🔗GTG Links 31 – EA disclosures, new EU rules, and EU citizen attitudes on climate change
Have you dug into the net zero snapshot yet? People* are calling it "a singular achievement", "a tour de force of sustainability" and "the most exciting bit of games' news this whole year!"
Ben Abraham
* those people are me
Electonic Arts releases its impact report
Just in time to mess up the snapshot our industry averages. This one's so fresh I have barely even had a chance to read it yet – let alone integrate it into the Snapshot.
How do they stack up against my projections though? The reality: they were a fair bit lower than the industry average might have suggested, at least for Scope 1 and 2. Almost half what my numbers thought they might be. Scope 3 was also well under, but again that's without Scope 3 Cat 11 in there, just upstream emissions. Are downstream/upstream emissions 3:1? That's what they'd need to be to reach the ~500k I expected.
EU carbon neutral rules
Hot on the heels of California's huge new mandatory disclosure rules mentioned last time – and almost as exciting as the findings of the snapshot – is that the EU is banning carbon neutral claims based on the use of offsets. I read the FT's coverage of it initially, but that often disappears behind the paywall, so here's another:
“The EU is sending a powerful signal to the voluntary carbon market: the era of offsetting is over,” said Gilles Dufrasne, policy lead at Carbon Market Watch.
Nikolaus J. Kurmayer
If you're planning on using offsets either from forestry, or "avoided" emissions from other projects, you're gonna be out of luck if you want to hang your claim of "carbon neutrality" off it. Carbon removals on the other hand – verified drawdown of CO2 – however, will still count. Thought there's a lot less of those credits around, and they're often way more expensive.
Speaking of CO2 removals
The IEA has released an updated roadmap to keeping 1.5ºC in reach in which:
In a Delayed Action Case the report examines, a failure to expand clean energy quickly enough by 2030 means nearly 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide would have to be removed from the atmosphere every year during the second half of this century. If carbon removal technologies fail to reach this target, returning the temperature to 1.5 ̊C would not be possible.
Solar handheld stuff
Alex Custodio and Michael Iantorno held a 'Solar Gameboy Jam':
a dozen participants from the Milieux community collaborated to develop solar experiments and prototypes. Some decided to create games centered on solar themes while others built proof-of-concept games that contemplated using the sun as an input. Rather than trying to end up with finished products, the focus of the event was to create provocations that could be built upon and completed later on.
And from last year, Custodio's tutorial on how to replace your Gameboy cartridge batteries.
Climate changes means insurance premiums 📈
Another piece summarising the new report from First Street’s climate risk model - newly available details down to the property level, and who is being priced out of insurance. Like I said the other week, if your house burns, that's your problem, but if a million houses burn, that's everybody's problem.
Tik Root
PACT / Scope 3 data sharing with Fujitsu
Author: Fujitsu Limited
Accounting for carbon in data centre hardware
Rachell Robson
Electronics <> Ecologies event looked awesome
Guide to Australia’s proposed mandatory climate reporting framework
Berkley law climate regulation dashboard
Super cool! And so many different moving pieces.
GDP & emissions growth
European Attitudes to Climate Change (circa 2018)
Direct PDF link to some really good social research on climate attitudes across European countries. Really detailed, but a bit out of date. Hugely high levels of belief in climate change (great!) but lower levels of belief the impacts will be... bad? Eh? Interesting though, I wonder if it's changed since?
The survey found high levels of support across Europe were reported for renewable subsidies, and even regulations:
In all ESS countries, a majority think that a large or a very large amount of electricity should be generated from solar and wind, which is much higher than for any of the other energy sources, in particular compared to fossil energy sources and nuclear power.
Also lol at this note which takes on a new dimension after the winter that Europe had last year:
Whilst these attitudes sound like a good thing for the prospects of climate change mitigation, we should sound a note of caution. People might be less supportive of policies if they come to be seen as costly. After all, Europeans are more worried on average about energy costs than they are about climate change; and one of the more effective policies to reduce carbon emissions, increased taxes on fossil fuels, is viewed far less favourably than the other policies...
I would put real money on the average European has come to see fossil fuels as "even more costly" and are now more in favour of cheap renewables. Last year's gas crisis was a real eye-opener. Wonder if this year's is shaping up any better...