Green Futures - No.74

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No.74 October 2009

America’s next top model? The sky’s the limit for the green revolution Making a market in forest futures Tourism without the guilt and Jonathon Porritt on the case for cuts

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Fr Vo id ti ay ng 30 cl Oc ose to s be r

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Contents

Contents

Number 74 October 2009

30

Photos: Ethan Miller/Staff/Getty; Daniel Beltra,/The Prince’s Rainforests Project and Sony; Ove Eriksson/Getty; Sharpham Park Farm, Glastonbury; Zaytoun CIC; mschowe/iStock

18

41

26

43

Features

Regulars

Partner viewpoints

18 Sunrise over the new frontier

4

riefings – The cutting edge of B news and green innovation

23

24

Sustainable sourcing hits the staff canteen Marine Stewardship Council

A thousand words – Designing disasters

37

orum update – Greening travel habits, F decarbonising health care and disrupting innovation – among Forum’s latest interventions

32

eading retailers green their L way through recession WWF

33

atering down – in a good way W Food and Drink Federation

36

I s there really such a thing as green PVC? The Natural Step

41

anking on organic growth B Triodos Bank

44

hich is greener – paper or W the net? Beacon Press

45

I n pursuit of natural born bubbles Ecover

s the winds of change blow through A America, Polly Ghazi sets out the potential for a green recovery.

26 Forest futures

If rainforests are so valuable, why can’t we make them pay? Martin Wright explores the profits and the pitfalls deep in the jungle.

30 At a leisurely lick

What will the tourism industry look like in 2023? Anna Simpson takes the slow boat to the future.

34 All the solutions are already here

43

ustainable entrepreneur – S Heather Masoud, Zaytoun olive oil

48

onathon Porritt – ‘Lean and green’, the J new slimline approach to public spending

49

etters – Readers respond to Green L Futures online and in print

he Green Futures Interview: T Zac Goldsmith talks to Martin Wright.

Front cover: Paul Chesley/Getty

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Briefings: Fast as a feather: a weak signal from the future, p7

Green Futures October 2009 1


Comment

About us Green Futures is the flagship publication of Form for the Future. Its focus is on communicating solutions and best practice in business, central and local government, universities, the voluntary sector and society as a whole. The magazine is financed by subscribers, advertisers and charitable trusts, and by contributions from Green Futures Partners and the Forum’s Foundation Corporate Partners.

Partners are selected on the basis of their demonstrable commitment to the pursuit of sustainable development. They take an active part in the debate through Partner Viewpoint pages, where they share their views and experiences. Green Futures works with its partners on ideas for, and editorial scrutiny of, these pages, to ensure that they are consistent with the overall aims of the magazine. If you’d like to join us as a partner, please contact Anna Simpson: 020 7324 3651 anna@greenfutures.org.uk

AkzoNobel N.V Elizabeth Stokes, 01928 511695 www.akzonobel.com

Entec Francesco Corsi, 0191 272 6128 www.entecuk.com

Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd Caroline Miller, 020 7695 3078 www.sainsburys.co.uk

Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy Jane Howarth, 020 7410 7023 www.ashdenawards.org

Food and Drink Federation Julian Hunt, 020 7420 7125

Skanska Jennifer Clark, 01923 776666 www.skanska.com

BT plc Environment Unit, 0800 731 2403 Commission for Rural Communities Paul Pennycook, 01242 534056 www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk Ecotricity Matt Thomas, 01453 756111 www.ecotricity.co.uk Ecover Mick Bremans, +32 3 309 2500 www.ecover.com Energy Saving Trust Paula Owen, 020 7654 2411 www.energysavingtrust.org.uk

Deputy Editor ANNA SIMPSON Editorial and Marketing Coordinator KATIE SHAW Consulting Editor ROGER EAST Contributing Editor BEN TUXWORTH Magazine Design JENNY SEARLE ASSOCIATES/ ANDY BONE Founder JONATHON PORRITT

Our partners

BP plc Christine Dewey, 020 7496 4000 www.bp.com

Editor in Chief MARTIN WRIGHT

Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227802435 www.firmenich.com Groundwork Fiona Taylor, 0121 237 5815 www.groundwork.org.uk Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) James Simpson, 020 7811 3315 www.msc.org Pureprint Group Yvie Dear, 01825 768811 www.pureprint.com Royal Mail Group Martin Blake, 01252 528 681 www.royalmailgroup.com

Triodos Bank James Niven, 0117 980 9721 www.triodos.co.uk TUI Travel plc Jane Ashton, 01293 645911 www.fcenvironmentandpeople. com Vodafone Group Chris Burgess, 01635 677932 www.vodafone.com Unilever plc Helen Fenwick, 01372 945000 www.unilever.com

Green Futures would like to thank: Lottie Butler, Anna May Shamoon and George Wigmore (interns) Helius (proofreading) Shelley Hannan (web) Editorial Overseas House, 19-23 Ironmonger Row, London EC1V 3QN Tel: 020 7324 3660 Email: post@greenfutures.org.uk Subscriptions Circa, 13-17 Sturton Street, Cambridge CB1 2SN Tel: 01223 564334 Email: greenfutures@circaworld.com Green Futures is published by Forum for the Future Registered Charity Number: 1040519 ISSN No: 1366-4417 The opinions expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of Forum for the Future, nor any of its associates. © Forum for the Future. 2009

WWF Dax Lovegrove, 01483 412395 www.wwf.org.uk

RWE npower Anita Longley, 01793 892716 www.RWEnpower.com

Environmental Policy Forum for the Future is certified to the ISO14001 standard. Green Futures is printed by Beacon Press, using their environmental print technology and vegetable-based inks.

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2 Green Futures October 2009

We use Sylvan Silk paper, made from 100% de-inked waste, for the inner pages of our magazine, and for Green Futures Special Publications. Our cover is printed on 9lives glossy paper, made up of 80% recycled household, office and printers’ waste. Both papers are supplied by Paperback. Single print copies of Green Futures are mailed in a degradable polythene film, which is recyclable, and non-toxic in landfill.

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Editorial

Contributors to this issue include:

“T

ropical forests”, Andrew Mitchell of the

Global Canopy Programme tells me, “constitute about 40% of the potential solution to climate change between now and 2030. And do you know how many out of the last 100 Green Futures briefings have been about forests?” Not precisely, no. “Well, I’ll tell you. Precisely none. And you claim to be a magazine about solutions…” Ouch. He’s right of course. So why so little on forests – particularly when there’s so much debate around the fascinating, if complex, new financial mechanisms which could ensure their future? Perhaps because it’s always easier, at a superficial level, to get people excited about new things, rather than new ideas. A solar plane, a smarter meter, a window which generates power…the very stuff of GF Briefings. Few of us, after all, live in rainforests. But that doesn’t make them any less interesting. As ‘Forest Futures’ [p26] makes clear, they are fast emerging as our last, best hope of curbing runaway climate change – and doing so at a profit, too. Which makes them very interesting indeed, in both senses of the word. If forests are tomorrow’s green gold, today’s is still renewable energy. Even if you completely ignore climate change – or if you think the sceptics are right and it’s not really happening – the economic logic of renewables is still overwhelming, thanks to the looming ‘energy crunch’ and fears around security of supply. It’s a logic which seems to be impressing corporate America [‘Sunrise over the new frontier’, p18], and with an Administration onside, there’s every chance the States will pull ahead. Staying ahead, of course, means being smart, being innovative. Which, let’s face it, can feel like an overused word these days. So I’m grateful to Chris Sherwin, head of Forum’s Innovation Team, for translating it into English. “Innovation”, he says, “just means new ideas that work.” Suddenly, it’s a lot more straightforward. It’s also the title of one of two special supplements which you’ll find included with this edition (making it, incidentally, our largest ever issue). New ideas that work brings together some of the brightest young sparks in British design, who are literally reshaping how we see some classic green dilemmas. Imagine a beautiful virtual tree on your wall, whose green leaves shimmer with health when you save power, but wilt if you waste it. How’s that for making energy efficiency interesting? And just as we need workable new ideas to save forests in Brazil or save energy in Britain, so we need them too to ensure the basic essentials of daily life – like clean water, or decent shelter. That’s a recurring theme in the second of this issue’s supplements, the latest in our international series, which focuses on South Africa. (It’s being distributed there with every copy of the Financial Mail.) Its title, Ubuntu!, sums up another ‘shining truth’ of sustainable development: it’s something we can only achieve together, not alone. ‘Ubuntu’ is an ancient word present in many southern African languages, whose meaning has been captured by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. “We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas [in reality] we are connected and what each of us does affects the whole world,” he says. “When we do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.” Today we call it social capital. It’s an old idea, but it still works.

Polly Ghazi cut her journalistic teeth as Environment Editor of The Observer, but for many years now has made her home in Washington DC. Here she writes for the World Resources Institute and, as Green Futures’ US correspondent, keeps a watching eye on everything from climate diplomacy to the cleantech revolution [p18].

Owner and former editor of The Ecologist, Zac Goldsmith’s conversion to the Conservative Party added crucial credibility to Tory leader David Cameron’s ‘Vote Blue, Go Green’ campaign. A combination of good looks and wealthy background may have made him a fixture in the gossip columns – but when it comes to environmental issues he’s deadly serious, as is clear from this issue’s GF Interview [p34].

An alumnus of Forum for the Future’s Masters course, Joanna Yarrow [p38] worked with Yorkshire’s ill-fated Earth Centre before returning to London to found Beyond Green, one of the capital’s growing number of sustainable communications agencies.

Like many visitors to Israel-Palestine, Heather Masoud [p42] was shocked by people’s daily struggles to make a living in a conflict zone. Unlike many, she decided to do something about it – launching her own company to bring olive oil from the West Bank to the West.

Martin Wright Editor in Chief martin@greenfutures.org.uk

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Green Futures October 2009 3


Briefings

Briefings Green city cool

Do what you can, but let your motive be money. Because saving money seems to be the most effective motivation people have.

” Germans James Lovelock

12 Climate change could wilt British cities in the summer, but green roofs could keep us cool. New research shows that grass or wooded areas can chill surface temperatures by up to 15˚C – which in turn cools the ambient air.

muck in

A German town is poised to be the host of the world’s first biogas heat and power network. Lunen’s 91,000 people will soon have half their energy needs met from the 2.5MW plant, which converts animal manure and crop waste into methane.

The average annual growth rate of solar power, 2000-2006. Over the same period, the oil industry expanded by 1.7%.

Sun and sea Sun on the decks helps power the Auriga Leader – the world’s first container ship to be partially powered by solar PV.

8 4 Green Futures October 2009

13

27%

The rise in clean energy investment in the developing world in 2008, to $36.6 billion. Growth was led by China, India and Brazil, while developed country markets stagnated.

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Photos: Renars Jurkovskis – Shutterstock; Cathy Britcliffe – iStock; Toyota (GB) PLC

36.4%


Briefings

Costa happy

11

Costa Rica has come first in the Happy Planet Index (HPI). Developed by the New Economics Foundation, it measures life expectancy, life satisfaction and ecological footprint. The UK came 74th – five places above Iraq; the US, 114th.

15

The tide is high The world’s first commercial tidal plant has come onstream at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. Tidal power could contribute at least 12% of the UK’s electricity needs.

9

“ ” In each of the last two years China has planted two and half times more trees than the entire rest of the world put together. Al Gore

Florida: green makeover

Photos: Strangford Lough; Kitson & Partners; Solberg Production StatoilHydro

A solar-powered city is set to rise from the Florida swamplands. It’s just one of a series of newbuild idylls designed with green energy, transport and space in mind, which are changing the face of major US tourism destinations.

Wind on the waves Revolutionary floating turbines, based on oil platform technology, could take wind power far out to sea, where it can harness higher and more consistent wind speeds. It could also bring offshore wind within reach of major energy consumers, like the US and Japan, which lack suitable shallow water sites.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

10 Green Futures October 2009 5


Briefings

First cut UK government sets out transition plan to meet 2020 carbon target The UK has published details of its Low Carbon Transition Plan, setting a mandatory carbon budget to limit each Government department in their use of both carbon and cash. When it comes to Britain’s future energy mix, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband is standing by his ‘trinity’ of renewables, nuclear and coal with carbon capture. These three together are supposed to provide 40% of UK electricity by 2020. Renewables will be the biggest element in this, with a target of 30% of electricity (and 15% of all energy), compared with just 5.5% of electricity at present. The Renewable Energy Strategy White Paper, announced alongside the transition plan, spells out the key measures: • a new Office for Renewable Energy Deployment within the Department of Energy and Climate Change • a new regime for grid access, with government funding for ‘smart grid’ development • major promotion of wind and tidal power, with funding for up to 3,000 offshore turbines, and creation of a special marine technologies economic area in the south-west • consultation on the details of a “clean energy cashback” scheme, a feed-in tariff incentive for small-scale generation • 1.2 million green jobs.

The London Eye – the capital’s iconic ‘big wheel’ – is to cut 20% off its electricity consumption in a £12.5 million ‘eco-refurb’. The capsules, which have carried over 34 million passengers over the past decade, will each undergo a revamp of their heating and ventilation system, ready for an expected influx of visitors for the 2012 Olympics. The upgrade follows a switch to ultraefficient LED lights on the pier and rim of the wheel, which cut lighting energy use by 69%. – Nick Chan

12.8%

The average reduction in energy use prompted by displays accompanying smart meters, according to an Onzo review of all published studies. The displays have been welcomed by the Energy Saving Trust, which has found energy bills to be the most difficult to understand, with 82% of UK consumers unaware of which tariff they are on.

6 Green Futures October 2009

2020 vision: windy horizons

At Forum for the Future, energy and climate expert Iain Watt describes the proposals as “suitably ambitious”. He’s only too aware that “we’ve got the best Government in the world for setting targets”, but he does see “some real substance” in there too. One good example is the ‘clean energy cash-back’ scheme for small-scale generation, starting next year for electricity and the following year for heat. The uptake of this kind of feed-in tariff incentive, in countries such as Spain and Germany, has produced an impressive surge in renewable microgeneration, and Watt is pleased that the UK is now following suit with “proper rapidity”. – Roger East

Chop chop The Government’s 2020 plan divides up the proposed cuts in emissions by sector as follows: • power generation 50% • places of work 10% • transport 20% • agriculture 5%. • homes 15%

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Photos: Shutterstock; Irina Korshunova/Shutterstock

Going around in circles gets greener


Chips with everything Peter Madden gets IT under his skin By 2020, there’ll be billions of tiny computers embedded in pretty much everything: stuck on our food labels, woven into our clothes, even injected into our skin. These computers will collect data and exchange information with one another, not just responding to needs, but actually anticipating them. Your fridge will monitor its contents and order fresh milk. It will also collect health data from implants in your body and sensors in your toilet bowl, and adapt your diet accordingly. It will even make suggestions as to what to eat, based both on your past choices and on those of other people like you. We might see ‘smart dust’ sprinkled everywhere – in the form of tiny motorised processors with transponders. These will draw energy from their surroundings and communicate information on everything from security threats to the state of the environment. While this sci-fi world might be scary to some, it is surely on its way. As the cost of computing continues to fall, as wireless broadband spreads, and as microchips get ever smaller, so it becomes more feasible. Your clothes shop already makes use of tiny tags to keep track of stock and send an alert if someone tries to steal it. Microsoft and others are developing software that allows cars, fridges and music players to share the same information. And Nokia is promoting a mobile phone that also monitors the user’s health and their surrounding environment, enabling users to pool their data and so build a picture of local environmental stress. Ubiquitous computing could have sustainability benefits. It will give us lots more real-time information about what is happening, and – by making the invisible visible – could increase pressure for change. It could make sustainable

Briefings

She wants your motorbike

choices easier. Imagine how much simpler using public transport willl be when we are all equipped with GPS, constantly updating both ourselves and the transport provider on where we are in relation to any part of the network. Perhaps the greatest potential is to increase the efficiency with which we use resources. Energy use would be finely calibrated. Companies could monitor performance in real time and make micro-adjustments to maximise efficiency. Of course, there will also be downsides to chips with everything. Nano computers might end up polluting our ecosystems; privacy could be threatened because everyone and everything is monitored. And because so much will be known about our wants and desires, businesses may become ever more skilled at fulfilling them – fuelling more consumerism. In the end, as with many such technological advances, it’s how we decide to apply them that will determine their true sustainability impact. • Peter Madden is CEO, Forum for the Future.

Weak signals from the future

Photos: Arman Zhenikeyev – Shutterstock; mschowe/iStock

Rotten logic

Potentially intelligent life is growing in our woodland and forming a bluish film in forgotten fridges. Plasmodial slime moulds are being sourced by scientists to develop a non-silicon, biological robot – or plasmobot. Capable of highly complex calculations, the mould could be used to develop everything from super-computers to microscopic, intelligent cells that could float in our blood or live on our skin: a useful back-up for weary minds.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Fast as a feather

The next generation of hydrogenfuelled cars will do their miles on a gallon of feathers. New research from the University of Delaware has found that tiny hollow and porous tubes found in the fibres of chicken feathers can absorb almost 2% of their weight in hydrogen. The precious waste from poultry kitchens could soon be in demand for other applications, too – such as lightweight, super-strength construction materials. And there’ll be plenty to go round: America’s appetite for finger lickin’ chicken makes their feathers a ‘nuisance commodity’, piling up literally millions of tonnes a year.

Free as a farm

Fish farms will soon be swimming our seas to keep their livestock in the pink. Remote-control underwater pods, sourcing their energy from the tides, would carry their shoals to new waters, mimicking natural migration for breeding and feeding. They would also help avoid the diseases of overcrowding endemic in today’s industrial fish farms. The swimming schools could even be programmed to arrive in time for the morning market!

Green Futures October 2009 7


Briefings

Sun powers the dream Round-the-world ambition for prototype green plane If efficiency savings and biofuels are the step-by-step path to greener aviation, the Solar Impulse project is a leap of faith. It’s “a paradox, almost a provocation”, in the words of its pilot, Swiss adventurer and round-theworld balloonist Betrand Piccard. Piccard has set himself the goal of flying a solar powered plane, with back-up batteries, around the globe – and he recently unveiled the prototype machine to make the trip. Lightweight composite materials and super-efficient cells give it the best of both worlds: a huge 61 metre wingspan and a weight of just 1,500kg. The biggest design challenge is generating and storing enough power for night flight, which Piccard plans to put to the test on an Atlantic crossing in 2012. But green aviation isn’t actually what he’s aiming at. Real success, he said at the unveiling near Zürich, would be “to have millions of people following the project, being enthusiastic about it, and saying ‘if they managed to fly around the world with renewable energy, then we should be able to make energy savings in our daily lives’”. – Roger East

Solar ship takes to the seas World’s first PV-powered container ship launched When the car container ship Auriga Leader chugged into the Californian port of Long Beach earlier this summer, it was greeted with a torrent of positive press reports – as the first freighter to be partially powered by the sun. The Auriga, which can carry 6,400 vehicles and makes bi-weekly trips from Japan to California, has an impressive array of 328 photovoltaic (PV) panels stationed on its top deck. The panels – connected to the 440V onboard electricity grid – represent an investment of around $1.7 million for ship owners Nippon Yusen Kaisha and Nippon Oil. The panels are touted to have a peak capacity of 40kW, when conditions are optimum (think sunny days at high noon) and

the ship is docked. This will cover about 0.3% of the engine’s energy requirements, and 7% of other power appliances, such as pumps and lighting. It is estimated that the PV system will save a total of 13 tonnes of fuel over one year – reducing CO2 emissions by up to 40 tonnes. Surprisingly, the panels have generated 1.4 times more electricity at sea than on land, leading to suggestions that the cool sea breeze improves efficiency. With the sector’s fuel costs and carbon emissions increasingly under the spotlight, there has been a flurry of activity investigating alternative power systems for shipping. They include the cargo ship MS Beluga’s Sky Sail – a kite towing-system – and Solar Sailor’s hybrid solar/wind power solutions, as well as simple solar arrays as on the Auriga. But none comes cheap. The ‘small bang, big bucks’ is 21st century sun deck

8 Green Futures October 2009

hard to justify in an era when fuel prices are not quite high enough, and the economy not quite strong enough, to make a solid business case for investment. But Christer Ågren at Sweden’s Air Pollution & Climate Secretariat, who has much experience in the maritime industry, is loathe to pour cold water on any renewable technologies that reduce the fuel consumption of ships: “Solar cells, kites… all these are good – and the more popular they become, the more they’ll be used,” he says. However, Ågren adds that the most cost-effective, money and pollution-saving measure container ships can take is simply to slow down. “It is incredible, but a 10% reduction in speed equals about a 20% reduction in fuel use,” says Ågren. It’s an approach already adopted by shipping lines such as Maersk when fuel prices are high. But the complexities of docking systems means most ship owners still want their cargo to reach port as quickly as possible. As yet, shipping has managed to stay outside international emissions reduction frameworks, although research by BP and the Institute for Physics and Atmosphere suggests that the sector’s annual emissions make up 5% of the global total – around twice that of aviation. And according to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a business-asusual scenario would see these more than double by 2050. Responding to growing pressure from the EU, the IMO advocates a range of what it terms ‘cost-effective’ measures including speed reductions, Beluga-style towing kites, upgrades to hulls, engines and propellers, and policy instruments such as emissions trading and a fuel tax. Taken together, says the IMO, ships could cut their emissions by 75% by 2050. – April Streeter

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Photos: Solar Impulse EPFL; Toyota (GB) PLC

Piccard’s provocation takes flight


Briefings

Algae biofuels race hots up

Babcock ranch: sunshine city

Cape Cod refinery could produce one million gallons per year The race for algae-based biofuels is heating up across America, with new biorefineries planned across the country. In the largest announced so far, Plankton Power of Massachusetts has formed a public-private consortium to build a new plant in Cape Cod that could eventually produce one million gallons of biofuel per annum – or 5% of the state’s diesel and domestic fuel demands. It’s part of a strategy which has seen it team up with the Regional Technology Development Corporation, the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Cape Cod Commission with the aim of developing an industry that will be costcompetitive with petroleum and with vegetablebased biofuels. Algae have been hailed as an important source of ‘third generation’ biofuel: one that would not otherwise be cultivated for food or other commodities, such as timber. Nor do they compete for space with food crops on arable land or in freshwater. Thought to be the most efficient organisms on earth in terms of growth, algae can produce over 2,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year of production – compared to just 50 gallons for soy, according to research by ExxonMobil. For algae to flourish, all that’s required is a constant optimum temperature, water and plenty of concentrated CO2. The cost of equipment for large-scale production is the key limiting factor. With global biofuel use to double by 2015, according to Hart Energy Consulting, Massachusetts could be well placed to lead the game. – Ed Gould

Photos: Kitson & Partners; Krzysztof Gawor/iStock

Power plant: 2,000 gallons per acre per year

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Florida and Vegas – green makeover Major eco developments create homes and jobs Newbuild idylls designed with green energy, transport and space in mind are changing the face of major US tourism destinations. In the ‘sunshine state’ of Florida, there are plans to build the world’s first solarpowered city. The state utility, Florida Power & Light, has partnered Washington-based property developer Kitson & Partners to build a 75MW solar plant on the outskirts of Fort Meyers. The $350 million project will power the new 17,000 acre city of Babcock Ranch. The city will include some 20,000 homes, six million square feet of retail and light industrial space, and 8,000 acres of green space. The entire design is intended to promote a healthy, sustainable lifestyle, where people walk or cycle to and from work, and exercise in local parks and the Wellness and Fitness centre, a key feature of the downtown area. A study by consultancy Fishkind & Associates estimates the city will generate 20,000 jobs. Meanwhile, a couple of thousand miles west, the Las Vegas Strip is getting a facelift in the form of an 18 million-squarefoot sustainable development centre. The ‘CityCenter’ will be powered in part by an 8.5MW natural gas generation plant, and will employ new water conservation technology estimated to save up to 40% within the buildings and 60% in outdoor landscaping.

In keeping with the feel of ‘The Strip’, the development will also have a fleet of stretch limos on hand, powered by compressed natural gas. While these initiatives are laudable, Martin Hunt, Head of Built Environment at Forum for the Future, thinks the effort may be misplaced. With 80% of existing building stock expected to be standing come 2050, “the priority for any city should be retrofitting existing communities to low carbon standards, rather than building new ones”. – Tricia Holly Davis

The crisis behind the cure Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called on President Obama for urgent intervention in the state’s water crisis, which is affecting agriculture, freshwater ecosystems and urban life. Las Vegas has been particularly hard hit. The city depends on a 110-mile-long reservoir, Lake Mead, for 40% of its water, but the lake’s surface levels have fallen 1% each year since 1999. The Natural Resources Defense Council has placed restrictions on urban and agricultural water use to protect vulnerable fish.

Green Futures October 2009 9


Briefings

A swift come-b ack A high-pitched warble will soon be sounding out from the roof of Islington council’s offices in North London. It’s a swift call, in stereo, designed to lure the birds back to the borough. Numbers have declined by nearly half in the last decade thanks to building ‘improvements’. The recovery scheme, funded by Transport for London, also includes the installation of 300 new nest boxes to attract migrants. – Anna May Shamoon

Set to soar

Breezing on through Funding, plans and findings to boost the wind power industry

Wind power drifts out to sea Floating turbine to push technological boundaries Can we harness the power of the wind using the technology of fossil fuels? The recent installation of the world’s first full-scale floating wind turbine, which uses stabilising technology first developed for oil platforms, may be the key to taking wind turbines further out to sea. The ‘Hywind’ prototype, built by oil giant StatoilHydro, is now in place for a two-year trial off the Norwegian coast, based on a relatively simple design. A conventional 2.3MW Siemens turbine is placed on a weighted ‘spar’ buoy that extends 100 metres below the surface to provide stability and a low centre of gravity. Three anchor points will prevent the turbine from floating away, as well as linking the structure to undersea transmission cables. “As you get into deeper water, the cost [of existing fixed turbine technology] escalates,” explains Benjamin Sykes, Senior Technology Acceleration Manager at the Carbon Trust. As well as benefiting from higher and more consistent wind speeds further out at sea, floating turbines would bring offshore wind within reach of major consumption areas, such as the US and Japan, that lack shallow water sites. According to StatoilHydro, they can be placed wherever ocean depth is between 120 and 700 metres. StatoilHydro has invested NOK 400 million (£42.8 million) in the research, development and construction of the pilot. – Nick Chan Deeper waters, higher winds

10 Green Futures October 2009

Photos: Graham Catley; Robert Nickelsberg/Getty; Øyvind Hagen StatoilHydro

Britain’s offshore potential gets most of the attention paid to wind in the Government’s latest renewable energy strategy [see p6]. But there’s also a welcome boost for land-based wind projects held up by the credit crunch. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband announced £1 billion of loans to wind farm developers, organised through the partly state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group and the European Investment Bank. The aim is to get one gigawatt of new schemes up and running. Local hostility to wind farm planning applications – probably the biggest obstacle to a more dynamic UK market – could also be tempered, given Miliband’s emphasis on “finding new ways of working with local communities… to persuade people that we need a significant increase in onshore wind”. Away from the UK, the boom in wind power has been driving job growth in the sector. The month after announcing its Isle of Wight factory closure, turbine maker Vestas hired thousands of new workers in China and the US to supply the fast-growing domestic markets in those countries. Sub-saharan Africa is also getting in on the act. The whole continent had just 593MW of installed wind capacity at the end of 2008, most of it in the north where Egypt and Morocco have ambitious expansion plans. But Ethiopia and Tanzania have major projects commissioned or in the pipeline. And the continent’s biggest wind farm, at Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, should generate 300MW – a quarter of that country’s total current installed generating capacity – when completed in 2012. – Roger East

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Briefings

UK breakthrough for tidal power World’s first commercial generator of electricity from tides A UK tidal power plant will be paid for the electricity it generates, after becoming the first to win accreditation for Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs). SeaGen is by far the largest tidal power plant to be connected to the grid, and the only one to be recognised as a commercial power station. It comprises a pair of underwater windmills which rotate in the tidal Like wind, underwater: lowering the turbines into Strangford Lough

current of Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, generating enough electricity for 1,000 homes [see GF69 p7]. “This is the first time anywhere in the world that a tidal power plant has been treated as a normal power generator,” says Peter Fraenkel, Technical Director of Marine Current Turbines, which built SeaGen. The firm plans to build a second plant, seven times more powerful than SeaGen, off the Isle of Angelsey in North Wales. Fraenkel believes power from tidal streams could eventually contribute up to 12% of the UK’s presentday electricity needs, but that a significant increase in government subsidies is needed to encourage development. SeaGen will receive two ROCs per megawatt generated, but higher subsidies are available in Scotland – dubbed the Saudi Arabia of marine power – where tidal is awarded three ROCs per megawatt. Ronan O’Regan, a director in the energy team at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, says this is enough to entice

developers to exploit sites earmarked as ‘ideal’, such as Pentland Firth. Further afield, South Korea is storming ahead. Two companies, POSCO Engineering and Construction and South-East Power, have signed a memorandum of understanding to build tidal plants with a total capacity of 460MW near the north-western island of Deokjeokdo, and off the coast of Sinan-gun, in Jeonnam province. Meanwhile, the 260MW Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Plant off the South Korean coast is due for completion in November. The plant will be the world’s largest to date. – Mark Jansen

From certified to salaried: ROCs ROCs are a system of subsidies to encourage the development of clean power in the UK. The certificates are awarded to generators of clean energy by the industry regulator, Ofgem. The ROCs can then be sold on to electricity companies, which buy them in order to meet their quotas for renewable energy supply.

The power of the sun in a nuclear state

Photos: Strangford Lough; byllwill/iStock

French policy and investment favours solar PV The French Government is aggressively developing its solar power infrastructure, investing in photovoltaic (PV) plants and providing tax breaks for commercial and private producers of the renewable energy. Although still lagging behind Germany, the world’s largest producer, France hopes to emulate its neighbour’s success through generous feed-in tariffs, which require utilities to purchase renewable energy at a premium rate. Wael Elamine, of the French renewables association Syndicat des Energies Renouvelables, says: “Germany is eight or nine years ahead of us, but we are growing at about the same speed. It is now French law that we will reach 5.4GW by 2020 – where Germany is today”. France knows it will have to work hard. By the end of 2008, it had installed only 87MW – around four times that of the UK – and there have been delays of up to six months for PV installations to be connected to the grid. But the country has a history of bedding-in ambitious energy policies, as its large number of nuclear power stations demonstrates. Recent developments indicate the country may reach its solar goal. In May 2009, French sustainable development minister Jean-Louis Borloo kickstarted the renewed push for solar power when he announced an investment of d1.5 billion for new PV plants. This would effectively quadruple solar output to around 300MW. As well as the capital investment, the French Government now offers the highest feed-in tariffs in the world, at d0.33/kWh for ground and roofmounted PV, and d0.6/kWh for the latest building-integrated forms. The UK languishes at the bottom of the league, offering a maximum of just 0.06 d/kWh. EDF Energies Nouvelles, the renewables subsidiary of France’s major power provider, has been quick to capitalise on the favourable tax and market conditions. In July, it announced a joint venture with a US PV

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En France, il fait chaud

supplier, First Solar, to build France’s “largest solar panel manufacturing plant”, able to produce around 100MW of PV capacity each year. Surprising amid this rush for the golden rays, though, is the country’s silence on concentrating solar thermal power (CSP). Neighbouring Spain is cutting a clear lead here, with a target of 500MW installed capacity by 2010, and a feed-in tariff system in place since 2007. Six plants are already up and running, with a combined capacity of 81MW, and another 12 are underway. France may choose to leapfrog the infrastructure development stage, investing instead in importing CSP energy from sunny North Africa. French-speaking Algeria is gearing up to source 5% of its energy from solar by 2015. The New Energy Algeria company has recently been set up to explore how solar ‘exports’ could help Europe meet its renewables targets. – Alex Johnson

Green Futures October 2009 11


Briefings

Green cities or red faces Vegetation to soak up the stifling urban sun Climate change could wilt British cities in the summer, if we fail to increase the amount of green space, says new research. A report published by the Association for Greater Manchester Authorities identifies an urgent need for green roofs that could counteract the urban heat island effect, by reducing the heat absorbed and released by buildings. Jon Lovell, Head of Sustainability at Drivers Jonas, the surveyors behind the research, says Manchester currently has around 25 green roofs installed or in planning, but that “there is massive potential to increase that significantly”. Meanwhile, researchers at Manchester University are measuring the cooling effect of green space with a live trial at nine plots across the city, covered with trees, grass or asphalt. “We’ve seen some promising early results – areas of grass and trees can reduce surface temperatures by about 15°C, which in turn cools the air,” says Dr Roland Ennos. The live trials follow computer modelling tests which suggested that a mere 10% increase in wooded areas in Manchester could cancel out the warming effects of climate change until 2080. “There’s no denying the benefit of green spaces in urban areas,” says Helen Clarkson, Deputy Director of Forum for the Future. “The mental and physical health benefits of green space have been demonstrated very clearly – through improved air quality and reduced stress, for example. And it’s been shown that regular exposure to the natural environment is important in childhood development. If it can also help to cool cities in a changing climate, then local policy must favour it.”

Urban cool

In July, London Mayor Boris Johnson issued a new environment plan which suggested that two million trees should be planted in the capital to combat rising temperatures. The charity Trees for Cities has welcomed it, but questions whether the target will be met. “They have identified the need, but I’m not sure they have the funds to be able to plant them,” says acting Chief Executive Emma Hill. German cities such as Berlin and Stuttgart offer excellent examples of urban greening, says Ennos: “The Germans have always been good at this. It is built into the system: they plan green areas with cooling in mind.” – Mark Jansen

South Wales to host the UK’s first green skills centre

96m The number of commuter journeys made on the National Cycle Network in 2008 (either by bike or on foot) – an increase of 9% on the previous year.

12 Green Futures October 2009

A former mining town is to lead the way on green skills, with the UK’s first dedicated training centre. As many as 1,300 people a year will learn to install microgeneration and renewable systems at the Green Skills Centre in Blaenau Gwent, South Wales. The students will include British Gas workers seeking to adapt their skills to clean technologies, and locals hoping to benefit from new job prospects. While there remains a manufacturing base in the region, the closure of mines led to largescale job losses. More recently, the area’s car component industry has felt the impact of the recession. In Blaenau Gwent, where the Government aims to refurbish 40,000 homes and make the Heads of Valleys region the largest Low Carbon

Zone in Europe, trainees could find that there is work on their doorstep. And, thanks to a recently reopened train line to Cardiff, they will also be able to take their skills further afield. The centre, to be funded by British Gas, has formed strategic partnerships with JobMatch, Jobcentre Plus, Summit Skills and Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council. Gareth Jones, Chief Regeneration Officer for the council, hopes it sparks a surge in local commerce – with start-ups specialising in renewables manufacture and installation. “Sustainable growth powered by local enterprise” will make the town more independent, he claims. Green skills are expected to be in increasing demand, with jobs in renewables and low carbon transport proposed for 1.2 million people by 2020, according to the UK’s Low Carbon Transition Plan [see ‘First cut’, p6]. – Gustavo Montes de Oca

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Photos: Renars Jurkovskis – Shutterstock; Joe Gough/Shutterstock

From coal dust to green sparks


Briefings

Germans muck in Lunen’s farms pool produce for biogas A small town near Dortmund is setting up the world’s first dedicated biogas network, to convert waste products and feedstock from local farms into fuel for heat and electricity. The system will use gas collected and cleaned in anaerobic digesters (ADs) to feed combined heat and power units dotted around Lunen, a small town of 91,000 people in northwest Germany. Local farms will deliver waste matter such as animal manure, as well as maize, wheat and grass, to anaerobic digesters, which use bacteria to convert some of the material into biogas. This is then filtered to exclude pollutants like sulphites and arsenic, and sent at high pressure through a network of pipes to ten combined heat and power units around the town. The annual output of the network is expected to be around 2.5MW, providing approximately 50% of Lunen’s heat and power needs. It costs around d18 million and comes onstream in December. So could this model be reproduced elsewhere? Madeleine Lewis of Farming Futures – a communications project for farmers and land managers hosted by Forum for the Future – thinks so: “Biogas makes great business sense and benefits the environment”. But the UK’s lagging far behind its potential, with just 13 AD plants compared to Germany’s 3,500. “British farmers tell us they need more information and incentives to invest in AD, such as access to capital grants, faster planning processes, and demonstration projects,” added Lewis. The Goverment is beginning to address these issues through its AD implementation plan, backed by an online information portal, launched by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in September. Farmers are missing out on opportunities, says Owen Yeatman, a UKbased dairy and arable farmer who set up the company Farmergy to fund his own AD plant, which now exports electricity into the grid. “Everyone who is a good farmer can be a good biogas producer,” he told Green Futures. “It’s still a production industry and farmers can use all their own resources, assets and skills.” – Alex Johnson

Happy accident

Intermittency “no obstacle to wind power success” Wind turbines can ‘keep lights on’ as a major power source, reports say Wind farm developers everywhere will be heartened by three UK reports this summer addressing ‘intermittency’ – and assuring us that it’s much less of a problem than is sometimes claimed. Because the wind only blows at the required speed to keep the blades turning for 70-85% of the time, wind energy is often portrayed as too unreliable to be a major power source for the grid, needing watt-forwatt back-up from other forms of generation to ‘keep the lights on’. It turns out this is an overstatement. Separate reports* from both the National Grid and the Pöyry Consultancy conclude that – regardless of the turbines’ location – only modest back-up capacity is needed to provide adequate cover. Analyst David Milborrow has calculated that – even if wind were to make up 40% of UK electricity generation – managing its variability would add only 0.55 pence to the average unit cost. According to Milborrow, the prime culprit of intermittency isn’t wind at all: “Thermal [coal, gas and nuclear] plant breakdowns generally pose more of a threat to the stability of electricity networks than the relatively benign variations in the output of wind plants”. The British Wind Energy Association has described Milborrow’s own report, Managing Variability, as “the last nail in the coffin of the myth of intermittency”. – Roger East * Operating the system beyond 2020 (National Grid); Impact of intermittency: How wind variability could change the shape of the British and Irish electricity markets (Pöyry Consultancy)

Photos: D.Kusters/Shutterstock; Cathy Britcliffe – iStock

The same applies to environmental taxation as to many other things: there are those who talk and those who do.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy

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Green Futures October 2009 13


Briefings

Alternative transport links

These primates are using purpose-built wires to cross the Kinabatangan River in Borneo. Oil palm plantations have cut into their habitat leaving only isolated patches of forest.

NE

£1.6m

The sum put forward by the EU Regional Development Fund and Newcastle University to demonstrate to businesses in the UK’s northeast how they can use renewable energy to boost output and cut costs. The university will also run forums for local entrepreneurs to explain the benefits of new wind, solar and biomass technology.

In the low zone

London launches ten Low Carbon Zones

Ten London boroughs will be dipping into a £3 million coffer for low energy development, following successful applications to the city’s Development Agency. In a scheme launched by Mayor Boris Johnson, the ‘Low Carbon Zones’ will aim to create jobs and reduce carbon emissions by a catchy 20.12%, in time for the London Olympics in 2012. The scheme is part of Johnson’s drive for a 60% cut in London’s carbon emissions by 2025. The areas will showcase varying methods of carbon reduction, including development of innovative local energy systems for housing and businesses, as well as basic improvements such as insulation or glazing.

Around £200,000 will be available from the London Development Agency to kick start each project. Local authorities will lead the projects, but applicants will be expected to team up with energy suppliers, businesses and community groups to ensure the financial future of the zones and to foster support. The zones may be as small as a couple of streets, but no larger than 1,000 buildings, and could adopt very different styles of carbon reduction. Outer London areas might focus on developing renewable power solutions like solar, wind or other microgen technologies for homes, alongside basic energy efficiency improvements. Others – particularly those in inner London – could look at innovative methods such as communal heating or combined heat and power (CHP) systems for homes and municipal

Hidden green: low energy fixes aren’t always high visibility

buildings. Waste technologies which reduce carbon, such as gasification and anaerobic digestion (biogas), might also be an option. “A fund to develop flagships is definitely a good thing, particularly as it focuses on existing buildings, not just new build,” says Martin Hunt, Head of Built Environment at Forum for the Future. However, the development of restricted zones is “only a drop in the ocean”, he warns: “The key to long-term success in cutting emissions will be creative finance solutions for large scale carbon reduction projects”. The initiative draws upon existing models, such as the charity-led Warm Zones initiative, which tackles fuel poverty in 13 areas throughout Britain, and similar low energy regeneration areas in South Wales and Shropshire. – Sarah Roe

London’s

starters for ten Barking Archway Brixton Lewisham Wandle Valley Ham and Petersham Peckham Hackbridge Queen’s Park

14 Green Futures October 2009

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Photos: Tony Heald/National Picture Library; R.Nagy/Shutterstock

Muswell Hill


Briefings

Costa Rica tops Happy Planet Index High life expectancy and satisfaction make Costa Ricans a lucky bunch Jaguars roam Costa Rica’s protected natural corridors, there are no army bases, and its people are the happiest in the world. Residents of the Latin American nation – also home to 5% of the world’s biodiversity – enjoy the optimum balance of wellbeing, life satisfaction and low ecological impact, according to the New Economic Foundation’s Happy Planet Index (HPI). The news comes as no surprise to Pilar Saborio, Costa Rica’s Ambassador to the UK: “Costa Rica steered from a mostly agricultural economy to a service and high-tech economy, whilst avoiding the creation of a heavy industry sector.” Money saved by abolishing the army has gone towards health and education, and its free universal healthcare service predates the UK’s NHS by almost a decade. Costa Ricans have one of the highest life expectancy rates in the Americas – second only to Canada – and the highest life satisfaction score on the HPI. Costa Rican law requires national development plans to factor in sustainability, which has encouraged successive governments to create a thriving tourism economy based partly on the country’s ecological assets. But even this exemplar state uses more than its share of resources, consuming a little more than genuine ‘one planet living’ would require. It is a sobering comparison for the UK, which was ranked 74th out of 143 countries, despite boasting a per capita GDP nearly three times that of Costa Rica. While the ‘happiest’ nation generates over 90% of its electricity from renewables – its largest source is hydropower, supplemented by geothermal, biomass, solar and wind – the UK has pledged to generate just 15% from renewables by 2020. According to Juliet Michaelson, co-author of the HPI report, regional planning authorities in the UK are beginning to use metrics that recognise wellbeing and the environment, such as the Measure of Domestic Progress. But it’s still a world away from Costa Rica. – Gustavo Montes de Oca

Life’s a beach

A formula for happiness

The Happy Planet Index shows the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens. It uses three key metrics: life expectancy, life satisfaction and ecological footprint.

Photo: Chad Riley/Getty

HPI July 2009 Ranking Country

Life expectancy Life (years) satisfaction

Ecological footprint (global hectares)

Overall rating (%)

1

Costa Rica

78.5

8.5

2.3

76.1

9

Brazil

71.7

7.6

2.4

61

20

China

72.5

6.7

2.1

57.1

23

Mexico

75.6

7.7

3.4

55.6

35

India

63.7

5.5

0.9

53

53

Sweden

80.5

7.9

5.1

48

74

UK

79

7.4

5.3

43.3

79

Iraq

57.7

5.4

1.3

42.6

114

USA

77.9

7.9

9.4

30.7

118

South Africa

50.8

5

2.1

29.7

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Green Futures October 2009 15


Briefings

Carbon cuts from afar Remote monitoring technology to save energy and costs

Future fuel? Don’t bank on it

Co-op draws line in the sand Ethics-driven bank funds campaign to halt tar sands extraction The Co-operative Bank, a major ‘ethical’ bank in the UK, has donated over C$200,000 (£104,000) to a legal campaign to stop the extraction of tar sands in Canada, which it says could cause an environmental catastrophe. The donations are just one outcome of the bank’s ethical engagement policy, adopted in 2005. The policy contains a commitment to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, supported by 94% of its customers. The Co-op is supporting a legal campaign brought by the Beaver Lake Cree against the province of Alberta and the federal government of Canada, to prevent grants of any further licenses to exploit tar sands. Alberta’s Superior Court will decide whether the action can go ahead in January. Tar sands are a mix of

clay and bitumen which can be pumped using steam or mined to extract oil. But the extraction process is highly energy intensive. According to Paul Monaghan, Head of Social Goals and Sustainability at the Co-op, the extraction of Canada’s tar sands would dramatically raise the amount of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere, from 430 to 445 parts per million by 2050: “That would take us right to the brink of runaway climate change”. Drew Mildon, a solicitor working on the case at Woodward & Company, estimates that the battle could cost up to C$15 million and take five years. “The Co-op’s support has given us hope that more international funders will come forward,” he adds. Since the launch of its ‘customers who care’ campaign in 1994, the Co-op has taken stands on a wide range of issues, including landmines and safer chemicals in commercial products. – Mark Jansen

When you sail on a boat you take with you the minimum of resources. You don’t waste anything. You don’t leave the light on; you don’t leave a computer screen on. And I realised that on land we take what we want.

Round-the-world yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur announces her retirement from competitive sailing to focus on environmental campaigning.

16 Green Futures October 2009

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Photos: Jiri Rezac WWF-UK; Adrian Sherratt/Alamy

Mobile phone technology could help to cut carbon emissions in industries as diverse as logistics, manufacturing and utilities, according to a new report published by Vodafone. In Carbon Connections: Quantifying mobile’s role in tackling climate change, the international communications company claims that 113 million tonnes a year of carbon emissions could be avoided through mobile technology. A combination of machine to machine (M2M) technology and ‘dematerialisation’ – the rise of virtual services, such as videoconferencing – could cut Europe’s annual energy bill by d43 billion, according to the report. M2M services – or wireless telecom – could be used remotely to monitor and improve the efficiency of operations, leading to cost savings. The technology is already being used by supermarket chain Asda, which has saved 28,000 tonnes in carbon emissions over the last three years by remotely monitoring how efficiently its vehicles were being driven – and then embarking on driver education to change habits. Other potential M2M applications include traffic management systems to improve vehicle flow, and smarter electricity grids that can respond promptly to changes in demand. M2M devices could also be embedded within high value manufactured products, which would communicate when maintenance is required. James Taplin, Principal Sustainability Advisor at Forum for the Future, welcomed the report. “Information and communication technology (ICT) has a crucial role to play in radically decarbonising society… enabling us to live and operate in entirely new ways.” But the techno vision comes at a price. Significant investment is needed for one billion new mobile connections, and to improve international compatibility across networks. – Sarah Roe


Briefings

Green profits from property Top-up funds

abc Less is more for eco-ink

Leading fund managers watch company footprints

Holepuncher makes novel savings

The financial returns from property portfolios are directly related to environmental performance. That’s the resounding message from a survey of unlisted UK and European property funds. Nine out of ten property fund managers said they sought advice from environmental consultants on the environmental performance of companies within the fund, and 95% believed there to be a link between environmental performance and financial return. But the survey, by global asset management business Aviva Investors and the Environment Agency Pension Fund, revealed that reporting of carbon emissions data by property funds remains weak. Although buildings are responsible for almost half of the UK’s carbon emissions, nearly 60% of fund managers admitted taking no action to collect emissions data. But opinion in the sector is changing, says Will Dawson, Senior Sustainability Advisor at Forum for the Future. “Funds are recognising the value of sustainability, and there is a growing recognition that better data is needed to make sound investment decisions.” Richard Jones, Managing Director of UK real estate at Aviva, agrees. Funds must “disclose, monitor and report environmental performance to investors” to encourage reduction in carbon emissions in line with UK and EU targets, he said. – Sophie Blakemore

Dutch creative communications agency Spranq has developed a sans serif typeface with small circular holes that offers over 20% in ink savings – and environmental benefits too. Roughly 3.5 litres of oil are used to manufacture one new conventional laser cartridge – so the less ink onto paper, the less oil consumed. Following feedback from companies with brand-specific fonts, Spranq has also developed Ecofont Professional, a plug-in for MS Office that enables companies to add holes to their original font. The professional version costs a small fee, explains Alexander Kraaij, co-owner of Spranq, as the “application was a much bigger investment and companies profit financially by saving ink”. Not everyone is a fan. Paul McNeill, lead tutor in graphic design at the London College of Communications, likens the font to “the rough equivalent of drilling holes in food in order to reduce waste. But,” he adds, “it has triggered ideas about economy in print communications. It’s a good provocation.” And maybe that’s the real purpose of the Ecofont, to make you think before you print. – Giovanna Dunmall

Small sheep greens wine Photos: Prism68/Shutterstock; George Rose/Getty

‘Baby Doll’ grazers make mowers redundant A New Zealand wine maker has found a novel way of reducing the carbon footprint of wine – by using miniature sheep. With 1,000 hectares in the vineyard needing to be mowed 12 times a year, owner Peter Yealands believes he can dramatically reduce the environmental footprint of his wine, while saving himself NZ$1.5m (£600,000) a year in diesel alone. Grazing on the grass between the vines, the rare Baby Doll breed, originally bred as cute pets, diminish the need for a diesel-guzzling lawn mower. And why don’t they eat the grapes? Because they can’t reach them: the sheep are just 60cm tall. – Anna May Shamoon

Cute cuts

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GF74_pp04-17 Briefings 10.indd 17

Green Futures October 2009 17

13/10/09 19:10:10


Feature

Sunrise

18 Green Futures October 2009

T

sweeping America – literally. Take Texas. Synonymous with the nation’s oil boom era, for the past century its wealth has been powered by gushing geysers and giant oil companies. But green gold is now competing with black, as Texas establishes itself as a powerhouse of wind energy. And the Lone Star State is not alone. During 2008, the US wind industry almost doubled in size, reaching 25,369MW, and passing Germany as the world leader. Across 30 states, from heartland Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas to the crowded northeast seaboard, giant wind farms are becoming an accepted part of the landscape. Nor does this clean energy revolution end with wind. America’s solar power sector has tripled in size since 2000. And with a dozen large concentrating solar power (CSP) plants under construction around the country, the industry aims to provide half of all new electricity generation by 2025. Investors, meanwhile, are betting on a cleantech future. Bucking the recession, venture capital investments in cleantech soared to a record $7.6 billion in 2008, double the 2007 tally, with solar and algae-based biofuels among the big winners. “Only a few years ago, cleantech was barely a sector at all,” says Joel Makower, Editor of GreenBiz.com, in The State of Green Business 2009 report. “Now it represents 20% of the entire venture capital asset class.” It’s not just start-ups and VCs. Some of the country’s household name corporations are also jumping on the bandwagon. General Electric is now the

biggest wind turbine manufacturer in the US, and the fifth biggest worldwide. Duke Energy, a Fortune 500 coal company which has not exactly been the darling of the green movement in the past, has built nine wind farms around the country and is planning more. And the likes of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler are racing to produce the first mass market electric cars [see ‘Spark plug’, GF73, p28]. All of a sudden, corporate America seems to be surging towards a new frontier of innovation.

Billions ventured Leading cleantech recipients of venture capital (VC) investment, 2008: • concentrating solar power • ‘thin film’ solar photovoltaics • next generation biofuels (especially algae-based technologies) • geothermal and tidal energy • fuel cell applications.

So just what is generating all this enthusiasm? Can it reach critical mass? And does President Obama’s outspoken advocacy of clean energy and climate action really mean America is poised to lead the world down the sunrise path?

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Credit: MAErtek/Shutterstock

From heartland Minnesota to the crowded northeast seaboard, giant wind farms are part of the landscape

he wind of change is


over the new frontier A cleantech revolution is sweeping America – but will government have the courage to put the wind in its sails? Polly Ghazi investigates. State after state…

In the last few years:

• 21 states have adopted mandatory greenhouse gas reduction targets • 36 have produced or are completing comprehensive climate action plans

• 30 have mandatory targets for renewable capacity in the electricity generation mix • Almost half have dedicated funds to support energy efficiency and renewables

Ethan Miller/Staff/Getty

• 1 0 northeastern states are implementing a mandatory regional cap-and-trade programme, and 13 more in the midwest and west are planning to do so. The first question is easiest to answer. The relentless rise of concerns over energy security, peak oil and looming carbon curbs, means cleantech is both smart business and smart policy. Many of America’s leading corporations now see a clean energy future as inevitable – and they want to be sure to have a share in it. Take the list of companies supporting a ‘cap and trade’ approach to regulating carbon. It reads like a litany of corporate America: GE, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Shell, BP America, Ford, General Motors… They have lined up alongside the green lobby in a titanic PR battle with the coal industry and the Republican Party, who claim a carbon cap will cost jobs and raise energy bills. A second ingredient feeding green industry growth has been the steady trickle of action at state level. In the absence of federal leadership under President Bush, many states quietly took steps to facilitate cleantech development, drawn by its potential to generate jobs and reduce fossil fuel dependence. They typically did so through a mix of carrots (tax breaks, and grants for energy efficiency and clean energy projects) and sticks (mandatory targets for renewable generation, and regional cap and trade programmes). Now such efforts are starting to bear fruit. In Massachusetts, for example. Here, a solar rebate programme launched a year ago is pouring $22 million into 539 new photovoltaic projects. Combined with a Green Jobs Act, which provides taxpayer funding for R&D, business start-ups and workforce development, this has spurred a quadrupling in statewide solar installation contractors – from less than 50 a year ago to

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“ ”

It’s not a choice between our environment and our economy; it’s a choice between prosperity and decline

nearly 200 today. One company, Evergreen Solar, has taken on 700 new staff alone. Massachusetts has now set itself a target of becoming a green industries hub, with 250MW of solar generation by 2017 and 2,000MW of installed wind power capacity by 2020 – up from a mere 7MW at present. Philip Giudice, Commissioner for the state’s Department of Energy Resources, makes it all sound very simple. “We created market opportunities, and companies responded. Some are regular electrical contractors who expanded their business model [to include solar or wind]. Others are contractors that used to build people’s porches and now also install solar panels. It’s the natural evolution of emerging markets, and it’s very exciting.” A third key factor powering America’s green enthusiasm is long overdue federal action, boosted by Obama’s characteristic clarion call to action. “The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy”, he said. “It’s a choice between prosperity and decline. The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy.” Fighting talk, which prodded Congress into allocating $112 billion of economic stimulus spending to green programmes (compared with a meagre $2 billion spent by Britain). By 2017, nearly $20 billion in tax incentives will be poured into the wind and solar industries, along with $54 billion into direct support for energy technology schemes. A large chunk of the latter will be spent improving the country’s ageing electricity grid to support renewable energy transmission and electric cars.

Green Futures October 2009 19


Feature

“ ”

Small yellow taxi: is MiniModal’s hybrid the shape of cabs to come?

20 Green Futures October 2009

Tower of less power: Bank of America’s new flagship

More than a pipe dream: analysts see glowing prospects for CSP

Investors have particularly welcomed the rollout of federal loan guarantees for green energy projects. “These should provide a real starting gun to get renewable schemes, which have been stalled by the credit crisis, off the ground all over the country,” said Jennifer von Bismarck, President of renewables financier Towpath Partners. Introduced with less fanfare – and less cost – a second presidential initiative may prove almost as effective. By 2016, national fuel economy standards will be raised significantly to 35.5 miles a gallon, forcing the car industry further down the road to leaner, cleaner vehicles. According to the White House, the greenhouse gas savings will be equivalent to taking 177 million cars off the road. So what does all this amount to? The US economic juggernaut is undoubtedly greening – but how far and how fast? Short term, the news is good. Thanks mainly to the dramatic economic slowdown, but also to state and federal green stimuli, US

carbon emissions fell by 3% last year and are predicted to fall a further 5% in 2009. This should present an enormous opportunity for the world’s richest country to start the transition toward a low carbon economy. But hold on. The bulk of the American economy remains resolutely ‘grey’. Almost 90% of US electricity is still supplied by fossil fuels, primarily coal-burning power plants. And while clean energy companies are finally receiving sizeable federal subsidies, so too are the coal plants and other smokestack industries. Unlike the European Union, the US has no carbon cap and trade programme, however flimsy, in place to stimulate green investment. Unlike China, which has set a target of 15% renewable generation by 2020, the US has no national Renewable Energy Standard. Only one of the world’s five largest wind turbine manufacturers is American (General Electric), and only one of the top ten solar panel makers. “The US is in danger of being left behind in the new global economy,” concludes Jennifer Morgan, Climate and Energy Director at the World Resources Institute (WRI), and she lays the blame squarely on Washington. “Business hates uncertainty, and the Federal Government’s failure to act is holding back US business innovation and leadership.” Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, agrees. “Right now, the US has no long-term market signal to tell companies and consumers that it values low carbon energy. But good policy can flip this dynamic.” But what form will or should such “good policy” take? The American Clean Energy and Security Act, narrowly approved by the US House of Representatives in June,

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Cook + Fox Architects LLP; Rendered view of Tower from Bryant Park

The US is in danger of being left behind


Atlantic divides The British have the policies and commitments, says Peter Madden, but the Americans are stealing a march with the action On this side of the pond, there is also great excitement about the benefits of moving to a low-carbon economy. The Government recently launched its ambitious and interventionist ‘Low Carbon Industrial Strategy’, while Prime Minister Gordon Brown has just promised that “we will create over a quarter of a million new green British jobs”. Britain has a much firmer policy framework in place than the US. As well as the European Emissions Trading Scheme, the UK has a ‘Low Carbon Transition Plan’ and a Climate Change Act setting firm carbon budgets for the economy as a whole and for individual Government departments. However, despite the blizzard of policy initiatives, rather less is happening on the ground. The credit crunch has turned off the financing tap for many big projects, and this has not been offset by the kind of sizeable green fiscal stimulus package seen in the US. And planning difficulties and delays have stymied major projects and led to big investors putting their money instead into the US and continental Europe. The UK will really have to raise its game to turn the fine words into deeds – and give some substance to Gordon Brown’s recent claim that “we are already global leaders in wind power, green cars, clean coal and carbon capture”.

L. Lefkowitz/Getty. davidf/istock

Peter Madden is CEO of Forum for the Future.

would reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2020, and 80% by 2050. Based around a cap and trade programme similar to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the bill would regulate utilities, coal plants and other outlets accounting for 85% of US greenhouse gases. By putting a price on carbon, says WRI President Jonathan Lash, this would send “a clear market signal… The President’s signature on a cap and trade bill would unleash a flood of investment in, and deployment of, clean energy technologies across the United States”. Or as one seasoned observer put it, could “transform the steady stream of clean energy funding and R&D into a tsunami”. But prospects for the next steps required to make such a bill law – Senate passage of sister legislation, reconciliation with the House bill and the President’s signature on the dotted line – are looking uncertain at best. A Senate vote may be postponed until 2010. Should Congress ultimately reject cap and trade, however, the President has a trump card in his back pocket. The Environmental Protection Agency has already laid the groundwork to regulate and cap greenhouse gas emissions as an air pollutant, under the Clean Air Act. While such a move would raise furious cries of foul from Republicans and the coal industry, environmentalists are confident the President will order the EPA to act if he has to. A critical complement to an emissions cap – and politically easier for either the President or Congress to implement – would be a national Renewable Energy Standard, setting a baseline for the proportion of electricity to be generated renewably. According to the Sierra Club,

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“ ”

The President has a trump card in his back pocket

sourcing 20% of US energy from renewables by 2020 would create 820,000 jobs and generate a whopping $66.7 billion in capital investment. So will America “lead or lag in the world’s next great global industry, green technology?”, as Jeff Immelt put it in a recent New York Times editorial. Certainly, the groundwork has been laid for US leadership. But will industry and, especially, Government demonstrate the steely political will required to follow through? Will black gold win or green? The jury is still out. ¥ Polly Ghazi is US correspondent for Green Futures and writer/editor for the World Resources Institute.

Generation A: algae grabs the biofuel bucks

Green Futures October 2009 21



Partner viewpoint

From catch to caff Andrew Purvis sets out to find sustainably sourced fish, and asks whether size really is the issue.

S

Photo: Francesco Ruggeri/Getty

mall is beautiful, but is

big necessarily ugly? If you’re looking to dine out on sustainably caught seafood, the answer is probably no. The fish pie you eat in your staff canteen, using haddock bought in from a food-service giant, is as likely to be ethical and fully traceable as anything in an eco-chic restaurant. That is the conclusion of Caroline Bennett, Managing Director of the Moshi Moshi sushi chain – one of seven small, independentlyowned restaurants licensed to use the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) logo on their menus. All have achieved MSC Chain of Custody certification, meaning fish and shellfish marked with the blue logo can be traced back to the fishery – and often the boat – that caught it. Given the workload and time pressures that small restaurant owners face, that’s no mean achievement. Bennett admits that “adding an extra layer of paperwork and wastage reporting” – on top of various procurement hurdles and safety standards – can be a stretch for people who are used to taking a more informal approach to business. “In larger organisations,” she adds, “they are probably doing a lot of routine paperwork anyway. [So for] big contract caterers, where they are so specific about margins, achieving MSC Chain of Custody might be less onerous”. Neil Pitcairn, Fish and Seafood Buyer at Compass Group – the world’s largest foodservice provider – agrees. Last year, the group became the first contract caterer in the UK to achieve MSC Chain of Custody – a milestone on account of Compass’s sheer size, influence and outreach. In fact, it was the company’s size that made the achievement relatively easy. “We already had an audited supply chain; we had strong, rigorous purchasing systems in place,” says Pitcairn. “It’s basic stock and order.” What this means in practice is that any of Compass’s outlets – including 1,400 state schools and 1,500 private companies, as well as NHS trusts and universities – can order MSC products through a centralised buying system and know exactly which fishery it came from. “We have more than 30 lines of frozen MSC product listed, and half a dozen lines of fresh,” says Pitcairn.

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Scaling up: sustainable fish isn’t just for niche markets

In addition, a number of Compass Group units (among them Oxford Brookes University, Bristol Zoo and 42 schools in Westminster) hold MSC Chain of Custody certification in their own right. This allows them to use the logo on their menus and in marketing literature. “It’s the beginning of a journey,” Pitcairn stresses, “but we are looking to roll this out to other units.” And just as Bennett stresses the hard work that smaller restaurants put into good practice, so Pitcairn stands up for the big guys. “Being a large organisation, there is this misconception that we are happy to supply just anything.” That said, changing the culture of such a large company has been hard work. “There’s a lot of education to do,” says Jane Wakeling, Compass’s Regional Sourcing Manager. “We regularly promote what we are doing through our internal magazine. Being an MSC partner is about commitment at all levels, from the board right down to the frontline team – the waiters who serve the fish.” The reward has been public recognition of a policy that had largely gone unnoticed.

“Because we can use the MSC logo, people are becoming more aware of what we are doing on the sustainability front,” says Pitcairn. “We do a lot of work that people don’t see, and now they are starting to find out.” Moreover, Caroline Bennett believes that the Compass Group’s commitment to the MSC is driving change in the small-restaurant sector too: “People are saying, ‘Well, I’m getting MSC-certified fish in my canteen at work. Why can’t I get it in a restaurant?’ That has a huge effect”. ¥ Andrew Purvis is the principal investigative writer on food issues for the Observer Food Monthly, and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph.

Marine Stewardship Council is a Forum for the Future partner. www.msc.org

Green Futures October 2009 23


A thousand words

Designing disasters Manam volano spews sulphur into the skies over Papua New Guinea. Volcanic eruptions are nature’s climate disrupters. But could they be mimicked to cool the planet? Some scientists think so. In one geo-engineered scenario, solar radiation could be reduced by firing sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, resulting in a reaction with water vapour to create sulphuric acid. This, in turn, would act like billions of tiny mirrors, scattering sunlight back into space. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory, EO-1 Advanced Land Imager



Feature

If rainforests are so valuable, why can’t we make them pay? For years, that was a rhetorical question. Not any more. Martin Wright on our last, best hope of saving forests – and the climate.

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We spend more on binge drinking than the amount needed to save the rainforests

26 Green Futures October 2009

deep in the Amazon rainforest. Peering through the clouds, you can see your pension plan – the vibrant greens of the canopy, reassuringly intact. Panning left, you can just make out the line of the last logging road, long swallowed up by the jungle. To the south, at the forest’s edge, the new growth springing up, high-yield plantations buffering the jewel… As you watch, a bubble appears out of the trees: a few lines of text summarising the latest carbon / hydro cycle stats. It’s good to know that the Forest Monitors are out and about – two Kayapo elders in this case, uploading new data before retiring back to the longhouse in time for the football. Sometimes you envy their simple life – and their subsidised satellite sports. Then you switch off the screen and head out into the London streets, secure in the knowledge that your investments are safe, that the rain will keep falling, the climate will carry on settling down… It’s the same story across the Atlantic, in Cameroon, Congo, even Indonesia … Around much of the tropical belt, in the mid-21st century, rainforests are recovering, even expanding. Why? Because an awful lot of people are making money, serious money, from the simple fact that forests left standing are worth more, much more, than forests cut down. Standing forests are soaking up carbon, stabilising the climate, smoothing out the water cycle. They’re providing a steady, sustainable harvest of medicines, even a little high value timber. All vital, and so all immensely valuable services. And thanks to some sophisticated financial products, these services are

yielding an income to everyone from forest tribes to governments north and south to … you. It’s mammon and morality hand in hand, under one canopy.

Markets not philanthropy

It may seem a long way from today’s reality, but it’s entirely plausible. And there’s a ferment of activity under way now trying to bring it about. Ever since the 1980s, campaigners have been insisting that it’s economic madness to liquidate irreplaceable rainforest ‘capital’ in return for the relatively paltry revenue from logging or cattle ranching. The alternative – cash for conservation, or so-called ‘payments for ecological services’ – is not a new idea. It’s been tried before, on a relatively small-scale [see ‘How much do you want this forest (in millions)?’, GF65, pp44-47], with mixed results. But now there’s an urgency and an excitement around it, driven by everything from the looming climate negotiations, to financiers’ endless appetite for coming up with new ways to make money. And you can add to that the widespread acceptance that pretty much everything else we’ve tried – new laws, protected areas, ‘extractive reserves’, pious international declarations – has failed to even slow the pace of destruction. The loss of tropical forests is by far the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions after energy, contributing up to ten times as much as aviation. Indeed, burning forests – the commonest form of destruction – produces a particularly nasty double whammy of warming. As they burn, they send vast swathes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And once they’re gone, they can’t soak up the carbon emitted from other sources, like industry, cars, power plants. The Stern Review, no

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Photo: Ferry R. Tan/Getty

I

t’s a gorgeous June day, 2040,


Future$ less, warned that rainforest loss alone would, in the next four years, release more carbon into the atmosphere than every flight from the dawn of aviation until 2025. Faced with this, many are increasingly convinced that only money will talk. Among them is Andrew Mitchell, founder of the Global Canopy Programme and now an adviser to the Prince’s Rainforest Project (PRP). “At the moment”, he says, “you can only make money out of forests when you convert them to something else – timber or beef, soy or palm oil... So in global markets, forests are worth more dead than alive. This is what we need to turn around. Philanthropy and governments won’t do it. You have to look to markets to overturn what is in fact a market failure… What we’ve got for free, we don’t pay for.”

Daniel Beltra/The Prince’s Rainforests Project and Sony

Carbon as currency

Meanwhile, unless you pay people not to do something, they’ll carry on doing it, says Tasso Azavedo, Director General of Brazil’s Forest Service. “Say you want to close down an illegal logging site. You can do so in 15 minutes. You just send in the police or the army and lock everything down. But 50 people will lose their jobs.” And unless you create better-paid alternatives, they’ll soon be back cutting trees, there or elsewhere. “We have to put something else in place to keep the money flowing. We have to create a new economy.” And the most obvious currency to fuel that new economy, given forests’ role as climate stabilisers, is carbon. Cutting forest destruction by half, says the Stern Review, would cost around $10 billion-$15 billion a year. “That’s about the same amount that we in Britain spend on wine, beer and champagne”, Mitchell exclaims. “We’re

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spending more on binge drinking than we the total amount we need to save rainforests!” Others put the bill a lot higher, but the benefits still hugely outweigh the costs. Johan Eliasch, who led a review on the subject for the UK Government, has put a number on it. Compared to taking no action at all, he says, “the mean global net benefit of halving forest emissions is estimated to be $3.7 trillion”. It sounds like the mother of no-brainers. “In effect”, says Tony Juniper, former Director of Friends of the Earth, who now works with the PRP, “it comes down to paying countries for either reducing their rate of deforestation, or not starting it in the first place”. In practice, that means A kinder cut: low impact logging in Tanzania

Green Futures October 2009 27


Feature

Photo caption adipiscing elit ut sem. Sed ri

“ ”

Before lunch, the Minister wanted $1 billion to save his forest; after lunch, it had gone up to $2 billion

28 Green Futures October 2009

providing cash as compensation to loggers, ranchers, farmers and so on, in return for them laying off the forest; and paying others – from enforcement agencies to tribal communities – to ensure existing forest remains intact. That principle is provided for, to an extent, in global climate agreements, and is expected to be firmed up at Copenhagen in December 2009. It’s covered under the arcane sounding REDD (‘reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation’) and REDD+ (which covers new planting and the management of existing forests). The devil is in the detail – and there is no shortage of that. To the uninitiated, it seems easier to plot a path through impenetrable jungle than pick your way through that little lot. But in very broad terms, it works like this.

Virtual tree huggers

Forests store carbon. If you’re a rich world government, you’re facing some challenging carbon reduction targets. One of the most cost-effective ways of meeting those could be to pay upfront money to keep forests in being, so soaking up ‘your’ carbon and preventing further emissions that would be caused by their destruction. And as and when the world finally has a functioning carbon market, investments made now could prove lucrative in the future. Hence the appeal of raising billions of dollars through ‘rainforest bonds’ and similar instruments. Technological advances play their part, too. Until recently, you couldn’t be sure just what was happening in a remote corner of a rainforest. But now satellite mapping can zero in on tiny sections of forest, almost down to

the scale of individual trees; radar can ‘see’ through clouds. (You can log, but you can’t hide.) Sophisticated software can calculate the carbon storage capacity of any given area. It is, as one observer put it, like having a combination of global CCTV and a high-tech sniffer dog. On the ground, meanwhile, local people wielding ruggedised icon-based touchscreen gizmos – like a sort of chunky iPhone - can map and monitor the health of their surrounding forest literally tree-by-tree. Microchips inserted into selected trunks can report instantly if they’re felled – and then track the timber as it’s transported, electronically fingering everyone involved. But before we all get carried away with optimistic talk of shiny new technology and billion dollar bonds, perhaps we need a reality check. Simon Counsell, Executive Director of the Rainforest Foundation, is ready with one: “It’s completely unclear how the forest carbon is going to be measured or monitored, it’s not clear who owns it, what role the government would have, how funding payments would be distributed… These are deeply political and, as yet, highly intractable problems. The evidence so far has been that if you throw something as potentially lucrative and uncontrollable as these vast markets for forest carbon into the very unstable governance mix in most of these countries, it’s going to make things worse”. Counsell has first hand experience of inflated expectations. “I witnessed this very closely with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Minister of Forests said (to paraphrase): ‘We are going to cut all our

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Daniel Beltra/The Prince’s Rainforests Project and Sony

A river runs through it: only a sustained flow of finance can save the world’s forests


Burning the bank

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Show us the money, we’ll save you the trees

forests down unless you give us a billion dollars to protect the carbon in them’. Later on, after lunch with the World Bank, he said: ‘We are going to cut all our forests down unless you give us two billion dollars’. I believe it’s now gone up to three or four billion…” Other reports speak of ‘carbon cowboys’ descending on unsuspecting tribal communities in Papua New Guinea, waving bogus carbon certificates and persuading landowners to sign away their rights. Even without corruption, a sudden surge of ‘forest carbon’ could in effect flood the market. Result? The price would collapse, making any mitigating action outside forests uneconomic, so putting the decarbonising of the industrial world’s economy back years, if not decades.

Daniel Beltra/The Prince’s Rainforests Project and Sony

Billion dollar bonds

Maybe, but meanwhile, the world’s most effective carbon sinks are going up in smoke, and we’re throwing money at unproven alternatives which may not, to stretch a metaphor, even hold water. Like carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Mention of which has Andrew Mitchell spitting with indignation. “Forests are an incredibly effective free machine [to absorb carbon]. And what are we doing to that machine? We are tearing it down and trying to build a new one – CCS – in 15 years with technology no-one has tried before and which will cost us at least $150 per tonne [of carbon stored]!” Talk of carbon markets may in any case be a red herring, says Alice Chapple, who co-ordinates Forum for the Future’s work on forest investments. Under global

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climate agreements, governments will be committed to carbon reductions. “Say you’re a bond issuer in the London market, you can see these cash flows that are completely committed over a period of time, you know the Government is absolutely on the dotted line for doing this, so you say, ‘OK, well I’ll issue a billion dollar bond because I know that I’m going to get repaid on an annual basis by the government over a long period of time.” And forests do more than store carbon. They have a host of other benefits, not least rainfall. Much of Latin America’s agriculture depends on rainfall generated by the Amazon forest. There’s billions of dollars in commodity earnings dependent on those trees staying put – and that means there’s potential for bond-style investment there, too. It’s heady stuff – but meanwhile, there’s consensus we need to ensure that the essential basics of good governance and capacity building are in place, and that needs developed world funding. We need to act now, because any deal reached at Copenhagen won’t kick in till 2013, and will need time to have an effect. As Juniper says: “It may or may not involve markets, it may involve some kind of fund mechanism, it probably will be a hybrid of the two. It may or may not be linked into global carbon markets, fungible with industrial carbon markets in the North. All of that is controversial and complex and will take time to sort it out. But the money needs to be stumped up now through a very simple, straightforward arrangement, where countries are paid for the hectares of forest that they don’t cut down”. “The one thing you have to keep in your head”, says Mitchell, “is that doing nothing is not an option. If we stand back and do nothing for another decade, we will lose half our rainforests, and we will lose the fight against climate change.” ¥

“ ”

Satellite mapping can zero in on tiny sections of forest

Martin Wright is Editor in Chief of Green Futures.

Further reading Forum for the Future’s report, ‘Forest Investment Review’, contains in-depth analysis of the debate around rainforest financing, with detailed recommendations for the ways forward. Download a copy at: www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/projects/ forest-investment-review. Green Futures will be publishing a series of articles on the latest breakthroughs in forest financing and conservation during 2010.

Green Futures October 2009 29


Feature

Is long and luxurious replacing the no-frills minibreak as the tourist trend of the future? Anna Simpson packs her bags.

e l i a s u t rely A

T

here’s something gloriously

slow about the sort of tourism evoked in ‘Moon River’. It’s impossible to sing the song at a lick, with its lyrics stretched out over long bars towards the distant dream of a stylish, ‘some day’ trip. You imagine the ‘drifter’ on a newly touched-up dinghy, carried by the lilting current through mangroves, past villages, over days, months… Tourism has a different pace today. Many more can afford it, many more times a year. And in our frenetic world, only the very rich – or poor – have time to drift. Instead, we ‘trip’, and we consume. In 2008, an estimated 924 million of us flew off for a month, a week, a long weekend, a stag night… The recession pressed the pause button for a season, but already growth is resuming. So can we expect ever more packed-out departure lounges, crowded skies, heaving beaches and breathless hype over ‘new’ destinations? Not so much ‘Moon River’ as a thousand sun cities? Unlikely. Tourism as we know it could be about to experience its greatest shift since Benidorm was a sleepy fishing village. And it won’t be so much changes in tourist appetites that drive it, but external pressures. There’s oil, for one thing, with prices inexorably rising.

30 Green Futures October 2009

Then there’s the stop-start progress towards a functioning carbon market; looming conflicts over energy, water, crop land – not to mention the pressure brought to bear by a changing climate. And tourism, of course, is in turn having a bearing on that climate. All that fuel, all those flights… So, what will holidays look like in the 2020s? Will carbon quotas limit us to one flight a year? And at the expense of what will we keep on flying at all? Will some of the ‘hottest’ destinations – the Maldives for one – still be on the map…? These questions are at the heart of ‘Tourism 2023’ – a new investigative partnership between Forum for the Future and some of the biggest names in the sector, such as BA, Thomas Cook and ABTA. Its task: to create a vision in which international travel works for the environment, the economy, and of course, the tourist. The starting point is a set of scenarios that address the combined challenges of population growth, climate change and peak oil. [See box, ‘Postcards from the future’.] And we’re not talking distant challenges: they’re already here. Take overcrowding. Some destinations are adopting radical measures to cut back on mass, short-stay tourism, doubtful that the fleeting economic boost

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Photo: Ove Eriksson/Getty

Two drifters, off to see the world. There’s such a lot of world to see. (Johnny Mercer, 1961)


visitors bring makes up for the burden on resources and the long-term impact on local life. Bhutan famously led the way with its ‘low volume, high value’ policy: all welcome if they pay a minimum of $250 a day. Now vulnerable Venice is planning a ban on ‘one-day tourists’ who rip through the city without so much as a gondola ride or a plate of zucchini.

lick

If quick-fix visits don’t ‘do it’ for our destinations, how about longer holidays? By 2023, the Easyjet weekend may well be a thing of the past. An increasingly plausible scenario is that of the long vacation – a couple of months at least, but only every couple of years. More people want extended trips like these to be part of life’s rhythm, and companies are beginning to find that supporting staff to do so improves motivation and makes them more likely to stick around. Missing out on a few mini breaks in order to justify that longer haul makes sense in carbon budget terms, too. And the destinations love it. Hoteliers and resort managers find it easier to secure bookings for weeks at a stretch; less turnover is less work. So, you have breakfast in bed, load the latest Booker shortlist or sci-fi trilogy onto your iRead, and board the ‘comfycarriage’ of the high speed train to Tirana. Your ticket lets you stop off at any point on the way for as long as you please, so you’re hoping to have a few days with old friends in Munich en route. Or, with all that time on your hands, you decide to go further afield. You pack your laptop and camera and drift over the Atlantic on a sleek, silent airship. You spend hours gazing at the 360° views, catch up with friends in the virtual chat booth, dine well, sleep well, and use up just 20% of your carbon budget for the year.

Photo: Brasil2/istock

Trains and boats – not planes?

It all sounds good, if that’s the only budget you have to worry about. But could such tourism ever be affordable, as well as sustainable? By 2023, carbon pricing has caused fares to rocket, making flights the preserve of the rich. Super-efficient overland travel, by contrast, is effectively subsidised. Trains and ships come complete with solar panels powering the lights and the in-seat cinemas, while, with commercial production reaching new heights, the cost of algae-based biofuel has finally begun to fall. So is this the death of the jet set? “Overland travel is still not seen to be as ‘cool’, luxurious or glamorous as flight,” says Forum’s Rupert Fausset. But what if your high speed cross-continental train also carried a Michelin starred restaurant, luxury office space complete with virtual conference facilities, and a crèche? These premium-rate pleasures would subsidise standard fares, where you would slum it in a lounger, with a flatscreen TV, and a view of the hills.

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It’s an alluring picture, but as the Forum’s Vicky Murray, a key player in Tourism 2023, admits, “we’re only just starting down the right path. However, the industry now has a shared vision of how the future could be – on everything from jobs to transport to conservation”. And Murray’s own vision of the perfect holiday? “It’d be really long for a start,” she laughs. “I’d take my time to get there – preferably by train or a really comfy bus – and take even more time to get to know the place, try the food, explore the sights. And I’d come back knowing that my trip had done more to enhance local life than to harm it.” Like the drifters in the song, we might all cross the world in style someday… ¥ Anna Simpson is Deputy Editor of Green Futures.

s d r a c Post

e r u t u f e h t from

Scenarios for Tourism 2023 Boom and burst With carbon-scrubbers in place to suck in and store any carbon emissions, the sky is awash with jetsetters. More hotels are popping up to satisfy new touring trends – like cheap beauty breaks to India. Are they built to last, you wonder…? Divided disquiet With wars raging over water shortages and food supply, home seems a good place to be. A bunch of friends are off to Kilimanjaro to see Africa’s last snow, but you don’t think it’s worth the risk. Price and privilege After years of saving, you’ve finally bought the golden ticket: that once in a lifetime trip to the Andes. You’re dying to taste the cevicha – you hope it’ll be worth the wait. Carbon clampdown You’re on a life-swap holiday in Lithuania – wondering how the other family’s getting on with Voluntary Action Liverpool. The train journey over was pleasant enough, but it still used 20% of your carbon for the year – perhaps better spent at home? To view animations of these scenarios, please visit www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/tourism-2023/animations

Green Futures October 2009 31


Partner viewpoint

Push me, pull you A retail push on green products? It might have seemed savvy when the economic going was good, but what does it mean today, asks Dax Lovegrove. affordability steps into the limelight and sustainability can be pushed out of sight. Surprising then, that while some consumers and retailers content themselves with cheaper wins, others are pressing ahead with the move towards greener products and services. Take B&Q. The UK’s largest DIY store has committed to phasing out the sale of controversial patio heaters, taking at least one environmental decision out of customers’ hands. It’s part of a wider commitment to have a sustainable product range in store by 2010. Other companies are starting to take a systematic approach to looking after the natural capital they depend upon, such as fish, forests, water and soil. For example, Marks and Spencer (M&S), the bank MBNA, and other members of WWF-UK’s Forest and Trade Network are vigorously promoting the use of paper and timber products which are certified as sustainably sourced by the Forest Stewardship Council. At times like these, you have to ask, what’s in it for them? With energy companies complaining that

promotions around efficiency measures have had low uptake, and retailers asserting that there’s no way customers on tight budgets will pay a premium for green goods, what makes these companies so sure they’re setting a trend their customers will follow? Professor Tim Lang, advisor to the Government on food security, thinks he has the answer. As he sees it, the need to be wellplaced for the future is a major driver behind these efforts. Take, for example, Birds Eye’s push on pollock fish fingers. With cod stocks set to decline, it’s vital to open up taste buds to more sustainable options, Lang believes. He also thinks that more draconian measures, such as restrictions on energy-intensive farming practices, could force consumers to

32 Green Futures October 2009

reconsider their diets, even before there are real curbs on the easy availability of meat, fish and dairy products. Meanwhile, the initiatives taken by the likes of M&S, MBNA and B&Q are also perhaps a sign that market leaders are no longer simply waiting for their consumers to turn green and say, “This is what I want to buy.” Instead they are moving to a position where they can tell their customers, “You can trust us to put the right products on the shelves.” In other words, they are starting to remove flagrantly unsustainable choices from the menu. And there’s a double advantage to be enjoyed by doing so. On the one hand, these businesses make themselves more resilient in the face of escalating carbon costs, resource shortages, and climate-related regulations. And on the other, they can use their environmental credentials as a powerful marketing ploy.

This is the crux of WWF’s recent report Let Them Eat Cake. In it, Unilever’s Santiago Gowland argues that the brands of the future will be those that make sustainability part and parcel of the way they do business – and make sure their clients know. Already, leading businesses such as IKEA and Adnams have joined Unilever and M&S in using sustainability to boost their brand. Meanwhile, more overtly ‘ethical’ operators continue to drive the market through campaigns such as The Body Shop’s “Nature’s Way to Beautiful” and the Co-operative Group’s “Good for Everyone”. Innovative businesses are also responding to tightened purse strings with products that can help their customers save money – by cutting utility bills, for instance. With water prices bound to go up, the public is turning away from thirsty appliances – especially in regions that face increasing seasonal water shortages. And for them, perhaps, the ultimate ‘white good’ has already arrived: the waterless washing machine. Created by Sun Microsystems, it is selling with the tagline, “Being ecologically sound makes economic sense”.

Businesses that want to reap the benefits of pushing solutions – rather than awaiting consumer pull – don’t have to go it alone. Some are partnering NGOs such as WWF, while others are joining forces on promotions to boost the credibility of green products and services. Such initiatives must, of course, be founded on rock solid environmental commitments – because that, increasingly, is what the discerning customer requires. ¥ Dax Lovegrove is Head of Business and Industry Relations at WWF-UK.

WWF-UK is a Forum for the Future partner. www.wwf.org.uk

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Photo: Duckycards/iStock

W

hen times are tough,


Partner viewpoint

Watering down Without water, there’s no food. So it’s time the food industry led the way in conserving its most vital raw material, says Rebecca Wilhelm.

W

e all need to change

the way we consume this precious resource, if supplies are to remain constant, safe and clean in the years to come.” It might surprise some to see such sentiments expressed about... water. But clean water for all remains a huge unmet basic need, while violent conflict over inadequate supplies is a real and present danger across our water-stressed world. In temperate Britain that threat may seem remote, yet even here periodic shortages have become a pressing issue. Every drop has a price – and a carbon impact. We’re coming to recognise that measuring and managing the ‘water footprint’ of our products and processes, our industries and our communities, is one of our most crucial sustainability challenges. And not before time. The UK food and drink industry has a key role in bringing home this message. The 430,000 cubic metres it takes each day from the public water supply amount to about 10% of all industrial use in this country. It also takes about a tenth of all water abstracted from rivers and other water courses – another 260,000 cubic metres a day. So a 20% saving in the industry’s water use, across all the processes of preparation, manufacturing and cleaning,

Water misers Leading food companies who have signed up to the FDF’s Commitment have already made substantial cuts in water use.

Photo: Ross Woodhall/Getty

Dairy Crest managed an 8% year-onyear reduction. Its focus on benchmarking between sites saw one back-marker location turn in a 16% improvement. United Biscuits, aiming for a 25% cut by 2020, achieved 17% in 2008 alone. Employees compete between sites on this and other green goals, backed by everyday measures like bags in toilet cisterns and spray nozzles on taps.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

would relieve a lot of pressure – and could cut businesses’ bills by a cool £60 million. Achieving that level of saving is a key target for 2020 in Defra’s Food Industry Sustainability Strategy. So can the sector deliver? The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) has responded with its ‘Federation House Commitment’, drawn up in collaboration with sustainability experts Envirowise. It was launched in January 2008, when 21 FDF member companies with a combined turnover of £15 billion agreed on the following measures: • to develop a 2007 baseline for water use • to assess where the water comes from, and where it’s going for each manufacturing site • to implement site-specific action plans embracing anything from alternative sourcing (including rainwater harvesting), efficiency savings and waste reduction to improved effluent management and water recovery for re-use • to report annual water and cost savings. By mid-2009, the Commitment had gained a futher 15 signatories, with the result that there are now almost 200 manufacturing sites across the UK working systematically on saving water. If adopted by the entire industry, it could save about 140,000 cubic metres per day – the equivalent of 56 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Engineering solutions can make a big difference. R&R Ice Cream, producers for a string of brands and supermarkets, has a new effluent treatment plant coming into operation this year that will cut its disposal costs by £100,000. It will also return a stream of recycled water for washdown and cleaning processes that will wipe £19,000 off the mains supply bill. PepsiCo’s Walkers Crisps plant in Leicester, something of a star performer, had already cut its use by 42% between 2000 and 2007 thanks to keen monitoring, engineering improvements and improved staff awareness. The crisp manufacturers are now targeting a further 45% cut within three years, and zero water intake within ten.

Still waters run shallow?

The first annual progress report, published this July, records a collective 1.7% reduction in water use compared with 2007. It’s a small start, but there are already some significant achievements [see box]. The report reckons that 20%-30% savings can be achieved through simple, low-cost steps, and much more via investment in longer-term projects and technology. There are also knock-on benefits to be gained, such as lower energy costs and carbon emissions, especially with every litre of hot water saved. In his foreword to the report, Secretary of State for the Environment Hilary Benn underscored both the business case and the environmental significance of the FDF’s water-saving drive – in the words with which this article begins. ¥ Rebecca Wilhelm works for the Food and Drink Federation. Additional material by Roger East.

Food and Drink Federation is a Forum for the Future partner. www.fdf.org.uk

Green Futures October 2009 33


Comment

The Green Futures Interview

“All the solutions we need already exist” Zac Goldsmith talks to Martin Wright about free markets, free choice, whether to trust politicians… and lessons from the stepsister of Anne Frank.

T

he market has to be a force for good

We have to rewrite the rules so that the market, which for so long has been an engine of unsustainable, colossal destruction, becomes a force for good. The market is the most powerful force for change, other than nature itself. And there are so many signs that it can be transformed, so many examples: make waste a liability, waste is minimised; if you put a value on something, it’s valued. It’s really very simple: we free the market to do what it’s best at, but change the parameters in which it operates.

Too many shampoos, too much information

If I go to the chemist, I don’t want to have to spend hours looking at all the different shampoos, trying to work out which chemicals are good and which are bad; which might give me cancer and which are benign. I want to be able to trust the way in which the system works – I’d like that choice to be made for me. I don’t want to have to be an expert in chemicals, that’s their job… I think that’s why Marks & Spencer’s Plan A appealed to people. The beauty of it was that you could walk into M&S and spend money, and so be part of the solution, not the problem, without having to think about it.

You want to pollute? You’ll pay the price Free choice is a great concept until it starts affecting other people. Then it becomes a restriction on their choice. You can’t allow people a free choice to destroy the planet – to inflict suffering on others.

34 Green Futures October 2009

“ ” “ ”

The market is the most powerful force for change other than nature itself

The conditions that led to the holocaust are always there

Now obviously you don’t stand for election on a manifesto saying “we’re going to deprive you of choice” – but you don’t have to. If you quadruple the tax on sending waste to landfill, for example, you know that most companies would stop doing so immediately! As for the rest, you just tell them: “If you want to carry on, that’s fine, but you’ll pay through the nose to do so, and we’ll use the money to bring down the price of the [cleaner] alternatives.” This is not an absolute restriction of choice: it’s about shifting the playing field.

Trust me, I’m a Conservative… We’ve got to be so honest with people – if you want to introduce a new tax, like aviation fuel duty, you’ve got to show that every single penny of that has been invested in alternatives, otherwise people just won’t accept it. [There was a poll] in which people were asked if they believed in taxing on domestic flights, and about 80% said no. Shortly after, they were asked: “Do you believe that aviation should be taxed domestically if every penny was used on alternative transport?”, and it was the exact opposite – about 80% said yes! So this issue really does all come down to trust. This is the biggest challenge for [Tory leader] David Cameron and the Conservative Party. Cameron has bent over backwards to make people believe [his environmental commitment]; he couldn’t really be doing any more. And yet still you can see a wave of scepticism among chunks of the audience – people just do not believe what politicians say. So if he becomes Prime Minister, and in his first term doesn’t make really substantial moves in the right direction, keeping to most if not all of the policies he’s set out on the environment, he will be punished for that.

www.greenfutures.org.uk


Zac Goldsmith

Owner and former editor of The Ecologist, Zac Goldsmith is standing for the UK Parliament as candidate for the opposition Conservative Party. The son of billionaire businessman Sir James Goldsmith, Zac led the party’s review of its environmental policies, and has been described as the green conscience of the next government. Independent in both means and character, he could become a thorn in its side if it fails to stick to green commitments. His new book, The Constant Economy: How to Create a Stable Society, is published by Atlantic Books.

Irrespective of what happens between now and the election, [environmentalism] has been a massive part of his narrative. He has absolutely pinned himself to this green flag. If he doesn’t do it, who the hell is going to do it? Who’s going to come forward?

When parties compete, everyone wins British politics has changed massively since Cameron launched his “vote blue, go green” campaign. It set off an incredible competition between the two parties – for a while it was like a tug of war. But then the Labour Party let go of the rope – as though they thought, “OK, we’ve lost that battle”. So the tension evaporated, and environmentalism more or less disappeared from politics. Now it seems to be picking up again, perhaps because of Copenhagen. I’m hoping the trend continues, and that by the time of the election, it’s an issue on which the parties feel absolutely obliged to fight. You need that competition: without that tension, there’s no real pressure to take things further.

Politics is very superficial The only thing that pushes any issue to the top of the political agenda is the public. With politicians, it’s all about winning the vote and maintaining [electoral] support, so really it’s all very superficial. The public simply have to make it clear that there are certain issues that matter to them – and that [the environment] is one of them.

Lessons from Anne Frank’s stepsister I recently met Eva Schloss, an extraordinary woman – an Auschwitz survivor whose family had hidden for a while in the same Amsterdam house as Anne Frank. They had became close friends.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

“ ”

You simply need to take the best of today and turn it into the norm of tomorrow

[Eva’s mother and Anne’s father were the only other members of the two families to survive the concentration camps. They married after the war, so that Eva is Anne Frank’s posthumous stepsister.] For years, Eva hadn’t wanted to talk of the holocaust, but now she’s nearly 80, and she feels it’s time to speak out. She feels that we’ve become complacent; the holocaust is so long ago, that it’s become an abstract historical footnote, albeit an awful one. So that lures us into a false sense of security. We somehow imagine we are different – but Eva points out that Germany was a highly sophisticated culture [before the Nazis]: the Germans used to say that they were the most civilised people in the world. This was the country of Beethoven, of Goethe, it had a flourishing democracy – yet this terrible thing still happened, this awful example of human brutality. Eva Schloss feels that the conditions that led to the holocaust are potentially always there. And in her view, unless we do something about the environmental crisis, and all the chaos and shortages that will result, we are going to be creating exactly those conditions. It will lead to human problems on a scale we have never seen before. A driving force for her [in speaking out about the holocaust] is the terror of what could happen if we don’t get to grips with this.

All the solutions already exist Almost everything that needs doing has already been done somewhere. You don’t have to imagine or invent a future; you don’t have to pin your hopes on newfangled technologies that don’t yet exist; you simply need to take the best of today and turn it into the norm of tomorrow. If you did that in every sector, we would be there. Yes the problem is formidable, it’s huge, it’s off the scale. But it’s not so big that we can’t deal with it. ¥

Green Futures October 2009 35


Partner viewpoint

Greening Barbie Sustainable PVC: more than just a pipe dream?

I

t’s cheap, durable and so

versatile you’ll find it in your clothes, your garden hose, your raincoats and your Barbie dolls. It wraps electric cables and it roofs your garden shed. No wonder global demand for polyvinyl chloride, better known as PVC, is over 35 million tonnes a year. But it’s also the bad girl of the Barbie world. Its long life has traditionally depended on heavy metal stabilisers, such as lead, that do not degrade in the environment and so become global pollutants. And it owes its flexibility to phthalates – plastic softeners which are linked to a range of health concerns, including asthma, allergies, developmental difficulties and cancer. But the chemical industry has set out to prove that this particular leopard can, indeed, change its spots. “There are no sustainable materials, just as there are no non-sustainable materials,” says Karl Henrik-Robert, one of Sweden’s foremost cancer scientists and founder of The Natural Step (TNS), a nonprofit environmental education agency. “There are only sustainable and non-sustainable management practices.” Now TNS has joined up with the Blekinge Institute of Technology

36 Green Futures October 2009

(BTH) to run a course entitled ‘Leading Change for a Sustainable Chemical Industry’ – and the PVC dilemma is at its heart. It’s not the first time that TNS has wrestled with the issue. It originally grappled with the stuff in 2000, when, with the support of the UK Environment Agency, it investigated whether PVC could have any place in a sustainable society. The answer was a cautious ‘yes’ – providing the industry addressed some of its most pressing challenges. In the same year, Vinyl 2010 was launched: a sector-wide commitment to cut energy consumption, improve waste management, and minimise the environmental impact of resin and stabilisers. The collaboration has grown to include all 27 EU countries, the European Commission, trade unions, consumer organisations and industry representatives. Such a broad approach sounds unwieldy, but it’s essential for any chance of progress, says TNS Chief Executive, David Cook. “PVC is a very complicated material with a complicated supply chain and customer base,” he says. “We analysed it at a time when it was being attacked by Greenpeace and the

like, and found that there is no one person responsible for [any particular] problem. You need to talk to the whole system.” Creating change in an industry of this size is no mean task. It employs over half a million people in Europe alone, working in 15 companies dedicated to resin production, 11 specialising in stabilisers, eight in plasticisers, and a mammoth 21,000 converting PVC into consumer products. “It is not possible to make just one company out of a whole supply chain ‘sustainable’,” says Fiona Wright of BTH. “Ultimately a lot of cross-company collaboration is needed. [You have to] build relationships and trust between the individuals working within those companies. It’s all too easy to forget the time and effort this takes.” The relationships may be hard to chart, but the results aren’t. Amongst the original EU15 signatories, the use of lead has been cut by 50% in favour of calcium-based stabilisers, and it’s set to be phased out completely in all EU-27 countries by 2015. Post-consumer recycling has reached nearly 195,000 tonnes, largely due to financial incentives offered by Recovinyl – whose establishment was one of the outcomes of the Vinyl 2010 exercise. PVC is 100% recyclable, and can be broken down mechanically (ground into small pieces that can be reprocessed) or chemically. As for phthalates, risk assessments have now identified two key areas for attention: their use in medical equipment, and the effect of emissions on ecosystems and populations located near PVC conversion plants. But do all these results make PVC all right? For Cook, the next step is to look beyond the material itself, asking whether we really need the products and services in which it’s used, and how they can be changed to drive down energy use and unnecessary waste. “Innovation for unsustainable products is a complete waste of time, and a tragedy,” he says. What he wants to see is “deep transformation” across the plastics industry – which will require consensus on a much greater scale. ¥ – Iain Aitch

The Natural Step is a Forum for the Future partner. www.thenaturalstep.org

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Photos: Olivier Le Queniec/Shutterstock; Peter Cade

When it comes to greening the bad girl of plastics, consensus is key.


Forum update

All aboard?

She used to go by limo...

Photo: Gideon Mendel/Corbis

Fancy knocking a billion car rides off Britain’s roads? Then get on board Greener Journeys. Private cars puff out 60% of all the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions from domestic transport. Improved efficiency, and a switch to hybrid or electric models, can help to shrink that figure – but if we’re to see a real shift, we need to tempt people out of their cars and onto the bus. That’s the mission of Greener Journeys, an alliance of Arriva, First, Go-Ahead, National Express and Stagecoach, in partnership with Forum for the Future. It has the modest sounding goal of switching people from car to bus for just one journey in 25. Even making such a minor shift would mean one billion fewer car journeys – and a two billion tonne reduction in carbon dioxide over three years. If successful, the project will deliver an additional 50% more savings in transport CO2 than is planned under existing government policies. But will people make the switch? It’s no secret that there is still a stigma attached to bus travel – famously summed up by the saying (wrongly attributed to Margaret Thatcher) that “any man over the age of 26 still riding the bus can count themselves a failure”. More positively, a recent YouGov poll found that people see using public transport as one of the main things they can do to help the environment. Other research shows that a fifth of motorists now find driving increasingly stressful and would prefer to reduce their car use. They’re a prime target for Greener Journeys. Or, as Forum for the Future’s Rupert Fausset puts it: “We’re trying to reach those willing to change. We’re not trying to get Jeremy Clarkson onto the bus”.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

GF74_pp37-40 Forum Update 03.ind37 37

There’s some promising signs. Easy-to-use Oyster cards and shorter waiting times have helped drive a 58% increase in bus patronage in London over the past decade. Ever rising ticket prices remain a challenge, however. Fausset hopes getting people onto existing buses will drive down fares, adding that awareness of the true cost of car travel is quite low. “People are not terribly rational when going on a car journey. If they’re not filling up with petrol, they assume that particular journey is free. [And yet] its share of overall car costs can easily exceed the price of a bus ticket.” Meanwhile, particularly when it comes to pricing, there’s only so much the industry can do alone. As Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director of Forum for the Future, puts it: “The industry is showing real leadership with Greener Journeys. Now it’s time for the Government to act”. •

New partners Since the last issue of Green Futures, Colors Fruit, BUPA, Panasonic, the London Borough of Newham and the London Borough of Waltham Forest have joined Forum for the Future as partners.

www.forumforthefuture.org

>

Green Futures October 2009 37

13/10/09 18:59:31


Tomorrow’s leaders

Joanna Yarrow

Since 1996, Forum For the Future’s Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development has been training the sustainability leaders of the future. Each issue, we track the career of a Forum alumnus.

Why I chose the Mprof? I had never considered doing a masters degree, but I saw an ad for the course and it was a real ‘light bulb’ moment. It brought together all the things I was interested in from an academic perspective, of learning how the world works and getting practical experience, of which I had none at the time!

Class of: 1997-98 Currently: Director and Co-founder, Beyond Green

What I learnt The biggest shock to the system was getting a fast-track, insider look at how society works. I was ‘goggle-eyed’ the entire year! I did a degree in human sciences, and a lot of the things we covered are what we would now call sustainable development; we just didn’t call it that back then.

Career to date After a spell as a freelance sustainability consultant, I worked with Royal Mail, BT, Tesco and a number of charities before joining the Earth Centre [an environmental education park which closed in 2004]. In 2002, my partner Jonathan Smales and I set up Beyond Green from our spare room, with the aim of making sustainability accessible and exciting to a broad audience. The unifying factor is communications. During my MProf year I noticed that, while there were lots of great things going on and lots of great people doing them, they were all talking to each other, not engaging with the wider world. Back then, there was nothing in the mainstream press about sustainability. It was all horror stories about rainforests or documentaries about cuddly koalas, and nothing connecting the two – and certainly nothing

connecting it all to how we live on a day-to-day basis. What I plan to do next The big focus over the next year is our property development company Blue Living, set up to conceive of, design and deliver sustainable communities. Our first project will be on the edge of Reading with 750 homes, including schools, all powered by renewables. We want to show people that these things are possible, and commercially viable. Advice for future leaders Try to understand other people’s motivations; get to know where they are coming from. Sustainability affects everything we do, and so it needs to be looked at from absolutely every angle; there is no right and wrong way of approaching it. Interview by Anna May Shamoon.

Healthy bodies, healthy budgets Forum sets out visions for sustainable health care

38 Green Futures October 2009

GF74_pp37-40 Forum Update 03.ind38 38

Twenty years on

Helping the NHS plan for the future is increasingly at the heart of Forum’s work on health. You can’t plan unless you know what the future might hold, of course – and that’s the focus of Fit for the Future – four scenarios for low-carbon healthcare in 2030, developed for the NHS’s Sustainable Development Unit. The report unveils different ways in which we might seek healthcare in the future, from a reliance on the latest technological fix, to one in which health advice from our local supermarket is the norm. And it considers the potential for backlashes against an endless diet of ‘nannying’ health advice... Both reports are available at www.forumforthefuture.org.uk •

Photo: Phase4Photography/Shutterstock

“I saw the doctor today, and he prescribed me some loft insulation…” It’s 2025 and GPs are as likely to prescribe exercise, healthyeating vouchers and home improvement regimes as curative treatments. Green gyms are all the rage, everyone has an electronic health passport, and citizen scientists take a key role in disseminating public health information to their communities. That’s part of the vision of The Health System in 2025, a new report by Forum for the Future for the Sustainable Development Commission. Produced in response to the Government’s Marmot Review into health inequalities, it shows how the NHS can pioneer a low-carbon future that promotes greater health while creating a better quality of life. There could be cost-savings, too. The World Health Organisation says that “misdirected care” whereby “resource allocation clusters around curative services at a great cost, [neglects] the potential of primary prevention and health promotion to prevent up to 70% of the disease burden”. By taking a common sense, holistic perspective, health budgets could be redirected to such ‘early interventions’, so tackling the inequalities that lead to ill health at their root. Forum’s vision brings this to life. It describes how shorter working hours, more contact with the environment, growing localisation of production and consumption, redistribution of wealth towards the poor, and greater service accessibility are all accepted as key drivers of health and wellbeing, and investment is targeted accordingly. This implies some fairly radical changes to today’s health system – reaching beyond the traditional remit of the NHS. Those responsible for making these changes will need a long-term view, and a willingness to make policy decisions now whose benefits may only become apparent years down the line. If the Marmot Review turns out to be the first step along a road paved with tangible action, then it will have done a good job.

Taking her prescription

www.greenfutures.org.uk

13/10/09 18:59:35


Fizzy, flat, fit or fat?

Will PepsiCo top the pops in 2030?

R

emember taking the

Pepsi Challenge, the fizzy drinks taste test to see who you thought was ‘top of the pops’? Well, it’s time to take the blindfolds off. Some of tomorrow’s challenges are already upon us. That’s what PepsiCo – which also owns brands such as Tropicana, Walkers, Quakers and Lays – found when it commissioned Forum for the Future to help it look ahead to 2030. This wasn’t just idle navel-gazing. PepsiCo wants to make sure its strategy will be robust enough for what lies ahead. Senior leaders

from across the business used specially developed scenarios as a tool to help identify the major sustainability risks and opportunities that the company will face in 2030, and to work out what it needs to do about these right now. PepsiCo has been feeding the results into its new environmental sustainability and health and wellness strategies. So what will 2030 look like? Our research suggested that two-thirds of people will live in water-stressed countries. Climate change impacts will be keenly felt. We will need 50% more food than we currently have. Obesity and under-nutrition will sit uncomfortably (and paradoxically) side by side. For food companies, costs of ingredients and of energy will almost certainly be higher. Security of supply will be much more of a challenge, in part driven by climate change-related disruption. The companies that will prosper in 2030 will be those which, in the words of Indra Nooyi, Chief Executive of PepsiCo, “recognise the possible outcomes of the global crises we face, and [are] nimble and tenacious enough to embed this into their strategy”. I’m not going to argue with someone recently voted the most powerful woman in US business for the fourth year in a row. Credit

What will she be sipping in 20 years’ time?

to PepsiCo for taking on the 2030 version of the Pepsi Challenge. Will the rewards be sweet, with a dash of savoury perhaps? Dan Crossley is Principal Sustainability Advisor at Forum for the Future.

Catalysing disruption

Photo: MalibuBooks/Shutterstock

A sustainable world doesn’t just need innovation – it needs disruption… If we’re to rise to the huge challenges facing us, then business as usual, done a bit more efficiently, simply won’t cut it. We need truly gamechanging, disruptive innovations. This novel use of the term ‘disruptive’ was coined by innovation guru Clayton Christensen to refer to products and services that change markets dramatically in ways that customers didn’t ask for or incumbents expect. Unsurprisingly, they often come from outside established players. We’ll need exactly these kinds of disruptions to build the sustainable world at the speed and scale we need. The first signs of this are just beginning to emerge. Examples include Google teaming up with General Electric on its Clean Energy partnership, to accelerate the take up of renewables and smart grid solutions; and Shai Agassi’s Better Place [see GF71, p12] catalysing the transition to electric transport. In terms of their impact on markets and lifestyles, these are the iPods of the future. Here at Forum, we’re keen to kickstart these disruptions for sustainability, too. As a first step, we’ve just produced a series of 12 cards, each capturing a method of thinking ‘out of the box’ – and so encouraging disruptive innovation. We have started to use these with our partners in our own innovation work, and initial feedback suggests we’ve hit on something rather exciting! • Chris Sherwin is Head of Innovation at Forum for the Future.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

GF74_pp37-40 Forum Update 03.ind39 39

Win our Disruptive Innovation cards Want a free set of our cards? Tell us in no more than 50 words how you will use our cards to disrupt for sustainability. The top five ideas will each receive a free set of cards. Send entries to: c.sherwin@forumforthefuture.org.uk by 30 November 2009. We plan to publish the results in Green Futures and on The Forum’s website.

Green Futures October 2009 39

13/10/09 18:59:42


Forum for the Future works in partnership with over 130 leading organisations, mainly from the public and private sectors, to find practical ways to deliver a sustainable future. For more information, visit www.forumforthefuture.org

AkzoNobel Elizabeth Stokes, 01928 511695

The Co-operative Group Chris Sherlock, www.co-operative.coop

Johnson Matthey Sean Axon, 020 7269 8400

Alliance Boots Andrew Jenkins, 0115 968 6766

Cornwall County Council Anthony Weight, 01872 322633

JT Group John Pontin, 01275 373393

AOL Time Warner www.timewarner.com/corpp

Corus Stephen Blaylock, 01244 89 2713

Kingfisher Christina Allen, 020 7644 1142

Arup Chris Trott, 020 7636 1531

Devon County Council Dave Solcombe, 01392 382218

Kraft Foods Jonathan Horrell, 01242 236101

Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy Jane Howarth, 020 7410 7023

Duchy Originals Tim Appleton, 020 8831 6800

Leeds City Council Tom Knowland, 0113 395 0643

Atkins Helene Vergereau, 0113 205 1242

Ecotricity Matt Thomas, 01453 756111

London Borough of Croydon Peter McDonald, 020 8760 5640

Aviva Investors Zoe Collier, 020 7809 6000

Ecover Belgium NV Mick Bremans, +32 3 309 2500

London Borough of Newham Fiona Perry, fiona.perry@newham.gov.uk

BAA Matthew Gorman, 020 7243 1264

EDF Energy David Ferguson, 07875 119978

London Borough of Waltham Forest www.walthamforest.gov.uk

Balfour Beatty Jonathan Garrett, 020 7216 6837

Energy Saving Trust Paula Owen, 020 7654 2411

Middlesbrough Council Bob King, 01642 728233

Benchmark Software Simon Harvey, 01458 444010

Entec UK Ltd Francesco Corsi, 0191 272 6128

Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) info@msc.org

BCME Claire Levens, claire.levens@gbcpublicaffairs.com

Eurostar Louisa Bell, 020 7922 2442

Marks & Spencer Rowland Hill, 020 8718 6885

Fife Council Neil Gateley, 08451 555555

Merrill Lynch Matt Hale, 020 7996 2054

Finlays Michael Pennant-Jones, 020 7802 3239

Minoan Group www.minoangroup.com

Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227802435

The Natural Step International Louise Bielenstein, +46 8 789 29 00

FirstGroup Terri Vogt, 07799 885171

Network Rail www.networkrail.co.uk

Food and Drink Federation Julian Hunt, 020 7420 7125

O2 Simon Davis, Simon.Davis@O2.com

Friends Provident Sandra Prida, 08452 683135

Panasonic Simon Eves, 01344 853325

Groundwork Fiona Taylor, 0121 237 5815

PepsiCo UK & Ireland Andrew Smith, 0207 734 0582

GSH Group Jane Reynolds 01782 200400

Powys County Council Heather Delonnette, 01597 827481

Guardian News and Media Jo Confino, jo.confino@guardian.co.uk

Pret A Manger Nicki Fisher, 020 7827 8888

Good Energy http://www.goodenergy.co.uk/

PRUPIM Siobhán Hewitt-Devine, 020 7548 6729

Halcrow Group Andrew Kluth, 020 7602 7282

Pureprint Group Yvie Dear, 01825 768811

Highways Agency Lisa Scott, 020 7153 4749

Rail Safety and Standards Board Joanna Gilligan, 020 7904 7655

IGD Dr James Northen, 01923 851919

Royal Dutch Shell Elfrida Hughes, +31610974798

InterfaceFLOR Ramon Arratia, 020 7490 3960

RSA Paul Pritchard, 020 7337 5712

Jaguar Land Rover Julian Whitehead, 01926 649646

Royal Mail Group Martin Blake, 01252 528 681

John Lewis Partnership Gemma Lacey, 020 7592 4412

RWE npower Anita Longley, 01793 892716

Birmingham City Council Sandy Taylor, 0121 303 1111 BP Naomi Korolew, 020 3057 2524 BT Environment Unit, 0800 731 2403 BUPA Pippa Vowles, 020 7656 2199 Cadbury Alison Ward, 01895 615568 Cafédirect Whitney Kakos, 020 7490 9540 Calor Simon Maris, 01926318810 Capgemini James Robey, 0870 904 5761 Cargill Europe Fiona Cubitt, 01932 861916 Carillion Louise Rhydderch, 01902 316258 Camarthenshire County Council www.carmarthenshire.gov.uk CDC Group Shonaid Jemmett-Page, 020 7963 4700 Cheltenham Borough Council Jane Griffiths, www.cheltenham.gov.uk City of London Emma Bara, 020 7332 1431 Colors Fruit Craig Schaefer, 01354 691 340 Commission for Rural Communities Graham Russell, 01242 534072

40 Green Futures October 2009

GF74_pp37-40 Forum Update 03.ind40 40

Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Jack Cunningham, Jack.Cunningham@sainsburys.co.uk SC Johnson Chris Lambert, 01784 484100 Scottish and Newcastle UK Richard Heathcote, 01432 345277 Severn Trent Kathryn Barker, 0121 722 4314 Skanska Jennifer Clark, 01923 776666 Skandia Jo Gilbey, 01703 334411 Sony Ericsson www.sonyericsson.com South West Tourism Neil Warren, 01392 353234 Tesco Ruth Girardet, 01992 644 053 The Tetley Group Sara Howe, 020 8338 4590 Tetra Pak Richard Hands 0870 442 6623 Thames Water Utilities Darren Towers, 0118 373 9063 TJX Europe Jo Murphy, 01923 473089 Transport for London Helen Woolston, 020 7126 3976 Triodos Bank James Niven, 0117 980 9721 TUI Travel Jane Ashton, 01293 645911 Unilever UK Helen Fenwick, 01372 945000 VisitEngland Jason Freezer, 0208 563 3180 Vodafone Group Chris Burgess, 01635 677932 Warburtons Sarah Miskell, 01204 556600 Welsh Assembly Government Simon Bilsborough, 029 2046 8669 Wessex Water Dan Green, 01225 526000 Willmott Dixon George Martin, 01932 584700 Wm Morrison Supermarkets Gillian Hall, gillian.hall@morrisonsplc.co.uk Wrexham County Council Michael Cantwell, 01978 292255 WWF-UK Dax Lovegrove, 01483 412395 Yorkshire Forward Debbie Rosen, 0113 3949783

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13/10/09 18:59:43


Partner viewpoint

Hareing ahead: with the right support organics can surge

Sowing the seeds for organic growth Banks should step on the soapbox, says Bevis Watts of Triodos.

Photo: Sharpham Park Farm, Glastonbury

I

t’s open season on organic

farming once again. Every few years, it seems, the press has a go at the sector – usually triggered by a critical report. The spur this time was a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which questioned whether organic food has any nutritional benefits over its mainstream equivalent. When the review hit the press, it provoked a wave of stories claiming that organic food ‘was no better’ than the ‘normal’ variety. These ignored the fact that, for many people, organics’ indisputable environmental advantages are more important than any direct health benefit. Not surprisingly, the stories drew a critical rebuff from the Soil Association and the Biodynamic Agricultural Association. More surprising, to some at least, was the fact that Triodos Bank added its voice on the issue. It’s unusual for a bank to have a view on organic farming, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. As a bank, we think about our role in society and the environment. We scrutinise the social and environmental impacts of our lending, and we take time to consider how best to support the ‘market development’ of sectors in which we invest. This doesn’t necessarily mean affordable finance. It can be as simple as taking time to understand a sector and develop viable models for its growth.

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So why give the organics industry a helping hand? According to the Soil Association, it’s grown in value from a mere £20 million a year a decade ago to over £2 billion today. On the surface, then, it’s doing just fine without assistance. But we found an anomaly in the tale of success. While for most areas like horticulture and meat, organics represent around 4% of the total market, this drops to around 1% in cereals. And this creates a further problem, with demand for locally produced organic feed, for organically reared livestock, far outstripping supply. The imbalance is currently resolved by importing expensive organic feed from overseas. Now Triodos has intervened with a new initiative to help stimulate the market through affordable finance, aiming to grow the UK’s organic cereal market by 10%. We’ve launched a new loan package for cereal farmers converting to organic methods, offering £5 million at very competitive rates. We’ve calculated that if farmers take advantage of the full sum offered, they could save a total of £160,000 over three years compared to market rates. Overall, it could support 10,000 acres of new organic cereal production. Finance, of course, is just one of the reasons why cereal farmers don’t convert.

Others include the current high price of conventional wheat and the relatively high average age of farmers growing conventional cereals. But we hope that by removing one of the main barriers, the loans could provide a major boost to the sector. As we emerge from the recession, it’s important to remember that we’re still in a transitional phase and that the opportunity to make important changes has not yet passed us by. Banks are being urged to increase scrutiny of their investments, but they can also examine their role in delivering a more sustainable society. The public rescue of failed institutions should be used as a lever, ensuring banks look beyond short-term profits to the wider impact of activities they support. The health of our soil and countryside is most certainly one area on which banks can use their leverage for good. Hence Triodos’s willingness to speak up – and to act – for Britain’s organic farms. ¥ Bevis Watts is Head of Business Banking, Triodos Bank.

Triodos Bank is a Forum for the Future partner. www.triodos.co.uk

Green Futures October 2009 41


Feature

Ten green bottles and a wall F

rom the steep terraces

of Jenin to the heights of Gilboa, you hear the sound of strings and stamping feet. It’s just a murmur at first, but with every beat there’s more vigour as the dabke takes off. The leader waves his beads like olives in the breeze, and local kids gather round. Their cousins have journeyed home, the harvest is in, and the festivities have begun. For Mohammed Isa of the Anin Co-op for Olive Oil Production, there are more reasons to celebrate the harvest this year than in the past. For the first time, his oil will be sold with Fairtrade certification. This means he’ll sell more of it, at a higher price, to a wider clientele – and so be able to invest in next year’s production. And he’s proud, too, to be part of the world’s first initiative for fair trade olive oil. When Heather Masoud and Cathi Pawson first contacted the Fairtrade Foundation about Palestinian olive oil, back in 2004, they didn’t get much of a response. “It was seen as a developed country product – from Italy or Greece,” explains Masoud, “so it wasn’t on their radar.” The two women, who originally met through a permaculture course, had just returned from a spell as peace volunteers in the West Bank. They’d both been struck by the prevalence of the olive tree – “there are terraces everywhere!” – and its central role in Palestinian culture. But they had also met olive farmers who were unable to access markets due to restrictions on movement imposed by the Israeli occupation – and were determined to do something constructive. “It was a combination of the warmest hospitality I’ve ever received and the scale of the injustice,” explains Masoud, who is married to a dabke dancer from Gaza. “We met farmers who’d lost trees to Israeli settlements

42 Green Futures October 2009

“ ”

Olive oil was seen as a developed country product, so it wasn’t on the fair trade radar

and whose land had been cut off by the [‘security’] wall. You’d look up and see this swimming pool, golf course sort of environment, and then down in the villages you’d turn the taps and there’d be no water. In a very British way, we were thinking, ‘Surely if something’s illegal you can pick it up with someone and change it…’” They soon realised that it wasn’t quite as simple as that. But while the politics might be frozen, perhaps trade could offer hope. So once back in Britain, they explored options. At first they assumed that the sort of fair trade groups who’d bought Nicaraguan coffee would be a natural market for Palestinian olive oil. But initial research was discouraging. They couldn’t find a single outlet for olive oil imported from the West Bank. Fair trade group Equal Exchange had been discouraged by a previous attempt in which the oil was blighted by high levels of acidity and had to be sold as soap. Oxfam weren’t even considering it. “We couldn’t find anyone who was planning to import it in the next few years,” recalls Masoud, “so we thought we’d give it a go.” Today, just four years down the line, the pair are directors of Zaytoun CIC, a community interest company which takes its name from the Arabic for ‘olive’. It’s the first UK company to import olive oil and other produce from Palestine, and the first in the world to win both organic and Fairtrade accreditation for it. The combined achievements helped Masoud win the 2009 Women in Ethical Business Awards, sponsored by Triodos Bank. Zaytoun’s first order was for just 200 bottles from the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee, earmarked for friends and family. “A word-of-mouth thing happened,” says Masoud. “Those bottles just disappeared.” Then they began to market it more widely. Six weeks later, their second order was for 5,000 bottles. “To make

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Photos: Zaytoun CIC

Occupied territories aren’t the best backdrop for business… or are they? Heather Masoud tells Anna Simpson about the world’s first fair trade olive oil.


it worthwhile, we asked people to buy a minimum of 24 bottles, and to pay for it upfront.” For some bulk buyers – from Palestinian solidarity groups to small ethical shops like FairDo’s in Cardiff – this was a real act of faith, investing thousands of pounds in an unproven enterprise. “The Palestinians don’t have any control of their own borders, which can be turned on or off at a whim,” says Masoud, “so in the first year we couldn’t bring the oil in quickly enough [to meet demand].” Now, such delays are planned for, and the company over-orders to keep a healthy stock in the UK. Masoud and Pawson have even turned the element of risk into a selling point. “We want the olive oil to be an education medium. It’s a nice way to tell people about what’s happening there, while they’re consuming a delicious product. Sympathy for the farmers’ plight helped get Zaytoun off the ground. “We had volunteers coming in to do graphic design, one did labels to meet food trading standards, a Turkish guy lent us some warehouse space for the first import.” By the end of 2005, it was clear that Zaytoun had too much potential to be run solely on a parttime, voluntary basis. Masoud still had a day job with the local councils of West Berkshire and Islington; Pawson was working for Green Party leader Caroline Lucas – and they were both reaching burn-out. If they were to keep going, they had to earn a living. So in 2006 they took the plunge and launched Zaytoun as a registered company with a co-operative structure, inspired by other well-known fair trade brands such as Divine and Café Direct. Meanwhile, their suppliers were proposing a little diversification. “They kept saying things

Photo:s Zaytoun CIC

Heather Masoud: olive oil as education

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Harvest festival: windassisted winnowing

“ ”

Our suppliers were proposing medjoul dates, soap from Nablus, long grain, handrolled couscous

like, ‘By the way, do you know that Palestinian dates are amazing?’ They grow medjoul dates in the Jordan valley: big fat, really good ones.” So they began to buy dates, followed by soap from Nablus, and long grain couscous hand-rolled by a group of women in Gaza – although that fell victim to the Israeli blockade of the territory. Zaytoun now has two full time members of staff and three part time, including Taysir Arabasi, its director in Palestine. In the last financial year, they imported 80,000 litres of olive oil. This year, with the first Fairtrade-certified harvest bringing onboard new bulk buyers from the Co-op to Equal Exchange, they’re expecting sales to grow by at least 30%. And as for profit? “At the moment, we’re still covering costs,” says Masoud. “We spent about £30,000 on branding and media work last year! But we aim to be turning a profit in about three years.” She’s also hopeful that they’ll bring in about £100,000 additional funds over the next year, as a mix of loans and grants. This will allow them to recruit two more staff and set up an office. So far, the company has relied on initial charitable support from The Funding Network, a loan and overdraft from Triodos Bank, and a large network of volunteers and solidarity NGOs giving both their time and their custom. They would like to offer their producers a stake in Zaytoun, says Masoud, but first “we need to borrow some expertise. We were both very ‘green’ when we set out, with no business or retail experience. We’ve had to learn about customs and excise, import regulations, trading standards … there’s so much we’d like to do better.” There’s a lot of cross-cultural learning to be done, too. Zaytoun organises exchanges whereby European students go to the West Bank to visit co-operatives at harvest time, and Palestinian farmers come to the UK to speak at Fairtrade Fortnight events, and to learn more about the market. “Fair trade sounds like a nice concept to our producers, but they want to understand why customers would be prepared to pay premiums when you can get very cheap European olive oil.” Meeting the exacting standards of large-scale European food buyers has been a bit of a learning curve for the producers, too. They have had to grapple with everything from correctly ventilated storage for controlling levels of acidity and peroxide, to submitting their produce for organoleptic (taste) tests. “The farmers have really embraced all of this,” says Masoud. “And they’re very proud of the results.” They can be proud, too, of the reception from Europe’s taste police. No less an authority than the French olive growers council, Adolive, declared Zaytoun oil to be “Very fine, harmonious in terms of both fragrance and taste … with salad-like hints of green bean [and] young walnut … and a peppery, even spicy finish”. And while some farmers struggle to adapt to organic methods, for Zaytoun’s producers it was simply business as usual. Most have never been able to afford fertiliser and other chemical inputs, so there was very little to change. “It’s hand-picked, rain-fed agriculture, really suited to the hilly terrain,” Masoud explains. “And these trees take so long to bear fruit that they are passed down from generation to generation.” Which is why the whole family comes home for the harvest. •

Green Futures October 2009 43


Partner viewpoint

Which is greener: print or web? The answer is far from obvious, discovers Lorna Howarth. Weighty subjects side by side

Two sides to every story print, rather than on the screen, you’re consuming more energy and so emitting more carbon. Aren’t you? Not necessarily. For all the talk of the ‘weightless economy’, and of a digital future that ‘lives on thin air’, there’s growing evidence that the humble website packs a hefty footprint. According to Martyn Eustace, Director of the newly-launched TwoSides initiative, “recent research suggests that producing and reading a traditional newspaper can consume 20% less energy than reading news online for more than 30 minutes”. On the surface, it seems an unlikely claim. A print magazine like Green Futures depends on heavyweight industries like forestry, paper, printing, distribution, and so on, while a laptop hardly uses any power at all, surely? True – but behind the laptop is a surprisingly energy-intensive infrastructure of IT systems, servers and so on. Until recently, its environmental impact hadn’t been questioned, much less quantified. But as carbon calculators become more effective and industry-specific, all this is changing – and the relative impact of electronic media is becoming all the more apparent. Google’s new data centre in Oregon, for example, is expected to use as much energy as the entire city of Newcastle when it comes

44 Green Futures October 2009

online in 2011. And Google is arguably one of the most environmentally-aware IT giants, which has led it to invest heavily in renewables [see ‘Google’s green ambitions take to the waves’, GF71, p9]. By contrast, research by ATS Consulting shows that the energy used to produce the average amount of paper consumed by each of us during a year is just 500kWh. That’s equivalent to burning a 60W light bulb continuously for 12 months. This is the sort of statistic which TwoSides hopes to bring to people’s attention. “Our challenge is to present a simple, understandable message that print and paper products can be far more sustainable than the equivalent electronic version,” Eustace says. As part of its three-year campaign, TwoSides will also undertake research into how we interact with print and paper, as opposed to a computer screen – including the way children learn. Initial findings suggest that people can retain information better from a printed document than from screen-based learning. Eustace is keen to point out that TwoSides is not anti-technology. “Of course we recognise how important the IT revolution is,” he says. “But we need to remember that print and paper can work alongside e-communication very successfully: marketing campaigns that use multi-media techniques are far more dynamic than those that just use ‘e-media’.

The argument is not about what is more effective, it is about the misconception that electronic media is better for the environment.” TwoSides’ membership includes a wide range of paper, print and publishing companies. Among them is Beacon Press, which prints Green Futures. It signed up, says Director Richard Owers, because “this is a forum for a broader discussion about the improvements that can be made in both the print and IT sectors”. Owers presides over a company that has put greener printing at the core of its business, but he isn’t complacent. “As the climate debate intensifies and carbon footprinting is on everyone’s agenda, knowing the impact of, say, sending an email with massive attachments, as opposed to printing and posting the same, is important. People need balanced information with which to make their decisions.” ¥ www.twosides.info Lorna Howarth is Development Director of Artists Project Earth (www.apeuk.org) and Contributing Writer & Editor at Resurgence magazine.

Beacon Press is a Forum for the Future partner. www.beaconpress.co.uk

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Photo: Fotosipsak/iStock

I

f you’re reading this in


Partner viewpoint

Natural born bubbles

Peter Malaise looks beyond biodegradables to breweries and more.

Photo: Donald Bowers/Shutterstock

W

arm water, bubbles,

soap and sheens. It all leads to a pleasing array of sparkling dishes, but what goes down the drain? That’s a question which both households and cleaning product manufacturers are increasingly grappling with. After all, no one likes the thought that cleanliness in the home might lead to pollution elsewhere. So if you’re serious about green cleaning, where do you start? Biodegradability is an obvious first step, replacing the petrochemicals present in most detergents with plant-based ingredients – and so limiting the potentially harmful substances our ecosystems have to absorb. But the use of natural ingredients does not, alone, make for a clean product. The traditional production process for surfactants – the active agent in detergents that allows them to emulsify grease and spread easily over surfaces – is an energy-intensive one. A reliance on 2-5 bar pressures, and temperatures of up to 100˚C, makes for a hefty carbon footprint. And these surfactants turn up in more places than you might think. It’s not just washing-up liquid,

www.greenfutures.org.uk

shampoo and other cosmetics but everything from paper production to the treatment of hide fibres for supple leather gloves. But a six-year research project, funded by Ecover, has led to the launch of a new range of surfactants – from boat wax to glass spray – all produced at just 30˚C and ambient atmospheric pressure, through fermentation. This year it hit the shelves as the world’s first ‘EcoSurfactant’. The key was finding just the right conditions – in terms of temperature, pressure and ventilation – for yeast to breed. That may sound rather technical, but in some respects it has a lot in common with a distinctly downto-earth technology dating back thousands of years: the art of brewing beer. The basic process is as follows: you put a water-soluble sugar and some non-watersoluble plant oil in a vessel, innoculate them with a yeast, heat to the right temperature and… stir. The result is a ‘sophorolipid’: a type of biological surfactant that can be produced quickly and simply, is a natural antimicrobial, has skinfriendly pH levels, and is 100% biodegradable. What’s more, the waste can be used for compost, and the process is so efficient that

Ecover is able to run its two industrial-scale production units – with an output of 10 tonnes of ‘EcoSurfactant’ per month – entirely on electricity from wind and solar power. The company has also committed to sourcing all the necessary ingredients – rapeseed oil, sugar from sugar beet and yeast – in Europe, thereby cutting fuel and other transportation costs, and of course saving carbon emissions. But Ecover’s task is not over yet. There’s more work to be done on making the product stable, and on meeting consumers’ expectations of its ‘foaming power’. And the company has set its sights beyond the washingup bowl, hoping to roll out the new process to produce cleaning and treatment products for everything from laundry to… leather gloves. ¥ – Peter Malaise is Concept Manager at Ecover

Ecover is a Forum for the Future partner. www.ecover.com

Green Futures October 2009 45


Comment

Ourselves at the root

Jonathon, I was pleased that you said that “there has never been a greater need for deep analysis” and that much of the current environmental debate is “at a very superficial level” [GF73, p48]. But you say the roots of the crisis are “failed economic models” and “the rich elites”. That is still too superficial. ‘We’ are the cause. The best way to change “malign corporate interests” is to change ourselves. I welcome your probing for deeper answers – and suggest that you, like all of us, need to take a hard and honest look in the mirror. Donald Johnson, Policy and Standards Development Officer, Powys County Council

A fresh start?

I was moved and stimulated by Jonathon Porritt’s adieu piece on The Ecologist in your last issue [GF73, p48] – not least by his emphasis on the need for clear thinking and deep analysis. The ecological crisis is all too real, but what’s needed is a practical political programme to which it can be related. The only people who seem to [offer such a thing] are the Transition Network, with their focus on developing local resources and industries, local currencies, and self-sufficiency in the face of catastrophic oil rundown. On this basis they have achieved in only three years the kind of breakthrough the world so desperately needs. They now have groups in China, Japan, Australia, the US, New Zealand and several European countries. It is a process in rapid development, with enormous political potential. In all this they are – perhaps unawares – echoing the concerns of Leopold Kohr and his groundbreaking work, The Breakdown of Nations (1957). He was urging the need for the reduction of giant political units to a size that would enable ordinary people to control their political destinies. Can we not all join forces to make the world safe, stable, decent and, not least perhaps, resplendent? Where is the Transition cell in your home area? Where is it in mine? John Papworth The writer is founder of the Fourth World Review

46 Green Futures October 2009

Greens on Board

Jonathon Porritt acknowledges the “many great companies…playing their part in securing a more sustainable future”, and – rightly – states that “there are also some shocking ones” [GF73, p38]. Companies and institutions now have offers of environmental consultancy overflowing their inboxes. Many accept these offers, but in many organisations there is still a widespread lack of urgency about, and recognition of, the environmental crisis. A new agency is now being formed to try another approach – encouraging companies to employ environmentalists on their boards of directors, and training greens to do this. ‘Greens on Board’ aims to help companies and institutions to ensure that environmental issues are at the core of daily decision-making, and to recognise that directors with green skills are as necessary to a board as are directors with experience of law, finance and marketing. Greens on Board will find and train environmentalists to be board members of companies and institutions. It will provide ongoing support and advice to make sure they can effect change, demonstrating that it’s possible to green all organisations. Whatever our role, whatever our business, we can all only operate within planetary limits; this the only way to guarantee a long term future for us all. Cllr Jenny Jones, Green Party member of London Assembly; Chair, Planning and Housing Committee

letters@greenfutures.org.uk

Letters

Carbon capture “unproven”

In his recent article (GF73, p48), Jonathon Porritt describes carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and concentrated solar power (CSP) as “high cost”, “high risk” and “yet to be proven”. But the two technologies should not be bracketed together in that way. There are still no commercial scale CCS-equipped generating plants operating anywhere in the world. By contrast, commercial scale CSP plants have been operating successfully in California since the mid 1980s, new ones have come on stream more recently in other parts of the world, and many more are planned. When environmental and hidden costs are properly accounted for, it is likely that CSP is already cheaper than electricity from coal-fired or nuclear plants. The TRANS-CSP report from the German Aerospace Centre calculates that it is likely to become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, even when allowing for the cost of transmission. Recently, 12 blue chip companies have signed up as founding members of the new DESERTEC Industrial Initiative, with the declared intention of developing CSP on a large scale in the Middle East and North Africa. Gerry Wolff, Co-ordinator DESERTEC-UK

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Comment

Rebecca Willis responds:

Rising winds, sinking heart

I turned with a sinking heart to the article on making the Lake District ‘a regional hub of green industry’ (‘More than mere beauty’, Rebecca Willis, GF73, pp34-35], where I read about 15 major wind farms in West Cumbria and more to come. Do the proponents have any concept of the concrete, the roads, the cables and pylons required to transmit power from these windfarm sites? Of the back-up facilities needed to maintain reliability of supply? Do they begin to understand how these giant structures stain our gentle and beautiful skylines? Do they realise what a marginal net contribution they make, if any, to checking the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere above us? The latest Government plan to push ahead with another 6,000 amounts to environmental desecration on a major scale. Please use your pages to safeguard our English landscape in all its timeless beauty, not to defile it. David Howell (Baron Howell of Guildford) The writer was formerly Secretary of State for Energy, 1979-81; he is President of the British Institute for Energy Economics

Lord Howell poses three objections to wind energy in the Lake District: minimal carbon savings, high costs, and impacts on the landscape. Let’s take these in turn. Do wind farms generate more carbon than they save? Emphatically not, according to Lord Howell’s own institution, the House of Lords. Its Science and Technology Select Committee stated in 2004 that onshore wind farms ‘pay back’ the carbon used to build them in around a year. What about the costs, then? Wind energy is more expensive than gas-fired or coal-fired generation, but is one of the cheapest forms of renewable power. Once you factor in the cost of damage done by carbon emissions, it looks like a wise buy. The Stern Review estimates that cutting carbon (including a shift to renewable energy) would cost around 1% of GDP, which is “small, relative to the costs and risks of climate change that will be avoided”. When it comes to visual impact, hard facts don’t help much. Some love wind turbines, others hate them. But a survey by the Sustainable Development Commission showed consistent levels of support for wind energy, with 90% in favour, 10% against. The Lake District is beautiful, but it is not a museum. It has always been shaped by interaction between people and landscape, from the Neolithic settlers who mined for stone to today’s use of land for farming or energy. Climate change will have severe effects: floods, drought, extinctions. We owe it to the spectacular surroundings to take this threat seriously, and to do all we can to minimise it. Renewable energy must play a part in that.

Join the debate at www.greenfutures.org.uk Don’t keep your thoughts to yourself! Our website receives hundreds of thousands of hits from visitors around the world. Reach them by posting a comment on any article in Green Futures, or respond to points others have made. Or just email us at letters@greenfutures.org.uk (Letters may be edited for publication.)

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Readers’ blog Clean water, muddied journalism

Your article ‘Clean water creates jobs, boosts education’ [‘Liquid Gold’, GF73, p19] was a relatively well written account of development work in Ethiopia, except that the ‘reporting’ is done by Ecover’s own brand manager. In other words, this thinly guised article is actually a press release. While I am sure Ecover is doing good work in Ethiopia, wouldn’t it have made more sense to have an independent voice give a credible assessment of Ecover’s project Mohamed

Green Futures responds:

This article is one of Green Futures’ Partner Viewpoint Pages, which offer our partners the opportunity to contribute to debates around sustainability and to share their experience – subject to a high degree of editorial scrutiny. As you noted, the article is well written and researched, and we have clearly indicated its source.

Change the eat

As Dax Lovegrove suggests [in ‘Eat the change’, GF73, p33], doing what we do better won’t get us all the way. Instead, fundamental changes in behaviour are required. Information and self interest are key, and the main barriers are convenience, viable alternatives and price. On information, comparing suppliers of similar products has little material benefit. What’s needed is information across categories – for example, meat versus [vegetarian] alternatives. Are retailers ready to do this? Jake Backus

Green Futures October 2009 47


Comment

JonathonPorritt

“There’s a strong ‘lean and green’ case for some spending cuts”

C

uts today and cuts tomorrow.

Frontline cuts and bottom line cuts. Cuts that are gentle and cuts that take your legs off. I think we can all see what the dominant political motif is going to be in the run up to the UK’s general election next year. So where will all good, well-meaning greenies end up in this debate? Historically, most environmentalists have never been drawn to the ideology of ‘the small state’ – set taxes as low as possible and spend public money only when it’s absolutely necessary. They naturally gravitate towards the ‘protect public services’ position – with many an envious glance towards our Scandinavian neighbours who seem completely at ease with the idea that people get the kind of society they’re prepared to pay for. By any standards, their societies do seem to work rather better than ours. But should we automatically assume that when it comes to public expenditure, it’s always a case of ‘the higher the better’? I suspect there’s a strong, sustainabilitydriven case for a much ‘leaner and greener’ take on many key areas of public expenditure – over and above the basic efficiency cuts that are undoubtedly available to any government. Having seen it from the inside over the last nine years [as Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission], I can say for sure that there are still too many aspects of central government that are scandalously profligate in the use of our money. Let’s start with defence. This really has to be the moment where we renounce once and for all the vainglorious illusion that we are still a nuclear superpower. Getting rid of the whole Trident missile programme would provide the biggest and quickest ‘sustainability win’ available. And once we’d swallowed that particular pill, scrapping the proposed new aircraft carriers and cutting right back on the Eurofighter would make it possible to target defence resources where they are really needed. Next up, I’d be taking my green scythe to the sprawling surveillance ‘state within a state’ and the various ‘database empires’ that Labour has invested so much in over the last ten years. The crazy ID card scheme (with national identity register) would be the first to go. Then the National Health Service supercomputer. Then the new contact point database. Sorry if I’m beginning to sound like an apologist for the Tories here, but their new policy paper on central

48 Green Futures October 2009

databases and personal privacy actually makes a lot of sense. I’m astonished at how blasé most greens are about the increasingly intrusive impact of these on our lives. The recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, questioning the basic legality of many public sector databases, has barely been commented on by the big environmental NGOs. Finally, there’s health. No longer ‘off limits’ for the Government, and very much top of the list as far as the Tories are concerned. Behind the scenes, every Strategic Health Authority (SHA) in England is already engaged in pre-cut planning under the pleasing acronym of QUIPP – Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention. This entails yet more millions of pounds, by the way, disappearing into the pockets of the big consultancies to help SHAs grasp the nettle. I was amazed to see that second P (for Prevention) in there. Prevention covers better public health, reduced health inequalities, and what health professionals call ‘demand management’ – as in making sure that people aren’t referred on to hospitals when they don’t need to be. This whole area doesn’t feature very prominently in today’s ‘National Illness Service’, commanding rather less than 4% of total spending. So full marks to the Health Secretary for getting that in there. But will he really bite the bullet in terms of redirecting remaining spending to tackle obesity and promote physical activity, better nutrition, better diets, and so on? Because that is the only way to make major long-term savings in the health budget. The Green New Deal group (whose 2008 report first got people talking about more sustainable routes to economic recovery – see ‘Crunch time for a green new deal’, GF71, p21) will soon be publishing a follow-up report on public expenditure and finances. Which is just as well. Because we certainly need a bit more ammunition to help frame how best to respond to this critical political debate. ¥ Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. www.forumforthefuture.org www.jonathonporritt.com

www.greenfutures.org.uk


Future Policy Risks and Opportunities for the UK’s Environmental Industry: Anticipating UK and EU Policy

In Association with:

8 December 2009 Cavendish Conference Centre, London W1

Keynote Speakers Dan Norris MP Minister for the Environment

Nick Herbert MP

Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment

Tim Farron MP

Liberal Democrat Spokesman for the Environment

Timo Makela

Director of Sustainable Development, European Commission

Other Speakers Include Ed Mitchell Head of Business Performance and Regulation, Environment Agency

Hugh McNeal Director, Low Carbon Business Opportunities, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

Professor Jim Skea Committee on Climate Change

The DeďŹ nitive Conference for Understanding the Business Implications of UK and EU Environmental Policy Co-Sponsors:

www.eic-uk.co.uk/eicnationalconference2009.cfm For more info email: info@eic-uk.co.uk


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