The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is a regional cooperative established in 2003 by states and provinces in the Northeastern United States and Canada to reduce GHG emissions. Current member are the US states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland,...
Ellis Main
Federal, Regional and Provincial Climate Change Policy and Legislation in Canada
The Voluntary Challenge and Registry (VCR) is a government‐funded program that encourages organizations in the public and private sectors to voluntarily limit and reduce GHG emissions, and report annually on emission totals and reduction measures. The VCR was...
Investment Additionality in the CDM
The additionality of projects is crucial to the integrity of the Clean Development Mechanism. The CDM tool for additionality produces binary outcomes; projects either pass or fail. This paper uses ΔIRR (the difference between a project’s IRR with and without CDM...
A Practical Approach for Policies to Address GHG Emissions from Indirect Land Use Change Associated with Biofuels
Recent estimates of indirect land use change impacts associated with biofuel expansion have used forward-casting models to predict the effects of changes in feedstock use upon agricultural commodity markets and land use decisions. The predictive reliability of such...
Consequential and Attributional Approaches to LCA: a Guide to Policy Makers with Specific Reference to Greenhouse Gas LCA of Biofuels
Policies for supporting biofuels, such as the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive RED, the Renewable Fuel Standard in the US, and the UK’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), require life cycle carbon reporting to ensure that biofuels achieve greenhouse gas...
Is ‘Insetting’ the new ‘Offsetting’?
There has been a fierce debate about the benefits of ‘carbon offsetting’ and the associated term ‘carbon neutral’. This paper does not seek to add to this polarised discussion, instead we seek to describe an emerging trend which we call ‘insetting’ amongst leaders in...
Building REDD capacity in Malawi, Waterloo Foundation
We are contributing to a research project working on the development of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) projects in Malawi, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, Mzuzu University, LTS International, the Plan Vivo...
Development of Ecosystem Planning Tools for Upstream Biofuels in Brazil
Working for a leading biofuels producer to assist in the development of effective processes and tools for monitoring land use change in areas under their stewardship and influence. This project involved the identification and mapping of ecosystems in and around...
Quantifying the Climate Change Mitigation Potential of Terrestrial Ecosystem Management, NERC
Working with Imperial College London, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Forest Research, and Aberdeen University to investigate the mitigation potential from biofuels and bioenergy, avoided deforestation, and...
Evaluation of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative, NORAD
The Norway International Climate and Forest Initiative has committed up to $500 million a year to support efforts that reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in developing countries. The real-time evaluation commissioned by the Evaluation...
Feasibility Assessment for a Coffee Agroforestry Carbon Project
Ecometrica conducted a feasibility assessment investigating the potential of developing small-holder forest carbon projects in around 37,500 hectares of land in coffee growing regions of Uganda. Proposed carbon projects would aim to encourage around 5,000 coffee...
Land-Cover Change Mapping of a Ghanaian Forest Reserve
Historical and current satellite images were used to provide a history of land cover changes in a forest reserve in Ghana since 1989 for a client investigating the investment potential under REDD. Since associated estimates in biomass change over time were needed, a...
Capacity Building For Mangrove Assessment Restoration And Valuation In East Africa
In collaboration with the Universities of Napier, Bangor and Edinburgh in the UK and the Kenyan Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI), Ecometrica was involved in the training of three KMFRI employees from Kenya in Edinburgh, in mapping using remote sensing,...
Technical Support for the Development of REDD Projects in Malawi, USAID
Working with the Malawi, Environmental, Endowment Trust (MEET), and Bioclimate Research and Development, on a project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). We developed a participatory process for Monitoring Assessment and...
Feasibility assessment for PES projects in Cameroon, WWF
Working with the Centre pour l'Environnement et le Développement, Cameroon (CED), and Bioclimate Research and Development, UK, on a project commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to assess the feasibility of developing Payments for Ecosystem Service (PES)...
Royal Mail’s Sustainable® Mail Initiative
In 2009 Ecometrica worked with Royal Mail to revise an existing carbon calculator, used internally by the Royal Mail sales team, to demonstrate to clients the greenhouse gas emissions and waste saving benefits of the Sustainable® Mail initiative. Royal Mail’s...
What is a Carbon Footprint?
A carbon footprint is “the total set of GHG emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organisation, event or product” (Carbon Trust 2008). For example, the carbon footprint of flying from London to New York is 0.68 tonnes of CO2e1, and the carbon...