NORWAY: CLIMATE NEUTRALITY IN ACTION
The picturesque city of Arendal on Norway’s south coast may only have a population of 40,000, but it is a serious contender for being the world capital of climate neutrality.
Not only has the city itself made a commitment to be climate neutral, it has become the hub of a wide network of businesses, sporting bodies and even music festivals that have all espoused the principles of climate neutrality.
It sits in a county, Aust-Agder, which has also declared itself climate neutral. And in a country which has pledged to be so by 2030.
So what does that actually mean? Can the world’s third- largest exporter of oil really reach a position where it makes no net contribution to climate change?
Arendal itself has been transformed in recent decades from a port largely based on shipping, forestry and mining, to one dominated by tourism and twenty-first century industries such as the information technology sector.
Among the organizations based here is the United Na- tions office responsible for assembling environmental data, known as the Global Resource Information Database, or UNEP/GRID-Arendal. So it is perhaps not the most surpris- ing place to be at the vanguard of a process which, first and foremost, involves assembling information about your im- pact on the climate—if you don’t know what it is, you can’t go about neutralizing it.
Like all organizations seeking to be recognized as carbon neutral, Arendal went through the multi-stage process rec- ommended by the flagship document on climate neutrality, a UN Environment Programme publication known as Kick the Habit. First you measure your emissions; then you re- duce them as much as possible; for the emissions you can’t avoid, you offset them through buying carbon credits that represent genuine reductions in emissions elsewhere.
After becoming a founder member of the UNEP Climate Neutral Network, Arendal city government completed its first emissions inventory in June 2008. The question, one which we will return to frequently in this publication, was what to measure?
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, an internationally recognized system for assessing the climate impact of an organization, defines three “scopes” of emissions. Scope 1 emissions are those produced from direct activities—say production in the case of a company. Scope 2 emissions are those produced by the electricity purchased by the organization. Both of these types must be included in any inventory following the Protocol.
Scope 3 emissions are those for which the organization is indirectly responsible, such as from the travel to work by its employees. Including these is voluntary, so the strict definition of climate neutrality may vary according to what proportion of Scope 3 emissions are “claimed” by the organization.
In the case of Arendal, the city government chose to include in its first inventory, covering 2007, emissions from official travel for employees (Scope 3), in addition to its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions; more Scope 3 emissions are planned to be included in later years.
The total annual emissions for the city government’s own activities were calculated at 7,020 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2
), of which some 90 per cent comes from use of its buildings, and much of the rest from transport.
Having worked out what it is emitting now, Arendal has set very ambitious targets for reducing its emissions in future—90 per cent by 2017. Key steps include agreeing with its electricity provider that all energy should have green certificates, and introducing a programme of energy efficiency. The city is cutting its transport emissions by insisting on low-emitting small cars in its leasing contract (100gCO2
/km compared with 7
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50