February 11, 2008 -

In the race against rising greenhouse gas emissions, coal – the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive of fossil fuels – is being taken to task. Scores of environmental organizations have launched campaigns to shut existing coal plants and stop construction of new ones.

February 5, 2008 - In the next several months, we'll be rolling out several widgets that take full advantage of CARMA's Application Programming Interface.

A widget is a little chunk of code that people can place on their own blog or website. For example, this widget can grab RSS feeds. Some other widgets are more interactive, such as this weather widget allowing users to search by zip code. CARMA's emissions data can be presented and explored in similar ways.

January 30, 2008 - My CARMA colleague David Wheeler has posted a fascinating note on the Center for Global Development's "Views from the Center" blog. In response to the World Bank Group's continuing support of coal power plants in the developing world, David crunched the latest numbers on the cost differences between dirty coal power and some carbon-free alternatives. Bottom line: The additional financing needed to make clean alternatives viable is small compared to estimates of the social, economic, and environmental costs of climate change. Read the full story here.

November 16, 2007 - Transparency is central to CARMA's objective of reducing carbon emissions through public disclosure. So when the CLP Group in China approached us about our figures for their Castle Peak power plant in Hong Kong, we took notice and responded promptly. Indeed, it is CARMA's policy to replace our data if high-quality, plant-specific, independently verified emission reports are available.

November 14, 2007 - We are pleased to announce the launch of the Carbon Monitoring for Action database at www.carma.org. CARMA provides the world's most detailed and comprehensive information on carbon emissions resulting from the production of electricity. Power sector emissions make up 25% of the global total, 40% of carbon emissions in the United States, and are a primary cause of global warming. CARMA is a product of the Confronting Climate Change Initiative at the Center for Global Development, an independent and non-partisan think tank located in Washington, DC.