photo: Mathias Degen

Some preliminary data was recently released on how well the 39 nations which ratified the Kyoto Protocol are doing in reducing carbon emissions and the result for the group overall is, well, a mixed bag. Sixteen nations are on track to meet their obligations, while 20 are not.

photo: Maury Landsman

While I’m not sure that the claims by the owners of Castello Monte Vibiano Vecchio olive oil farm that they will be the first farm anywhere to reduce their net carbon emissions to zero, without using offsite carbon offsetting projects, are be entirely true—I’d be surprised that some small farm hasn’t tried to do the same thing, just not publicized it as well—the efforts by the owners of this Umbrian farm are pretty interesting: ...

Norway has lots of reasons to back CCS - it already sequesters 1 million tons annually.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) seems to give the power industry a warm, fuzzy feeling. Vattenfall, Sweden's state-owned power utility has embraced the technology and has opened a pilot plant in Germany, where it runs a number of coal-fired plants - 64 percent of its generation is from brown coal in Germany, just one percent from renewables (and it has zero coal-fired plants in Sweden).

Instead of funding tree planting in Indonesia, wind farms in China or methane capture right here at home, S.F.-based Village Green (of "Green My Vino" fame) is trying a different route - selling directly to consumers permits from the fledgling carbon cap and trade market just starting up in the U.S. Northeastern states.

Buy a permit, rip it up
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) makes power plants hold one permit for each ton of carbon they emit.

I previously posted about Apple being listed as a non-environmentally friendly company, in part for being one of the only computer companies to still use toxic materials. CNET now reports on a study by Climate Counts that puts Apple dead last in a list of electronics companies in terms of carbon footprints. They gave Apple a score of 11 out of 100 (which interestingly enough is up 9 from last year). It's amazing that a company that is so forward looking with designs is so backward in regards to the environment.