Resources

At the 2000 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, attendees decisively voted climate change to be the leading challenge for the 21st century.

In the years following a majority of developed nations ratified the Kyoto Protocol which went into effect in 2005. The European Union Emissions Trading System implemented the “flexible mechanisms” portion of the protocol which was largely patterned on the 1990s experience in the United States of regulating air pollutants under the Acid Rain Program of the Clean Air Act.

In 2009, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated a rule requiring mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 10,000 US facilities. The information gathering was requested by the US Congress in 2008 and is authorized by provisions of the Clean Air Act. Information about the EPA rule is available at http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ghgrulemaking.html.

At the state level, Massachusetts in 2001 became the first state to regulate new electricity generating plants with capacity greater than 100 megawatts by requiring them to offset one percent of their CO2 for a twenty-year period. This initiative grew into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a ten-state cap-and-trade program that took effect on January 1, 2009. Other regions of the United States are in the planning stages for cap-and-trade programs. Most advanced is the Western Climate Initiative, which includes California and six other western states and four Canadian provinces. The WCI cap-and-trade program is scheduled to take effect January 1, 2012.

Mandatory greenhouse gas reporting began in California as of January 1, 2009, and is scheduled to take effect in the other WCI states and provinces in 2010. Massachusetts also has expanded mandatory reporting of GHG emissions to holders of state issued air permits with authorized emission levels of as low as 5,000 short tons of CO2-equivalence per year. Emissions must be monitored beginning in 2009 and reported and verified on a staggered triennial basis by an accredited third-party verification body.

California pioneered voluntary reporting of greenhouse gas emissions by organizations with the opening in 2004 of the California Climate Action Registry. In 2006 the state legislature passed Assembly Bill 32 and from 2008 California required mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions by certain regulated industries.

Voluntary reporting of greenhouse gas emissions at the organizational level has been continued by The Climate Registry which accepts reports from organizations based anywhere in North America (Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Futurepast is a reporting Member of The Climate Registry.

climateregistry

Futurepast’s president is a member of the Emissions Marketing Association and an associate member of the American Bar Association.

Since 2005 Futurepast has provided technical expertise to NSF-ISR, an accredited third-party greenhouse gas validation and verification body. Futurepast assisted NSF-ISR with its greenhouse gas program implementation and accreditation to ISO 14065 by ANSI. Futurepast personnel serve as program manager and greenhouse gas validators/verifiers under subcontract to NSF-ISR.

Archives

Futurepast is proud to have contributed to the transition of Russia and Ukraine to independent states in the decade that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. We present some highlights of that work in the pages that follow.

Our interests in radiation health effects also resulted in contributions to a workshop in Taiwan.