Peru has long boasted the world’s highest railroad. Now it is claiming one of the cleanest. Ferrocarril Central Andino since 1999 has operated the formerly state-owned rail line that runs from Lima over the Central Andes, reaching an altitude of nearly 16,000 feet (4,900 meters). It recently unveiled a locomotive that has been converted to a dual-fuel system of diesel and compressed natural gas (CNG). By using natural gas from the Camisea field in southern Peru, the company will be able to reduce air pollution from its locomotives—eight will be converted in all—by up to 70%, says Jack Roberson, the railroad’s executive director. The rail line’s consumption of diesel fuel, currently about 3 million gallons a year, will fall precipitously, he...
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Brazil’s São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) is preparing a listing of member companies that show commitment to environmental and social sustainability. The Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE), to be unveiled in December, will list those of Bovespa’s 125 most actively traded companies that meet sustainability benchmarks based on the results of a survey. It will be the second emerging-market listing, the first being that of the Johannesburg Securities Exchange. Bovespa began work on the index at the urging of Brazilian banks with socially responsible investment funds. It contracted the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), a private Brazilian socio-economic research institute, to develop a voluntary questionnaire that will go to the 125 most actively traded of Bovespa’s 383 listed companies. The foundation’s Center for Sustainability Studies...
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Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo’s veto of a new General Environmental Law may return the measure to square one, even though the bill was hailed as the product of consensus among government, business and green groups when Congress approved it in June. In a seven-page veto message issued last month, Toledo and Cabinet chief Carlos Ferrero made 23 “observations” on provisions that they contend would unduly limit economic development. The provisions they cited include measures on citizen participation in environmental oversight, criteria for triggering government anti-pollution action, ceilings on environmental fines, powers of the country’s top environmental authority and procedure for setting emissions standards. The legislation, Toledo and Ferrero wrote, “will not be conducive to the economic growth of productive activities that are very...
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Brazilian authorities last month fined three companies a total of US$42.4 million (R$101 million) in connection with a tanker explosion last November that sent oil onto 19 miles (30 kms) of Paraná state coastline. Ibama, Brazil’s environmental-enforcement agency, fined the Chilean freight company Socidedad Naviera Ultragas, which contracted the tanker, US$21 million (R$50 million). Meanwhile, the IAP, Paraná state’s environmental enforcement agency, imposed a penalty of equal size on Cattalini Terminais Marítimos, the Brazilian company that owns the terminal where the tanker was off-loading at the time of the accident. And Ibama levied an additional US$411,000 (R$1 million) fine on the port authority in Paranaguá, the southern Paraná city where the explosion occurred. The explosion took place...
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