Today we announced that we have met our original GHG reduction goal, by achieving a 23% absolute reduction below 2002 levels for the US. I’m excited and proud that we made this milestone well ahead of schedule. As part of the announcement we also went public with our new goal of a further 20% absolute reduction of our global impact by 2015. A couple of quick notes. First, why US only?

Environmental Leader today reported that “Environmental Friendliness Not Driving PC Sales” (I’d quote the original study, but getting it to read costs more than a couple of PCs). The conclusions are not surprising: consumers are looking for hard environmental savings, not marketing. In particular, they want to see energy efficiency that leads to real economic savings. But realistically, what else would they use as a criteria? Higher use of recycled cardboard in the packaging?

The Senate version of Emergency Bailout bill is now 451 pages, up from the 113 page House version that was defeated earlier in the week, which was up from the original 2 and a half page proposal. All of the extra stuff is pork. (here’s one of the many descriptions on the internet). Is anyone paying any attention?

Interesting discussion with some Sun stakeholders today. Their question was whether Sun could taken more active role in clean energy supply policy. My answer was that we aren’t experts, and that it wasn’t clear we had any influence. We’re going to continue to discuss this. It make sense that we care to some extent, but if the proposed market mechanisms are effective, then it not clear we what we’re adding.

Trying to post a blog from ping.fm using the custom URL feature.

Is it just me, or are some of the stories about the Chinese Olympic team downright scary? I just heard that the Chinese woman in the marathon is running over 700 miles/month..

Environmental Leader has a good article on the report by IEA that says that $45T of investment will be required by 2050 in order to reduce CO2 by 50%. In particular, it highlights the graph which is very interesting, showing 15 of the 50% reduction coming from efficiency gains, and the next 20 of 50% coming at relatively low cost from the power sector. So combined, these two are 70% of the overall reduction, and looking at the graph, can be achieved with near net 0 cost (the efficiency savings cover the added cost of power switchover).

The Environmental Leader reports on an analysis from Carnegie Mellon claiming that a $35 price for CO2 would results in a 10% decrease in emissions. I haven’t read the report yet, but just at the face of it I’m skeptical when I look at the impact on the pricing and usage of gasoline and electricity. First, lets do gasoline. Roughing out the math, gas produces just under 20 lbs of CO2e per gallon of gas, or 110 gallons per metric ton.