- Industry: Broadcasting & receiving
- Number of terms: 5074
- Number of blossaries: 1
- Company Profile:
The largest broadcasting organisation in the world.
An emission trading scheme whereby businesses or countries can buy or sell allowances to emit greenhouse gases via an exchange. The volume of allowances issued adds up to the limit, or cap, imposed by the authorities.
Industry:Natural environment
Not, in this instance, a club for car enthusiasts, but an organisation providing car rental to members at very short notice and usually for short periods, such as an hour or two.
Industry:Natural environment
Car pooling - or lift sharing - is a way of reducing CO2 emissions from private transport, especially commuter travel, by sharing journeys. It can be arranged informally among friends and colleagues or, increasingly, through dedicated websites. Its aim is to have fewer cars on the road with more people in each.
Industry:Natural environment
Carbon is the fourth most common chemical element in the universe, and carbon compounds - in other words, carbon chemically combined with other elements - are the basis of all known life forms on earth. Pure carbon appears in many apparently diverse forms, from diamond to graphite to charcoal, but it is much more commonly found in substances such as coal, oil, natural gas, wood and peat that we use for fuel. When we burn these substances to provide energy - either directly in our homes as heat, or in power stations to produce electricity - the combustion process produces 'oxides' of carbon, including the gas CO2.
Industry:Natural environment
Carbon capture, carbon sequestration, or CCS (carbon capture and storage) are all terms to describe relatively new technologies designed to let major producers of CO2 emissions, such as fossil fuel-burning power stations, prevent the CO2 they create being released into the atmosphere. Instead it is stored by being injected into underground or undersea geological formations. Some CCS technology is already in operation on a limited scale in other countries but its use is not yet widespread.
Industry:Natural environment
One carbon credit allows a business operating within an emissions trading scheme to emit one tonne of CO2. A firm that manages to reduce its carbon emissions to the extent that it does not require all its credits can sell the surplus to other firms who need to exceed their own cap. See emissions trading for more details.
Industry:Natural environment
CO2 is made up of the elements carbon and oxygen. It exists quite naturally in our atmosphere, as part of the carbon cycle. Everyday processes in the plant and animal world both add CO2 to the atmosphere and take it out. However, because it is a greenhouse gas - meaning it affects the temperature of the earth - the exact level of CO2 is important. Burning fossil fuels releases CO2 into the atmosphere, hence the anxiety that extensive use of these fuels is causing climate change.
Industry:Natural environment
Six greenhouse gases are limited by the Kyoto Protocol and each has a different global warming potential. The overall warming effect of this cocktail of gases is often expressed in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent - the amount of CO2 that would cause the same amount of warming.
Industry:Natural environment
A person's carbon footprint (or that of a particular household, business or entire community) refers to the CO2 for which they are responsible - whether directly, via their home energy use, their transport use, or indirectly via the embodied energy in the products and services they buy and use. You can work out your carbon footprint using calculators such as the Government's Act On CO2 Calculator.
Industry:Natural environment
A unit of measure. The amount of carbon emitted by a country per unit of Gross Domestic Product.
Industry:Natural environment
