Category: carbon
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The Sustainability Perils of E-commerce (II): Fast and Furious (Fuming)?
In an early post, I talked about the upsides and downsides of e-commerce logistics on the environment. The main idea there is that e-commerce can potentially reduce CO2 emissions if customers end up driving less in their own cars. However, because of the small batch size of typical e-commerce orders, delivery trucks end up drive…
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The Carbon-reducing Effect of E-commerce Delivery
In an early article I discussed the perils of higher carbon print in online grocery shopping (mainly from a paper by Van Loon et al (2015). However, let’s not forget that the paper did find that when it comes to delivery using dedicated vans carrying a large basket size (as opposed to just a few…
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The sustainability peril of E-commerce (I): Small batches lead to more emissions
Recently I have been discussing with David Steven of Boston Strategy International, a world expert on sustainable supply chains, on the topic of carbon foot printing. One of the interesting points we talked about is the impact of the growth of the E-commerce sector on global carbon emissions. Researchers have been studying this for a…
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The Dawn of the Modern Power Grid Started Right Here in Massachusetts (and It was Clean Energy!)
Electrification is indeed the single great achievement of our society. And yet, I was delighted to find out the modern power grid actually started in Massachusetts, a state I live currently. In the late 1800s, technologies started to converge to build an electrified society. In 1882, Edison’s direct current (DC) system was built in Manhattan.…
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Measuring the Carbon Footprint of a Supply Chain: 3 Scopes
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol has established a set of standards to measure and manage GHG emissions. To me it seems to be the dominant framework in measuring the carbon footprint of an organization and/or a supply chain. The key to understanding the GHG protocal is that it includes three scopes: Scope 1: Any emission that…
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Zero-Carbon Economy: A Grand -and Necessary – Vision
I just watched a video produced by Cambridge University called “The Climate Crisis: Towards Zero Carbon”: Well done, Cambridge! The video first shows that data on historical CO2 levels and temperature makes it irrefutable that the current climate crisis is created by us humans. The video then highlights a few important areas for decarbonization: Energy…