Comments on: Who are the big carbon emitters?

By: Stubborn Mule

Stubborn Mule — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:22:20 +0000

VerdantFlaneur: thanks for the links, I’ll look into them.

Bionic Man: the “CO2 is not a poison” argument has always struck me as one of the weakest in arguments against anthropogenic global warming. It seems rather like saying to a drowning man “don’t get worked up, water is not poison, it is the stuff of life!”.

By: Bionic Man

Bionic Man — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:28:13 +0000

CO2 is not a poison it is needed by plants for survival. There is scientific debate about whether CO2 per se causes any temperature change and quoting from globalwarmfacts.com
“It’s a shame, the excess carbon dioxide could contribute to creating a greener planet (and the gain in albedo might save us from the next ice age). In the distant past, for millions of years, CO2 levels were 12 times higher than today (4500 parts per million then, versus 380 parts per million today), and that was a time of ice age temperatures. We can say the world is carbon dioxide deprived today”
The focus should be on sustainable and non poisonous energy sources not CO2 levels.

By: VerdantFlaneur

VerdantFlaneur — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:48:38 +0000

To get stuck into some deeper analysis, suggest you access some of the reports prepared by Citi’s Elaine Prior. She’s analysed the ASX200 in terms of emissions intensity (emissions/market cap), as well as potential CPRS exposure. Some material available here: http://bit.ly/b1Uup6 .

More recently she’s published a paper on the question of whether there is a link between greener buildings and value: http://bit.ly/bSaDku .

Much of her analysis has been derived from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) – a global voluntary carbon and climate change reporting program: http://www.cdproject.net (interestingly, only two ASX50 companies failed to report in 2009).

You will also find significant variation between NGERS data and CDP data given the application of different reporting boundaries. NGERS requires application of an operational boundary whereas CDP leaves boundary definition up to the company – typically companies have applied a financial boundary.

By: OldFuzz

OldFuzz — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:23:52 +0000

Macquarie and Delta, the top two – are wholly owned by the NSW Gov’t still. While they generate profit for their one shareholder, their value should be measured not by profit but perhaps by carbon efficiency in providing the valued electrical energy to the community – eg perhaps all power generators could be ranked by tonnes of CO2/MWh .
The “hungry” consumers, largely including the big minimg companies who consume enormous quantities of diesel fuel and electricity do have a very active program of reduction – perhaps they should be ranked on some measure of reduction in energy consumed/tonne of product produced for the needy/hungry/wealthy consumers of their products?

By: manny

manny — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:21:00 +0000

Great post.
I believe that since most greenhouse gas emissions are energy related (power plants, buildings, transport and industry), much of the answer in reducing emissions lies in new energy solutions – which both de-carbonise the supply of energy itself and reduce demand for power

By: Stubborn Mule

Stubborn Mule — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:12:29 +0000

James: I was thinking much the same thing about bringing in profits. Next step is to find the data…

I have updated the post to note that Wesfarmers owns Coles. Since Woolies have their own trucks, I would have thought much of their transport emissions would appear in Scope 1. It may be that air and rail (provided by other companies) contribute to their Scope 2 emissions.

By: JamesGlover

JamesGlover — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:58:54 +0000

Since companies are also generators of profit for shareholders it would be interesting to see the companies ranked by (something like) tonnes carbon per dollar profit or revenue, or its inverse.

Woolworths high figure may be due to transport costs but then where is Coles?