Google reached its goal of becoming carbon neutral for 2007 and is almost entirely neutral for 2008, Google's Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl announced on the official Google blog Wednesday evening.

In June 2007, Google had announced it was going to try to become carbon neutral by the end of that year by working to maximize its efficiency, investing in renewable energy resources, and as a last resort and interim solution buying carbon offsets.

In Wednesday evening's post announcing the company had finally achieved that goal, Weihl reiterated the company's 2007 promise of using carbon offsets was only a temporary fix and announced more initiatives towards long-term sustainability goals.

"While offsets with strong additionality can achieve real emissions reductions in unregulated sectors at a relatively low cost, we view them as a short-term solution for Google, not as a substitute for other action," said Weihl.

"In addition, we've set ourselves the ambitious goal of creating 50 megawatts of new renewable generation capacity--enough to power 50,000 typical U.S. homes--by 2012," he said.

Earlier this month, the company shared one of its quirkier Green alternative solutions: using goats to cuts the Mountain View, Calif., campus lawn.

As there is yet no legal standard on how a company must calculate its carbon footprint or an official U.S. carbon certifying agency, Google said in its June announcement that it would be hiring the Environmental Resources Trust to verify its yearly assessment . Google also stated that its global carbon footprint includes employee commuting and business travel, as well as Google company construction, server manufacturing, and electricity use.

So, how does this compare to others? Matching how Google stacks up against other big names in tech is difficult since everyone calculates things uniquely, as they do with recycling. Here's the available info on the carbon neutrality status of several big names in tech.

This past March, Microsoft announced on its sustainability blog that the company plans to reduce its carbon emissions by 30 percent compared with its 2007 levels, by 2012.

In August 2008, Dell announced that it was carbon neutral in terms of its global electricity use and in April 2008 announced that its U.S. headquarters, consisting of 2.1 million square feet and 10,000 employees, was powered by 100 percent green energy. It's striving to achieve carbon neutrality through a combination of efficiency practices and buying carbon offsets.

Hewlett-Packard has announced a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 16 percent from its 2005 levels before the end of 2010. About 99 percent of HP's greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity use, with only 1 percent coming from manufacturing and refrigeration equipment, according to HP. HP detailed that its official carbon footprint will include HP's owned and leased facilities' electricity use, natural gas use, manufacturing emissions, and refrigerant emissions. HP will not be including employee commuting, transport of its products, or the manufacturing of its suppliers in its carbon footprint, according to HP's "Global Citizenship Report 2008."

In May 2007, IBM held a press conference to announce that Big Blue would be launching "Project Big Green" to help other companies become carbon neutral. Part of its promise is that it can help the average 25,000-square-foot data center cut its energy bills by 42 percent. Between 1990 and 2007, IBM reduced about 45 percent of the company's 1990 global CO2 emissions. It plans to reduce its energy use by 12 percent from its 2005 levels by 2012 through conservation, increased use of renewable energy, and buying Renewable Energy Certificates, according to the company materials on its environmental stance. It plans to reduce its total global GHG emissions by 7 percent from 2005 to 2012, according to a listing with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Comparing footprint size
You could keep sifting through all the corporate sustainability reports and get varying systems of carbon footprint measurements and statistics like those above for almost every tech company. There are some organizations that have tried to come up with a way to make it easier to compare.

The EPA lists companies that have joined its Climate Leaders initiative and their stated goals for greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction, but many companies simply have "greenhouse gas reduction goal is under development" next to their listing. The list also fails to specify what each company includes in its carbon footprint.

But according to that EPA list, Intel will reduce its global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30 percent per from 2004 to 2010; Cisco will reduce by 25 percent from 2007 to 2012; and Oracle plans to reduce "by 6 percent per square foot from 2003 to 2010 for all non-data center space and to purchase 5 percent green power for data centers." Sun Microsystems reduced U.S. GHG emissions by 23 percent from 2002 to 2007 and pledged to the EPA that it would reduced its global GHG emissions by 20 percent from 2007 to 2015.

In May 2008, Climate Counts, a nonprofit watch group funded by yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm that keeps scorecards on companies environmental records, released a list on tech and software companies' green achievements. Companies were rated by a points system and also placed into one of three (green, yellow or red) categories. IBM, Canon, Toshiba, Sony, HP, Motorola, Hitachi, Samsung, Siemens, and Google were put in the green category signaling companies with a good environmental record.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Dell, and Nokia were put in the yellow category signaling that they had made a start, but still had work to do in certain areas.

Amazon.com, Apple, and eBay were placed in the red category which, according to Climate Counts' chart, stands for "This company is not yet taking meaningful action on climate change."

Kevin Wilhelm

(Credit: Sustainable Business Consulting)

Sustainability may be all the rage but, as the song says, it's not easy being green.

Without widespread standards, companies are struggling with how to properly calculate and disclose their carbon footprint to the public. And many don't have the financial resources to address environmental resource concerns.

Kevin Wilhelm is the chair of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce Sustainability Committee and CEO of Sustainable Business Consulting. His new book, "Return on Sustainability," which got endorsements from environmentalists Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Laurie David, takes a shot at deciphering the ins and outs of corporate sustainability given the current economic downturn.

The environmental capitalist talked with CNET News about the recession, the next Y2K event, outsourcing, wasteful surprises most companies find, and why comparing carbon footprints can be like comparing apples to oranges.

Q: Are sustainability efforts taking a bad hit with this recession?
Wilhelm: Yes. It's just like so many other initiatives big companies are doing, whether it's IT infrastructure or energy upgrades. Traditionally, sustainability and green efforts are seen as additionals. Because the marketplace hasn't gotten to where it's fully required, it's definitely been hurt by budget cuts. Some current clients have asked to hold work for 2009 because there's no more budget. All that being said, I think everyone was in this panic over the economy. Now that the bottom is somewhat stabilized, I think the fear is gone and people realize sustainability is part of a long-term strategy. And even though they may have to slow down their efforts, they still have to go through with them.

Explain what you mean in your book by "waste equals money."
Wilhelm: Anything that you're throwing out or not using to its full effect becomes waste. People's time when they're not producing is wasted time and wasted money. Materials are a big component. When a company throws out something, they're not only throwing out scrap. They paid for that in the cost of whatever they bought. The most famous example is Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Ben & Jerry's was used to disposing of slop through traditional sanitation methods. They found they could take their waste from dairy production and sell it to pig farmers.

Cascade Designs makes thermal things for backpackers that have this foam (in them). With their cuts there was always left-over foam and they were throwing it out. They turned it into camping pillows, and what was this expensive thing they paid to be hauled to a landfill was turned into a profit center.

How does outsourcing come in to this? I've talked to people from major companies who wonder if competitors could be fudging carbon footprint numbers by eliminating their manufacturing from the U.S. and outsourcing it to China. While our local U.S. air may get cleaner as a result, that company is still contributing to pollution that's going to affect us long-term.
Wilhelm: You're right. It's just like any time when anyone tries to externalize their costs. You look right now at any company polluting the air. Companies pay to recycle or take out garbage, to have wastewater treated, but air goes up and what happens to it? Nothing. We all pay the price. In terms of the carbon footprint, you're dead-on. With companies right now--because they're just now understanding what you have to measure--you may find you're comparing apples to oranges sometimes. What you try to do with companies is get them to say what the boundaries of the company are for the footprint. They can say they're only doing U.S. operations and exclude anything manufactured in China. In terms of what the standard is, companies can include operational control, economical control, or subsidiary control.

Look at all the products being made and shipped from China. Some of the factories are giant and make (products) for four or five brands at a time. You look and say 20 percent (of their production is going) toward our product, so 20 percent of their energy needs to be part of our carbon footprint. There are standards, but people can define it in different ways. Starbucks only looks at energy use and transportation. They don't count their cups, and everyone walks out with at least one of those. But they're very transparent about it. They say it's complicated and they haven't gotten to it yet. It's new for a company and they usually say, "We want to do a carbon footprint for everything." Then they realize, "Oh, I have to go to China to figure this out?"

In your book you say that whether you believe in global warming is beside the point.
Wilhelm: It is. If you're a businessman who doesn't think climate change is manmade, well, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has said it is and they're coming out with climate regulations. The Kyoto Protocol is coming up and they'll have a new treaty in Copenhagen. So whether you believe or not, you're going to have to respond. The trend with consumers is huge and from a global perspective, climate change is like the Y2K event. The Y2K prep is nothing compared to what's coming this December, January, and February in terms of regulation.

You mention in your book how REI was shocked to find that 26 percent of its carbon emissions came from its Adventure Travel division, while it had assumed it would all be from shipping and distribution. Depending on the type of business, what's the likeliest culprit between energy, travel, waste, paper, and freight?
Wilhelm: If you're a manufacturer, energy is your biggest. If you're service-based, electricity is a part but employee travel is a big, big deal. That's the one that always shocks people. I biked an entire year to work, then I took one trip to China and wiped it all out. I could have driven a Hummer to work, used plastic bottles, used virgin paper, and it wouldn't have been as much.

OK, but videoconferencing is not going to replace business travel. There are still those people who believe that you have to meet face-to-face and sometimes a situation does require it.
Wilhelm: When a company looks at the cost of travel, they may only look at the cost of the ticket and hotel, and don't take in the effect of a person's time away from the office, their loss of production, or flight delays. But you're right, the video tech is not going to replace 100 percent the face-to-face because, let's face it, people do business with people. But instead of making four trips you make two: the first impression, then do videoconferencing, then when you need to make that final report or finalize that deal you can shake hands in person.

What are the biggest obstacles for a company in calculating an accurate carbon footprint?
Wilhelm: Getting the data is the first one because a lot of people aren't used to it and have never had to get this data before. Second, they don't know where to go or who's got it, and it may not be in the format they need. If they lease, which most service-based businesses do, they have to get it from the building manager, who may not know or not want to know how to do it. The first time through you get most data but have to make some assumptions. It then helps companies realize they should be tracking things or are overpaying for some things.

Your book has a lot of case studies. The quirkiest one may be how General Mills was able to reduce Hamburger Helper packaging size by changing the shape of their noodles, which not only reduced packaging costs by 10 percent, but resulted in a fuel savings equating to 500 fewer distribution trucks on the road each year. What's an example that surprised even you?
Wilhelm: One of the reasons I threw that out there is because people say, "Oh my God, really?" One that is really obvious was that it used to be, even a year ago, that you could buy those big plastic bins of laundry detergent, and now you see the same brands sold in concentrate. Procter & Gamble originally said, "Sell it in concentrate?! We need the big one for shelf-space advertising, and people think big is more." But Wal-Mart said, "It's too much shelf-space, too pricey to ship." So then Wal-Mart wouldn't have the big ones from them. And soon, you didn't see them at Target and other stores, and now hardly anybody sells them.

Not every company has the resources of a Sun Microsystems, DuPont, or Verizon, which all made some sustainability changes that resulted in savings. Companies are finding it hard right now just to get their usual revolving credit to operate. What's something a small or mid-size company can do to implement sustainability for little or no money?
Wilhelm: With small clients we suggest using our ROS (return on sustainability) chapter, where people can figure out cost savings, brand value, and environmental impact. Then sit down and have a brainstorming session on ways to save money as a company with the potential to be environmentally sustainable but really focus on saving money. Things start popping up where there's inefficiency. A nonprofit did a drawer clean-out day. People could keep what they wanted, and if they had, like, three staplers, they put two back in the supply room. When they were done, they realized they didn't need to order supplies for the next six months and saved $8,000. The other thing I would say is do the carbon footprint assessment. There's a lot of tools out there to do that. Even a small business will find a surprise of "Gee, didn't realize we were spending that on paper."

Usually the problem is there's a resistance to change in an organization--especially if you have a powerful office manager who likes to do things how they've always done them. If you can say you're trying to reduce the carbon footprint and achieve sustainability goals, it's a way to get people to look at it through a new lens. Maybe a small business will only find a couple hundred dollars' worth of savings, but they can report to customers and clients that they did a carbon footprint and are trying to be as green as they possibly can.

Your book is filled with quick charts, tables, and statistics on things like physical water scarcity regions in the U.S., weather-related insurance losses, carbon metrics, and consumer surveys on sustainability. Do you think all this freely available information is empowering or overwhelming?
Wilhelm: It's definitely overwhelming and can be discouraging. You don't even want to think about water scarcity. If we think there was a war over oil, what's going to happen over water? You look for sustainability and a million sites pop up. There's too much info. And whose ideas are political motivated?

OK, but what are some of the tools or standards you would recommend?
Wilhelm: If you're in the U.S., there's no one way on how you have to do the carbon footprint. It's voluntary. Look at carbon offsets. There's no agreement. Sustainability is now where organic food was 10 years ago. People liked it, but there was no certified label. Then there was, but then people thought well, what about if it's local and all these things? Right now, it's the Wild West because for CSR (corporate social responsibility) reporting, there's a lack of standardization. And it's funny because I find that people rather be told, "Do it this way." They're always asking which one is the best to go with? What are the pros and cons? I tell them go with the de facto standard, the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), but until it becomes the standard, companies can report it any way they want.

This was originally published on CBSNews.com.

WASHINGTON--Congressional Democrats' proposal to create a trading system for carbon emissions will create jobs and bolster the economy, the Obama administration told Congress on Wednesday.

House Republicans insisted, however, that the proposal, which would charge the largest emitters of carbon dioxide for burning fossil fuels, would result in higher energy and gasoline prices for consumers, as well as a loss of U.S. jobs as carbon emitters moved positions overseas to unregulated markets.

"I believe this is a jobs bill that focuses our country's attention on the global industry of the future, which is the clean energy industry," Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The far-reaching legislation being drafted by Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) would institute a cap-and-trade system in which carbon emitters would be allowed to buy and trade permits for certain levels of emissions. The bill would also establish a renewable electricity standard and an energy efficiency standard.

"In the future, it is very clear we will be living in a carbon-constrained world," said Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "The U.S. must position itself so we can lead that transition."

Republicans on the committee, however, countered that the bill does not provide enough specifics to reach the administration's optimistic conclusions and warned that just the opposite could be true.

"My fear, my belief, is this is an intentional move to deceive us so we're not allowed to do the cost-benefit analysis," said Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.).

This bill is the "largest assault on democracy and freedom on this country that I've ever experienced," he said.

Specifically, the bill lacks details on whether the permits would all be auctioned to carbon emitters, or whether some would be automatically granted to some companies to relieve their economic burden during the transition to a cap-and-trade system. Other data has yet to be provided, such as a proposed cost for the permits.

"This proposal puts a bull's eye on the back of working families," said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.). "Just wait until they get their hands on their utility bills that are capped and taxed."

The administration representatives said cost of the carbon permits should be returned to the American people in the form of the rebate.

Additionally, they said, any costs that may be passed onto consumers would presumably be offset from the benefits gained from higher-efficiency homes and appliances.

Working with the information available from the draft bill, the EPA completed a preliminary analysis of the cap-and-trade portion of the bill, concluding that it would accelerate the deployment of clean-energy technology while growing the economy, at relatively little cost to the consumer.

Before including cost-saving measures like the increase of energy-efficient appliances, the analysis concludes the cap-and-trade program would cost the average household $98 to $140 a year. To reach that figure, the EPA assumed about 40 percent of the allowances would be returned to citizens in some form such as rebates.

The number stands in stark contrast to the figure of $3,100 a year floated by Republicans. That figure was based on a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but its author said it misrepresented his findings.

In addition to higher energy prices, consumers would suffer from job losses, said Shimkus, who pointed to the 35,000 coal-mining jobs lost in Ohio as a result of regulations imposed under the Clean Air Act.

Jackson warned, "The 'no, we can't' crowd will spin out doomsday scenarios about runaway costs."

She pointed out that the Acid Rain Trading Program, which was established in 1990 under the Clean Air Act, delivered huge benefits--to the tune of $120 billion a year--with an annual cost of only $3 billion a year. The acid rain program is a trading system comparable to a carbon cap-and-trade program.

Republicans also questioned whether putting a price on carbon in the United States would have any impact, given that growing carbon producers like China and India are not adopting similar programs.

"If the United States does take the lead, China will follow," Chu said, adding that he had spoken at length personally with Chinese officials on the issue. "They are taking it very seriously because they see the impacts of climate change as well."

It looks so simple, and that's the key innovation.

The Kyoto Box consists of two cardboard boxes, one inside the other. The inner box is painted black to absorb sunlight, and the heat is trapped with a transparent acrylic lid. Captured solar energy heats up the air in the box enough to boil food and water and bake, but the stove is not powerful enough to fry food.

A prototype of the award-winning Kyoto Box solar cooker.

(Credit: Kyoto Energy)

The invention received the $75,000 FT Climate Change Challenge award last week. The competition, run by Forum for the Future with The Financial Times and Hewlett-Packard, had nearly 300 entries, which were judged on their contribution to tackling climate change.

"It feels good. It was the only finalist that was a solution for developing countries," Kyoto Energy CEO Jan Bohmer, a Norwegian-born entrepreneur based in Kenya, told CNET News during a call on a crackling phone line from Nairobi.

The invention was inspired by the 240-year-old "hot box," a heat catcher by Swiss inventor Horace de Sausseur, and it could solve problems plaguing rural areas of developing countries.

Deforestation is a huge problem in Africa, note the inventors of the Kyoto Box, who hope the stove could halve firewood use, saving trees and preventing carbon emissions. The Kyoto Box is targeted at people who currently use firewood, a fuel that takes the rural poor hours of hard labor per day to collect, and can cause health problems when the fumes from the often primitive stoves are breathed in the home.

The worst of the global-warming effects can still be reversed, if proper steps are taken fairly quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to an analysis by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

A team led by Warren Washington, a senior scientist at NCAR's Climate and Global Dynamics Division, ran various climate-predicting scenarios with a Community Climate System Model run through a global supercomputer. Most notable is the simulation of what would happen in a world continuing on a path of unchecked human-made emissions of greenhouse gases versus one in which emissions are cut globally by 70 percent.

Supercomputer simulates how average Earth surface air temperatures could warm by the years 2080 through 2099, compared to the years 1980 through 1999, depending on whether greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb (top) or are reduced by 70 percent (bottom). Unchecked emissions could lead to an increase of 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit or more for parts of North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

(Credit: Geophysical Research Letters/modified by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.)

The results by the year 2100 are a difference between the global temperature rising an average of 1 degree versus 4 degrees Fahrenheit; the sea level rising 5.5 inches versus 8.7 inches; and Arctic ice stabilizing versus having its thin seasonal layer melt away completely.

"The threat of global warming can still be greatly diminished, if nations cut emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by 70 percent this century, according to a new analysis," according to an NCAR statement. "While global temperatures would rise, the most dangerous potential aspects of climate change, including massive losses of Arctic sea ice and permafrost and significant sea level rise, could be partially avoided."

The levels of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere have already risen from 284 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial revolution to more than 380 ppm this year, according to NCAR.

The computer simulation showed that if greenhouse gas emissions can be held at 450ppm--the target labeled as reasonably achievable by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, if the world reduces emissions by 70 percent--the global temperature would rise by about .6 degrees Celsius (about 1 degree Fahrenheit) by the year 2100. If human-made emissions are left unchecked, the model predicted that greenhouse gas levels would rise to 750ppm by 2100, causing a global temperature increase of 2.2 Celsius (about 4 degrees Fahrenheit).

In the unchecked world, the model found that increasingly warm water temperatures would lead to a greater rise in sea levels, which, in turn, would lead to a negative impact on fisheries, sea bird populations, and mammals living in areas such as the northern Bering Sea. The simulation showed Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America as the areas that would see the greatest increase in average temperature.

It also simulated the U.S. climate specifically. In the world with 70 percent reduced emissions, for example, the U.S. Southwest would see double the amount of annual precipitation by the year 2100.

NCAR, which is funded by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, will publish a full report on its findings next week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. NCAR's report comes just as the U.S. Congress is about to debate the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, an energy and climate bill that would (among other things) impose a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions permits and mandate increased use of renewable-energy resources for utilities.

"Our goal is to provide policymakers with appropriate research so they can make informed decisions," NCAR's Washington said in a statement. "This study provides some hope that we can avoid the worst impacts of climate change--if society can cut emissions substantially over the next several decades and continue major cuts through the century."

WASHINGTON--"We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century," President Obama said in his address to Congress earlier this year.

As investors seek out opportunities in the growing global carbon market, and world leaders prepare for the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, it may seem as if the United States is a step behind in reducing carbon emissions; the administration and the Democrat-led Congress are still shaping policy to regulate carbon in the United States.

Yet given the United States' role as a global leader and its potentially substantial carbon market, the rest of the world will be watching what happens here very closely, experts from the carbon finance, climate policy, and clean-tech communities said here Wednesday.

Energy and climate change experts in Washington on Wednesday discussed the growing carbon market.

(Credit: Stephanie Condon/CNET)

"What happens here has a profound impact on what everybody else does, (and makes) it more likely to get a decent global agreement," said James Cameron, executive director of Climate Change Capital, an investment management company that specializes in the low-carbon economy.

Even if the United States is not able to pass energy or climate change legislation by December, sincere efforts to do so will be meaningful in Copenhagen, Cameron said. Along with Washington's efforts, policy makers and investors will take note of the clean-tech investment taking place in the United States.

"People will look to what is actually happening here in real life versus policy life," Cameron said. "Clean-tech investment in the United States is phenomenal."

Cameron and others interested in the carbon market gathered in Washington this week for the Carbon TradeEx America forum, hosted by Koelnmesse GmbH, an industry trade show organizer. The carbon market--the trade of carbon allowances--is still in its infancy in North America but stands to grow as Congress considers legislation like Rep. Henry Waxman's American Clean Energy and Security bill. The worldwide carbon market reached a value of $118 billion in 2008, according to the research and analysis firm New Carbon Finance.

Speakers at the conference agreed that the renewable energy investments in the stimulus package will encourage the development of a U.S. carbon market.

Stephen Harper, the director for environmental and energy policy at Intel, called the stimulus package "a good way to demonstrate a lot of good ideas people have talked about."

"It's a down payment only...but if it's done right and the (Department of Energy) actually gets this money out the door, it gives a chance for a number of different experiments," he said.

Harper and others at the conference said technology companies will play a significant role in the reduction of carbon emissions.

Intel, Dell, and a number of other technology companies are working to convince Congress that information and communications technology (ICT) can play an integral role in reducing emissions. To further that point, they started the Digital Energy Solutions campaign last year to promote public policies that employ ICT as a solution.

Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, said the United States should adopt a "comprehensive digital transformation strategy."

Information and communications technology is "pervasive and embedded in most of what's going on in today's economy," he said.

Technology companies can play an additional role in enabling the reduction of carbon emissions by facilitating campaigns in favor of energy efficiency policies, said Peter Seligmann, the chairman and CEO of Conservation International.

"Right now President Obama has a political mandate...but you can begin to see the assassination of ideas is just beginning to bubble," Seligmann said. "This is when the Internet leaders, the Googles and Facebooks, have to kick in--this is when that power of reaching millions has to kick in."

Obama is "going to be taken apart by the political process if we don't galvanize millions of people to say (emissions reduction) is important," he continued. "We need to be focused on supporting leadership with the right message, and that's an obligation everybody here has."

Biofuels are on the way up, while carbon emissions are on the way down, a global airline industry spokesman said Tuesday at the annual Aviation and Environment Summit in Geneva.

After a successful run of pilot programs from Continental, Virgin, Air New Zealand, and JAL, sustainable biofuels are on track to be approved by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) for wide commercial use in planes by 2010 or 2011, Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the IATA, said in a speech given at the summit.

IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani

(Credit: IATA)

The IATA includes more than 230 airlines that make up about 93 percent of the world's airline traffic.

"Biofuels may even hold the promise of improved fuel efficiency on top of the potential to reduce emissions by up to 80 percent over the lifecycle of the fuel," said Bisignani.

He also had a positive spin to share on the fact that airlines have had to reduce flights due to a decrease in cargo and passenger demand throughout this economic downturn. The IATA expects to see a 7.8 percent drop in aviation carbon emissions for 2009.

Six percent will be due to a decrease in the number of cargo and passenger flights, while 1.8 is related to technology, operations, and infrastructure improvements, according to IATA figures.

Bisignani said governments of the world should focus on "replacing the growing patchwork of green taxes, charges, and emissions trading proposals" aimed at airlines with a more comprehensive system that takes into account that aviation carbon emissions contribute about two percent of the world's annual manmade carbon emissions.

The funds sponsoring environmental projects, as well as the degree to which airlines are held responsible for carbon emissions, should both proportionately reflect the two percent figure, according to Bisignani.

"We have a responsibility to secure the future of the 32 million jobs and $3.5 trillion in economic activity dependent on aviation. We need global leadership that unites industry and governments with the common purpose of reducing emissions," he said.

Manmade coal produced by Carbonscape's Black Phantom machine.

(Credit: Carbonscape)

A new machine dubbed the "Black Phantom" can turn biomass into manmade coal.

Carbonscape, a New Zealand-based start-up, describes its invention as an industrial-sized microwave that can cook plant waste, wood waste, and "even sewage" into coal.

Carbonscape also claims that the machine captures and stores more carbon than the amount of carbon generated by the electricity needed to power it for the process.

Why would anyone want to make more coal when humans are desperately trying to get out from under the carbon dioxide mess we've been making since the Industrial Revolution?

The invention combines two popular environmental efforts: using biochar for carbon capture and storage (CCS), and developing alternative fuel sources from biomass.

While there are issues to be worked out on carbon capture and storage (CSS), it's seen by energy utilities and governments as a possible tool in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Biochar is coal made from biomass that can be buried in soil as a carbon sink or for use in farming, rather than letting decaying plants release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

Biomass--agricultural and wood byproducts that can be used to make ethanol, or electricity directly--is considered by the EU, the U.S. and others as a possible answer to reducing oil dependence while providing a cleaner and more efficient way to produce and consume energy.

As reported by the Financial Times, Carbonscape's machine turns biomass into a kind of biochar to be stored underground.

Though it's unclear just how clean it would burn, Carbonscape's biochar can also be burned as fuel.

Whether or not the invention is scalable remains to be seen, but judging from who is involved Carbonscape's claims seem legit.

The company's board includes Nick Gerritsen, the director of Aquaflow Bionomic, one of the companies developing algae biodiesel; and Tim Flannery, former Harvard University professor and environmental activist known for his books "The Future Eaters" and "The Weather Makers."

Investors received another tool Monday designed to track green themes and greenbacks.

Standard & Poor's launched on Monday its S&P U.S. Carbon Efficient Index, designed to measure the performance of large-cap U.S. companies operating with a low carbon emissions footprint.

The index, which currently has 362 companies gleaned from the S&P 500, are selected using calculations from Trucost, an environmental data gathering organization.

David Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor's Index Services index committee, said in a statement, "Organizations around the world are paying greater attention to the impact of greenhouse gases on our climate, as increasingly more investors consider carbon efficiency as an important investment theme."

The U.S. Carbon Efficient Index is part of S&P's global thematic index series, which also covers such green themes as water, forestry, and carbon efficiency.

Microsoft, Cisco, Apple, and Google are among the tech companies included in the U.S. Carbon Efficient Index.