The CMB-designed HydroTug hydrogen-powered tugboat for the Port of Antwerp
Port of Antwerp (click here) has ordered construction of a tug powered by hydrogen, the first in the world.
Compagnie Maritime Belge (click here) (CMB) announced Monday that it has fully offset the CO2 emissions from all of its shipping operations beginning this year. To achieve net-zero operation, the company has supported certified climate projects in developing countries and acquired voluntary carbon units in Zambia (carbon-reducing agricultural and forest management practices), Guatemala (forest management) and India (wind and solar parks).
Carbon offsets - in particular forest conservation - have attracted scrutiny in recent years over questions of permanence and effectiveness. The difficulties for forest projects include changing political winds (e.g., the rise of pro-deforestation factions in Brazil), enforcement difficulties (illegal logging and land-clearing), accounting challenges (for example, whether a successful forestry outcome would have happened anyways), and "leakage," or the relocation of the unwanted deforestation activity to a different site.
However, CMB does not intend to rely on offsets for the long term. Rather than aiming for the IMO target of a 50 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, CMB aims to go fully zero-carbon (not just fully-offset) over the same period...
These are global commitments. There is no excuse anymore.
January 24, 2020
By Vanessa Bates Rameriz
The alarming headlines (click here) about Australia’s bush fires over the last couple weeks have heightened the global outcry over climate change, and companies, NGOs, and governments are taking action.
One of the most ambitious targets was set last week by Microsoft. In a press conference on January 16, CEO Satya Nadella announced that not only does the company plan to be carbon negative by 2030, but if it succeeds, the move will effectively cancel out its lifetime CO2 emissions by 2050....
Committing to carbon neutrality has become something of a (laudable, necessary) fad in recent years, with companies like Amazon, Bosch, Nestle, L’Oreal, SAP, Google, and many others reaching carbon neutrality or pledging to reach it in the near future. This means they’re either eliminating their own emissions by, say, switching to 100 percent renewable energy, or they’re buying carbon offsets, which are credits that fund emissions-reduction projects around the world.
It’s not just companies jumping on the carbon-neutral bandwagon; countries and states are too. The UK pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, Hawaii by 2045, and Finland by 2035....
These are global commitments. There is no excuse anymore.
January 24, 2020
By Vanessa Bates Rameriz
The alarming headlines (click here) about Australia’s bush fires over the last couple weeks have heightened the global outcry over climate change, and companies, NGOs, and governments are taking action.
One of the most ambitious targets was set last week by Microsoft. In a press conference on January 16, CEO Satya Nadella announced that not only does the company plan to be carbon negative by 2030, but if it succeeds, the move will effectively cancel out its lifetime CO2 emissions by 2050....
Committing to carbon neutrality has become something of a (laudable, necessary) fad in recent years, with companies like Amazon, Bosch, Nestle, L’Oreal, SAP, Google, and many others reaching carbon neutrality or pledging to reach it in the near future. This means they’re either eliminating their own emissions by, say, switching to 100 percent renewable energy, or they’re buying carbon offsets, which are credits that fund emissions-reduction projects around the world.
It’s not just companies jumping on the carbon-neutral bandwagon; countries and states are too. The UK pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, Hawaii by 2045, and Finland by 2035....
