QMS & EMS London

Worldwide investment in renewables surged 17% to $270 billion in 2014, bringing the total invested in renewable energy to $2 trillion over the past 10 years, according to UNEP. The UN environment programme’s latest annual report, Global trends in renewable energy investment, says record investments in offshore wind projects across Europe, combined with major expansion of solar installations in China and Japan contributed most to the increased capacity in 2014 and helped reverse a two-year decline in investment.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, retrofitting buildings has the largest potential of all measures to reduce greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions by 2030. In the UK, successful retrofitting of the built environment is key to meeting its target of reducing GHGs to 80% of 1990 levels by 2050. Emissions from buildings contributed 35% of the UK’s total in 2011, says the committee on climate change (CCC). Its latest progress report on meeting the UK’s carbon budgets reveals that 66% of emissions from buildings are from residential ones, while commercial and public sector emissions account for 25% and 9% respectively.

UK electricity generated from renewable sources in 2013 reached a record 14.9% – an increase of 30% on the previous year – but coal remains the biggest source of electricity, generating 36%. The latest digest of UK energy statistics, published by Decc, also reveals that gas-powered electricity fell to 27% in 2013, while nuclear generation remained unchanged at 20%.

Energy minister Greg Barker has unveiled the government’s plans to ensure large biomass and biogas burning plants are using sustainably grown and harvested feedstocks, and are producing 70% fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than fossil-fuelled power stations. Under the plans, which closely follow those outlined in a consultation last year, energy companies operating biomass plants with a generating capacity of at least 1MW, will not be able to claim for support under the Renewables Obligation (RO) unless they can produce an independent report verifying that the fuel used meets new land-use criteria.

In the latest crisis to strike the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) has discovered that 300 tons (nearly 72,000 gallons) of highly radioactive water has leaked from a holding tank into the ground over the past month. The development comes on top of TEPCO's admission last month that an estimated 300 tons of radioactive groundwater, which picks up small amounts of contamination when it flows through the damaged reactor buildings, has been leaking into the Pacific Ocean every day. (See related story: "Fukushima's Radioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know.")

To meet the requirements of the EU’s Energy Efficiency Directive (2012/27/EU), all large companies – those with more than 250 employees and an annual turnover exceeding €50 million – will have to complete an assessment of their energy consumption every four years. The assessment, the first of which must be completed by December 2015, must be completed by an “approved assessor” and produce a list of “cost-effective efficiency measures” that the firm can implement.

For more than 15 years, organisations wanting to lessen their environmental impacts have used ISO 14001 as a framework to understand how their operations affect the natural world and to combat harmful outputs. Alongside waste management, pollution prevention and resource efficiency, many businesses have examined their energy consumption under 14001 as a way of lowering greenhouse-gas emissions. However, dramatic increases in energy costs, coupled with the introduction of mandatory requirements to lower emissions, such as the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency scheme, have lifted energy efficiency to the top of many organisations’ environmental agendas.