Tag: greenhouse gas emissions

Cans of beer with cardboard holding them together instead of plastic rings
Climate Confident

Closing the Loop: Unveiling the Potential of a Circular Economy with SAP’s Stephen Jamieson

In the continuous quest to spread the word about sustainability and inspire climate confidence, in today’s episode of the Climate Confident podcast I spoke with Stephen Jamieson, the Global Head of Circular Economy Solutions at SAP. We delved into the intriguing world of the circular economy, a concept that’s becoming increasingly crucial in our fight against climate change.

Stephen painted a vivid picture of our current global economy – one that is shockingly only 7.3% circular. To grasp the gravity of this, imagine that a staggering 93 gigatons of materials are extracted each year, most of which are mishandled, resulting in detrimental environmental impacts. From contributing to 90% of the world’s biodiversity loss to 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the way we manage materials today is cause for serious concern.

What stood out during our chat was the enormity of the problem, but also the potential solutions at our fingertips. It’s not just about waste reduction; it’s a broader climate change story. One significant revelation was that we’re ingesting a credit card size amount of plastic each week, which is an alarming testament to our current practices.

Stephen brought into focus the substantial role of businesses in promoting circularity, saying, “80% of sustainability impact is baked in at design time.” In essence, companies need to integrate sustainability from the design stage itself, and technologies can aid in streamlining this process. He shared an encouraging story about Henkel, a consumer goods company that swiftly adapted to Spain’s plastic packaging tax requirements, highlighting the power of digital transformation in the circular economy.

A significant part of our conversation centered around Extended Producer Responsibility regulations and the impact they have on shifting the cost of downstream waste management. Jamieson mentioned that the cost, which is currently shouldered by local authorities, would soon be handled by the production system, marking a considerable shift in incentive.

There’s a strong sense of urgency in our chat, but also a ray of hope. The circular economy holds the key to unlocking a sustainable future, and it’s evident that we are on the right track, but the journey has just begun.

Want to hear more about Stephen’s insights and why people often liken his voice to that a certain famous actor? Tune into this episode of the Climate Confident podcast and join the conversation. Let’s drive the change together!

You can listen to the full episode here. Your feedback and ideas are always appreciated, so feel free to drop a comment below. And remember, every small step towards sustainability counts!

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And remember to stay #ClimateConfident!

Full disclosure – SAP sponsored this episode of the podcast

Featured Posts, Technology / Software

IBM to increase the amount of renewable electricity it procures

IBM branded battery

After returning from IBM’s InterConnect conference recently we chided IBM for their aping of Amazon’s radical opaqueness concerning their cloud emissions, and their lack of innovation concerning renewables.

However, some better news emerged in the last few days.

The Whitehouse last week hosted a roundtable of some of the largest Federal suppliers to discuss their GHG reduction targets, or if they didn’t have any, to create and disclose them.

Coming out of that roundtable, IBM announced its committment to procure electricity from renewable sources for 20% of its annual electricity consumption by 2020. To do this, IBM will contract over 800 gigawatt-hours (GWh) per year of renewable electricity.

And IBM further committed to:

Reduce CO2 emissions associated with IBM’s energy consumption 35% by year-end 2020 against base year 2005 adjusted for acquisitions and divestitures.

To put this in context, in the energy conservation section of IBM’s 2013 corporate report, IBM reports that it sourced 17% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2013.

It is now committing to increase that from the 2013 figure of 17% to 20% by 2020. Hmmm.

IBM committed to purchasing 800 GWh’s of renewable electricity per year by 2020. How does that compare to some of its peers?

In 2014, the EPA reported that Intel purchased 3,102 GWh’s, of renewable electricity, and Microsoft purchased 2,488 GWh’s which, in both cases amounted to 100% of their total US electricity use.

In light of this, 800 GWh’s amounting to 20% of total electricity use looks a little under-ambitious.

On the other hand, at least IBM are doing something.

Amazon, as noted earlier, have steadfastly refused to do any reporting of their energy consumption, and their emissions. This may well be, at least in part, because Amazon doesn’t sell enough to the government to appear on the US Federal government’s Greenhouse Gas Management Scorecard for significant suppliers.

With the news this week that 2015 will likely be the hottest year on record, and that the Antarctic ice sheets are melting at unprecedented rates, it is time for organisations that can make a significant difference, to do so.

Google, purchased 32% of their total US energy from renewables in 2014. But more than that, this week it emerged that Google are considering moving climate denying sites down the list of Google search results.

And just yesterday, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff cancelled all his company’s events in the state of Indiana, after its governor signed a law making discrimination on the grounds of sexuality legal.

These are the kinds of measures that can make a difference.

Come on IBM. If this were your Spring Break report card, it’d read “IBM – could work harder”.

Technology / Software

Carbon Disclosure Project’s emissions reduction claims for cloud computing are flawed

data center
The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is a not-for-profit organisation which takes in greenhouse gas emissions, water use and climate change strategy data from thousands of organisations globally. This data is voluntarily disclosed by these organisations and is CDP’s lifeblood.

Yesterday the CDP launched a new study Cloud Computing – The IT Solution for the 21st Century a very interesting report which

delves into the advantages and potential barriers to cloud computing adoption and gives insights from the multi-national firms that were interviewed

The study, produced by Verdantix, looks great on the surface. They have talked to 11 global firms that have been using cloud computing for over two years and they have lots of data on the financial savings made possible by cloud computing. There is even reference to other advantages of cloud computing – reduced time to market, capex to opex, flexibility, automation, etc.

However, when the report starts to reference the carbon reductions potential of cloud computing it makes a fundamental error. One which is highlighted by CDP Executive Chair Paul Dickinson in the Foreword when he says

allowing companies to maximize performance, drive down costs, reduce inefficiency and minimize energy use – and therefore carbon emissions

[Emphasis added]

The mistake here is presuming a direct relationship between energy and carbon emissions. While this might seem like a logical assumption, it is not necessarily valid.

If I have a company whose energy retailer is selling me power generated primarily by nuclear or renewable sources for example, and I move my applications to a cloud provider whose power comes mostly from coal, then the move to cloud computing will increase, not decrease, my carbon emissions.

The report goes on to make some very aggressive claims about the carbon reduction potential of cloud computing. In the executive summary, it claims:

US businesses with annual revenues of more than $1 billion can cut CO2 emissions by 85.7 million metric tons annually by 2020

and

A typical food & beverage firm transitioning its human resources (HR) application from dedicated IT to a public cloud can reduce CO2 emissions by 30,000 metric tons over five years

But because these are founded on an invalid premise, the report could just as easily have claimed:

Technology / Software

Unfortunate EV choice won’t help SAP’s Greenhouse Gas reduction commitments

SAP's 2010 Global Greenhouse Gas Footprint

The graph above is taken from the Greenhouse Gas Footprint page of SAP’s Sustainability Report and it shows SAP’s global GHG footprint for 2010. Of particular note in this graph is that globally SAP’s 2010 carbon footprint for corporate cars is 24%. This is up from 23% in 2009 and 18% in 2008. This is obviously a problem for SAP who have publicly committed to reducing their Greenhouse Gas Emissions 51% (from their 2007 baseline) by 2020.

In an effort to help address this SAP decided to embark on a small scale Electric Vehicle (EV) project called Future Fleet. Future Fleet uses a fleet of 30 EV’s charged solely from renewable sources supplied (along with the charging infrastructure) by project partner MVV Energie.

SAP Future Fleet electric vehicle

SAP Future Fleet electric vehicle

SAP are using this project to test employee attitudes to EV’s but also to test their own EV eMobility charging and fleet management software which is being developed, and tested in tandem with the project. The software allows employees to log in and book cars for specific journeys between SAP sites in Germany, or for a day or a week at a time. The software also intelligently prioritises charging of cars based on expected upcoming journey duration, current battery state and other factors.

All good and laudable stuff. However, one major issue I have with the project is that for purely political reasons SAP chose an electric car for the project which seemed to be designed with the distinct purpose of turning drivers off EV’s…

Trends & Concepts

Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 01/29/2010

Green numbers
Photo credit: Unhindered by Talent


Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

Here is this Friday’s Green Numbers round-up:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

by-sa