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Friday, November 15, 2013

UPU News:-Postal sector to have its own carbon fund

The proposed carbon offset fund for the postal sector is expected to become a reality by the end of this month.

The fund will take the form of an association under Swiss law, which will be registered this month. Ten Posts around the world, including those of France, Switzerland and Thailand, will be the founding members.
"This flexible funding mechanism will collect and allocate funds made available by Posts that want to offset their carbon emissions against low-carbon postal projects in developing countries," explains Patrick Wildloecher, chairman of the UPU's sustainable development project group.

New global results

As the Warsaw climate change conference is taking place, the UPU is announcing that Posts worldwide generated 60 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2012, according to the recent results of its fourth carbon inventory of its member countries. The results of the first inventory were presented in 2009 at the conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Sixty million tonnes represents 0.2% of global CO2 emissions in 2012 and 0.9% of total emissions from the transport sector.   
More than 92% of postal emissions come from industrialized countries, compared to 7% from developing countries and 0.5% from the least developed countries.
The 2012 carbon inventory, in which 127 countries participated, takes into account emissions generated by buildings (19.5%), vehicle fleets (20.5%), subcontractors (21%), sea freight (0.2%), rail freight (0.3%) and air freight (38.5%). The global figure for international shipments by air was obtained through close cooperation with the International Civil Aviation Organization. Employee commutes in 15 industrialized countries were also taken into account.

Identifying projects

The calculations, refined year after year, enable projects that could receive financial support from the postal carbon offset fund to be identified.
"Currently, the UPU advises operators, on request, of steps that they can quickly take to reduce their emissions, such as energy audits in buildings, changing collection and delivery routes to reduce fuel consumption, using electricity from renewable sources, or responsible procurement", says Olivier Boussard, partnerships, financial inclusion and sustainable development programme manager at the UPU.

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