Carbon Management for a Sustainable Environment


Book Description

This textbook presents students with a systematic approach for the quantification and management of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and provides best practices for optimal carbon management and quantification. The book begins with an overview of climate change basics and goes on to discuss carbon footprint measurements, carbon management concepts, and concludes by presenting carbon reduction solutions with applications for green buildings, smart transportation, waste management, and carbon trading and offsetting. The author provides practical examples and carbon management models that support innovative reduction solutions and presents a roadmap for the implementation and development of carbon management strategies, making it a useful resource for both upper undergraduate and graduate students as well as practitioners seeking a comprehensive framework to conduct carbon management.




The Carbon Footprint Handbook


Book Description

Thorough and detailed, The Carbon Footprint Handbook encompasses all areas of carbon footprint, including the scientific elements, methodological and technological aspects, standards, industrial case studies, and communication of carbon footprint results. Written and edited by an international group of experts, the far-ranging topics on carbon foot




The Handbook of Carbon Accounting


Book Description

Carbon Accounting is a vital tool in enabling organisations to measure and report on their greenhouse gas emissions. As the need to respond to the causes and impacts of climate change becomes increasingly urgent, emissions calculations and inventories are a vital first step towards mastering climatic risk. The Handbook of Carbon Accounting offers an accessible and comprehensive presentation of the discipline. The book examines the different methods or instruments implemented by countries and companies – such as carbon taxation, carbon markets and voluntary offsetting – while revealing how these stem not simply from the aim of reducing emissions for the lowest cost, but more as a compromise between divergent interests and individual world views. It also explores the historical context of the emergence of carbon accounting, assessing its evolution since the Rio Conference in 1992 and the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, to the latest Conference of Parties in 2015 in Paris.The book concludes with a very practical guide to calculate, reduce, offset and disclose your carbon footprint.Like other management tools, carbon accounting may not be an exact science, but its contribution has never been more important. The Handbook of Carbon Accounting is a vital educational resource that will help readers – including those with no prior knowledge of the field – to understand carbon flows and stocks and to take action. It forms part of a movement that heralds the start of a new economic era in which the search for prosperity can live in harmony with the environment.




Carbon Footprint Analysis


Book Description

The negative impacts of carbon emissions from human activities continue to dramatically reshape the environmental, political, and social landscape. These impacts coupled with cap and trade schemes iterate the importance and need to properly measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon Footprint Analysis: Concepts, Methods, Implementation, and Case Studies provides up-to-date technical information and practical guidance on measuring and reducing energy and GHG emissions. Presenting a comprehensive framework for carbon management, this book: Provides definitions, concepts, benefits, and background information regarding carbon footprint analyses Discusses the GHG accounting methods Outlines the general systems framework for conducting an audit Features four case studies in higher education, service, and manufacturing organizations The book includes detailed discussions of the concepts and explains how the different concepts fit together. It supplies the necessary background as well as systematic tools and procedures for organizations to measure and reduce their carbon footprints and begin to adapt to a carbon-constrained world.




How Bad Are Bananas?


Book Description

'It is terrific. I can't remember the last time I read a book that was more fascinating and useful and enjoyable all at the same time.' Bill Bryson How Bad Are Bananas? was a groundbreaking book when first published in 2009, when most of us were hearing the phrase 'carbon footprint' for the first time. Mike Berners-Lee set out to inform us what was important (aviation, heating, swimming pools) and what made very little difference (bananas, naturally packaged, are good!). This new edition updates all the figures (from data centres to hosting a World Cup) and introduces many areas that have become a regular part of modern life - Twitter, the Cloud, Bitcoin, electric bikes and cars, even space tourism. Berners-Lee runs a considered eye over each area and gives us the figures to manage and reduce our own carbon footprint, as well as to lobby our companies, businesses and government. His findings, presented in clear and even entertaining prose, are often surprising. And they are essential if we are to address climate change.




Handbook of Carbon Offset Programs


Book Description

Greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets have long been promoted as an important element of a comprehensive climate policy approach. Offset programs can reduce the overall cost of achieving a given emission goal by enabling emission reductions to occur where costs are lower. Offsets have the potential to deliver sustainability co-benefits, through technology development and transfer. They can also develop human and institutional capacity for reducing emissions in sectors and locations not included in a cap and trade or a mandatory government policy. However, offsets can pose a risk to the environmental integrity of climate actions, especially if issues surrounding additionality, permanence, leakage, quantification and verification are not adequately addressed. The challenge is to design offset programs and policies that can maximize their potential benefits while minimizing their potential risks. This handbook provides a systematic and comprehensive review of existing offset programs. It looks at what offsets are, how offset mechanisms function, and the successes and pitfalls they have encountered. Coverage includes offset programs across the full swath of applications including mandatory and voluntary systems, government regulated and private markets, carbon offset funds, and accounting and reporting protocols such as the WBCSD/WRI GHG Protocol and ISO 14064. Learning from the successes and failures of these programs will be essential to crafting effective climate policy. This is an essential reference for all regulators, policy makers, business leaders and NGOs concerned with the design and operation of GHG offset programs world-wide. Published with SEI




Handbook of Low Carbon Concrete


Book Description

Handbook of Low Carbon Concrete brings together the latest breakthroughs in the design, production, and application of low carbon concrete. In this handbook, the editors and contributors have paid extra attention to the emissions generated by coarse aggregates, emissions due to fine aggregates, and emissions due to cement, fly ash, GGBFS, and admixtures. In addition, the book provides expert coverage on emissions due to concrete batching, transport and placement, and emissions generated by typical commercially produced concretes. - Includes the tools and methods for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases - Explores technologies, such as carbon capture, storage, and substitute cements - Provides essential data that helps determine the unique factors involved in designing large, new green cement plants




How to Avoid a Climate Disaster


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.




Handbook of Climate Change Mitigation


Book Description

There is a mounting consensus that human behavior is changing the global climate and its consequence could be catastrophic. Reducing the 24 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from stationary and mobile sources is a gigantic task involving both technological challenges and monumental financial and societal costs. The pursuit of sustainable energy resources, environment, and economy has become a complex issue of global scale that affects the daily life of every citizen of the world. The present mitigation activities range from energy conservation, carbon-neutral energy conversions, carbon advanced combustion process that produce no greenhouse gases and that enable carbon capture and sequestion, to other advanced technologies. From its causes and impacts to its solutions, the issues surrounding climate change involve multidisciplinary science and technology. This handbook will provide a single source of this information. The book will be divided into the following sections: Scientific Evidence of Climate Change and Societal Issues, Impacts of Climate Change, Energy Conservation, Alternative Energies, Advanced Combustion, Advanced Technologies, and Education and Outreach.




Carbon Inventory Methods


Book Description

Carbon Inventory Methods Handbook fills the need for a handbook that provides guidelines and methods required for carbon inventory. It provides detailed step-by-step information on sampling procedures, field and laboratory measurements, application of remote sensing and GIS techniques, modeling, and calculation procedures along with sources of data for carbon inventory. The book is driven by a growing need for ‘carbon inventory’ for land use sections such as forests.