exposing "carbon fat cats" through data visualisation
DESCRIPTION
In Europe, big polluters need a permit for every tonne of carbon dioxide they emit. Unfortunately the huge multinational corporations owning these polluting factories and power plants have been aggressively lobbying politicians. This has resulted in too many permits being given out. With too many permits in the system factories often have no need to reduce their emissions, which is good for the corporations - as it saves them a lot of money - but bad for the environment!Although the EU releases the emissions data publicly, the complexity of the data creates a lack of transparency, which benefits the big corporations and their polluters. At Sandbag we have been using a range of techniques to visualise this data (e.g. sandbag.org.uk/emissionsmap). Our new map exposes the 10 "carbon fat cat" companies that benefit most from having been given too many pollution permits (after all, the system was created for the benefit of the environment!). Future work aims to tie in data on company lobbying activities and see how this directly relates to those companies being allocated too many permits. As this is still work in progress, we would love to get feedback (ideas or data) from OpenTech.TRANSCRIPT
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