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
sandbag.org.uk
