So the next climate deal is another watered down soapy substance now that China and India pulled the plug at the G8 meeting held in Japan. The stalemate that’s visible was exactly what was feared by everybody; diametrically opposed parties over the emissions by the world’s largest energy consuming countries.

Time for a change in approach? Perhaps time for a change in accounting methods. Take China for instance. At least 23% of this country’s carbon emissions are from goods that are exported to industrialized countries. So is it fair that the country is held responsible for all of its emissions in the new climate deal?

Academic researchers from the UK focusing their efforts on finding ways in which China can evolve into a coal independent nation say that determining countries’ carbon emissions should not be limited by national borders, as is currently the case under the Kyoto Protocol. The goings on at the G8 meeting in Japan appear to suggest something along similar lines.

The researchers, who embarked on their project in 2006 and have an end date in 2009, wrote a commentary note called the Tyndall Centre Briefing Note on the G8 meeting and suggested that a nation’s entire carbon footprint should also include imported goods and services manufactured elsewhere.

It’s an argument that is heard frequently. The supply chain logic follow through is gaining momentum in the corporate world these days in particular. As carbon calculations are increasingly getting more sophisticated, more and more companies are getting to the nitty gritty parts of their carbon emissions by including data on their suppliers.

The Tyndal researchers, Tao Wang and Jim Watson, make a few strong points. First of all they point out that China’s carbon emissions from goods exported to the first world are the equivalent of more than double the UK’s emissions or the whole of Japan’s. That is quite hefty. Then they claim that industrialised countries are both historically responsible for the majority of carbon emissions to date and that they’re likely to have accelerated the rapid growth in emissions in these countries.

The arguments build up to the logical deduction that it makes sense for the developed world to get on with cleaning up the environment by imposing strict rules and by helping the poor countries along the road.

Wang and Watson’s calculation of just how China’s greenhouse gas breaks down firmly supporting this argument. The numbers are taken from China’s official 2004 data (the most recent year for which full data was available) and they indicate that China is now the world’s top polluting country (having overtaken the US). And these results may be on the low side because between 2004 and 2006, China’s export increased from $32bn to $177bn.

The researchers, whose project assesses how China can industrialize without becoming locked long-term into an energy and economy dependent upon coal, oil and gas, believe there’s credible evidence that it makes sense for industrialised countries to move first to make real progress in cutting their carbon emissions and to help nations like China and India to shift to a more low carbon path of development. The United States in particular is vehemently opposed to reducing emissions unless new economies like China and India also do so. The US is the top importer of Chinese made goods.

China is working on reducing energy use, but its government has limited power because global demand and market forces determine much of this process. Take for example the steel industry. The Chinese government has tried to slow this sector’s expansion by slashing tax rebates. But steel exports nevertheless have increased over 200% due to worldwide demand for cheaper steel from China. Looks like there’s a whole lot of thinking that needs to go into what’s fair.

At the end of the G8 meeting, only three of the emerging economies, Indonesia, South Korea and Australia, did actually commit to the vague goals set; a 50 percent reduction of greenhouse gas by 2050.

Chinese participants to the global climate talks cited economic growth and political risks as the main factors deterring them from committing. The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, was saying that his priorities were stacked up in a different order. He said food security, public health and water resources were the main issues on his list of important things to do.

But environmental activists are deeply disappointed at the G8 meeting’s outcome because the goal to set firm targets with smaller time frames has now been abandoned. They furthermore say that a specific base year to calculate carbon reductions on is missing. It is now hoped that a ‘do good’ mentality is going to become the export product of proper pride of the individual participating countries.

The UK and Europe (EU) have said that they will both be on target to reduce greenhouse gas 20% by 2020. It is assumed that countries that impose stringent goals also come up with the better competitive technology which they will be able to sell to other countries too.

Environmentalists are lobbying intensely for governments’ commitment to shorter-range targets, (also read a recent Triple Pundit post by me about G8 sponsored research) but the Japanese meeting concluded with this consideration left to the discretion of member countries.

European researchers say they have begun to develop fridges that are powered by a 100% alloy which will reduce their energy usage by 50%. In the last 15 years, fridge technology developers have had to consider what option would be the lesser of two evils. Environmentalists alerted them to the harmful side effects of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the refrigerant chemical, but alternative refrigerants require a lot more energy.

But now there’s an alternative to both chemicals, a solution that will reduce your fridge’s energy bill by half. Trick is to use electromagnetic fields cleverly. No joking. The scientists work on behalf of BASF, the chemicals company, and a Dutch foundation called Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM). They are pioneering technology based on magnetocaloric materials (again, no joking). These materials are a new class of refrigerants and are set to significantly reduce the negative impact of today’s cooling systems on the environment.

Full testing is underway but it’s very likely that magnetocaloric materials are highly efficient cooling agents. Research leader Prof.dr. Ekkes Brück from Delft University of Technology has reserved five years for developing the materials with the best properties. He and his team will be working in the BASF laboratories in the Netherlands and Germany to improve the alternative chemicals requiring lower energy levels.

Magnetocaloric materials are solid alloys and earlier research by the scientists has already proven that it’s set to be an attractive alternative for cooling fridges. “The [magnetocaloric materials] warm up in a magnetic field and cool down when the field is removed. Theoretical considerations show an energy savings potential of up to fifty percent”, the scientists say. Not only will the technology be applicable to fridges, but because of its compactness it’s likely it can easily be installed in air conditioners, central heating systems and even in computers.

The technology, if it makes the commercial stages, will be staggeringly useful because it’s estimated that 25% of our total energy consumption today is used for cooling applications, for instance in refrigerators and air conditioners.

Despite all the talk about green interior design, there’s a long way to go before we live with furniture and household items that are actually biodegradable. A truly green sofa ought to be disposable via the compost heap in your own garden by the time you’re done with it, don’t you agree? That’s the central argument in the Cradle2Cradle philosophy. Unlike durable design, C2C is the real end of the throw away society.

The C2C philosophy has been around for the last five years, but to find furniture designers that adhere to its principles it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. A recently created design house by eight Dutch design students has embraced C2C fully. The company, called Artishok, has just completed its first designs after spending months researching the best 100% biodegradable materials for modern furniture.

The team was directly inspired by William McDonough, an architect, and the chemist Michael Braungart, the two inventors of C2C. The duo believes that another Industrial Revolution is at hand which is concentrated around ecological production methods.

The Artishok design studio embodies this perfectly, creating furniture from corn based plastics. Artishok’s products look no different than other designer stuff and the advantage of the Artishok items is that they virtually do not contribute to your carbon footprint. After use, you can safely throw the furniture on your garden’s compost heap without polluting the soil even 1%. That means that the eight students are about as close as any designers to replicating the natural cycle directly. There’s likely strong demand for such items because other than recycled materials, 100% natural materials effectively eliminate the garbage problem. C2C based items can be ´fed back´ to mother nature no questions asked! Artishok buys its materials from Biopearls www.biopearls.nl, another Dutch enterprise which makes biodegradable polymers.

C2C has turned the design world on its head in some ways. Everybody agrees that the throw away society must be stopped, but C2C appears to clash with durable design. Because unlike durable designs which seem to deny a product’s end point, C2C is sold primarily because of its ‘rotting away’ value. Critics say that it’s the trash heap nightmare, and not nature, which inspires this and that C2C is merely a marketing ploy. Some people also believe that nature doesn’t need extra compost. That might very well be true, but McDonough and Braungart aren’t too extreme. They say that so long as you create stuff that can be re-used by industry, you might consider it on equal terms with biodegradable materials. Every item that´s not ending up in a rubbish dump helps solve the landslide problem.

Other designers working with corn based plastics have mostly been involved with soft finishings like pillows. And Umbra, the US mid market designer has manufactured a 100% corn based Garbine trashcan. Another natural material that’s used in designs is sugar, which, believe it or not, can be used for making lamps. Other than furniture designers, HP is also experimenting with natural plastics.

Artisjok’s competition in the Netherlands is virtually zero, but there is massive interest in the C2C philosophy throughout Europe. This entire year and in 2009 the agenda’s of McDonough and Braungart are chockerbloc with Dutch speaking appointments. There are also plans to offer Braungart a position as professor at a newly created C2C institute in Venlo, the Netherlands.

It’s a known fact that trees are only temporarily carbon sequesters and that by the time they start to rot, all the nasty material gets transmitted back into the atmosphere again. So why not prevent this? Thus far we’ve been held back from doing so because intervening into the natural cycle somehow doesn’t feel right. But if we only tidied up one sixth of all the tree wastage lying around on the forest floors, we’d be nearing the carbon levels emitted by burning fossil fuels.

That’s quite a compelling idea. Climatologist Ning Zeng who works at the University of Maryland, published a paper describing the impact of clearing up forests on a the Carbon Balance and Management Journal website recently. The article, now flagged ‘highly accessed’, was picked up by various other journals in no time.

It must be said that the numbers –Zeng made his calculations on the basis of national US forests and CO2 data- are enough to spark anyone’s interest. Zeng’s says that to relieve forests of some of their excess debris, could lead to a recurring carbon sequestering of 10 gigatons of carbon a year. Trees and plants are believed to scrub the air free of some 60 gigatons of carbon a year. Most of that gets emitted back into the atmosphere when living organisms decompose.

Removing one sixth of the debris before it sets out to rot away might be a hugely efficient way to prevent greenhouse gas emissions, says Zeng. So long as enough woody debris is left on the forest floors to feed new cycles and to maintain bio systems, this is a feasible solution. The dead wood is best stored air tight underground. That way a continuous carbon sink is created. Every square kilometer of forest would fill trenches of 10×25 meters in size and 10 meters deep. Some 10 million of those would have to be dug every year to store 5 billion tons of carbon at a cost of $14 per ton worth of buried wood.

The proposal will trigger odd associations because something natural is proposed to be treated as if it’s a chemical. And in some ways the proposed interaction (if not interference) with forests’ bio rhythms is risky to say the least. Nevertheless Zeng’s argument is no waste of time because the scientist has analyzed all the factors involved. Including the types of soil and their reactions to types of wood. And he admitted to New Scientist that in some cases, the creation of methene gases won’t be prevented. Methane is known as one of the worst greenhouse gas types. This indicates that extreme care should be taken before big mistakes are made. Also, burying a biomass like trees and plants will inevitably attract termites which would mess up the project by puncturing holes in the airtight burial chambers. That’s not to speak of the natural habitats of some animals that you might ruin by clearing out wood.

But on the other hand the advantage of Zeng’s proposal is that if it’s well executed, it’s highly efficient. To date there’s hardly any technology that could match up to a 100% efficient burial of biomass with such greenhouse gas reductions. You could also argue that it’s very likely that managed forests likely offer plenty of evidence that not all human interference in the natural cycle is bad.

Equity analysts divide into three distinct groups based on their climate change perspective, according to a new report from independent research firm Verdantix.

The survey, entitled Equity Analysts Link Climate Change And Company Valuation shows that there are virtually equally sized groups of climate change believers, sceptics and cynics. Believers represent 30% of analysts. These guys already include climate change factors like regulations and risks in their financial models. Sceptics, comprising 28% of the research participants, think that climate change will have a material impact on profitability within 2 to 5 years. Cynics, comprising 30% of analysts, doubt climate change will ever impact valuations.

Verdantix Director David Metcalfe, author of the report, said that the utilities sector thus far is the only industry about which analysts seem to have agreed on a consensus on how to incorporate climate change into financial models. In other sectors such unanimity is lacking. Some oil and gas analysts are in complete denial while others view climate change regulations, risks and strategy as intrinsic to financial valuation. Metcalfe believes this is bound to change. He believes that by 2010 all industries will see a consensus of opinion of analyst.

The Verdantix analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 50 equity analysts who cover 13 different industry sectors and represent 22 investment banks including ABN AMRO, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS. In addition to the high-level segmentation of analyst perspective, the research found that:

-Analysts suffer from information and knowledge gaps. Thirty-two per cent of analysts (covering industries as diverse as food production, basic resources, retail, oil, gas, media and banks) said they “didn’t know” if firms provide sufficient data on greenhouse gas emissions. Half of the respondents stated that firms didn’t need to verify greenhouse gas emissions although this is essential to establish a baseline for reporting.

-Regulations rank highest among climate change factors. Forty-two per cent of the analysts in the Verdantix survey, from sectors like industrial goods, oil, gas, travel and construction, conducted research into climate change regulatory impacts. The EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme loomed large in analysts’ minds. By contrast, the UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment was deemed less important.

-Carbon emission reductions and renewable energy ranked lowest. While 32% of analysts had changed a profit forecast due to an energy or fuel efficiency initiative, just 8% did so due to a commitment to reduce carbon emissions and only 6% made an adjustment because a firm committed to buying the majority of energy from renewable sources.

“Climate change is perceived as a corporate branding issue” Metcalfe says. A total of 80% of the surveyed analysts were more or less convinced that brand image is enhanced through climate change initiatives. The report also includes pointers for companies’ corporate communications designed to take advantage of the analyst mindset based on the survey’s results.

Heard the scare stories about greenwashing? Turns out that most of the trickery happens when business 2 consumer deals are involved. B2B is an entirely different story, not least because of reputational risks involved. But European legislation also will soon facilitate the combat of greenwashing.

The European environment commissioner Stavros Dimas has said he’s drawing up plans to achieve lower energy consumption by legislating what actually makes a green product. The initiative, the Sustainability Package, comprises new rules that organizations can used to get green procurement operations in place.

The concept of green procurement is not new. Around the globe, companies and public organizations are busy implementing software modules that allow them to make sure they’re purchasing goods and services that score well in terms of green credentials.

Check out the Business and Sustainable Development website for case studies of private companies around the globe that have already got a green procurement strategy in place, including Dupont, Elextrolux, AMP, the BBC, Dow Jones Sustainable Indexes and Humboldt’s Legacy. There are also various small business on this website.

Green procurement is now set to receive backing from European policymakers who are devising a set of minimum requirements for the most environmentally damaging products, Stavros told the Environmental Committee of the European Parliament. The rules, a first draft of which is expected to be published next year, also will facilitate competition because incentives are awarded to products that outperform.

The EU policymakers are especially bullish on resource-efficient products. The new product requirements will be periodically reviewed, Stavros said.

The European Union website already published a green procurement training toolkit, designed for use by public organizations pondering green public procurement Check it out here.

A recent annual survey into the carbon reduction efforts by suppliers has revealed that business leaders dread the potential impact of emissions legislation on their activities.

The survey, carried out by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a transatlantic not for profit organization, covered responses of 144 supply companies to multinational corporations.

Only 26% of the suppliers have actual plans in place to achieve greenhouse gas reductions. But more than double that number (58%) was tracking their emissions. Around 33% of all the surveyed suppliers has a dedicated board member in place dealing with climate change issues.

Nevertheless almost all company bosses (96%) cited emisssions legislation as a major risk. The CDP survey focused on finding out what progress companies are making toward reducing their carbon footprint. The report underscored that business leaders in the supply chain area are most serious about measuring greenhouse gas emissions, which is an important first step.

CDP sends a climate change questionnaire annually to the largest publicly listed companies globally on behalf of investors. Companies report their emissions data using the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol - which is the most widely used international accounting tool for government and business leaders to understand, quantify, and manage greenhouse gas emissions. The organization represents 385 institutional investors with assets under management of $57 trillion.

England’s Climate Change Minister Joan Ruddock unveiled a new two year plan by the UK government for tackling climate change, stressing a local approach. She spoke at a conference about preparing for climate change organized by the Guardian newspaper. The UK government is one to watch because it has made impressive progress toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and is on track to achieve almost double its Kyoto target.

Ruddock revealed a two year plan to tackle the problems with new and existing projects in regional Britain, speaking at a conference on planning for climate adaptation. The UK government believes that local authorities, regional government and devolved administrations have a vital role to play in reducing carbon emissions because they happen to manage large estates and act as community leaders.

Official government bodies called Regional Climate Change Partnerships can apply for funding for taking action to
- Develop/update regional strategies
- Landscape scale natural environment issues and biodiversity
- Economic development
- Multi-area agreements
- Innovation/specific regional opportunities

Ruddock’s announcement at the Guardian conference follows a flurry of news reports containing alarming statistics indicating that CO2 levels are much worse than assumed thus far.

At the moment, CO2 emissions have reached the highest levels in 800,000 years according to recent data published on the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14 parts per million (ppm). This is a harrowing number because it’s the fourth year since 2001 that the 2ppm has been exceeded. To get an idea of proportion, check out these numbers for the previous decades. From 1970 to 2000, CO2 in the air increased way less, by about 1.5ppm annually. The problems exacerbated tremendously since 2000 as ppm numbers averaged 2.1ppm annually.

Another study recently published in Nature reconfirmed key scientific evidence that climate change is caused by human actions, a finding which had been concluded with 66-90 percent certainty in landmark February 2007 research on behalf of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). That research document is considered the basis for the international climate negotiations.

The Nature article was authored by many of the collaborators of the groundbreaking February 2007 IPCC research. Just like the NOAA information, the study asserts that the effects of global warming are undeniable and that things are getting worse. Greenhouse gas emissions trigger changes in natural systems on all continents as well as in most oceans, the scientists say, led by Cynthia Rosenzweig of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research. Antarctica is the only territory on the globe that is not affected, the researchers say. The study derives its findings from an 150,000 more years of data compared to the IPCC’s February 2007 information. “The warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems attributable at the global scale,” lead author Rosenzweig was quoted as saying in the Rawstory recently.

What’s all the more convincing is that a separate article in Nature by skeptics concludes that Rosenzweig et al’s research indeed contains an overwhelming amount of undeniable evidence. The commentary, by Francis Zwiers and Gabriele Hegerl, two climatologists, focused in on the question whether climate change is a result of human actions. “The sheer number of changes” in ecological systems listed in the study outweighed the skepticism that Zwiers and Hegerl reserved for the supposedly shortish time frames of the studied data.

Most of the recent gloom and doom in newsreports includes the harrowing comment that even if we curbed all greenhouse gases today the scenario would still be desperate. That’s of course a scientific observation that people are free to make. Whilst normally I’d be loath to devote too much attention to that particular assertion at the moment I think the time is more than appropriate to postulate the fact because it so obviously has a positive effect; many people are spurred into action. (I am on eagerly on the lookout for an agency/blog which monitors the ‘triggers’ spurring people/organizations to take environmental action. If anyone knows of such a monitoring service, please let me know.) Who knows, perhaps instilling fear turns out to be hardly the issue here; instead we could be absolutely ignorant of the real horrors that lie ahead of us.

Ruddock for one pointed out at the conference on planning for climate adaptation that “even if we stopped all emissions of greenhouse gases tomorrow we would still be locked into 30 to 40 years of climate change”. And a similar comment was made by Martin Parry, co-chair of the IPCC working group on climate impacts and also a speaker at the conference. He said that “despite all the talk, the situation is getting worse. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change and the scale of those impacts will also accelerate, until we decide to do something about it.”

Incidentally, some horrors are expected to change as a result of global warming. NOAH’s Thomas Knutson published an article in Nature Geoscience asserting that greenhouse gases will not necessarily lead to an increase in the frequency with which hurricanes take place this Century. That’s good news, but nevertheless Knutson asserts that the intensity of hurricanes is likely to get worse as a result of temperature rises.

The various sounding alarm bells have reinvigorated more people’s environmental concerns, a trend that’s intensified in recent months. We’re likely going to hear a lot more about the local factor. This is absolutely essential, also in the US. Read these comments by a US blogger called ClimateFrog who believes that the local initiative for climate change is key in waking up people. In many ways the local approach appears to be making sense because it’s at this level that anyone can decide that ‘the economy’ doesn’t have to be adversely affected by climate considerations.

This blog post was also published on Triple Pundit, a blog I contribute freelance articles to.

Ever thought about how a visit to a restaurant impacts your carbon footprint? Recent research shows that food served in over 40 London restaurants is not just slightly CO2 intensive, but that in many cases restaurant food produces over 100 times more CO2 than locally bought ingredients.

The research was carried out by Will Brookes, a Bsc student at the University of Nottingham (UK) and a graduate chef cook from the prestigious Leith School of Food and Wine. Brookes was so shocked at his findings that he called on the government to conduct a full environmental audit of British restaurants.

In his research, entitled ‘The Environmental Sustainability of the British Restaurant Industry: A London Case Study’ Brookes carried out an extensive public survey to test knowledge of local produce and the cost to the environment of importing food ingredients.

It can hardly come as a surprise to you that imported food creates more CO2 than locally sourced foodstuffs. But where the study’s findings are particularly shocking is how much more CO2 production is involved in imported food and how little awareness exists about this. An average dish in which ingredients are used from outside the EU produces more than five kilograms of CO2 in transport alone. This compares to just 51 grams of CO2 emissions associated with locally sourced food.

Food transport is a huge factor in the UK’s total CO2 emissions. It is believed that food transport alone accounts for 35 per cent of the UK’s total emissions, and the food industry is the third largest contributor with industrial use.

“The concept of food miles isn’t new” says Brookes. “There has been extensive research into the cost of importing foodstuffs by supermarkets, but this is the first study of its kind into the restaurant industry and its considerable impact on the environment. Given that up to 30 per cent of all human-induced global warming is caused by global food and agricultural systems, this is one area which needs to be addressed.”

Brookes’ dissertation supervisor Nick Mount stressed that a rule of thumb is that the more expensive the meal, the lower the carbon footprint. “This is what people seem to expect, but I doubt they would believe just how high the cost to the environment is in the cheaper meals”, he commented.

In case you wonder whether meals would get extremely dull if all restaurants sourced their ingredients from a limited amount of local producers, Brookes’ supervisor admitted it’s a risk. “But what the research clearly points to is the need for regulation and a governing body to make restaurants more sustainable,” Mount said.

Oliver Rowe, a famous cook in London, says he takes food CO2 issues very seriously and that over 85% of his produce in the kitchen hails from inside London. His restaurant is no exception, even though what his chefs do with the food unquestionably is exceptional.

The UK restaurant scene is interesting to keep a check on because the entire country itself is far ahead in Europe in consumer appetite for locally grown food. “The UK’s reliance on food prepared for the consumer is at an all time high”, said Brookes. “This puts restaurants in a highly prominent position. The restaurant sector has the potential to be at the forefront of improving the sustainability of our food industry. This of course carries the responsibility of promoting knowledge of seasonal and local produce. This in turn could improve the sustainability of the food we cook at home.”

Post was published also on TriplePundit, a blog I contribute freelance articles to.

Green collar jobs are rapidly becoming fashionable. The new trend represents a shift to the mainstream of the good old environmentalist approach to life. But what exactly makes a job green? The experts are far from agreed.

Green collar jobs have a magic lure to them. Not only because the people involved in the sector are supposedly making a conscious effort to salvaging what’s left of the earth’s natural resources, but also because they’re believed to drag the ailing economy out of its quagmire.

The environmentalist visionary Van Jones, who heads up the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, is drawing massive crowds across the country to his speeches about the green sector. He has helped initiate a green jobs program in Oakland and it´s in part due to his work that the Presidential candidates have included green collar jobs into their programs.

The Presidential candidates envisage green collar jobs to fuel the economy in the future with millions of workers weatherizing homes, installing solar panels and other house plans, concocting improved recipes for biofuel, adopting hybrid cars and of course building scores of wind turbines.

Hillary Clinton says she plans on creating 5 million green collar jobs and Barack Obama has also put the sector central to his energy plan, whilst former candidate John Edwards was talking about “one America in the new energy economy with green-collar jobs”.

Despite the political interest, it’s still too early to determine what the Green Collar job sector really amounts to. But the first contours of a legislative framework are visible. Congress passed a $125 million green-collar jobs program last December, with at least 20 percent targeted at reducing poverty. And a total of 28 states have legislation in place that mandates 10 to 25 percent of energy to be sourced from renewables over the next 10 or 20 years. Oakland, California, launched the the Oil Independent Oakland By 2020 Task Force at the end of 2006 and was also the first to sign the OilDepletionProtocol, an non-government organized protocol which guides communities and private persons reducing their oil dependency.

Official statistics on worker numbers don’t exist yet. People involved in the regulatory issues complain that there is a lack of guidance on the part of the policy makers at Federal level on sustainable energy policy issues. For the moment, the green sector is mainly driven by businesses, industry and individual home owners keen to promote energy conservation.

The main issue the green jobs sector will be faced with is credibility. High hopes are being built and in the absence of a track record the dream factor is high. Because of the economic dimensions associated with the green collar job sector, naysayers already talk of its ’staying power’. The danger here is that if the nation’s job market as a whole don’t get any better as a result of the radiance of green, the magic might wear off. The ´having your cake and eating it´ attitude which demands that green will save not only the planet but the entire US economy could smother the concept of sound living. Let’s hope that a sense of realism sinks in before the green job sector really takes off. There´s still time, because there´s no convergence of opinion of what actually makes a job green.

Check out the widely varying opinions on this issue among green job advocates quoted in the New York Times;

Blue Green Alliance (the Minnesota partnership between the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club): There’s little difference between blue collar and green collar jobs. It depends on the product that’s made. Cars obviously don’t make a green product, but wind turbines do.

American Solar Energy Society: there are 8.5 million jobs in renewable energy or energy efficient industries.

Apollo Alliance (A coalition of environmental groups, labor unions and politicians to guide the US economy into a renewable energy based economy): A green-collar job is in essence a blue-collar job that has been upgraded to address environmental challenges. Believes there will be 3 to 5 million more green jobs by 2018.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute: Argues that green jobs often don’t create jobs on a net basis because green jobs created will lead to vanishing jobs in another sector. CEI opposes official legislation promoting renewable energy.

Plextronics (a company that makes polymer ink parts for solar panels): Green jobs are vastly different from blue collar jobs because many people involved in green work are highly trained.

The term Green Collar Jobs was first coined by Alan Durning in his 1999 book Green Collar Jobs. The book described the changes in the post logging rural towns in the Pacific Northwest, from economic dependence on resource extraction from timber to “green-collar” jobs such as sustainable forestry, ecosystem restoration and tourism.

The term became in widespread use in 2006 when San Francisco State University Urban Studies professor Raquel Pinderhughes first defined green collar jobs. She said they are “manual-labor jobs in businesses (or other enterprises) whose products and services directly improve environmental quality”. Pinderhughes, who´s associated with the Ella Baker Center and Green for All wrote a landmark study commissioned by the City of Berkeley’s Office of Energy and Sustainable Development. She identified 22 economic sectors in which green jobs are located including green building, energy retrofits and sustainable food production.