The Carbon Footprint of Nations has been recognized as the Top Environmental Policy Paper in 2009 by Environmental Science & Technology (announcement). It is a big honor for us to win that award. ES&T is the  most important journal in environmental science and environmental  technology, publishing 1500 papers

The Climate Conference in Copenhagen has  ended as expected: with a political declaration instead of a legally  binding agreement. Nonetheless, there seems to be wide-spread  disappointment among the public. Commentators are busy portioning out  blame for the failure of the negotiations, where the U.S., China,  and the unwieldy UN

The Guardian and industry actors call for considering Carbon Embodied in Trade as part of a climate deal at Copenhagen. On December 7, 2009, 56 newspapers from 20 countries published  a joint editorial calling world leaders to use the 14 days of climate  negotiations in Copenhagen in order to come

A new UN report emphasizes the importance of addressing land use, water, and biodiversity impacts of biofuels. The jury is now in on biofuels: Current government mandates in the  United States, Europe and other countries to blend biofuels into  ordinary car fuels cause substantial environmental damage, do little to  reduce

Economists argue that the carbon market suffices to reduce  greenhouse gas emissions and attack additional policy tools for  increasing mitigation costs. Time to look at how the carbon market works  in practice! In my last blog I have pointed to the campaign of a few Norwegian economistsagainst  climate policy tools

Some economists argue that support for renewable electricity  leads to more coal power. Their reasoning is curiously flawed and  oversees the crucial role of technological learning. A curious discussion about climate policy has arisen in Norway now that the country has agreed with Sweden to join Sweden’s  ”green certificate”

The IPCC says that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by  at least 80 % by 2050 to achieve the goal of limit global warming to not  more than 2°C, agreed to by the EU and the G8. Recent research indicates  that the cumulative emissions in the period 2000-2050

Many people have asked how a country’s carbon footprint  compares to the territorial emissions reported to the United Nations  Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)? In hindsight, it was perhaps remiss of us not to include this data in the paper. However, it was not our motivation. Focusing on

A good week has gone since the release of the website and the online version of our article. A number of news outlets picked up the story, including the venerable Neue Züricher Zeitung (Switzerland)  and the tabloid VG (Norway). It was really interesting to discuss our  research with numerous journalists

Congratulations to Edgar Hertwich, Glen Peters and the  NTNU team for presenting the ‘Carbon Footprint of Nations’ as a  politically relevant way of accounting for greenhouse gas emissions,  based on a sound methodology. The publication and website comes at an important time – the decisive  climate policy negotiations in Copenhagen are

We are excited about launching this web site. Many years  of our research have gone into developing models and analyzing data on  the connection of industrial production, consumption and environmental  pressures. Profound insights have been gained, and an approach has matured which  we think is indispensible to address climate change