Emissions down, interest up: Banking on a carbon neutral future

It's highly unlikely that the thing to bring me back out of my grumpy hiatus from blogging about climate change (after ex-PM Rudd stalled on the ETS), would be a press release. Particular one from a bank. Like most of Australia, I suspect, the only reason why I am still with my current bank is that they are the best of a bad lot.

But, when one of the big four are telling me they are now carbon neutral, and it doesn't smell of green-wash at first sniff, I'm encouraged to notice the real-world progress being made while certain political parties bugger around spoiling. I am reminded that procurement departments in large companies in Australian and globally are sending out forms to all of their suppliers, getting them to record what systems they have implemented to record and reduce their carbon footprints. Tendering offices are responding to requests of the same. Marketing departments are framing the triple bottom line. Supply-chains are greening.

Beavering on in the background of the busy commercial world, the biggest survey since Domesday is going on. Facilities managers are recording the savings in energy and recyclables and environmental performance now makes the annual report. Top 200 CEOs are proudly talking up their companies' newly declared carbon neutral pledges, as if they were hippies at a Stonehenge Solstice moon festival. It's not all puffery, these companies are now subscribing to rigid environmental management standards like the ISO14000+ series. Tangible, verifiable stuff - ETS-proof.

HR departments are running behavioural change programs. Photocopiers are being changed to print double sided, and idle out. Screen savers drop into energy saving mode after 30 seconds, down from 5 minutes. Cardboard boxes for paper waste are replacing the all purpose desk bins at employees cubicles and now the poor darlings have to make the trip to the communal recycling bins for any other waste disposal matters. Early grumblings soon becomes office chatter as the food and organic waste bin becomes the new water-cooler in my office.

Everywhere there is cause for optimism: Energy is being saved, emissions cut, cars are being taken off the road as far as the atmosphere is concerned.

About about 13,500 cars annually by the NAB alone, in fact. The NAB has announced that they are now proudly carbon neutral, savings of around 60,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per annum since 2006 through efficiency and effectively taking 13,500 cars, annually.

I checked out their website to find out more, and liked the new design -- it's bold and clean. In the equally bold headline they announce they're "proudly carbon neutral". Good on them, they deserve to be proud - they are the first bank to go carbon neutral. Not a bank of the future, but a bank for the future. Anyway, NAB have now given me something more to consider in a new bank, next time I get pissed off at my current bank's more opportunistic fees regime.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

All power to you, Google!

My leprechaun friend, below, tells me that it's motivated, grass-root ideas that are going to create the groundswell needed for meaningful change at the level where it has to happen — the consumer.

I would rather throw my lot in with a market-signalling coalition of the good-willing than all the vapid international treaties and lobby-bruised politicians in the world. And Google PowerMeter now offers me a practical way to participate (assuming Google in Oz offers same). Here's their spiel:

Google PowerMeter allows you to:

Access
See your electricity use from any Google Powermeter enabled device.

Learn
Understand more about how you use electricity throughout the day.

Save
Reduce your electricity use and lower your monthly bills.

Since Google are currently exhausted from Doing No Evil, they are Doing This Gratis, participating leprechauns, and their offspring, get to keep their saved gold:

Google PowerMeter is a project of Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm, which aspires to leverage the power of information and technology to address global challenges.

May de road roise up to greet you!

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

ANZ calls independent Gunns pump mill environmental assessment.

The ANZ is creating an image for itself as a greener bank, as I discovered when researching who is behind Project Andromeda, a climate initiative by business.

So, what are they going to do about the Gunns pulp mill, which as already pulped Turnbull and Garrett and it is only in approval stage? As Gunns' bank for the last 20 years, they face a dilemma.

They have gone public when they could have remained quiet, hoping not to attract attention to a potentially unbalanced triple bottom line. So good on them. I know that the trend among financiers and developers is to take their environmental commitments seriously now.

It would be great if they were legally able and willing to make the environmental review aspect of their technical review public. As infinitely preferable as it is to not chop down productive carbon sinks, I mean trees, I'm not against anything that the stake-holding public has been fully informed about, as part of a two way dialogue.

clipped from www.smh.com.au ONE of the country's largest banks, ANZ, is considering whether it will fund the Gunns pulp mill, saying it must first assess whether the Tasmanian project meets its own environmental standards. In a statement issued yesterday the bank said it had commissioned an independent review of the $1.7 billion Tamar Valley mill, approved by the Federal Government on Thursday. "The review is testing the technical aspects of the mill's design and its overall feasibility with reference to engineering specifications, design plans and other supporting information," it said. "As this project proposal involves significant social and/or environmental issues, the technical review will also include an assessment of the adequacy of measures proposed by the company to manage these risks on an ongoing basis." Gunns has been a customer of ANZ for more than 20 years.