John Gormley, the Irish Minister for the Environment, has launched change.ie a country-wide initiative to help reduce CO2 emissions by 20%.

The project uses AMEE to perform all calculations (with Irish-specific metrics approved by the Irish Government). AMEE also stores all user footprints anonymously, enabling aggregate statistics to be reported.

We’re really excited that AMEE is now representing its second country-wide initiative, after the UK’s ground-breaking Act on CO2 initiative helped set the standard for Government engagement.

AMEE represents broad metrics for over 150 countries and as each country defines its own official figures, we will ensure that the most up to date (and increasingly granular) metrics are always represented.

As they embark on the first leg of their 2008 tour, Radiohead are appealing to fans to think about how they travel to and from shows.

Both their own report, and Julie’s Bicycle have shown that fan travel is one of the greatest factors to CO2 production in the music industry.

Radiohead are encouraging fans to consider public transport or increased car sharing. Where possible, the band has booked city centre shows with good transport links to make it easier for fans to get out of the car.

A new section on the Radiohead site has been set up offering fans to add detailed travel information to the gigs. By entering this data, the fans will not only have visibility of their own CO2 footprint, but Radiohead will use the broad statistical data gathered to plan future initiatives and improve energy efficiency.

AMEE provides all the back-end calculations and aggregates all the user data for analysis.

http://www.radiohead.com/ for more details

The first industry-led report for the music industry, commissioned by Julie’s Bicycle,  shows the it can play a leading role in tackling climate change by reducing it’s own half-million tonne footprint (equivalent to a town with a population of 54,000, or the emissions from 180,000 cars).

AMEE contributed to research undertaken by The Environmental Change Institute (Oxford University) who produced the report. Live music, touring and fan travel are amongst the highest contributions - almost equivalent to the entire CD production process.

Emissions from the production of one CD is 1kg of CO2 - so next time you pick up a CD, think about the “bag-of-sugar” in  weight of CO2 that it contributed. And that’s not including the store’s footprint…

The Carbon Account, developed by the overly talented folks at Torchbox, have set a new benchmark for ongoing measurement and management of your energy consumption - not only integrating with Facebook, but releasing their entire platform as open source.

As Tom Dyson, Director at Torchbox, says, “We’re very grateful for the assistance that AMEE has provided in our development of The Carbon Account. We share AMEE’s open source philosophy and we believe it’s important to have an open and transparent emissions inventory. This is why we open-sourced The Carbon Account: our timescales for carbon reduction are very tight, and everyone must work together to build the tools that will help us meet them.”

Gavin Starks, founder of AMEE, adds, “Torchbox were the first agency to engage with the AMEE vision - we are really excited about their open-source release of a consumer-facing application. We encourage everyone working in addressing this area to collaborate on these tools and applications to accelerate measurement, management and change.”

Call to developers: We are working to update The Carbon Account to enhance its integration with AMEE - if you would like to assist with this development, please get in touch (co2 -at- dgen.net).

Cut your Carbon is an exciting regional initiative, led by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA), with the goal of helping communities respond to climate change by reducing their carbon emissions.

Groups taking part will be able to:

• measure their carbon footprint online (AMEE is at the back-end)
• take action to become more energy efficient
• seek up to £200,000 for carbon cutting projects in the £2.5 million funding competition