It’s a sign of the shifting energy landscape as incumbents in the auto and electricity industry try to maintain the status quo, tech companies like Google are planning to generate 1 gigawatt of renewable energy and electric cars… (not forgetting, of course, the ex-tech-startup led Tesla Motors)

Choice magazine have got an interesting article on going carbon neutral. I found it interesting that in this graph Australia ranks 4th for per-capita emissions. I’d always been led to believe we were second only to the US. Also includes all the usual tips (and usual suspects) for reducing emissions, but doesn’t mention offsetting. A useful guide to pass on to family and friends that are bitten by the green bug…

Classic. Many of these are great too - especially this one on fear and this one on privacy vs. security.

Mildly good news: Australia Stepping Back From The Coal-Fired Edge - the planned Sydney desalination plant will be powered by renewable energy.

Now, if only they’d actually invest in the more cost-effective alternatives to desalination (like recycling and water tanks etc.), we’d be on the right track…

I’ve been seeing advertising around the city touting BP’s “green credentials” - paraphrased, the ad says “We committed to reducing our emissions to 1990 levels by 2010. We did it by 2001.”

I find these ads mildly offensive, because BP are still making massive profits - $4.21 billion in one quarter (and this is considered a “bad” quarter) - from their primary busines - selling petrol. Of course, this is one of the major contributors to global warming, so the company’s claims seemed to me to be a bit disingenuous, to say the least.

But, what is even worse still is that while BP are out touting their “green-ness”, they have paid $1.1 billion in fines in the US alone for environment-related violations.

BP are one of the most forward thinking of the Big Oil companies (not that that says much). They have announced an investment, globally, $1.8 billion over 3 years. Working this out another way, that equates to $0.15 billion per quarter - or around 3% of profit.

Don’t get me wrong: $1.8 billion is a big investment in anyone’s language, but it’s a tiny fraction compared to the damage their main business does.

Mostly, though, I reckon that BP should spend less money on advertising how green they are, and more money on actually doing the right thing…

South Australian students have constructed a biodiesel powered bike.

That’s cool ‘coz it’s an Aussie invention (we need more of them). But like most - likely to go off-shore (”There are no plans to produce a commercial version of the bike, but several companies in Asia have expressed interest.”).

That’s so frustrating - these talented students can do more than manufacturers with R&D budgets infinitely larger that the students probably had to work with. We need to see more of this kind of R&D happening in Australia - thankfully we have the education system to do that hard work eh?

Just a pointer to a post I’ve just written over on the Digital Eskimo blog on Greener Computing.

Well - we already knew that. But as Treehugger reports, the ice is melting faster than the official predictions of the IPCC. The IPCC is the same organisation that conservatively suggested that humans are 90% likely to be causing global warming. In the face of reality, their conservative estimates on ice melt seem to be very conservative indeed. Perhaps they are also understating our impact?

Vincenze also posted a simple argument for why we need to act - risk management 101 really. Makes common sense - so why is it still in question?

Anyways - very interesting. And with Al and the IPCC getting the Nobel prize, mebbe more action is on the way? I sure hope so…

Just a heads up that next Wednesday is National ‘Ride to work’ Day.

During Earth Hour I had a couple of conversations about how people who work in offices seem to be less conscious of their habits in relation to sustainability than they are at home. That somehow, when they’re at work, they kind of feel it’s someone else’s responsibility. This was primarily anecdotal, but it did ring true for me at the time.

Seems that recent survey, reported by Smart Company seems to back that up:

According to a recent survey of 1741 US employees by Sun Microsystems published by Inc.com, 73% of workers want to work for businesses that are environmentally-friendly – but only 52% say they turn lights off when they leave a room at the office, and 34% report they turn off their computers at the end of the day.

Interestingly, people take more responsibility for conservation at home. The same survey found 92% of people conserve energy at home by turning off the lights and 58% shut down their computers.

In our chats one of the folks suggested that we needed to get across the idea that individuals are the business - in the specific case we were referring to the building (i.e. that the building doesn’t know how to turn off lights and computers, put things in recycling, conserve water etc. - the people do).

But how do you do that without sounding patronising? Anyways - hopefully that study will help change some behaviour…