exposing "carbon fat cats" through data visualisation

Exposing    “Carbon  Fat  Cats”  through  

data  visualisation  

sandbag.org.uk

Who’s  heard  of    

Climate  Change?  

http://www.phlorum.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/climate-change.jpg

Who  knows  the      

biggest  European  Policy      

dealing  with  Climate  Change?  

European  Emissions  Trading  Scheme  

Covers  40%  of  Europe’s  greenhouse  gas  emission  –  all  big  polluters!  

“Cap  and  trade”  Greenhouse gas emissions from factories and power plants are limited (capped) by number of “carbon permits” they receive

If plant emits less:

Sell excess permits

If plant emits too much:

Required to buy additional

permits

Reduction of cap provides incentive for companies to invest in cleaner technology

http://www.avonconnects.co.uk/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-8159-4346/rewards.png http://landgiraffe.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/money_in_hand.jpg

The Cap

A  big  lever  for  change!  More ambitious Emissions Trading Scheme1 could save

130% instead of 20% emissions reduction by 2020 relative to 1990 Source: http://www.sandbag.org.uk/site_media/pdfs/reports/Rescuing_EU_ETS.pdf

175,000,000 tonnes

carbon dioxide per year!

That’s  equal  to…  

2,916,666,666

Light bulbs replaced per year

91,145,833

Return flights London-New York

EU  Commission  publishes  emissions  data  online  

Amazing  transparency?  Unfortunately  not…  

Factories and power plants are NOT required to surrender full company information - data is far from complete …thanks to hard-working industry lobbyists! (and the EU commission’s website might well qualify as one of the worst web apps ever…)

At  Sandbag    we  scrape  the  data..  

http://hakeemit.blogspot.com/2011/02/database-multi-language-support-format.html

…  and  assign  individual  plants  and  subsidiaries    

to  parent  companies    

Sandbag  analysis  reveals…  O  Multinational companies (especially steel

sector) were given far more carbon permits than they need to cover their emissions

O  The excess permits (that they were given for free) are worth lots of money on the market!

O  Essentially government subsidies!

Visualising  the  Carbon  Fat  Cats  on  Sandbag’s  Company  map  

www.carbonfatcats.eu

Number  1:  

Steel  company  ArcelorMittal  

http://images.forbes.com/media/lists/10/2009/lakshmi-mittal.jpg

Hooray!! €1.7bn windfall

profits!

How  could  this  happen?  

O  Lack of transparency and public scrutiny! O  Hard-core lobbying of politicians in charge of the

EU Emission Trading Scheme: “… when the European Union's landmark climate bill was nearing its legislative conclusion, Avril Doyle, the MEP …. complained about being besieged by lobbyists ... tally came to 168.” 16/03/2009, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8896a5c0-11ca-11de-87b1-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz1MnbGTsX4

EU  Lobby  registers  (voluntary)  http://europa.eu/lobbyists/interest_representative_registers/index_en.html

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/expert/lobbyAlphaOrderByOrg.do?language=EN

But  overall…  O  EU transparency on lobbying is poor O  Urgent need for publicly available service

that collects data on how and when decision makers are being lobbied by industry

USA   http://transparencydata.com

http://influenceexplorer.com

http://opensecrets.org

Future  work  O  Freedom of Information requests

on lobbying activities in collaboration with Corporate Europe Observatory www.corporateeurope.org

O  Expose steel industry: Direct causality

between steel industry’s lobbying activity (need proof! Can anyone help?) and profits from overallocation of carbon permits

Thank  you  

Check who is polluting your neighbourhood: Search for “Carbon Geiger” on Android or iPhone App Store

patrick@sandbag.org.uk

sandbag.org.uk