The National Academies: Advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering, and Medicine
|
|
|
Public Meeting Registry |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Major Unit: |
|
| Subunit: |
|
| Project Unit: |
Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program Seminar Series |
| Meeting Name: |
Voluntary Carbon Offsets: Hype or Hope? |
| Meeting Start: |
8/1/2007Meeting End:8/1/2007 |
| Location: |
National Academies (Keck Center) |
| Address: |
500 Fifth Street, NW, Washington D.C. 20001 |
|
This event is organized and sponsored by the Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellows and is open to the public. It will be moderated with ample time available for questions and discussion. Photo ID required to enter the building. This seminar is for educational purposes only and is not connected to an NRC/NAS/IOM/NAE project, report, or committee. No report or summary will be produced from this seminar.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
For more information, Please contact: |
| Contact: |
Yeimy Garcia; Patrick Cunningham |
| Contact Affiliation: |
Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program Seminar Series |
| Email: |
ygarcia@nas.edu; ygarcia@nas.edu |
| Phone: |
202.334.2741 (Yeimy) or 202.334.1697 (Patrick) |
|
|
| Preliminary meeting agenda: |
|
|
Date: Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Time: 12:30-2:00 PM
Location: The Keck Center of the National Academies, 500 5th Street, NW, WDC
Room: Keck 100
By metro: Judiciary Square (red line) or Gallery Place/Chinatown (Red/Green/Yellow lines)
PLEASE NOTE: Photo ID required to enter the building
For further details and periodic updates, visit
www.national-academies.org/policyfellows/events.
The National Academies
Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program
presents
VOLUNTARY CARBON OFFSETS: HYPE OR HOPE?
Voluntary carbon offsets are a mechanism by which individuals or corporations attempt to negate their carbon dioxide emissions by funding projects that remove an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. While the market for these offsets has experienced tremendous growth in the past few years, there is an ongoing debate over their effectiveness in the real world. In this seminar, we examine the efficacy of the various types of offsets, what role they can play relative to other mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and whether the government has a role in this emerging market.
The speakers will address the following questions:
(1) Do the actions of carbon offset companies reduce greenhouse gas emissions and if so, which offset methods are most effective?
(2) What is the role of voluntary carbon offset programs within the larger goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
(3) Are universal standards necessary to ensure the credibility of carbon offsets? If so, who should take the lead in forming and enforcing these standards?
Featured Speakers (bios below):
Joseph Romm, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow
Center for American Progress
Writer for ClimateProgress.org
Eric Carlson
Founder and Executive Director
Carbonfund.org
The seminar format will involve 10-15 minute presentations by the featured guests, followed by a moderated question and answer session.
No report or summary will be produced from this seminar.
Public Contacts:
Yeimy Garcia, ygarcia@nas.edu or 202.334.2741
Patrick Cunningham, pcunningham@nas.edu or 202.334.1697
Media Contact: Office of News and Public Information, 202.334.2138
SPEAKER BIOS:
ERIC CARLSON is a founder, with his wife Lesley, and Executive Director of Carbonfund.org. Eric has more than fifteen years experience promoting cost-effective solutions to climate change, with an extensive background in energy efficiency and renewable energy. Eric lived in Central and Eastern Europe for six years managing international programs for the Alliance to Save Energy. There he advised ministers of energy and environment, testified before Parliaments, developed a $30 million debt-for-environment swap, and advised the World Bank and IFC on multi-million dollar project investments. He also created Serbia’s first CDM project proposal. Prior to this, Eric worked at the US EPA’s Energy Star programs managing voluntary partnership programs and advised firms such as Gillette, AT&T and IBM on energy and money saving opportunities. Lesley and Eric have two beautiful young daughters and want to pass on to them a cleaner world. At a minimum, they want to be able to say they tried.
Eric Carlson holds a B.A. in politics and government from the University of Puget Sound.
JOSPEHP ROMM is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he oversees the blog ClimateProgress.org. He is author of a new book on climate science, solutions, and politics: Hell and High Water: Global Warming—The Solution and The Politics (William Morrow, January 2007). He is coauthor of the Scientific American article, “Hybrid Vehicles Gain Traction” (April 2006) and author of The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate, named one of the best science and technology books of 2004 by Library Journal.
Dr. Romm served as Acting Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy during 1997 and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary from 1995 though 1998. In that capacity, he helped manage the largest program in the world for working with businesses to develop and use advanced transportation and clean energy technologies—one billion dollars aimed at energy efficiency, hybrid vehicles, electric batteries, hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, renewable energy, distributed generation, and biofuels. Dr. Romm helped lead the administration's climate technology policy formulation, and initiated, supervised, and publicized a comprehensive technical analysis by five national laboratories of how energy technologies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions at low-cost: Scenarios of U.S. Carbon Reductions.
Joespeh Romm holds a Ph.D. in physics from M.I.T. and researched his thesis on physical oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|