Greentech Lead Europe: Picarro, a producer of greenhouse
gas and optical stable isotope instruments, announced that it has been selected
along with a consortium of scientific organizations by EADS Astrium as the sole
provider of in situ instruments for measuring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in
London, during the 2012 Olympic Games.
Astrium’s new Emissions Measurement Service (EMS), which
uses stationary, mobile and airborne instruments to measure GHG emissions on a
city-scale and in real-time.
The EMS is supported by a consortium of leading
institutions, including France’s Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de
l’Environnement (LSCE), the UK’s National Centre for Earth Observation and
National Physical Laboratory (NPL) Centre for Carbon Measurement, Earth
Networks, and Picarro.
The EMS service will analyze carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon
monoxide (CO), and methane (CH4) gas concentrations to determine the CO2
equivalent emissions at a national level, with associated uncertainties, and to
identify the sources of these emissions.
The London pilot combines ground measurements from a
network of Picarro’s cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) instruments,
including four instruments stationed around the city, an instrument on a bus
measuring GHG concentrations at road level, and an instrument aboard an
airplane for higher altitude measurements.
Picarro’s technology can be leveraged in London to
compare measured GHG emissions to baseline inventories, and further encourage
civic leaders that have set emission reduction goals yet lack precise,
objective measurements to credibly evaluate their progress.
“We’re now delighted to participate in Astrium’s
consortium and demonstrate once again that our technology can be used to
measure urban-scale GHG emissions, and encourage major cities to start
measuring rather than self-tabulating their progress towards emission reduction
goals,” said, Michael Woelk, Picarro CEO.
Carbon
emissions during World Economic Forum 2012 in Davos decreased : Picarro
Recently, Picarro announced that the carbon
emissions during the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2012 in Davos,
Switzerland have dropped to roughly 35 percent below the pre-WEF rate of
emissions, or only 210 tons of carbon per day.