Researchers investigate carbon neutrality

In a race for the greenest of the laurels, not a day goes by without another announcement about going “carbon neutral.”

Carbon neutral organizations are those that measure CO2 emissions, work to reduce or eliminate them, and then attempt to offset those that cannot be eliminated through schemes such as the purchase of carbon offsets, tree planting and clean energy alternatives.

Among the world's 195 nations, the starting pistol was fired earlier this year in Monaco at the annual meeting of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Program. Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Costa Rica formally signed up to go zero carbon, competing to be the first to go entirely carbon neutral.

One United Nations member state already claims to have beaten them all. The Vatican announced last year that it was becoming the world's first – but is widely held to have cheated since it failed to count the carbon emitted by its traveling officials.

Among the many other entities that have made the carbon neutral pledge are Abbott, Dell, the Super Bowl, the Whole Foods, the World Bank—even rock bands like the Rolling Stones and Coldplay, and surfer Kelly Slater. New Hampshire University claims it is the first carbon-neutral university campus.

In the face of widespread concern about global warming, many organizations are going carbon neutral. Or are they?

Professors Amanda Ball and Markus Milne of the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) have been awarded a Marsden research grant ($824,000 over three years) to examine claims of being carbon neutral. Along with colleagues Professor David Levy (UMass - Boston) and Professor Kevin Anderson (Tyndall Centre at Manchester, UK), professors Ball and Milne will investigate organization and agency claims, policies, and practices in relation to carbon neutrality. This will be achieved through a series of in-depth case studies of organizations that are pursuing this goal, along with evidence from certification agencies, auditors, and others involved in measuring, managing and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.

Credible carbon neutrality programs require serious attention to emissions reduction prior to offsetting. So far, however, little work has attempted to systematically understand the actual dynamics of organizational emissions reduction programs, key motives that drive or inhibit action, or critically scrutinize obvious tensions and paradoxical motives between organizational desires to reduce ecological impacts and desires to grow and succeed economically. Achieving carbon neutrality requires organizations to think differently as well as change their practices. The researchers aim to uncover exactly what managers in an array of organizations mean by ‘carbon-neutrality’, and how they believe it can be achieved in their organizations. This side of the issue has not yet been examined as fully as the economic and technological aspects.

New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has already set her country the goal of being the world's first carbon-neutral country. It aims to generate 90 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025, and to halve its transport emissions per head by 2040. But the country has a particular problem with agriculture, which accounts for half its emissions of greenhouse gases.

The Marsden Fund supports excellence in leading-edge research in New Zealand. Projects are selected annually in a rigorous process by nine panels of experts who are guided by the opinions of world-leading referees. The Fund is administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Levy has co-edited two books, titled, “The Business of Global Environmental Governance”, (MIT Press,2005), and "The Business of Climate Change", (Greenleaf Publishing, 2005).