Fuel Cell technology for buildings: Lowered Energy Costs, Increased Business Up-time and Reduced Emissions through CCHP (combined cooling, heating and power).

According to statistics, Australia is ninth in the world with the amount of greenhouse gas emissions they put into the air. In the year 2000, it was estimated that Australia was responsible for putting as much as 25.9 tons of carbon emissions into the air. The fact that Australia was ranked as ninth in the list of who produces the most emissions that are put into the air per year is not very good. This is a fairly clear indication that something must be done about the emissions being put into the air by Australia and this needs to be done now.

What can Australia do to reduce their emissions? There is plenty that an individual can do. An individual can do some simple things around their home that could help in saving electricity and the bonus with doing this is that it can save the individual money as well. Keeping the home maintained, purchasing highly efficient electronics, turning things off when they are not in use and using alternative transportation are all simple ways that an individual can help reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses they normally contribute to the atmosphere. Businesses can also do a lot by encouraging alternative transportation and car pooling, as well as keeping the building well maintained and having machinery turned off when not in use are all things that can greatly help in reducing greenhouse emissions; however, getting the government to give incentives for becoming more green and enforcing it can go even farther. By writing to the government, voting on parties that are in favor of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, getting thousands to sign petitions to show support for the reduction of emissions as well as educating others about the need for the reduction of these emissions can all go a long way in bringing the change that is necessary.

Especially with government support, incentives and enforcement can push the country to start becoming more progressive and change to using renewable forms of energy that will aid in stopping the emissions from being put into the air.

Another effective strategy to reduce carbon emissions is to purchase carbon offsets. Carbon Offsetting is an efficient and easy way to reduce your carbon footprint.

There is much that can be done if just one person puts their mind to it, but it is amazing what many people can do if they work together. If enough emphasis is put onto the problem with emissions and the government is pressured enough to realize that this is an important concern for their people, changes can be made.

Calculating carbon emissions is a complex process. The different types of emissions need to be identified and collected company wide. From this information, the amount of each type of gas released into the environment needs to be calculated. In addition, tracking methods need to show the daily use of refrigerant gas. The end result will show the global warming potential for each facility with a refrigeration and air-conditioning (RAC) system or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system. Refrigerant systems use high levels of greenhouse gases, so the EPA established the Climate Registry Protocol for calculating carbon emissions on a regular basis. The international equivalent of this requirement is outlined in the Montreal Protocol and Kyoto Protocol. The main purpose for calculating carbon emissions is to begin reducing the damaging effects that refrigerant gas has on the environment. Commercial refrigeration and air-conditioning (RAC) systems or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems operate on refrigerant gas, which is made up of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs). When broken down, these substances contain carbon, chlorine, fluorine and hydrogen. These gases are major ozone depleting substances. By calculating carbon emissions, government environmental agencies will be able to better understand the situation. Companies who fail to report their carbon emissions will be issued a substantial fine. Various carbon emissions reporting protocols have emerged from the EPA, ISO, World Resource Institute, and Climate Registry protocols. All of these documents define in great detail how organizations must collect data, calculate carbon emissions, and report the results. In short, the monitoring, tracking, and reporting requirements mandate that all locations where refrigerants are being used or serviced must collect, organize, and calculate as part of an enterprise’s carbon emissions. Some volume of carbon is released into the environment by any company with a refrigerant system. Trying to determine how much carbon is emitted is an intricate process. Calculating carbon emissions begins by collecting data across the entire company and all its locations and identifying the gases. From there, a determination on how much of each gas is released must be made. Then various reports that include tracking methods need to be completed and submitted. Refrigerant management programs can best handle the tedious process of calculating carbon emissions. With so many components involved, a computerized refrigerant management program is much more effective than manually handling and reviewing paper reports. A refrigerant management program that includes a solution for refrigerant gas tracking and an automated way to calculate carbon emissions is important. Solutions like this make is easier to handle calculating carbon emissions for all AC/HVAC systems operated by a company. There are several reasons that led to the EPA and international environmental agencies to require companies to include calculating carbon emissions in their reports. It is an important step to define your organizational boundaries, where you do business, and to identify the refrigerants you own or other sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Equally important is to establish a tracking mechanism for determining how much harmful gases are released at any given time. The information and data collected for the emerging refrigerant management programs will enhance and improve atmospheric conditions with specific requirements for reducing carbon (CO2) emissions. By calculating carbon emissions, companies will be able to recognize the extent of their carbon footprint. For companies with multiple locations using refrigeration and air-conditioning (RAC) systems or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, the task becomes even more critical. But there is help to address this challenging issue. Emerging software provided by clean-tech development firms track carbon dioxide gas emissions across all sites so companies can do their part to ensure a healthy environment for years to come.

The United States and a host of other foreign countries are focusing on fugitive emission tracking for certain industries. The goal is to identify the amount of substances that are emitted into the atmosphere when a refrigerant gas leak occurs. This will give government officials at the EPA a better understanding of the amount of greenhouse gases harming the environment each year and contributing to global warming due to the ineffective management of refrigerant gases.

Fugitive emission takes place when an unexpected leak of a hazardous substance occurs in a system and the discharge is not contained in a vent, stack, or duct. This may be caused by a component failure, poor servicing, or a breakdown in some industrial process. The leakage causes harmful gases to enter the environment. Certain refrigerant gases are not broken down in the atmosphere and end up entering the stratosphere and destroying the protective ozone layer over time.

Across the U.S. economy, refrigerant gases or fugitive emissions equal over 300K tons of carbon dioxide each year. Other countries have similar or worse outputs. Many environmental regulations, such as The Montreal and Kyoto Protocols, exist to reduce the escape of harmful substances, like refrigerants, into the atmosphere over time. There are additional goals to reduce the potential for global warming in the near future and to improve air quality in the long term by reducing the emissions refrigerant gases.

A select few refrigerant gases have multiple detrimental effects on the environment. Not only are they ozone depleting substances but they are also chemicals with a high global warming potential (GWP) which places them into the category of greenhouse gases which lead to global climate change. For many reasons, it is important to effectively monitor, track, and report refrigerant gas usage.

The EPA has finalized its rules pertaining to any fugitive emission occurrence, whether through evaporation or a leak. The regulations apply to several industries, including existing and newly constructed facilities with systems using refrigerant gas in their workplace heating and cooling systems. Other industries are industrial chemical manufacturing, electric services, pulp and paper mills, and petroleum refinancing.

Tracking fugitive refrigerant gases is required by facilities owning or operating HVAC-R systems or by manufacturers who produce them. The EPA has identified a number of dangerous compounds, among them chloroflurocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, methyl bromide, halons, methyl chloroform, and carbon tetrachloride.

A particular concern for fugitive emission problems is with refrigerant gas, because it contains chloroflurocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons, two primary contributors to the weakening of the ozone layer and the increase in greenhouse gas volumes. Furthermore, refrigerant gas is used across many industries in refrigeration and cooling units, ventilation and air conditioning systems, and fire protection systems.

When a fugitive emission occurs, businesses are required to track the refrigerant leak rates and report annul refrigerant usage it to the EPA. One of the primary emissions scopes, fugitive refrigerant gas emissions are an integral part of an organizations carbon management requirements. It is important that the severity of the leak and the repair process is documented. Systems containing refrigerant gases must be inspected by EPA certified technicians and all service events must be logged when refrigerants are handled.

The new fugitive emission regulations provide a more standardized approach to thresholds identified by the U.S. Clean Air Act at the direction of the EPA. These include continuous monitoring, tracking of leaks, and reporting of leak repair, and containment.

Web applications and specialized tools can increase an organization’s efficiencies related to HVAC-R system maintenance, improve accuracy of refrigerant inventories thus saving money, and turn manual processes into a centralized, automated work flow. Development firms who specialize in the area. They ensure compliance and reduce the likelihood of substantial fines.

Carbon offsetting provokes a powerful emotional response in some people. They just don’t like the idea that you can pay someone else to mop up your carbon emissions. It smacks of indulgence and cheating. Critics say buying an offset while continuing to fly, or drive an SUV, or live in a mansion with all the lights on, is at best hypocritical, and at worst, downright dangerous. It simply avoids the issue, which is that we should be reducing our carbon footprint, and simply encourages the delusion that we can go on living in an environmentally profligate way.

Some even compare offsetting with the Papal indulgences of the late Middle Ages, where Catholics were offered redemptions for their sins in return for donations to the Church – buying their way out of punishment for wrongdoing. Critics say this is exactly what modern-day carbon offsetters are trying to do. They think money will buy them a clear conscience while they continue to fill the sky with fumes.

Certain high profile stories, mainly about celebrities trying to offset carbon-intensive lifestyles, give credence to the criticisms, but it is far from the whole picture. Offsetting is something that is practiced by thousands of individuals and organizations who are neither hypocritical or delusional. Let’s look at the argument more closely.

First, let’s acknowledge that our number one priority must be to reduce our carbon output in every way possible – switching to a renewable energy supplier, insulating our homes, driving less, etc. But let’s also acknowledge that even if this is done with the best intentions in the world, most of us will reach a point where we cannot easily, or perhaps affordably, do much more in the short term. Few of us have lived our lives entirely by environmental priorities, and most of us have woken up to climate change at a point where we inhabit houses or offices, or own cars, or hold down jobs that were never designed with carbon neutrality in mind.

Even if we take whatever steps we can to reduce, recycle and reuse now, and make a commitment that our next car will run on biofuel and that we will fit solar panels to our house, etc., most individuals or organizations endeavoring to go carbon neutral will be left with a residue of current emissions. Now we have two choices – we can ignore them or we can offset.

Ignoring them might avoid having to think through the ethical issues around offsetting, but it is not going to help the planet. On the other hand, offsetting them will ensure that as long as we continue to produce emissions, they will be counterbalanced by a saving or sequestering somewhere else. It is the environmentally responsible thing to do.

We’ve been talking about the residual emissions left after taking a reduction strategy as far as we can. Now let’s go back to the case of the pop star or movie actor who appears to have no immediate intention of giving up flying, or selling their SUV, but who decides to offset. On the one hand, we could cry, ‘Hypocrite!’ and denounce them for trying to buy environmental redemption. Or we could recognize that they have at least acknowledged that their lifestyle has an environmental price. For the wealthy, this price is relatively trivial at the moment if they are simply accounting for their flying or driving, but it is the start of a cultural process – a process of accepting the cost to the planet of our actions, and building this into our economy.

Over time, the cost of carbon will rise and will be factored into all the products and services we consume, and this will begin to have greater impact on our behaviour as the price differential between our old habits and a new greener lifestyle increases. Celebrities have a part to play in highlighting issues such as climate change, and in endorsing the concept that we must pay for our impact on the planet.

We need to be realistic too. Many people are going to continue to take long-haul holiday flights, drive SUVs and run high energy households no matter what anybody says. The process of persuasion and change will be slow. Denouncing people for taking a step towards environmental awareness and carbon neutrality is counterproductive. It will discourage positive action, and polarise the debate. We should be trying to move people on in their environmental thinking, not alienate them.

Some individuals and organisations will no doubt abuse offsetting in order to indulge environmentally irresponsible behaviour, but to condemn all offsetting on this basis is to overlook the best intentions and goodwill of the majority who participate. We are all trying to find a way forward with global warming. We know it will take a combination of many individual, community, corporate, government and international efforts. Offsetting has a role to play. It is empowering at the individual level. And, unlike the Papal indulgences of the past, offsetting can have a real effect in reducing the carbon levels in our atmosphere, and slowing the pace of climate change.

Lord Nicholas Stern, economist and author of the acclaimed and much-discussed Stern Review of 2006, spoke recently at the Royal Geographical Society about the world’s major problems and his suggested solutions to them. This, in summary, is what he said.

The two great issues of the 21st century – poverty and climate change – are interdependent: they succeed or fail together. The economic crisis we are now experiencing is a shorter, shallower problem.

WHO CAUSES THE CLIMATE CHANGE?

There is no doubt that climate change is caused by human activity. People produce greenhouse gases, not all of which are absorbed by the atmosphere. Hence we have a stock of gases in the atmosphere trapping other chemicals: this is what we call ‘the greenhouse effect’. The impact is felt mainly through water – melting glaciers and ice-caps, reduction of ice in the polar regions, tsunamis, rising sea levels.

Early economists misunderstood the impact of climate change because they didn’t recognise the size and uncertainty of the problem, which is global, long-term and very big. The changes that are happening are not marginal like those in economics. Moreover, the problem is growing all the time, so delay worsens it.

Governments and other interested bodies need to consider ‘externalities’ – the effects of one person’s actions on others – and hence the interconnectedness of all aspects of climate change.

WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM?

About two-thirds of emissions of greenhouse gases are accounted for by only six or seven countries. Poor countries will figure large in emissions in the next years because there are more people in them, but rich countries account for more emissions overall, as their emissions per capita are higher. In the mid-19th century the rate of emission was 285ppm CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent); now it is 430ppm and we are adding CO2e at the rate of more than 2.5ppm/year. If we continued as we are now – the ‘business as usual’ (BAU) scenario – we would reach a level of 750ppm by the end of the century, which would be nothing short of ruinous.

The challenge is to keep the rate of emissions under 500ppm, or, better still, 450ppm (which we will reach, under BAU, in six years). This would keep the increase in temperature to less than two degrees and would reduce emissions to about 50% of those of 1990-2000.

The trouble is that, although humans have been on earth for some 100,000 years, we don’t know what the effects of high levels of emissions will be. In the last Ice Age, 10-12,000 years ago, the temperature was only about five degrees lower than it is now.

What we do know is that temperature increase will force people from their existing settlements by rising sea levels or loss of suitable conditions for agriculture or survival by other means. Massive human movements are bound to lead to extended conflicts.

It takes a long time for reduced emissions to lead to reduced concentrations in the atmosphere. By 2050 there will be some 9 billion people on the planet. Overall our aim should be to reduce emissions to 2 tonnes per person and by 2050 to reduce emissions to 50% of their 1990 levels.

WHAT ARE WE TO DO?

There are three key areas to focus on:

energy efficiency developing and deploying low-carbon technologies – an attractive and long-term option whose effects promise to last several decades halting deforestation, which is the source of 15-20% of emissions.

The cost of reducing emissions is estimated at about $2 trillion. Sounds like a huge amount of money? In fact, it’s only about 1-2% of the world economy – and the cost is to put one-off new measures in place, not a long-lasting, continuous commitment.

Prices, taxes and regulation are necessary too, and individual preferences have to be managed. People need to be made to understand the consequences of their actions. Remember the introduction of the breathalyser? Many people were outraged at the alleged infringement of personal liberty, yet now the practice is not only commonplace but fully accepted as right.

WHAT SHOULD BE THE GLOBAL DEAL?

Action has to be taken internationally. Here is what the global ‘deal’ we need would look like:

1. Global emissions targets for rich countries.

2. Developing countries to take on targets too (as some already have, e.g. Brazil, India and China).

3. Emissions trading should be encouraged.

4. There must be a halt to deforestation and investment in agriculture, an initiative driven by developing countries.

5. Employ technology. Some 50% of our energy currently comes from coal. Carbon capture and storage could give us solids to use as fuel.

6. Adaptation: we need to remember that development in a more hostile climate is more expensive.

These principles need to be firmly established before the next Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December, when it is hoped this deal will be drafted.

There are two points to note about any economic crisis. One is that the longer the risks are ignored, the worse the consequences. The second is that action to get out of the present crisis must not sow the seeds of the next one. But the current downturn creates an opportunity: materials, for insulating homes, for example, are cheaper; and now is a good time to invest in energy efficiency, new technologies and low-carbon growth.

“2009 is a year when political leadership, pressure and decision are vital,” says Lord Stern. “The prize from success is great; the risks from failure are immense.”