Rezachek & Associates'
Energy & Environmental Resources

Environmental Issues - Page 2

Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) A public interest, not-for-profit environmental law firm founded in 1989 to bring the energy and experience of the U.S. public interest environmental movement to the critical task of strengthening and developing international and comparative environmental law, policy, and management around the world.

Centre for Alternative Technology Europe's foremost eco-centre - an educational charity striving to achieve the best cooperation between the natural, technological and human worlds. Many links to environmental information resources.

Centre for Economic and Social Studies on the Environment (CESSE) CESSE is involved in the following activities: sustainable development indicators and indices; ecologic economic analysis - national environmental accounting; sustainable development metadatabase (data sources); cost assessment of pollution control (transport, industry, ...) and of the damage caused to the environment (natural environment, building, health); cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis; environmental impact of energy; inventories of sources and emissions of pollutants released by human activities; least-cost-analysis (LCA); and economic optimisation of pollution control.

Charles Stewart Mott Foundation The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation's grantmaking is organized in four programs, one of which is environmental.

Citizens for Sensible Safeguards - Activism The following analysis was prepared by Karen Florini of the Environmental Defense Fund. It highlights some of the major technical problems with Title II of the reg "reform" bill.

Climate Action Network Newsletter From this page, you can access recent editions of Eco - including those being published at the second Conference of the Parties and related sessions taking place from July 8-19 1996 in Geneva; Eco back issues; and information about the organizations involved in producing Eco.

Climate Challenge Options Workbook The Climate Challenge Options Workbook is a work in progress. It is intended to be a living document that can provide guidance to electric utilities that desire to undertake voluntary and cost-effective actions to reduce, avoid, or sequester greenhouse gases. It has been developed by the Climate Challenge Options Task Group, one of the working groups of the Climate Challenge program, a collaboration between the electric utility industry and the Department of Energy. The options presented in the Workbook should not be considered all-inclusive. As they are identified, additional options may be included in future versions of the Workbook. The workbook identifies a number of opportunities for greenhouse gas reduction, avoidance, or sequestration, many of which do not require regulatory or legislative changes. It also includes descriptions of many of the barriers which may deter progress, along with suggestions for overcoming those barriers.

Climate Challenge Participation Accord This Participation Accord describes the commitments that the Montana Power Company (MPC) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have made to participate in the Climate Challenge Program in pursuit of the President's goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Climate Challenge Program is a joint, voluntary effort of DOE and the electric utility industry to reduce, avoid or sequester greenhouse gas emissions. The framework of the Climate Challenge Program was established in the Climate Challenge Program Memorandum of Understanding and exhibits thereto dated April 20, 1994 (the Climate Challenge Program MOU).

Climate Change and Greenhouse Gases The first photographs from space brought home the fact that Earth is an integrated and isolated system. Concern that human impacts could be changing the equilibrium of this system grew in the 1970s as theories about ozone depletion and the "greenhouse effect" developed. The concept of the Earth changing over various time scales was not new: solar and astronomical cycles, the waxing and waning of ice ages, and seasonal changes have long been recognized. What was new was the realization that humans can have a lasting and far-reaching impact on Earth's natural fluctuations and cycles. Potential human impacts on climate are linked to the globally increasing emission of "greenhouse gases" (1) through activities such as burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas); deforestation; fertilizing croplands; and heating, air-conditioning, and lighting buildings.

Climate Change and the Electricity Industry - Moving in the Right Direction? The upcoming December 1997 international climate change conference in Kyoto, Japan has focused public attention on the issue of global warming and global climate change. Scientific understanding of climate change has advanced considerably over the past five years and, not unexpectedly, the science has grown more complex as deeper insight has been gained into the interactions between climate and meteorological patterns and human-caused air emissions. Despite remaining scientific uncertainties, an unprecedented 2600 international climate scientists advising the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reached consensus that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate," and stressed the "importance for timely decision-making."

Climate Change: Three Policy Perspectives This paper examines three reasonably distinct starting points from which a U.S. response to the convention is being framed. These starting points, or policy "lenses," lead to divergent perceptions of the issue with respect to uncertainty, cost and benefit accounting, and urgency. They also imply differing but overlapping processes and actions for implementation that shape recommendations of policy advocates for the Federal Government's appropriate role in reducing greenhouse gases.