Welcome to WeCarb.Earth!
This webspace is powered by the Wegener Center of the University of Graz on behalf of its Field of Excellence Climate Change Graz. It serves as an open platform to provide information and exchange on Institutional Carbon Management (ICM), a new approach and related guidance and tools supporting institutions like companies and other organizations of all sizes to achieve Paris-compliant climate goals.
Welcome to join and become empowered to share in your climate solution path, in the spirit of the ICM motto: WeCarb – carbsmart to Paris.
Have a look at the video about Institutional Carbon Management – June 2021. ©Uni Graz/Koppelhuber
What Institutional Carbon Management is – in a nutshell:
Institutional Carbon Management (ICM) provides science-based knowledge, innovation, and services for institutional entities, including commercial and non-profit private and public institutions and organizations (such as companies, enterprises, corporations, associations, public-service institutions), for supporting them in an actively managed goal-driven and solutions-oriented transition to a low carbon institution until 2030 – 2040 – 2050, in accordance with the overarching goals of the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 that require net-zero(a) emissions and climate-neutral(b) institutional entities earliest possible over this timeframe.
Definition footnote:
(a) net-zero: sum of CM emission reduction and storage percentages vs. reference budget amount (CMRB2020 [tCO2eq]) adds to 100(±5)% in a future year of interest (e.g., 2030), but the reduction part is less than 90%.
(b) climate-neutral: sum of CM emission reduction and storage percentages vs. reference budget amount (CMRB2020 [tCO2eq]) is 100(±5)% in a future year of interest (e.g., 2040), as for net-zero emissions, but the reduction part is at least 90%.
For a general introduction to Carbon Management (CM), comprising as well Public Carbon Management (PCM) and Personal Carbon Management (pCM), visit CarbManage.Earth (or visit via carbsmart2Paris.earth).
And an encouragement – if we can do it, you can do it!
We at the University of Graz, a research & higher education institution with about 4300 employees and 30000 students in Austria, don’t just conceive and further develop carbon management for others to better act but rather take it serious ourselves. As of 2020 we have started our own Institutional Carbon Management (ICM) implementation in-house and so we are field-testing the concepts and key tools of ICM ourselves in practice, in synergy with carrying our carbon management research along. Together with partners we also support Public Carbon Management (PCM) and facilitate innovative Personal Carbon Management (pCM) services.
Furthermore, for background information and motivation, we simultaneously developed and started the GCCI-Graz Climate Change Indicators Portal. This portal provides reliable recent-past monitoring information jointly with current-state nowcasting and Paris-compliant future projection information, over the critical timeframe from 1960 via 1990 and 2020 to 2050. In doing so it focuses on greenhouse gas emissions (GEM-GHG Emissions Monitoring), global climate warming (CWM-Climate Warming Monitoring), and climate change impacts in terms of weather and climate extremes (EWM-Extreme Weather Monitoring; released later in 2021).
By acting as such a role model and information source, we intend to serve as an innovative pioneer both in research and in practice. In this way we want to encourage and support also other entities at all levels (other public ones, but also private companies and organizations as well as individual persons and their networks) in achieving their Paris-compliant climate goals thanks to professional carbon management.
The webspace is open as of April 2021 and repeatedly updated – stay tuned.