Gogreencompare.com is a unique search service aimed at reducing the cost of motoring for both the driver and the planet by offering cheap car insurance deals with the added bonus of reducing carbon emissions. Launched earlier this year, the car insurance comparison website allows Brits to save money and protect the environment quickly, easily and for free.

As people become more aware of the impact their vehicles have on climate change there is a growing interest in saving carbon. By giving drivers the option to offset the carbon emissions of their car or bike at no extra cost, gogreencompare.com keeps pockets and the planet happy. Other sites charge extra for green car insurance premiums, but the gogreencompare.com service is completely free and allows motorists to make great savings on their policies at the same time.

“Gogreencompare.com is a brand new and exciting venture that was born out of our firm belief that people who want to do their bit for the environment should not have to pay a premium to go green,” commented founder Terence Bailey. “Gogreencompare.com offers a free and easy car insurance comparison service with a green, ethical stance to global warming.”

Carbon offsetting is free for motorists using gogreencompare.com as around half of the commission received from insurance providers every time a policy is taken out goes towards helping the planet. This money is paid to co2balance, an organisation which funds carbon offsetting projects worldwide. These initiatives, such as renewable energy plants and energy efficient stoves, help to limit the impact that carbon emissions from vehicles in the UK have on the environment and also aid local communities.

For each car insurance policy agreed through gogreencompare.com 1.5 tons of carbon is offset - around half of a car’s annual amount. For bike insurance policies 1 ton of carbon is offset - three-quarters of the emissions produced by a bike in a year. And this is at no extra cost to the motorist; gogreencompare.com does it because of a commitment to helping the planet.

The green insurance service is not only free it’s also quick and easy to use. Gogreencompare.com compiles deals from more than 90 different insurance providers and all motorists have to do is fill in a short form. Results are displayed on a single page so they can be compared at a glance and saved so they can be completed at a later date.

With gogreencompare.com consumers get the best deal on their car or bike insurance and the environment wins too. “The recession has highlighted more than ever the need for all of us to take better control of our finances and avoid paying over the odds,” Terence added. “With our comparison service you will never need to pay a premium for green insurance.”

Editors’ notes

For more information please visit www.gogreencompare.com or contact Terence Bailey on terence@gogreencompare.com.

The carbon offsetting levels are based on average vehicles with average annual mileage.

Gogreencompare.com links to the insurance comparison service provided by Seopa Ltd.

Details of the carbon offsetting projects run by co2balance can be found at www.co2balance.com.

To celebrate the new partnership, Coast to Coast together with co2balance UK Limited are offering members a free Greenhouse Audit on their current usage, along with a full Cost Comparison that will guarantee to save members a minimum of 20% on their stationery, office supplies and printer consumable costs.  Each client that takes up the offer will also receive a free box of A4 80gsm recycled printer paper (2500 sheets) as a welcome to the Coast to Coast team.

Coast to Coast Direct is a small, independent Office Supplies company based in West Sussex who specialise in eco-friendly office supplies.  They offer a service tailor-made to fit any size of business need, and have access to over 30,000 different office products, all with free next-morning delivery. 

Since their launch almost 4 years ago, they have been able to build a reputation as one of the most professional, reliable and cheapest suppliers in the UK – as well as being one of the greenest.  They have been a member of the CarbonZero Federation throughout their time as an independent supplier, and are delighted to offer their services to like-minded businesses within the group who show a commitment for looking after the planet as well as looking after the balance sheet.  Company Director Michael Errington said of the new deal;

“We are delighted to be working alongside the co2balance team, and look forward to speaking to other members of the CarbonZero Federation in the future to see where we can help with both cutting their costs and improving upon their carbon statuses.  It’s great to be working with companies with similar values, the same goals and the same ambition.”

As well as guaranteeing to save new clients a minimum of 20% on their stationery and office supply costs, they also offer online ordering, full account management, no minimum order values or early cut off points and a guarantee not to raise any prices for at least 12 months.  Their network of warehouses across the UK allow them to delivery anywhere in the country for free.

If you would like to find out more about how Coast to Coast can add value to your business, and are interested in the exclusive 20% offer, then please contact Matthew Stanley at Coast to Coast Direct on 01903 218982 / matthew@coasttocoastdirect.co.uk or check out the website at www.coasttocoastdirect.co.uk.

This project is seeking to address numerous environmental, social and economic issues faced by low income families, by distributing highly fuel efficient cook stoves (replacing their traditional 3-stone fire). These stoves reduce smoke emissions and significantly reduce the amount of firewood needed. This counteracts deforestation and erosion, and saves fertile land. The project also helps families and empowers women through the household savings on fuel, which can be used for micro-enterprise.

The project will transform the market by not only producing high quality Gold Standard Credits but improving awareness amongst the Aberdares Community, establishing business capacity of locals to manufacture and market the stoves, creating jobs in retail and after-sales service, and establishing quality assurance procedures which include careful monitoring of the usage and effectiveness of the new stoves.

The new Woodland Carbon Code has been developed in conjunction with scientists, forestry experts and project developers and was finalized earlier this year following a consultation period.

The commission is now starting a six-month testing programme using 12 pilot projects that aims to refine the code ahead of its formal launch next year.

Tim Rollinson, Forestry Commission Director-General, said the new code would give businesses buying carbon credits from British tree-planting projects greater confidence that they are funding quantifiable emission reductions.

"There are now many commercial schemes that encourage individuals and businesses to contribute to tree planting to help compensate for their carbon footprint," he said. "But before investing in projects people want to know that schemes will actually deliver what they claim. The Woodland Carbon Code will provide that reassurance and will encourage more investment in tree planting in the UK."

A spokesman for the commission admitted that there had been concerns that some projects had over-stated the level of emission reductions they deliver – a problem that should be addressed through the new code.

He explained that projects that qualify for the code will be required to comply with a scientific methodology that measures how much carbon specific tree-planting projects capture.

They also have to demonstrate that the project would not have gone ahead without funding from offset credits and meet sustainability requirements designed to ensure that the trees that are planted will remain in place.

The move comes as new research published in the journal Science this week raised worrying questions about plants ability to continue to soak up carbon dioxide as temperatures rise.

The study from Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running of the University of Montana suggested that large-scale droughts over the past decade had reduced the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed and stored by plants and forests.

The findings will come as a surprise to some scientists who had predicted the increases in average global temperatures will help to stimulate plant growth.

"Under a changing climate, severe regional droughts have become more frequent, a trend expected to continue for the foreseeable future," wrote the researchers. "The warming-associated heat and drought not only decrease [net primary production] NPP, but also may trigger many more ecosystem disturbances, releasing carbon to the atmosphere. Reduced NPP potentially threatens global food security and future biofuel production and weakens the terrestrial carbon sink."

Source: Climate Click

In the primary market, for CER-generating projects being developed, prices are ranging from €8.30 to €10.70 per tonne depending on the share of delivery risk between buyer and seller, according to IDEAcarbon. Uncertainty over the future of the UN’s CDM scheme beyond 2012 also overhangs the CER market.

Early trade in the New Zealand ETS sees a small volumes of trades in NZUs as momentum builds slowly. The focus of trade is predominantly in spot transactions with the latest sale reported by OMFinancial at $NZ18.45 (€10.20, $US13.50). The market is linked internationally via the eligibility of CERs in the NZ-ETS. However, lower NZU prices locally mean no demand for secondary CERs at present.

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the new owner of the Chicago Climate Exchange, says it will talk to participants in the pioneering US voluntary carbon trading programme about whether its worthwhile continuing the market. Interest has waned and prices have slumped amid the dashed hopes for a federal US cap and trade scheme being passed by Congress this year, or anytime soon.

Source: Climate Click

We recently held a “Local Stakeholder Consul­tation” (LSC) where we invited end users, government representatives, official NGO supporters, and other groups relevant to the Gold Standard. The LSC enabled all stakeholders to fully evaluate and understand the environ­mental, economic and social benefits, and any associated risks. The project is primarily aimed at enhancing access of poor households to energy saving stoves and is expected to run over the next 7 years. The emission reductions resulting from the improvement in fuel efficiency and the reduction of non-renewable biomass consumption will eventually qualify for Gold Standard Verified Emission Reductions, or GS VERs.

Source: Climate Click

In a series of experiments reported in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the team found that as carbon levels rise and ocean water acidifies, the behaviour of baby fish changes dramatically – in ways that decrease their chances of survival by 500 to 800 per cent.

“As CO2 increases in the atmosphere and dissolves into the oceans, the water becomes slightly more acidic. Eventually this reaches a point where it significantly changes the sense of smell and behaviour of larval fish,” says team leader Professor Philip Munday of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) at James Cook University. 

“Instead of avoiding predators, they become attracted to them. They appear to lose their natural caution and start taking big risks, such as swimming out in the open - with lethal consequences.”

Dr Mark Meekan from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, a co-author on the paper, says the change in fish behaviour could have serious implications for the sustainability of fish populations because fewer baby fish will survive to replenish adult populations.

“Every time we start a car or turn on the light part of the resulting CO2 is absorbed by the oceans, turning them slightly more acidic. Ocean pH has already declined by 0.1 unit and could fall a further 03.-0.4 of a unit if we continue to emit CO2 at our present increasing rate.

“We already know this will have an adverse effect on corals, shellfish, plankton and other organisms with calcified skeletons. Now we are starting to find it could affect other marine life, such as fish.”

Earlier research by Professor Munday and colleagues found that clown fishes were unable to find their way back to their home reef under more acidic conditions. The latest experiments cover a wider range of fish species and show that acidified sea water produces dangerous changes in fish behaviour.

“If humanity keeps on burning coal and oil at current rates, atmospheric CO2 levels will be 750-1000 parts per million by the end of the century. This will acidify the seas much faster than has happened at any stage in the last 650,000 years.

“In our experiments we created the kind of sea water we will have in the latter part of this century if we do nothing to reduce emissions. We exposed baby fish to it, in an aquarium and then returned some to the sea to see how they behaved.

“When we released them on the reef, we found that they swam further away from shelter and their mortality rates were five to eight times higher than those of normal baby fish,” Professor Munday says.

He adds it should be clearly understood that this impact is likely to happen independent of global warming, and is a direct consequence of human carbon emissions.

The research team concludes “Our results demonstrate that additional CO2 absorbed into the ocean will reduce recruitment success and have far-reaching consequences for the sustainability of fish populations.”

Professor Munday adds “In its 2008 report on the state of the world’s fisheries the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said “the maximum wild capture fisheries potential from the world’s oceans has probably been reached”. If you add the impact of ocean acidification and other climate change impacts to this, it means there are grounds for serious concern about the future state of world fish stocks and the amount of food we will be able to obtain from the sea.”

Source: Science Alert

A lot of these phones are just thrown out with the waste. Mobile phones however contain a lot of dangerous metals that can damage the environment and therefore they need to be disposed in special recycling plants. If phones are just thrown away then the bio-accumulative metals within them will become toxic over time. Phones can contain dangerous chemicals such as cadmium (the 7th most dangerous chemical), lead, nickel, mercury, lithium etc. Lithium can burn with water exposure, and so can potentially begin underground fires when present in large quantities. Cadmium is highly carcinogenic while lead can also cause both liver and neurological problems. In the longer term as the mobile phone decomposes it releases methane gas which is one of the major factors in global warming and is more damaging than CO2.

This is why LVS has decided to help in minimising landfill waste by offering a Mobile Phone Recycling Service. Recycling redundant mobile phones has many benefits;

• It reduces waste and prevents potentially harmful substances, including antimony, arsenic, copper, cadmium, lead, and zinc, from leaking into the environment from landfill sites.
• It extends the life of useful components, reducing the need for energy and raw materials to make new phones. This includes reducing the impact that the mining of coltan is having on the forests and wildlife of the Congo.
• It enables people in developing countries who could not afford a new phone to buy cheaper, refurbished handsets.

co2balance is working with LVS and their associated waste and recycling management policy (change4change), to ensure that you can offset your mobile phone’s contributed carbon emissions, by investing in projects that absorb or prevent the release of carbon dioxide equivalent to the carbon footprint of your mobile.

For more information please click here



Increasing fuel scarcity is leading to rapidly escalating costs for those who buy their wood and a greater time burden for those who collect it. The problems associated with fuel collection also pose significant social issues. Women walk long distances to collect fuel wood and consequently, they are often harassed in remote areas.  Children are also involved in fuel collection; this is reflected in the low literacy and school enrolment rates.

co2balance will meet with residents of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to discuss the implementation of our improved energy efficient cook stoves. Each stove consume half as much fire wood than traditional stoves and saves up to three tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. The stoves also aids in reducing the amount of time women need to spend foraging for firewood, thus limiting their exposure to violence and assaults.

A study into particulate matter in households in Addis Ababa found levels that grossly exceeded the air quality standards recommended by the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPS).  Our stoves improve indoor air quality, and reduce the attendant adverse health impacts of exposure to smoke, while helping locals save their forests.

To find out more about co2balance’s African Low Carbon Projects, please click here

Source: Click Green

To plant a tree with co2balance click here

Asthma sufferers:
The UK has one of the world’s highest rates of childhood asthma, around 15 per cent, particularly amongst lower socio-economic groups in urban areas. Research shows asthma rates among children aged four to five falls by a quarter for every additional 343 trees per square km, as they help keep the air clean and breathable and reduce ambient temperature.

Trees are also able to reduce the pressure on the drainage system during flooding. The University of Manchester has shown that increasing tree cover in urban areas by 10 per cent reduces surface water run-off by almost 6 per cent. A major international study published earlier this year, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), put the global value of services provided by forests and biodiversity at between £1.2-2.8 trillion a year.

Decline in native woodland:
Despite these 'invisible' benefits, the report says urban tree cover is actually deteriorating in many areas, with concerns over tree safety and insurance claims as well as development. Many places have seen a decline in older trees with large spreading crowns, replaced with smaller, more manageable alternatives. Smaller crowned trees have less capacity to intercept rain. Fewer than 10 per cent of city dwellers have access to local woodland within 500m of their homes. Evidence suggests proximity to a wood encourages physical exercise, whilst a woodland walk lowers the heart rate and mental stress.

The Woodland Trust said socially disadvantaged groups were the most likely to lose out with around two-thirds of urban trees in private or less accessible public grounds. It is campaigning to plant 20 million native trees annually across the UK for the next 50 years.

Source: Ecologist

A blueprint for how Britain could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero over the next 20 years could be reflected by the combination of electrification, insulation and a massive scaling up of offshore wind. The steps are broken down as follows.

Carbon price and taxes: To achieve the zero emissions target we would need new regulations but also an eventual carbon price of around £200 per tonne of CO2 but this could rise to as high as £500 a tonne according to CAT. This would have a huge impact on the price of carbon-intensive consumption. For example, under such a pricing a kilogram of beef would be £7 more expensive while a kilogram of chicken would cost an extra £1.75.

Insulation: The home accounts for 28 per cent of Britain’s energy demand and is responsible for 30 per cent of our total greenhouse gas emissions. More than half of those emissions come from heating our homes.We can reduce home energy demand by 70 per cent by improving insulation in every home (there are 6.3 million lofts with little or no insulation), improving new home designs and aiming for thermal comfort (warmer surfaces and less draught) rather than heating up buildings to certain pre-defined temperatures.

Offshore wind: Britain has the potential to meet all its energy needs through renewables by 2030, which means no nuclear or coal-fired power stations. The bulk of this (55 per cent) can be met through offshore wind through an estimated 20,000 turbines. Britain already has the largest deployed offshore wind capacity in Europe but as its North Sea oil and gas reserves decline it could create a new energy surplus through massive growth in its offshore wind capacity. A total government investment of £300 billion over the next 20 years would be required to facilitate this growth. This is an enormous amount, but at its peak will only amount to a little more than 2 per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product in 2008.

Electric cars and hydrogen buses: Electric cars produce around 50 per cent less carbon dioxide emissions compared to petrol or diesel. Reductions in car use can be achieved by two methods; a tax on each mile driven to make public transport costs more comparable to car costs; and town planning changes to reduce distances we need to travel and encourage cycling, walking and public transport alternatives.

Massive cut in long-haul flying: Aviation is one of the fastest growing sectors of the world economy and in the UK a 200 per cent increase in air passengers is expected by 2030.To reach a zero carbon Britain we would need to end domestic flying and cut international, long-haul flights by two-thirds. Long-haul flights account for the bulk (66 per cent) of the UK’s aviation greenhouse gas emissions. Some reductions would be expected through adoption of video-conferencing for business meetings and an increase in holidaying closer to home but the bulk of reductions would need to be achieved by price regulation. Britain has the potential to get more than 50 per cent of its energy from offshore wind

Source: Theecologist

Kenyatta said a framework for carbon trading — in which polluters buy and sell the right to emit carbon — would be set up to outline how to register to participate in the scheme, how revenue would be shared and how to ensure accountability.

The carbon credit investment framework would help streamline conservation efforts and alleviate poverty in the country, having the potential to attract billions of Kenyan shillings annually. The government also allocated 58 billion Kenyan shillings (US$721 million) for environmental conservation in the 2010/11 financial year — a more than 50 per cent rise from the previous year’s US$473 million.

Out of this, US$640 million will go to the environment, water and sanitation sectors, in efforts aimed at reversing what many see as Kenya’s battered biodiversity systems.

‘Efforts must be made through comprehensive environmental conservation to forestall the adverse effects of climate change in order to reverse damages to our scarce arable land, water and biodiversity resources,’ Kenyatta told parliament. The government recognises that the restoration of ecosystems provides the key to reducing poverty, creating employment and improving food security.

co2balance’s Kenyan Energy Efficient Stove Project fully compliments the government’s plan for an efficient carbon trading scheme. Our stoves are approximately 75% more efficient in the use of wood and/or charcoal and typically have a carbon saving of about 60 tonnes per annum.

co2balance will be attempting to remediate some of these issues by distributing highly fuel efficient cook stoves to the poor surrounding communities. These stoves reduce smoke emissions, and do not expose children to an open flame. This is beneficial to the environment and to the health of women and children. It also helps families and empowers women through the household savings on fuel, which can be used for micro-enterprise. The cook-stove benefits the environment as it yields better indoor air quality and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. It also counteracts deforestation and erosion, and saves fertile land.

This project is expected to produce high quality Gold Standard VERs that would subsequently balance the carbon footprint of organizations that cannot reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by internal abatement measures alone.

Join co2balance in the fight against climate change. To offset your emissions please click here