Green Futures - No.69

www.greenfutures.org.uk No.69 July 2008

Out of the crunch

Will recession trigger green growth?

Also in this issue: • What price carbon?

• Rowan Williams, turbulent priest • Cleantech sweeps America

Contents

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Contents

Number 69 July 2008

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Photos: JacksonBone, Joson/Zefa/Corbis, www.modcell.co.uk, Earth Policy Institute, Richard Baker/Corbis, Martin Gallagher/Corbis

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30

34 32

Features

Regulars

Partner viewpoints

16 Into the red – out with the green?

4

Briefings – The cutting edge of news and best practice.

22

Silver lining on credit for social business – Triodos Bank

24

A thousand words – told in one big picture.

28

35

American Eye – gasoline prices are driving change.

A chance to lead the world on carbon capture – Yorkshire Forward

34

Whitehall Watch – time for leadership with vision.

The new look of tomorrow’s homes – Entec UK

45

Energy majors in the dock on climate change – WWF

Recession – a spur to sustainability?

Martin Wright investigates.

23 Shelter from the storm Mike Scott checks out green investment as a safe haven.

26 The Green Futures Interview: Rowan Williams Martin Wright draws out the Archbishop of Canterbury on the environment, morality and politics.

30 Reasons to be cheerful Lester Brown finds cause for optimism on climate change.

36 37 47 48

Forum for the Future Update Letters And another thing…

Martin Wright extols the joys of green.

32 What price carbon?

The government’s shadow pricing tool needs sharpening, says Rebecca Willis.

41 Hang the DJ Chantal Cook saw the future of radio. Now she broadcasts it on Passion for the Planet.

42 Riding with the Rail Guru Ed Gillespie is on the right track with the Man in Seat 61.

44 Energy for change Award-winning projects from Tibet to Truro.

Front cover illustration: JacksonBone

www.itho.co.uk 0870 460 6741 www.greenfutures.org.uk

Green Futures July 2008 1

Partners Partners

Editorial

About us Green Futures is the flagship publication of Forum for the Future. It aims to be a leading source of information, opinion and debate on progress towards sustainable development. 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

Contributors to this issue include: commitment to the pursuit of sustainable development. They take an active part in the debate through ‘Partners’ 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 Lindsay Travis.

01242 262 729 l.travis@forumforthefuture.org.uk

Editors ROGER EAST MARTIN WRIGHT (AT LARGE) Deputy Editor HANNAH BULLOCK Assistant Editor JON WALLACE

Ed Gillespie writes fast but travels slowly.

Creative director of Futerra, the sustainability communications company, Ed recently took a year out to go round the world by train, boat, bus, bike and foot – which just about qualifies him to sit on Eurostar for a day with the legendary Man on Seat 61.

Contributing Editor BEN TUXWORTH Magazine Design JENNY SEARLE ASSOCIATES/ ANDY BONE Partnerships, Special Publications & Advertising LINDSAY TRAVIS 01242 262729 lindsay@greenfutures.org.uk

Our Partners Aga Foodservice Group Alison Neville, 0121 711 6000 www.agafoodservice.com

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

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

GSH Group Neil Fright, 01782 200400 www.gshgroup.com

BP Christine Dewey, 020 7496 4000 www.bp.com Climate Care Michael Buick, 01865 207000 www.climatecare.org Commission for Rural Communities Paul Pennycook, 01242 534056 www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk DTZ Cassandra Campbell, cassandra.campbell@dtz.com www.dtz.com Ecotricity Matt Thomas, 01453 756111 www.ecotricity.co.uk Ecover Belgium NV Mick Bremans, +32 3 309 2500 www.ecover.com

The National Trust Mike Collins, 01793 817708 www.nationaltrust.org.uk The Natural Step International Louise Bielenstein, +46 8 789 29 00 www.thenaturalstep.org Pureprint Group Yvie Dear, 01825 768811 www.pureprint.com RBS David Graham, 0131 523 7453 www.rbs.co.uk Royal Mail Martin Blake, 01252 528 681 www.royalmail.com RWE npower Anita Longley, 01793 892716 www.RWEnpower.com Sainsbury’s Caroline Miller, 020 7695 3078 www.sainsburys.co.uk

Skanska Tanya Barnes, 01923 423906 Noel Morrin, +46 8 7538898 www.skanska.com

Green Futures would like to thank: Tom Bamford (intern) Melanie Thompson (proofreading) Shelley Hannan (web)

Thames Water Utilities Darren Towers, 0118 373 9063 www.thameswater.co.uk

Editorial Overseas House, 19-23 Ironmonger Row, London, EC1V 3QN Tel: 020 7324 3660 Email: post@greenfutures.org.uk

Triodos Bank James Niven, 0117 980 9721 www.triodos.co.uk TUI Travel Jane Ashton, 01293 5888511 www.fcenvironmentandpeople.com Unilever UK Thomas Lingard, 01932 261613 www.unilever.com Vodafone Group plc 01635 672980 www.vodafone.com WWF-UK Dax Lovegrove, 01483 412395 www.wwf.org.uk Yorkshire Forward Mike Smith, 0113 394 9741 www.yorkshire-forward.com

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. 2008

Environmental Policy Forum for the Future is certified to ISO14001 standards. For full details of our environment policy, visit: www.forumforthefuture.org.uk Green Futures is printed by Beacon Press, using their environmental print technology and vegetable based inks.

Editorial

T

here aren’t many subjects on which I prefer Harry S

Truman’s words to those of Oscar Wilde. But the former US president’s prosaic definitions – “a pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities, while an optimist makes opportunities of his difficulties” seem more helpful in these crunch times than the poet’s cry, “the basis of optimism is pure terror”.

Much of this issue of Green Futures focuses on that gloomiest of topics, economic recession.

But you’ll note a recurring strain of optimism (Truman style) in the analysis of what a worsening crisis might open up for the sustainability agenda. Martin Wright has canvassed the views and expectations of a wide range of ‘thinkers and doers’ for our cover feature ‘Into the red, out with the green’ [pp16-21]. None of them could be accused of ‘blind optimism’ – their attitudes are based on evidence, backed by well reasoned argument. All of them consider the balance of threats and opportunities, while looking for a path forward rather than a place to hide.

Ian Christie is a writer and adviser on sustainable development who has that rarest gift: he’s immensely practical but also shamelessly reflective. These qualities survived, intact, a stint as joint head of sustainability at Surrey County Council. A former deputy director of Demos, Ian is an associate of Green Alliance – and firmly convinced that economic downturn doesn’t mean the blues for the greens.

This positive spirit does not lead everyone to the same conclusions. Indeed, optimism is one of the few common ingredients in such radically divergent perspectives as Lester Brown’s conviction that a great leap forward for cleantech means coal is dead in America [p30], and Yorkshire Forward’s aim of boosting regional revival by investing big-time in carbon capture and storage [p28]. You couldn’t accuse Green Futures of closing its mind to debate.

Nor is this magazine all about recession. Far from it. In fact, it’s full of people and the many and varied things that matter to them – from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the founder of Passion for the Planet and that enigmatically named train travel guru, the Man in Seat 61. There are serious pieces on tough policy issues too, in our regular Whitehall Watch, and Rebecca Willis’s critique of shadow carbon pricing [p32]. Not to mention a full dose of solutions-focused news in the Briefings section – and much else besides.

If all this prompts you to action, or reflection, or just helps boost your level of creative optimism, then Green Futures will be worth the (carefully chosen) paper it’s printed on. Don’t forget that there will be more news, views and features on our regularly updated website to keep you going over the summer until you next see us back in print again. And remember, too, that we value your feedback and your contributions to the debate – by letter, email, or (easiest of all?) by adding your comments to what you read online.

The phrase ‘veteran environmentalist’ could have been coined for America’s Lester Brown, who’s well into the fifth decade of a campaigning career which has combined intensive research with crisplyworded calls to action. Far from being a grumpy old man, he’s now scenting a dramatic shift in the wind in American energy policy.

I look forward to hearing from you.

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Single print copies of Green Futures are mailed in a degradable polythene film, which is recyclable, and non-toxic in landfill.

2 Green Futures July January 20082008

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Roger East roger@greenfutures.org.uk

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Mike Scott has nine years at The Times imprinted on his CV and his memory – and now runs his freelance life writing on a broad spectrum of environmental business issues from a base in Bournemouth. A perfect combination of experience, we thought, from which to assess the potential of green investment as a safe haven in stormy times.

Green Futures July 2008 3

Briefings

Briefings

Briefings

Great wall of light

Sun rises on US energy scene

Think bike lights, then think big

California’s “biggest ever” solar project follows record year for industry growth America’s solar energy industry is coming of age. A record growth year in 2007 pumped over $2 billion into the economy, and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) is projecting that revenues for the sector as a whole – manufacturers and distributors of photovoltaic, concentrating solar power and solar heating technologies – will again more than double in 2008. The biggest boost of all was this April’s announcement by utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric that it will buy up to 900MW of electricity from five new solar thermal power plants (pictured left) to be built by BrightSource Energy over the next decade in the Mojave Desert. see page 6 >

“

“

“Oil and gas reserves will be the biggest source by far of global political tension and potential conflicts. If we don’t sort this out, there will be wars fought over oil. You can argue there already have been.”

Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish and Southern Energy

“The politics [of tackling climate change] is changing in every country in the world because the science is telling us we have less time than we thought.”

While the credit crunch has led to job losses in the financial and property industries, the environmental sector is bucking the trend; the market for so-called ‘green collar’ jobs is thriving.

Between May 2007 and May 2008, environment and sustainability recruitment specialists Acre Resources observed a 20% increase in jobs offered – with climate change the fastest growing sub-sector. www.acre-resources.co.uk

4 Green Futures July 2008

Tokyo target

Shrink wrap

Goods without wrappers catch on with shoppers A shop in Islington is changing the way we look at packaging. For self-evident reasons, it’s called ‘Unpackaged’. It’s the brainchild of Catherine Conway and the concept is simple: do away with packaging altogether. Conway started with a market stall, but she soon outgrew those small surroundings and relocated to her new larger premises – where she now runs a thriving shop stocking organic wholefoods and other green products, all free of the unnecessary packaging that often ends up in landfill. see page 11 >

Japan has announced its intention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60-80% by 2050. It’s good to see the higher figure gaining currency there, as it is in UK government circles. Ahead of the G8 summit in Japan in July, prime minister Yasuo Fukuda also unveiled a trial national carbon market, which could help prepare Japan for participation in a wider global scheme. www.env.go.jp/en Offshore bonanza beckons

$2 billion The value of the world’s largest ever order for wind turbines – 667 of them, to be supplied by GE at $3 million each. The buyer, legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens, is preparing to build the world’s biggest wind farm in the Texas panhandle – and he’ll be purchasing four times this many turbines before he’s done [see p31].

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Photos: Greenpix, www.emmamyrtle.com, Siemens

Green skills in demand

”

Uncontained delight

Wind among the Jewels

Photos: Joson/Zefa/Corbis, Yuriy Panyukov/iStock

”

Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Chinese capital showcases solar powered LEDs It might not be the biggest wall in China, but the Greenpix Zero Energy Media Wall in Beijing can lay claim to its own record. Comprising 20,000 square feet of computer-controlled LEDs, it is the largest of its kind ever built. Better still, it’s powered entirely by the sun.

Located on the Xicui entertainment complex near the site of the Olympic games, the wall features thousands of solar capture cells attached to each of the glass panels. It’s the first time perforated photovoltaics laminated in glass have ever been used on a building in China, and the result is an imposing and colourful display.

It works by capturing solar energy in the panels throughout the day. At night the stored energy brings the LEDs to life, displaying a series of video installations and performances by artists from around the world. – Tom Bamford

Although Shell shocked the renewables industry by pulling out of the massive London Array project, a big future still beckons for offshore wind in the UK. The Crown Estate (which owns the seabed within UK territorial waters) has now launched Round Three of its site-leasing programme. It’s inviting bids for new development sectors where operators can build offshore wind farms with a potential combined capacity of some 25GW. That’s a giant step for

www.greenfutures.org.uk

the industry’s coming of age, building on the 8GW currently under development through Rounds One and Two. What’s more, the Crown Estate will be investing its own money this time, not in actually building or operating wind farms, but to meet up to 50% of the cost of getting sites through the planning permission stage. www.thecrownestate.co.uk www.bwea.org.uk

UK wind power capacity Onshore: 2.1GW in operation, 0.8GW under construction, 2.5GW with planning consent.

Offshore: 0.4GW in operation, 0.4GW under construction, 2.8GW with planning consent.

Source: British Wind Energy Association

Green Futures July 2008 5

Briefings

Briefings

Solar sunrise < contd from page 4 The SEIA is also trumpeting the investment of billions of Wall Street investment dollars in solar energy companies. A survey of its members revealed an impressive tally of 80 major projects in the planning stages that, if built, would represent about 56GW of renewable electricity and 20,000 permanent jobs.

The five BrightSource solar thermal plants in the Mojave Desert, whose construction cost is estimated at around $3 billion, will employ about 1,000 workers, and provide enough electricity for 540,000 Californian homes a year. “From what I know, this is the biggest commitment ever in the history of solar,” declared John Woolard, BrightSource Energy’s CEO and president.

His company’s solar thermal (or concentrating solar power) technology uses what it calls “distributed power towers”, in which thousands of moveable mirrors capture and concentrate sunlight to heat water in a boiler to more than 540˚ Celsius. The steam that results drives a turbine that generates electricity. The company predicts that the first plant, with a capacity of 100MW, will be operational in 2011, and the rest by 2016.

BrightSource’s announcement comes hard on the heels of a separate deal,

Waiting for the waves in Siadar Bay

in November 2007, between PG&E and rival solar manufacturer Ausra to build a 177MW solar thermal Megawatts in the Mojave plant, also in California.

There is one major caveat to this rosy outlook. A federal subsidy, which covers 30% of the cost to solar manufacturers of building plants, expires at the end of 2008 and has not yet been renewed by Congress. SEIA president Rhone Resch has warned that “should the solar investment tax credit be allowed to lapse, after only three years in existence, companies will see a substantial loss of jobs and reduced revenue growth”.

Both the industry and environmental groups are lobbying vigorously on the issue. As Green Futures was going to press, proposed legislation on extending the tax credit subsidies was facing problems in Congress, with the Senate holding up progress on a bill passed by the House of Representatives in mid-May. – Polly Ghazi

One down, but one to go Renewed optimism follows “bitter disappointment” over Lewis wind farm It was a case of one door closing, another opening for renewable energy on the island of Lewis.

Plans for what would have been Europe’s single largest onshore wind farm on the Hebridean island, with 181 turbines, were rejected by the Scottish government – shortly after it gave the green light for a 35-turbine project near Brora on the east coast of mainland Scotland.

www.seia.org

“

“The high-priced energy environment is being driven by the fact that demand has outstripped supply. We have sopped up all the available spare oil production capacity in the system... and there is no silver bullet that will immediately solve our energy challenges or drastically reduce costs at the gas pump.”

Samuel Bodman, US Energy Secretary

But our attention shouldn’t stray from Lewis just yet – because npower renewables and Inverness-based company Wavegen have recently submitted plans to harness up to 4 megawatts of electricity from Atlantic waves entering the island’s Siadar Bay. Building on Wavegen’s experience of creating the world’s first commercial wave generator, the Siadar Wave Energy Project (SWEP) would be another step towards scaleable wave power, and the first development under the Scottish government’s Marine Supply Obligation. “By 2020 we hope to have at least 100MW of operating wave power stations in UK waters,” said Bill Langley, marine renewables development manager at npower. “I envisage this capacity being split between near shore schemes like Siadar and offshore, floating schemes.”

”

Microgen aid for the fuel poor

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Photos: Wavegen, Marine Current Turbines TM Ltd

The record sum likely to be spent this year on the ever pricier business of oil exploration and production by the Big Seven oil majors – Exxon Mobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, Total and ConocoPhillips. The cost estimate, which comes from Lehman Brothers Holdings, is more than four times higher than the equivalent figure in 2000.

www.eeda.org.uk

6 Green Futures July 2008

www.npower-renewables.com www.wavegen.co.uk

Seagen tidecatcher makes its debut

Photos: Brightsource, JacksonBone

Fuel price increases are tipping literally millions more people in the UK into fuel poverty (officially defined as needing to spend 10% of income on household fuel bills to stay adequately warm). Seeing this not just as a crisis but as an opportunity to promote renewable microgeneration technologies, the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) is making £1million available to help the region’s ‘fuel poor’ to invest in their own kit – from backyard wind turbines to rooftop solar panels and air and ground-source heat pumps.

Langley acknowledges, however, that proven technologies and financial viability won’t be enough to open the waters for development: “Planning issues will come into play once wave power stations beyond the first demonstration schemes are proposed. It’s a busy sea out there – and environmental consultees’ raison d’être is to maintain the status quo.”

The fate of the Lewis Wind Farm certainly showed that planning restrictions won’t be bowled over by government targets. Although the 650 megawatt project would have contributed a sizeable chunk of the UK’s renewables target, the proposed site was a Special Protection Area designated under the EC Birds Directive. Chris Tomlinson, director of programme strategy at the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA), sees a crucial period ahead: “The government has targeted 10% of UK electricity supply to come from renewable sources by 2010, of which 4.5%, or around 6 gigawatts, will need to be sourced from onshore wind energy. Currently we have just over 5.5 gigawatts confirmed for delivery in 2010. Therefore, all eyes are firmly fixed on the next one or two key decisions from the Scottish government, who have the power to facilitate delivery of the target.” – Jon Wallace

The innovative tide-harnessing turbine known as SeaGen is securely in place, linked up to the grid, and almost ready to start turning the rapid ebbs and flows of Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough into green electricity. The largest tidal stream power device in the world, with twin rotor blades measuring 16 metres across, it should also be the first to generate energy on a commercial scale when final tests are completed in a few weeks’ time. Turning at a stately (and therefore ‘fishfriendly’) 10-20 rotations a minute, it will produce enough electricity for a thousand average homes.

With a capacity rated at 1.2MW, it’s about half as powerful as a modern wind

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turbine, but with the advantage of highly predictable operating times of up to 18-20 hours per day. And you could hardly call it visually intrusive. Martin Wright, managing director of the developers Marine Current Turbines, says that his company has plans for a more sizeable commercial tidal farm of up to 10MW in UK waters within the next three years, adding: “With the right funding and regulatory framework, we believe we can realistically achieve up to 500MW of tidal capacity by 2015 [see GF67 p20 for overall prospects for UK tidal power] based on this new SeaGen technology.”

A turbine to turn the tide

www.seageneration.co.uk

Green Futures July 2008 7

Briefings

Briefings

The taming of the screw $2 million The sum committed by hotel chain Marriott International to an environmental management scheme to protect 1.4 million acres of endangered rainforest in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. While the move comes as part of a wider scheme to cut the carbon footprint of its own operations – estimated at 2.9 million tonnes of CO2 annually, based on energy consumption of its buildings and employee travel – hotel guests will soon be able to make their own offset payments into the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation too.

Eureka!

In addition to Ashburton, we have schemes at various stages of commissioning at Howsham and Bonfield Ghyll in North Yorkshire, Stockport, Monmouth, Oxford and Strathdon in Aberdeenshire.”

Archimedes himself had a good eye for a renewable solution, having also got to grips (the historians say) with the power potential of the sun. By angling a series

In its latest drive to cut back on waste, Sainsbury’s will shortly start selling milk in recyclable plastic ‘pouches’. The initiative, in partnership with milk supplier Dairy Crest, will only work if customers prove more green-minded than they were in 2001, when the supermarket chain’s first attempt to wean us onto pouches was abandoned due to lack of consumer interest. The pouch is designed to reduce packaging by 75% – and if all the plastic milk bottles in Britain were replaced in this way, says Sainsbury’s, it would keep 100,000 tonnes of plastic waste out of landfill every year.

“It’s less clear cut than it might seem,” though, for Alice Roberts, policy consultant at the Local Government Association. “This would reduce waste to landfill when compared to standard plastic milk cartons, but the pouch material may not get recycled at the moment because it is much lower value – too low in fact.” An LGA report in May shows that up to 38% of supermarket food packaging cannot be recycled – showing only a two percentage point improvement on the previous year.

– Tom Bamford

The national distrust Environmental messaging bedevilled by ‘greenwash’ “Only 10% of US and UK consumers trust green messages from businesses,” said Accountability and Consumers International.

That was a year ago – and it’s getting worse. Leading advocates of the sustainability agenda, anxious to combat the twin cancers of manipulative messaging and consumer knee-jerk cynicism, are now looking to ‘out’ the culprits – and provide some kind of ground rules for genuine communication.

Two recent contributions to this cause are Forum for the Future’s Ecopromising report [p39], and a new ‘greenwash guide’ from those savvy sustainable comms specialists at Futerra [www.futerra.com] – who helpfully boiled theirs down to a “two minute version”. So, for those of you under even more time pressure, here’s that summary summarised:

The one minute version

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“Personal carbon budgets would make the poll tax riots look like a veritable tea party.”

”

Peter Ainsworth suggests that the Conservatives won’t be leading from the front on this one.

www.sainsburys.co.uk www.lga.gov.uk

8 Green Futures July 2008

Bright LEDs on the home front >

www.mannpower-hydro.co.uk www.environment-agency.gov.uk

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Photo: iStock/Marshall Bruce, Futerra

From cow to bag

of concave mirrors, similar to those now being used in concentrated solar power plants, he reflected the sun’s rays onto Roman ships invading Syracuse. Appropriately enough, Sicily is building a solar power station named after him. – Jon Wallace

Photos: www.glendell.co.uk, Rocter/shutterstock

Ancient technology finds new application Thousands of years after it was invented for drawing water out of ship hulls, the ‘Archimedes screw’ has been rediscovered as an efficient, low-maintenance and ecologically sound hydropower generator.

The new twist on a (very) old idea was first seen in the UK in March of last year when the River Dart Country Park in Ashburton, Devon, added an 11 metre screw to a section of the river. One year on and the device has performed well on all fronts, producing up to 48 kilowatts at peak flow – enough to meet all the Park’s energy needs with a surplus left to sell back to the grid.

The generator also gets the nod from the Environment Agency, whose study of its impact on fish migration left senior technical specialist Alan Butterworth “greatly encouraged by the apparent safety for fish passing through compared to other technologies”.

That’s an important outcome for Mo MacLeod, development manager at MannPower Consulting who designed Ashburton’s new turbine: “Sites which have previously been written off for micro-hydro development,” she told Green Futures, “owing to fish protection and other ecological issues, are now being revisited for Archimedean screw developments with the blessing of the Environment Agency.

UK research promises great leap forward on ultra-low-energy bulbs Scientists at the University of Strathclyde have high hopes that they can push their energy-tolight conversion efficiency up to 75%. The key, it seems, is to release more of the light that currently stays trapped in LEDs because of their high refractive index.

Dr Faiz Rahman, who is leading the work at Strathclyde, foresees even higher efficiencies for LED devices in years to come; some researchers, he points out, have claimed efficiencies of up to 90%. This compares to less than 15% for incandescent bulbs and around 72% for fluorescents. Whether they’re used for displaying stunning artwork, or saving energy in the home, LEDs look like the one to watch in the quest for more light for far less energy. – Tom Bamford

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What is it? An environmental claim about people, organisations or products which is unsubstantiated (a fib) or irrelevant (a distraction).

Where is it? In advertising, in PR and on packaging.

Can’t the regulators stop it? Up to a point. The Advertising Standards Authority is showing more spunk about picking off the worst offenders, and the Green Claims guide is being revised, while the US Federal Trade Commission has brought forward its plans to review its advertising messaging guidelines. But it’s an uphill struggle for them and their counterparts around the world.

Why does it matter anyway? Because green consumers send strong signals by their purchasing choices, and create a ‘virtuous circle’ that helps companies grow the market for environmentally responsible products. But their confidence is being undermined.

Greenwash throws a spanner in the works.

Are there no standards? None of the UK’s biggest advertising agencies claim to have guidelines or training for staff on recognising when ‘green’ claims are genuine – nor do the main publications have proper standards to vet what goes into their advertising space.

What is to be done? Learn to spot greenwash, and be vigilant; the next few years will show whether companies, agencies and consumers together can spin the virtuous circle, or “whether runaway greenwash will bring the new green revolution crashing down”.

Green Futures July 2008 9

Briefings

Briefings

“ Farm food nation?

Sustain, www.sustainweb.org

Mark Constantine, CEO, Lush Cosmetics

”

Indian leaves bring new life to disposable crockery They’ve been used in rural India for countless years, but ‘disposable’ plates made from leaves are now becoming a big hit on British dining tables.

For generations, residents of Orissa in India have sewn together leaves from local sal and siali plants then compressed several layers of them together to make heat and greaseproof plates, commonly used at weddings and festivals. Jo Lawbuary, the co-founder of London-based fair trade partnership Ganesha, was so impressed by the plates she saw on her trips to India that she began selling them in the UK. Since last year the plates have been available from Ganesha’s shops in London and by mail order. They’re now a hot item at selected Oxfam shops too.

As the plates are sourced through fair trade organisations, it’s not only Brits seeking an environmentally friendly way of avoiding the washing-up who benefit, but the Indian villagers – predominantly women – who make them.

“They’re getting a fair price for their labour,” says Lawbuary. “When you talk to the women, they all say very similar things: If you put the money into the hands of a mother, the whole family benefits – they use the money for food, education, health. The women without families say they are going to buy make-up. Just like us, I suppose.” – Alison Winward

Bread rising Campaign backs ‘real’ baking, exposes factory failings Good bread needs to be at the centre of our tables again, says organic baker, teacher and campaigner Andrew Whitley. So get ready for a nationwide Real Bread Campaign, due to launch later this year.

Whitley, who founded the pioneering Village Bakery in the 1970s and now runs bread making and baking courses from his home in the Lake District, is working on the campaign with UK food and farming charity Sustain. It aims to inform people about where to buy real bread, put them in contact with the country’s best organic wheat farmers and millers, and encourage them to share recipes and even sourdough starter cultures. (These can be made from water and flour and are used instead of yeast in certain breads. People use the same ones for years; in fact Whitley still uses one that he brought back from a Russian bakery 18 years ago.)

Top of Whitley’s list of concerns about factory-made bread is the speed at which it is made, leading to many ‘unnatural’ shortcuts – the worst of which, he says, is what he calls “the big secret of modern baking: enzymes”. Derived from various sources – animal, vegetable, fungal, microbial – these are added to bread to make it lighter, softer and, above all, to give it that allimportant longer shelf-life. “We are eating things that in the entire history of Homo sapiens we have never eaten,” says Whitley. “At best this is an experiment, but it’s not an honest experiment…”, especially since the labelling on bread packets is “misleading and inadequate”.

Enzymes, for example, do not need to be labelled at all since they are treated simply as processing aids.

– Giovanna Dunmall www.breadmatters.com

10 Green Futures July 2008

Leaf service

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www.ganesha.co.uk

830,000 The number of ‘Green Jobs for America’ which could be created through a campaign for greater energy independence based on boosting renewable power production, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club, which are promoting a big campaign on this issue in the run-up to the presidential elections.

Uncontained delight < contd from page 5 Photo: Supri Suharjoto/Shutterstock, Shutterstock/Ugorenkov Aleksandr

State law opens way for local farm food into US schools and low-income communities So far, America’s booming local food movement has largely been limited to the farmers’ marketloving middle class. But that’s starting to change. Schoolchildren, food aid recipients and food bank users are now set to get fruit, vegetables and meat fresh from the farms of Washington, under that north-western state’s new Local Farms-Healthy Kids and Communities Act. The legislation commits $600,000 a year to provide a “locally grown fruit and vegetable snack program” targeted at elementary schools with high numbers of low-income students. It will also enable schools to buy fresh local food – which is often more expensive – by exempting administrators from previous rules that forced them to accept the lowest bid for meat, dairy products, and fruit and veg.

Families eligible for food stamps will now be able to use them to buy fresh, nutritious produce at farmers’ markets, thanks to the provision of $50,000 under the new Act for 20 payment collection machines that handle balance transfers. Farmers’ markets operating near low income neighbourhoods will get priority in receiving these machines – whose absence has been a major obstacle to serving food stamp families. The state government will also provide $350,000 to enable three food banks serving poor households to set up contracts directly with local farmers. And there will be new posts in the state agriculture department to oversee the local food programmes, help connect schools, farms and wholesalers, and commission research on ways that farms could collectively distribute their wares to meet demand.

The pioneering scheme won overwhelming bipartisan support and was backed by an unusual coalition of environmentalists and farmers’ associations, along with anti-poverty, children’s welfare and parents’ groups. It places Washington State at the forefront of increasing local and state efforts to get more farm-fresh, locally grown food into schools and other institutions in order to promote good nutrition, preserve land, and cut greenhouse gases. “This is being recognised as the most comprehensive local foods programme in the United States,” Tom Geiger of the Washington Environmental Council told the Kitsap Sun newspaper.

“We are already getting calls from around the country.”

Campaigners in the UK also see it as a powerful example of what might be done here with a more robust approach to sustainable procurement. “We need to see more This little veggie went of this kind of legislation, especially as it removes the obligation to market… to buy from the cheapest source,” says Jeanette Longfield of Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming. “Some governments are waking up and putting sustainability – not money – first. In Holland they have introduced a national target of 100% sustainable public procurement by 2010. This, and not the voluntary approaches and piecemeal initiatives we have in the UK, is the way to transform markets.” – Polly Ghazi

“All this ‘Buy One, Get One Free’, this ‘3 for 2’ stuff really winds me up. It’s just a way of inflating prices to encourage excessive consumption. We’ve come up with a really good alternative which we’re very excited about. It’s called ‘Buy One – Get One’.”

Customers are encouraged to bring along their own containers and fill up from the range of products, from dried fruit, nuts and seeds to tea, coffee and olive oil. If you forget to bring a container, Unpackaged will sell you a one-off reusable one. As well as eliminating the need for packaging, Unpackaged does not stock any air freighted products. It’s all certified organic (with the exception of teas) and Conway sources fair trade produce where possible.

Now she aims to expand the business into further retail outlets: “The idea is positive on so many levels,” she says. “It supports local shops and producers, educates customers

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about their environmental impact and provides good quality affordable products.”

While supermarket aisles free from packaging may still be some way off, the UK’s major retailers are all pledging to cut back on the amount of packaging they use without sacrificing the quality and freshness we all take for granted. Waitrose has a stated aim to “eliminate packaging wherever possible, and to switch to more environmentally sustainable materials, including using recycled and recyclable packaging”. Sainsbury’s is now the single largest user of compostable packaging in Europe. – Tom Bamford

Ethics in the bag Indian co-op helps ditch plastic carriers With disposable plastic bags under fire as the environmental bogeyman of the moment, businesses on the lookout for reusable alternatives might learn something from Paravur. A women’s cooperative in this village in Kerala, south India, is helping members work their way out of poverty by offering fair pay for making cotton bags.

Liz Shackleton, director of the Londonbased company Jamm Print and Production, helped start the project when she was looking for ethically produced tote bags for a charity mailing. She soon realised she could not get them at competitive prices without doing something herself – and, inspired by a meeting with Paravur-based community activist Shanta Pillai, she arranged for her company to put up a £15,000 interest-free loan to start the Jamm Paravur co-op. Her client helped with set-up cash by agreeing to pay in advance for a proportion of the bags.

“Jamm Paravur is making a huge difference to the women – it has to thrive,” says Liz. The project, overseen by Pillai, enables its workers to earn up to four times more than they would elsewhere, and also provides such important benefits as free meals and a crèche. A share of the profits will eventually go to a community fund; the women hope to build a health facility for poor children.

The Co-Operative Group’s fair trade strategy development manager Brad Hill also knows the difficulties of sourcing ethical reusable bags. He worked with Supreme Creations, which had a factory in India, to help his suppliers obtain official Fairtrade status.

Cooperatives like Paravur’s, says Hill, should be supported: “When these schemes are built up, it’s usually because they are needed in the area. We are very keen to support cooperatives and to try to help with market access.” – Louise Vennells Jamm Print and Production, www.jamm.co.uk For more on linking Indian traditional skills with world markets, see ‘Weaving a future that works’ in the recent Green Futures special publication Monsoons and miracles.

www.beunpackaged.com

Green Futures July 2008 11

Briefings

Briefings

Boris beds in

Here’s some they planted earlier

Major tree-planting under way in capital as new research points to health benefits Fresh from his victory in the London mayoral elections, Boris Johnson has announced a scheme to plant 10,000 new trees on the streets of the capital over the next three years. Funded by the Greater London Authority (GLA), charities such as Trees for Cities are to draw up a list of the 40 areas they believe would benefit most. Londoners will then be able to vote (via the GLA website) on the order the areas receive their trees.

The announcement comes shortly after publication of a Columbia University report showing that tree-lined streets cut levels of asthma in urban areas – particularly among young children.

Conducted in New York, the study found that for every additional 343 trees per square kilometre, asthma rates fell 25% among children aged between four and five, even after taking account of factors such as relative affluence and local sources of pollution.

It remains unclear how much of that is directly attributable to trees cleaning the air of pollutants. For Graham Simmonds, chief executive of Trees for Cities, that’s only the start.

“Research has shown,” he says, “that trees help to alleviate respiratory problems by trapping airborne particulates more common to towns and cities – the debate is really on the extent.

But it’s clear that people are also much keener to get out and exercise more in greener urban environments.”

That’s good for adults, and even better perhaps for those in their formative years when exposure to microbes builds an immune system more capable of fighting infection and allergies.

With 1 in 10 children in the UK currently receiving treatment for asthma, perhaps in future years we’ll see local health authorities leading investment in tree-lined streets. – Jon Wallace

Redesign for living

Coffin makers carry it off

Student design rethink takes on the compost bucket Where would you go for inspiration on sustainable design? Everyday items often merit fresh attention, and the RSA Design Directions awards might seem another obvious place to look. Its 2008 winners don’t disappoint: two in particular have come up with novel ‘everyday’ solutions.

A winner in the Sustainable Packaging category, De Montfort University student Craig Strangward came up with a design for battery packaging that allows customers to slide new batteries out and put used ones back in. Once all of the new batteries are used, customers can send the old ones back to the company for recycling, preventing the toxic disposal of depleted batteries.

Sole prizewinner in the Domestic Greenclean category, the Bio Pod (pictured) is a kitchen-top waste processor that treats kitchen waste ready for composting.

Designed by Jonathan Fenton, a student at Loughborough University, the Pod uses a nifty ionisation process, encouraging the user to recycle organic waste by eliminating unpleasant smells and health hazards.

The number of entrants in the Sustainable Packaging category, added to the awards three years ago, have increased sharply since then. “This year’s scheme demonstrates the growing interest and real enthusiasm young designers have in tackling sustainability,” said RSA head of design Susan Hewer.

– Tom Bamford

Awards fete UK’s greenest companies Another sign of the interest in ‘green exemplars’ – the new Sunday Times Best Green Companies awards. A ceremony for the top 10 in mid-May was followed by publication of the top 50 ‘Green List’ (albeit out of just 88 entrants).

Who won, and why? First overall was Tyne and Wearbased coffin manufacturer J C Atkinson and Son, beating a battalion of bigger businesses on an assessment of its environmental performance, policies and practices (addressing its carbon footprint, energy consumption and reduction, waste production and reduction, and supply chain) plus the views of its employees. Company boss Julian Atkinson was highly rated by staff for leading by example, with other positives including the use of sustainably sourced wood for the coffins, a rainwater collection system on the factory roof, and heat and energy generation from a biomass boiler running on wood offcuts and sawdust.

Five top-rated companies 1 J C Atkinson and Son 2 Carillion 3 Co-operative Financial Services 4 Pureprint Group 5 Skanska UK

Notwithstanding the celebratory mood, no-one’s kidding themselves that anyone’s perfectly green.

“Companies and employees alike have made fantastic progress in adopting green initiatives, but wholesale changes to corporate behaviour are needed to take the whole process much further,” said Will Ullstein of Munro Global, the company that did the surveys.

This Green List appears some seven months after an identically titled supplement in The Guardian, whose rather different purpose was to track the carbon emissions of the FTSE 100. The expertise for that List came from sustainability charity Forum for the Future, where Stephanie Draper, acting director of the business programme, believes that such benchmarking exercises can be useful indicators of who’s moving fastest. She stresses, however, that no company can claim to have ‘got there’ yet across the whole sustainability agenda. “There are some great examples of leadership out there,” says Draper, “but most companies are on a journey – they’re good in parts, but finding other areas more difficult. The important thing is that they go in the right direction.”

www.rsadesigndirections.org

www.treesforcities.org

12 Green Futures July 2008

”

Photos: Gaetan Lee/flickr, Jonathan Fenton

HRH Prince of Wales

Cute composter

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www.timesonline.co.uk/bestgreencompanies Photo: Shutterstock/Jean Schweitzer

“

“You would think, wouldn’t you, that protecting the ultimate capital asset upon which all future income depends – in other words this fragile planet – was worth investing in, seriously and urgently?”

Manufacturing Construction Financial services Printing & publishing Construction

The Forum for the Future report leader business 2.0 (see p39) can be downloaded at www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/leader-business The Green List on the carbon emissions of the FTSE 100, which Forum produced with The Guardian last November, is also available at www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/files/greenlist2007.pdf

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Fast lane to sane lane Local curb breaches German principle of limitless autobahn speed Fast cars are big business in Germany, but there are signs that the brakes are going on. In April the small northern state of Bremen became the first part of the country to impose an overall autobahn speed limit – aimed specifically at curbing emissions.

In truth, the importance of this is more symbolic than practical. Drivers can still do 120 km per hour (about 75mph) quite legally, which would take them round all of Bremen’s limited stretches of autobahn in not much over half an hour. Nevertheless, the state government’s action is still a significant step.

At federal level, the coalition government’s dominant Christian Democrats oppose calls for a nationwide autobahn speed limit. But with fuel cost increases making headlines across the continent, even a little restraint could help motorists save on petrol bills. According to the UK’s Department for Transport, driving at 80mph can use up to 25% more fuel than driving at 70. – Tom Bamford

Carbon pricing US style San Francisco pioneers emissions levy for local businesses In the first measure of its kind in the USA, companies in California’s Bay Area now face mandatory fees for their carbon emissions. Some 2,500 businesses, ranging from supermarkets to gas stations, oil refineries and power plants, will pay 4.4 cents for every tonne of CO2 they expel. Leading environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Clean Air Coalition, have lauded the trailblazing levy as a long overdue concrete measure which sets an example for dithering state and federal governments.

For most of the companies affected, the cost will amount only to a nominal, symbolic fee of $1 a year – but the top ten carbon polluters will pay the lion’s share of the estimated $1.1 million the levy will net annually. It’s being implemented from July 1 by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which is in charge of regulating local air pollution in seven counties including San Francisco. It already regulates emissions of around a dozen major pollutants including volatile organic compounds, nitrous oxide and soot by about 10,000 companies. Its CO2 regulation plan, approved by its board of directors in a 15-1 vote, will pay for collecting and tracking data on greenhouse gases from business and industry in the Bay Area.

“Someone needs to take a first step, and we’re running out of time when you look at the bay rising three feet by 2100 and the devastating effects of climate change,” San Mateo County supervisor Jerry Hill, the air district’s chairman, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “This is a more expensive proposition if we do nothing.”

Predictably, major polluters, led by the fossil fuel industry, have protested loudly.

Climate change is “a big issue that needs a comprehensive statewide plan to address it,” Cathy Reheis-Boyd, chief operating officer for the Western States Petroleum Association told the Associated Press. “We believe it’s premature for local air districts to design local programs before we have a state program.”

California’s state government is actually leading the way towards state regulation of greenhouse gases, approving the landmark California Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006 which sets a target of cutting CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

But the California Air Resources Board has yet to publish its plans on how this goal will be reached. At federal level, President Bush issued a belated call in April this year for the US to halt the growth of greenhouse emissions by 2025, but proposed no specific mandates or legislative action to make this happen. – Polly Ghazi Bay Area Air Quality Management District, www.baaqmd.gov

Green Futures July 2008 13

Briefings

Wind-powered recharge grid on the horizon for Danish battery vehicles It’s looking good for plug-in electric cars in Denmark – as a new scheme promises a network of renewably-powered recharging stations by 2011.

Renault-Nissan’s involvement gives big name credibility to the project, with Danish power supplier Dong Energy also lined up to supply as much additional wind-generated electricity to the grid as the 20,000 dedicated service points across the nation will require.

The driving force behind the scheme is Project Better Place (PBP). Founded by entrepreneur Shai Agassi, this Silicon Valley company works by building partnerships to set up Electric Recharge Grid (ERG) systems – which can include everything from the cars themselves to charging points, battery exchange stations and renewable energy supplies. Agassi’s approach doesn’t depend on scientific advances or new discoveries. Instead it simply integrates existing components and, by bringing together manufacturers and suppliers, enables electric car users to make longer journeys in better performing vehicles.

Earlier this year, the company announced it had teamed up with RenaultNissan to roll out a big ERG project in Israel by 2010, supported by tax incentives from the Israeli government in line with its bid for a drastic reduction in oil dependency. A key feature of the Israeli scheme is that car owners won’t buy their batteries outright, but pay a combination of a monthly rental and a per-kilometre rate. Expansion to other European countries is planned in the near future. PBP estimates that “by 2020, fuelling an internal combustion car for a single year will cost more than charging an electric car for its entire life”. – Andrew Williams

UK company’s makeover approach “could convert conventional cars” Can your current car boast the green credentials – and fuel economy – of a fuel/electric hybrid? If not, there may be a solution on the horizon, if a new conversion system lives up to its promise.

The Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA) which, despite its name, is an engineering and design consultancy company, is currently demonstrating the conversion technology on a Skoda Fabia – deliberately chosen to show that there need be nothing special about the base model. The resulting H4V (Hybrid Four Wheel Drive Vehicle) claims to do an average of 64mpg (which is 61% better than the standard Fabia’s 39mpg) while the top speed and acceleration remain broadly similar. Emissions are reported as 39% lower.

The key feature is a removable Li-ion battery pack arranged into three portable 30kW cassettes, powering the two 50 bhp electric motors which drive the car’s rear wheels. In electric-only mode it has a range of 15 miles – but here’s the twist: it can also use its petrol engine to drive the front wheels. In short, a conventional car becomes nothing less than a plug-in hybrid 4x4.

The petrol engine, and a regenerative braking system, will help top up the battery pack while the car is running. But you can get a full recharge from the mains in 30 minutes – or simply swap over the cassettes for ready-

Fuel cell power packs a punch in ‘dream car’ bracket It’s not easy being green for ‘performance’ cars, but a British-built zeroemission roadster certainly turned petrol heads at the Geneva car show in March. Three years in the making, the Morgan Lifecar is capable of doing 0 to 60 mph in a mere seven seconds – on a hydrogen fuel cell engine.

Peak oil performance

Tomorrow’s house today

50 million Let’s go to work

“

The number of car miles saved by the online journey matching service liftshare, set up 10 years ago and now winner of a 2008 Queen’s Award for Innovation. It’s an uphill battle to reverse the downward trend in car occupancy; the UK average has fallen from 2 in 1965 to just 1.6 today. An increase of just 1% would save a billion car miles.

“It seems we reached a tipping point. A large part of the recent changes [to the car market] are structural rather than cyclical.”

”

Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford, plans for life after the SUV. With sales on home turf down 42% in May alone, the company is cutting production and pinning its hopes on smaller, less gasguzzling cars [see ‘American Eye’, p35]. Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, used that same telling phrase, ‘structural rather than cyclical’, a week later when announcing a change in strategy which might even include dumping the Hummer.

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Paul Clarke of the Green Car Guide says this can be the “ultimate dream fuel” solution, though he does warn of “issues surrounding the sustainable production of hydrogen”; it’s the power that’s used in this initial process which really determines how green a fuel it is.

Looking beyond the ‘performance car’ niche, several mainstream manufacturers are also progressing with fuel cell technology to make a variety of hydrogen cars a reality. At the Frankfurt Motor Show last year General Motors (GM) unveiled the aptly named HydroGen4, while Honda debuted the first production version of its FCX hydrogen fuel cell vehicle in Los Angeles.

Such efforts are to be applauded, according to Tony Bosworth, senior transport campaigner at Friends of the Earth, though he notes that only relatively small niche brands are looking to cut emissions across entire product ranges. “The car industry should also stop lobbying against tough EU regulations to cut emissions from cars,” he told Green Futures. “At a time of high oil prices, low carbon cars are part of the future and European manufacturers have the opportunity to be ahead of the game globally.” – Tom Bamford Morgan: www.morgan-motor.co.uk Friends of the Earth: www.foe.co.uk

MIRA, www.mira.co.uk

www.projectbetterplace.com

14 Green Futures July 2008

Best in show

charged ones. “You can obtain electricity from your domestic provider far cheaper and greener than from a car engine, so plug-in hybrids make sense,” says MIRA’s Derek Charters. What’s more, he adds, “we’ve removed the main limitation of the plug-in hybrid by allowing the battery pack to come to the mains, rather than having to park right next to a socket, which is difficult if you live in a terraced house or flat”. The battery pack could also double as a power source for ‘external devices’, and the fact that such delights as electric jet-skis and quad bikes get cited suggests an appeal well beyond the devout greenie market.

So when and where can you buy one of these conversion kits? Well, actually, you can’t.

The H4V is really a concept evaluation tool, rather than something destined for public sale.

The Energy Saving Trust helped pay for the project through its low carbon R&D programme (funded by the Department of Transport) and, as the EST’s chief executive Philip Sellwood says, what MIRA has designed is “a new system allowing hybrids to be more flexible and practical for every day use”. But that’s not the end of the story, because MIRA does now plan to apply the lessons it has learned to help create more commercially oriented hybrid projects. – Roger East and Andrew Williams

Photos: Simon Burt/Apex and Denis Jones

Plug and play

Hybrids by retro-fit

Photos: Project Better Place, N. Beckerman/Getty Images

Traffic goes electric green

Briefings

Volume housebuilder showcases the zero carbon home The ‘zero carbon home’ has become concrete reality. The Barratt Green House is the first new home built by a mainstream housebuilder which measures up to the strict sustainability criteria they’ll all have to meet by 2016.

Now on show at the BRE Innovation Park in Watford, the three-bedroom family home achieves Level Six (the highest level) of the government’s Code for Sustainable Homes.

The code sets progressive minimum standards for new homes built between now and 2016, the deadline for the UK’s pacesetting requirement for all new homes to have zero carbon emissions (averaged over the course of a year).

Mark Clare, the chief executive of Barratt Developments, promised at the launch of the demonstration house in May to “take what works and apply it to house-building across the country”. His company has already won the contract with regeneration agency English Partnerships to build the first large-scale zero carbon community in the country, with 200 homes due to be completed in 2011 on the Hanham Hall Hospital brownfield site near Bristol.

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Interpreting ‘zero carbon’ has been the subject of much debate in the housing and renewable energy industries, especially over whether each individual house must generate all the renewable energy to meet its needs.

In a bid to establish consensus on this issue, the UK Green Building Council’s recent report The Definition of Zero Carbon rules out the ‘offsetting’ of the in-house renewables requirement by such means as making payments towards offshore wind farms, but does set ground rules for allowing some district heating schemes and participation in local community microgen projects.

Barratt cracks the code

None of that (save for some ‘pooling’ of solar photovoltaic electricity generation using panels spread across adjacent house roofs) should be strictly necessary for the Barratt Green House, whose key features include: • high thermal mass, based on the use of ‘aircrete’ wall panels and pre-cast concrete floor slabs; • heating from an air source heat pump and hot water from solar panels; • special provision for drying clothes at the top of the stairs using the rising currents of warm air; • window shutters which can close automatically to minimise over-heating in hot summer weather; and • rainwater harvesting linked to ‘grey water’ use for flushing toilets.

Its design, by architects Gaunt Francis, was chosen last year as winner of the Homes of the Future competition in the Mail on Sunday’s British Homes Award. – Roger East BRE, www.bre.co.uk Barratt Developments, www.barratthomes.co.uk UK Green Building Council, www.ukgbc.org British Homes Award, www.britishhomesawards.com

Green Futures July 2008 15

Feature

Danger signals Some see clear signs of trouble ahead. John Elkington, founder of SustainAbility, who has weathered several economic peaks and troughs, believes “the current frenzy around sustainability is very much a late-boom phenomenon. That doesn't mean that critically important seeds aren’t being sown, but I suspect that they will face a fairly wintry season or three before they can really get into the process of germination.”

Rhian Kelly, head of climate change at the Confederation of British Industry, has “some concerns that the issue might be put to one side as the government focuses its attention on economic worries” and sees “a danger that it could also start to drop down the corporate agenda if the slowdown worsens”.

This may mean a tough few years for sustainability professionals.

Elkington compares the present crunch to the “troubled times of the early 80s [when] some companies in heavy-end sectors like oil and chemicals had built up substantial safety, health and environment departments.

Recessionary pressures forced major cutbacks… I recall ICI losing 16-17 of these people in a single year. This time around, I think a fair few will be reassigned or, because they don't fit well elsewhere, will be ‘let go’.”

Jonathon Porritt, founder-director of Forum for the Future and chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, agrees that companies might “scale back on sustainability spending, [with] some of the larger capital expenditures being deferred”. But, he adds, “it’s important to point out that the spend within these companies is not that big anyway. I suspect what we’ll see is somewhat less manic recruitment, rather than a wave of redundancies.”

>

Still doing the business

If the green wave really is going to break on the rocky shores of recession, you’d expect niche eco sectors to be the first to get splattered. So how worried are they?

“I can’t say I’m having problems raising money,” says Dale Vince of Ecotricity, which specialises in on-site wind power. “People look at the price of fossil fuels going up, and carbon going up, and think, ‘Oooh, we’ll have some of that!’ It makes renewables look like a pretty good place to be. So they’ll continue to be attractive to banks… Frankly, we see all this talk of rising energy prices... and we just say ‘Bring it on!’”

Fighting talk, perhaps, but it’s echoed by Mark Constantine of specialist soap makers Lush. “I really Dale Vince, Ecotricity: “Bring it on” don’t think the green boom will end. After all, green things shouldn’t cost more than non-green ones – they should actually cost less, because you’re not using so much energy or resources. So for example, we don’t have to use bottles or lots of packaging, so we save money there. Items which are genuinely an environmental solution will have their own economics.

So actually, environmental entrepreneurs should be making more money, not less, because they’re not wasting it… The recession shouldn’t make a difference.”

Mark Constantine, Lush: “No difference” Jessica Sansom, sustainability manager at Innocent, the smoothie company, agrees: “In many cases the sustainable option is also the sensible business choice. For instance, reducing the amount of plastic in our bottles lowers our carbon footprint and the need for non-renewable resources, and ensures that we are no longer utilising virgin plastics which have been subject to significant increases in the cost of oil.

It also differentiates ourselves in the market.” So when it comes to a looming recession, sustainability is an asset, not a burden, she says. “It helps us to reduce Jessica Sansom, Innocent: “An asset, costs and risks, improves our reputation, and better not a burden” prepares us for a resource-constrained future.”

‘B

ye greens, see you in the

“ ”

Just a pleasant indulgence for the good times?

16 Green Futures July 2008

next boom.’ That was the scathing sign-off to an editorial in The Economist in 1991, as the last recession began to bite.

It neatly sums up the conventional wisdom that environmental concerns wither in the face of the chill winds of a downturn. Like worrying about the finish to your new kitchen, fussing over green issues is a pleasant indulgence for the good times – but when the crunch comes, you pare everything back to the essentials.

So, now that the ‘nice decade’ is over, are we set to see a ruthless, exclusive focus on the ‘nasty’ stuff – the struggle to stay afloat at any cost, to keep your job, your home, your business intact, and damn the

consequences? Will soaring oil prices combine with the credit crunch to choke off ethical investment, squeeze out demand for eco-products, and force the government to appease voters by watering down green regulations?

Or will a recession instead focus attention on the virtues of energy efficiency and renewables, encourage a culture of saving, not splurging, and bring home the inherent unsustainability – economically and environmentally – of a debt-fuelled consumer boom?

We’ve polled opinions from leading thinkers and doers in the sustainability and business worlds; and on page 20 Ian Christie reports the results of his own investigation into the likely consequences of a downturn.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Photos: Sam Lakha, Ecotricity, Lush, Innocent Drinks

Will recession force environmental issues down the agenda – or could it be an unlikely spur to more sustainable work, rest and play?

Martin Wright investigates.

So who’s vulnerable?

Some of the frothier corporate positioning might be an early casualty, along with pricey consultancy exercises. Any company facing a squeeze on shareholder dividends, or the prospect of widespread redundancies, will baulk at spending money on ‘nonessentials’. “If you see [sustainability] as just a communications opportunity, then yes, you may lose out,” comments Seb Beloe, head of socially responsible investment research at Henderson Global Investors.

But be wary of being too Euro-centric, warns Brendan May, managing director of Planet 2050 at Weber Shandwick. The demand for sustainability communications may slow in the West, “but there will always be a marketplace which needs it – like India, or China. The demand in general is growing, not falling away.”

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“ ”

Anything frothy is vulnerable

John Elkington, SustainAbility: “A wintry season looms”

Seb Beloe, Hendersons: “The business case is robust”

Green Futures July 2008 17

Feature

“ ”

We’ve been through this before

“ ” “ ”

Shell and BP’s commitment to renewables needs watching

“Only when you get into a recession will you know whether your values will hold up.”

So watch Marks and Spencer’s ambitious ‘Plan A’; watch HSBC’s massive investments in renewables and climate research; watch the (already faltering) commitment to renewables on the part of Shell and BP. For Stephanie Draper, deputy director of Forum for the Future’s Business Programme, a recession could show up very starkly which companies have truly taken sustainable development on board – and which were just flirting with it at the margins. “Those that have really got it don't leave it to the CSR department: they take it right into the heart of the business. It’s a way to manage risk and control costs, to create new products, to penetrate new markets, and so on. That means there is less immediate risk to this activity when there’s a downturn, as it’s clearly seen as a cost saver or a revenue generator.” Forum’s new report, leader business 2.0 [see p39] makes a persuasive case that such an approach really does create value – and so should weather the downturn intact.

At the CBI, Rhian Kelly agrees. “It’s clear now, more than ever, that CEOs do ‘get it’ – and many are taking

action to embed climate change into core strategy, recognising that [it’s core to] the long-term health of their business.”

And that’s one of the key differences between previous recessions and now, says Seb Beloe. “Most companies are much more sophisticated in the way they tackle sustainability… It’s much more embedded in the way they think about the future, and the business case associated with it is much more robust, [whether it’s related to] risk management processes or innovation and product development.”

For Geoff Lane, a partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, addressing such issues often “involves management time but not huge cash investment. So in a downturn, when you’re striving to keep people motivated and making sure your stakeholders are still respecting your business, [sticking with sustainability strategies] can actually add value for relatively little cash cost.”

Paul Monaghan is adamant that “if anything I’m seeing increased levels of competition in terms of ethics.

I’m not seeing any loss of interest in the sectors in which we trade. In fact we’re expanding here, in terms of budget and people.”

Regulation plays a role, too, says Lane.

of sustainable development at the University of Surrey and economics commissioner at the Sustainable Development Commission. Similarly, “business will lobby harder against regulations imposing fresh costs, and government may listen more if the economy is top of the agenda”.

Porritt, too, sees “real danger” here. “Our government is absolutely obsessed with competitiveness – and Gordon Brown is extremely anxious to avoid any additional burdens on industry… So we’ll definitely be more vulnerable to that kind of argument.

“For instance, I have heard one or two ministers arguing lately that a substantial part of the increased energy prices at the moment can be attributed to things like the Renewables Obligation and energy efficiency commitments – which is largely garbage, but when did they ever worry about the facts!”

But he takes comfort from the fact that “much of the regulatory process is now driven by the EU, which is less likely to be vulnerable to short term economic pressures of this kind”.

Industry, though, says Kelly, would welcome a more robust approach from the government. “Business more than ever needs policy certainty over the long term. It needs to know that there will be a long term price for carbon and, where carbon prices may not support the demonstration and deployment of key low carbon technologies, that the government will provide that support.”

Most commentators think a recession is unlikely to derail the slow crawl of international climate change diplomacy, partly because it’s not exactly setting stretch targets, but also because it’s focused on relatively longterm goals – ones that will only really start to bite once a downturn is over.

But will cash-strapped consumers still be willing to dig deeper for greener, more ethical products – sales of which were worth £32 billion in the UK alone last year?

It “underpins the whole agenda, particularly on climate change, but elsewhere, too. So whether companies like it or not, they can’t get around their basic obligations on environment, health and safety.” And that alone, he says, makes a nonsense of claims that “this is all a fad prone to be swept away in tough times…

My analogy is: the froth on the cappuccino may disappear, but the coffee underneath is getting stronger!”

Draper is sceptical.

“Contracting consumer spending is going to hit the high street – which is where there’s been the major flurry of sustainability activity of late.”

Will government keep its nerve?

Talking of regulation, will governments seeking popularity water down environmental rules and targets? After all, green charges, in Britain at least, are routinely derided as ‘stealth taxes’. “There could be a backlash which would make it tougher for the government to introduce or even maintain fiscal measures,” says Tim Jackson, professor

Photos: Paul Ekins

The froth may disappear, but the coffee underneath is getting stronger

For Paul Monaghan, head of ethics and sustainable development at the Co-operative Bank, there’s a danger that ‘saying it could make it so’. “We’ve been through this before, when the dot com bubble burst, and when we had all the big accounting scandals. Both times people predicted it was the death knell for corporate social responsibility. It wasn’t then, and there’s no sign it will be so now. But what worries me is that, because business has such a herd mentality, if enough people say it often enough, we will end up killing it. So we need to be careful. [Sustainability and CSR] has been quite robust in the past, and we shouldn’t forget this – through all the turmoils, it has gone from strength to strength.”

More fundamentally, though, a downturn will put to the acid test those much-vaunted claims that there’s a happy symbiosis between planet and profit. As John Quelch, associate dean of Harvard Business School, famously remarked:

Paul Monaghan, Co-operative Bank: “Saying it could make it so”

18 Green Futures July 2008

Brendan May, Planet 2050: “Demand is growing”

Tim Jackson, SDC: “Could push awkward questions to the fore”

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Paul Ekins, Kings College: “Strong case for tax reform”

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Jonathon Porritt: “Impact on green spending marginal”

Others aren’t so sure. “As long as people have money coming in,” says Porritt, “there will only be a marginal impact on green spending.” Consumers will still want to ease their consciences, predicts Elkington, so “fair trade and organic products could surprise us by their staying power”. Brendan May agrees: “People’s whole value systems don’t change because of an economic downturn. Look at the brands founded on ethics – Ben and Jerry’s, Green and Black’s.

Businesses have been desperate to buy them.” And, he adds, they can give competitive distinctiveness, too. “Kenco won’t abandon shade-grown coffee, because it maintains a key point of difference with Nestle.”

Ethical investments too [see p23] can hold up surprisingly well in tough times, fluctuating less than their mainstream rivals, observes Mark Robertson of the Ethical Research and Information Service (EIRIS). The Co-op’s Sustainable Leaders Trust, as Monaghan points out, outdid “every single other unit trust in the UK market” in 2007. At Hendersons, says Beloe, “the volume of money coming in [to our ethical funds] is more than the volume of money going out, which isn’t true for all equity funds by any stretch of the imagination”. He says ethical investors tend to be “stickier” than the conventional sort – both because of their personal commitment, and the fact they tend to view the investment as a long-term one. So for the moment at least, customers don’t seem to be fleeing sustainability in favour of cheap n’ dirty.

>A

“ ”

Ethical investors are stickier than the rest

carbon price in disguise?

Some see the surge in oil costs as being a de facto carbon price, so helping push the economy along a low-carbon path. It’s true up to a point, says Martin Brough, director of economics consultancy Oxera. “If the oil price stays above £100 a barrel, there is a huge impetus from that alone for people to become much more energy efficient. The oil price itself is acting as a surrogate global carbon price to some extent.”

But, he adds, “the danger is that if we move into Martin Brough, Oxera: “Impetus for efficiency” recession and then the oil price comes down, it will be very difficult in that environment, where we still feel as though we’re being hit in our pockets, for the government to say: ‘Right, we’re using the opportunity to fill the gap by significantly increasing [carbon taxes].’”

Paul Ekins, professor of energy and environment policy at King’s College agrees. “With every hike in the oil price, the entire lexicon of low carbon demand and supply side measures becomes less expensive, in relative terms. [But] that’s what environmental tax reform is expected to achieve. And it [would be] a much better way of doing it, because you keep the revenues in your own economy.”

Meanwhile, high oil prices alone are a blunt weapon. “Were there to be a carbon price as well,” says Ekins, “we wouldn’t see this rush by oil companies into developing tar sands, and we would see a more sustained interest in renewables.”

He’s frustrated at the failure to join the dots. “I’m not sure that I have ever heard any mainstream commentator link the increases in the oil price with its effect on climate change. I’ve heard it being discussed in terms of the economic problems to which it’s likely to lead – the inflation that then passes through to the petrol pumps, [but not] in terms of making alternative forms of travel relatively cheaper, or perhaps fostering a slightly more ‘stay at home’ kind of climate whereby people get stuck into their local communities rather than driving 200 miles to the nearest beach!”

Here, politics comes into play. “We hear the worst effects that [rising fuel costs] could have, so you’re always thinking about the little old lady and her heating bills or the isolated rural motorist and his needs to get about. So if you’re looking for silver linings [and there are plenty], you risk being seen as monumentally insensitive – and so being shafted politically.”

Green Futures July 2008 19

Feature

Swings and roundabouts

“ ”

Cleantech markets are remarkably resilient

If spending gets squeezed, major capital investments with long payback periods – such as solar panels or new waste recovery plants – could be among the first casualties. But while some green actions cost money; many save it – particularly at the level of the individual consumer (and voter). Thrift may never be the height of fashion, but it looks increasingly cool when times are hard. Hence the surge of articles lately on second-hand chic. For everyone baulking at the cost of buying organic or hiring CSR specialists, there will be someone else deciding to holiday at home, or carry out a ruthless war on wasted energy.

Rising oil prices might have helped trigger the downturn – but they also make investment in energy efficiency, in particular, look increasingly attractive.

This in turn could set off something of a positive feedback loop for renewables: the more energy we save, the greater share of our demand we’re able to meet from ‘home-grown’ sources, such as wind, tidal, wave, biomass and solar. High fuel costs also strengthen the case for a whole slew of green policies, from locally sourced organic food to green transport initiatives

encouraging walking, cycling, homeworking or carclubbing.

For the moment, investment in renewables and other clean technologies is holding up well, says Mark Campanale, associate director of London Bridge Capital.

“Whilst the broader economy is facing difficulties, the cleantech markets are remarkably resilient.” Campanale quotes some impressive growth figures: such as solar investment in the City markets rising at an average annual rate of 254% during 2004-07. “We feel 2008 will be better than 2007… Society has decided to invest in, effectively, new energy infrastructure on an enormous scale. This is getting done – and so capital is getting deployed.”

At a national level, says Paul Ekins, professor of energy and environment policy at King’s College, the single most effective intervention the government could make – especially during a recession – would be to “invest heavily in the energy efficiency of the housing stock. It’s good for the economy, and it’s good for the quality of life of the people that live in the houses.”

For maximum effect, though “we need to couple it with an environmental tax reform. There is absolutely no reason to think that this would be bad for the macro economy – it’s simply getting

Eclipse – or stimulus?

Recession doesn’t have to mean a rollback of enthusiasm for sustainability, argues Ian Christie.

H

owever serious or

otherwise the downturn we face, some commentators have been quick to argue that green politics and policies will face a recession of their own. Economic turmoil, they claim, will take policymakers’ and voters’ attention away from the environment, and focus them on more ‘pressing’ concerns.

This conventional wisdom has two things going for it. First, it is widely believed in the media and in politics, and so has a self-fulfilling character. Second, it seems to rest on solid experience – namely the supposed decline of green politics from 1990 as recession struck.

This second claim is true up to a point. The Green Party vote plummeted in the early 1990s, from its high of 15% in the 1989 European elections. And polls such as the British Social Attitudes Survey showed diminishing concern for environmental issues.

20 Green Futures July 2008

Recession did indeed seem to have eclipsed the environment as a key focus of public concern.

This is perhaps unsurprising, given the sharp rise in unemployment and home repossessions experienced at the time. But we need to think more than twice before we use the 1990s’ evidence as the basis for a general law that fatalistically assumes every economic downturn means an environmental one, too.

And here’s why.

First, a focus on immediate economic concerns does not necessarily mean a loss of concern for the environment. If I lose my job or take a large pay cut, I might worry a great deal about those things while still caring about the environment; and I might still care about the environment while feeling less of a sense of ‘agency’ for taking green action. The survey evidence from the 1990s shows a plateauing

of green priorities – but not a crash. The Rio summit of 1992 had a pervasive effect at local levels throughout the decade, and there was no sharp decline in NGO membership or support.

Second, economic upheavals don’t repeat themselves precisely, and the wider context shapes their effects. Consider the last three downturns. The 1973-74 crisis was a ‘perfect storm’ of inflation, strikes, fuel shortages and oil price rises. It focused minds in the West on energy conservation and over-dependence on oil – though sadly not for long enough.

The early 1980s were plunged into recession by more oil price hikes, and also by policies of deflation and deindustrialisation. The early 1990s crisis was the result of a credit boom and a (burst) bubble in the housing market.

All downturns are not all created equal, and the wider political and economic context counts for a lot.

So there is no cause for fatalism about environmental priorities in the current turbulence. Indeed, the present turmoil may not amount to a recession or worse in any case, and there are plenty of reasons to believe that it may not be as severe as widely feared.

[For a full discussion on this, see www.greenfutures.org.uk/eclipse_or_stimulus.]

But even if it is, public awareness of climate change, waste and environmental issues relating to food has risen considerably since the

www.greenfutures.org.uk

your taxes from one place [pollution] instead of another [income and jobs].”

Silver linings?

Back in 1991, few people this side of George Monbiot welcomed a recession. Today, there are some more mainstream voices spotting a silver lining to the economic clouds. For Paul Monaghan, the downturn “almost makes you believe there’s a god – as it may buy us the time we desperately need to turn climate change around, because economic activity will be constrained. There’s very little ‘hot’ money in the economy right now, and that’s a good thing, because hot money is usually highly speculative and short term, and I don’t think anyone would argue that it has a tendency to produce sustainability.”

Tim Jackson also sees an opportunity. “The virtues of frugality are incredibly difficult to nourish in our existing consumer culture. Politicians are obsessed with growth – so much so that it makes it hard to question whether it really is a sustainable business model. As people realise an economy as strong as ours is still vulnerable, it might prompt a change in the way we think about consumerism – we might even develop a sense of shared vulnerability. Recession could help force those questions right to the fore.”

Paul Ekins isn’t so sure. He sees a parallel with the government’s failure to act to prevent the “completely unsustainable” house price spiral. “If after many, many years of concern [with issues like growth and stability] we still have not got the regulatory structures in place to limit

economy last took a dive. Such awareness will not simply be eliminated by a downturn, even if it is no longer ‘front of mind’ for some people.

Then there’s the fact that the momentum behind significant eco-policy commitments is now established.

In the UK, the Climate Bill, along with the pervasiveness of climate change discussions and initiatives in general, means that there will be no escaping the issue, even if action is less than optimal.

Moreover, the current economic turbulence is partly due to factors that will, in effect, help maintain a focus on environmental priorities. Those who fear a ‘perfect storm’ recession note that the crisis for the banks coincides with a spike in food and oil prices.

Now, some of the latter can be attributed to speculators and to the denomination of the oil price in dollars. But more significant is the shadow of Malthus. The food price surge is rooted in the crowding out of crop production by biofuels and land take for development, in localised damage caused by the first signs of climate shifts, and in growing demand for meat from China and India. And the oil price spike is

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and if possible, prevent, the kinds of wholly unsustainable activity that have lead to the credit crunch, how much less likely is it that we’re going to get the regulatory structures in place that will allow us to live with the environmental limits?”

“Every commentator of any substance knew that we were on an unsustainable economic boom; I suspect the government must have known so too, because all the figures on credit and mortgages were well known and well publicised, and yet nobody did anything about it because it served the political purpose of the time. And that is really profoundly depressing, given that they also know we’re on an unsustainable environmental course.

But because doing something about it – taking the carbon out of the economy – is perceived as being difficult, and likely to be politically unpopular, we simply don’t do it.”

At this level, John Elkington is more optimistic, believing that history will view all this as “the processes of creative destruction at work. It’s a natural part of the economic cycle. Painful, even devastating to some, but creating the conditions for innovation and change in the same way that fires do in forests.”

And, he adds, “as the Japanese used to know, the best time to invest in new things is when the economy is going into recession – and all your competitors are cutting back. So invest now – and be ready to emerge from the recession with a bang!”

“ ”

This is creative destruction at work

Martin Wright is Editor (at Large) of Green Futures.

related to ever-rising demand for fossil fuels, and increased competition for diminishing supplies. So the recession, if it comes, will be accompanied by growing concerns about food, climate and energy security among governments, and by more focus from citizens on the cost of food, travel, heating and lighting.

Each of those can be a driver for greener behaviour. The surge in food and oil prices can be the basis for communications about local sourcing, fair trade and the transition to a low carbon economy. It could encourage interest in frugality and conservation in both households and organisations, and this too can be given a green dimension – cheaper living can be better quality living.

it comes to the hollow promises of debtfuelled consumerism.

And finally, the electoral context is much more promising for green issues than in the last recession. Assuming the general election is fairly closely contested, as seems possible, then environmental concerns could well be a ‘deal-breaker’ for many marginal voters – and for parties in coalition or minority government talks.

So there should be no fatalism about economic downturn meaning a green recession. If the above is accurate, environmentalists will have only themselves to blame if public and politicians downgrade their interest in the environment.

– Ian Christie is an Associate of Green Alliance and independent writer and advisor on SD.

Meanwhile, the banking crisis has forced regulators and politicians to make major interventions in the marketplace for the common good, and to save the markets from themselves. Public intervention is now legitimised in a way unthinkable 15-20 years ago, and this can be used to argue for more environmental incentives and smart regulation for the economy. More immediately, the time is surely right for a message of ‘Don’t get fooled again’ when

A longer version of this article is published online at: www.greenfutures.org.uk/eclipse_or_stimulus

Green Futures July 2008 21

Feature

Partner viewpoint

Green borrowers afloat

Shelter from the storm?

Green investment may have been full of thrills – but can it thrive in today’s more constricted climate? Mike Scott considers its credentials as a safe haven for the longer term investor.

Cushioned from the credit crunch? Values-led green businesses can even gain financial advantage from it.

Bevis Watts explains how.

Photo: Judy Ledbetter/iStockphoto

I

t may have been an alien

term until the middle of last year, but the ‘credit crunch’ is now only too familiar to us all.

Brought on by ill-advised sub-prime lending in the USA, it has prompted panic in the financial world, led to the contraction of credit markets and, worst of all, created the spectre of recession.

This unwelcome phenomenon has created its fair share of losers – among them, arguably, the government, the Bank of England, and some of the country’s best-known financial names. As the market for borrowing has clogged up, entrepreneurs and their businesses have been hit particularly hard, principally because they haven’t been able to access much-needed finance.

But one group of entrepreneurs appears to have benefited from all the uncertainty. Valuesdriven businesses are increasingly able to access more competitive finance from sustainable banks, giving them a competitive advantage over their mainstream competitors. Take, for example, a housing association that’s looking to grow a portfolio of properties. The new conditions may allow it to steal a march on commercial property developers, by accessing less expensive finance through a sustainable lender like Triodos (who will only lend to enterprises that benefit people or the environment). This could mean a significant competitive advantage for the values-driven housing association, since the purely profit-driven conventional commercial property developer cannot borrow from this source.

The credit crunch ‘upside’ is the result of a banking model that social banks like Triodos have developed over a number of years. Rather than borrow from other banks to find money to lend on, as most financial institutions do, they have more money on deposit than they need to lend. So there’s no requirement to go to a moribund money market. Instead, all their lending is funded by their savers’ deposits – and thus social banks can continue to lend competitively, with plenty of money to draw from. It’s an approach that’s looking increasingly enlightened as high-street names such as Barclays and HBOS are forced to go to their shareholders to raise money through rights issues – money raising exercises created to build the levels of liquidity they require.

Hedge fund manager takes a dip?

At Triodos Bank, our position is particularly pertinent. We too have raised money through an issue, but for very different reasons, in 2007 – when the credit crunch was already in full swing. Triodos’s capital raising issue at that time actually raised double its target. The Bank now has very high levels of capitalisation and liquidity, which means that the businesses and charities who borrow from us are not subject to the same pressures as the customers of many other banks. Essentially Triodos, and other banks like us, are not as desperate to protect our liquidity, hold on to our funds or raise more of them. Rather we want to continue to lend at competitive interest rates. We have not raised our lending rates as others have done, and all things being equal, we do not plan to as a result of the credit crunch.

Social banks have also built considerable expertise in markets such as renewable energy and organic farming – sectors regarded as higher risk by banks less familiar with them. This not only means that social

banks, in theory at least, have a greater appetite for investment in these markets; they can also be more competitive on terms, because they understand what and whom they’re dealing with. A gap has been created and social banks are filling it.

The credit crisis matters a great deal to UK businesses. Its impact will remain high and is likely take a long time to resolve. But it may not be all bad news. The events that have followed it suggest that social lenders not only offer a viable and more sustainable model for banking, but may also give significant advantage to green businesses, social enterprises and charities. Far from stagnating enterprise, the credit crunch’s greatest legacy may prove to be a shot in the arm for the UK’s environmental and social economy.

– Dr Bevis Watts is head of business banking at Triodos Bank.

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

22 Green Futures July 2008

www.greenfutures.org.uk

M

oney was pouring into

the environmental sector last year. ‘Clean tech’ stocks were all the rage, especially where credible renewable energy was on offer. But short term market watchers have detected a wobble. The NEX index, which specifically tracks clean energy stocks worldwide (and rose by an impressive 57% in 2007), fell almost 18% in the first quarter of 2008.

So has the chill whiff of recession choked off the growth of green investment? Not according to Amanda Davidson of financial advisors Baigrie Davis. “Despite short-term volatility,” she says, “the right areas will come good.”

That does not mean that environmental companies are going to be immune to an economic downturn, says Stephen Hine at Ethical Investment Research Services (EIRIS), but they will be well placed to take advantage of a number of underlying trends. “You should not take a one-year view, you should be looking for good steady growth over a long period,” he argues.

Volatility may be an inherent characteristic of the environmental sector, with its many small, early-stage companies often working with commercially unproven technologies.

But the long-term rationale is clear enough to counsel against reading too much into that first quarter dip. The assessment in the Stern Report, that the market for environmental products and services would reach $500 billion a year by 2050, now seems if anything an understatement. What’s more, says Alice Chapple of Forum for the Future, “as clean technology matures, investors will become much more sophisticated and discerning”.

As director of sustainable financial markets at the Forum, Chapple is only too aware that ethical investments still suffer from the City’s short-term focus: “You don’t get any credit for doing something with a 20year return…” While acknowledging that environmental and social concerns don’t always go with the best financial performance, Chapple believes that “green is no longer seen as just an ethical choice, but as one of the biggest investment opportunities there is”.

Indeed, as Hine points out, some of these environmentally focused funds aren’t necessarily even very ethical, in the traditional sense. “Clean technology funds are not ‘dark green’ because they do not necessarily look at the environmental credentials of the companies they invest in,” he says. “Making photovoltaic cells, for example, is energy intensive and creates a certain amount of pollution – but is clearly a good way of tackling climate change.”

Mind you, the UK ethical (as opposed to purely environmental) investment market has come on by leaps

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“ ”

Green is now seen as one of the biggest investment opportunities there is

Jupiter’s drivers

Emma Howard Boyd identifies three key drivers for growth in Jupiter’s Ecology Fund, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

• Governments are taking action. Measures such as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and the UK Climate Change Bill, for instance, push companies to fall into line with targets to cut carbon emissions.

• Consumers are demanding sustainability.

UK sales of organic food, cosmetics and clothes hit £2 billion in 2007, and more than eight out of 10 consumers in a survey by Co-operative Financial Services said they’d prefer an ‘eco-friendly product’ if there was a choice.

• These two factors combine to provoke a response from businesses which see an opportunity to make money.

and bounds too. An impressive 15% of new investment in 2007 went into ethical funds, says Davidson. That brought their total value to almost £9 billion in 2007.

While that’s only 1.5% of the value of total funds under management, it does mean there are now almost 100 ethical funds to choose from – and a whole range of other ‘green’ financial products too, from mortgages to ISAs. People choose them, say wealth managers Holden & Partners in their Guide to Climate Change Investing, in the hope that they will be “supporting companies that protect the environment, and avoiding those which do it excessive harm”. In practice, however, it’s worth remembering that many socially responsible investment funds actually put a high proportion of their money into “large companies which are far from cutting edge in terms of providing climate change solutions”.

But if purely clean tech investment is what you are after, there is plenty of choice. According to sector analysts New Energy Finance, no fewer than 16 funds were launched in 2007 that have more than 50% of their cash in clean or efficient energy companies. A total of $150 billion was invested worldwide last year in clean energy alone, and shares in solar companies on the NEX index rose by an eye-popping 163%.

On a rather different scale, social bank Triodos is providing crucial support for innovative small companies like Marine Current Turbines (which has just installed the world’s first commercial tidal energy scheme in Strangford Lough – see p7). Triodos’s 2005 share issue produced a return of almost 23%, or an average of over 7% per year, and more recently they’ve been raising capital via another £8.5 million share issue specifically to invest in renewable energy companies.

Established environmental funds such as Impax invest not just in energy, but in areas like waste management and water too. Waste is a £150 billion a year global market, and the £200-£250 billion water market can only grow as antiquated infrastructure in Europe and the US is replaced, and new supplies installed in emerging markets. Add to this the challenge of dealing with water-borne diseases, and securing supplies that will be restricted by climate change, and it is not hard to see why companies such as Pictet and SAM (Sustainable Asset Management) have launched water funds.

“In times of turmoil,” says Emma Howard Boyd, head of SRI and corporate governance at Jupiter Asset Management, “people seek sanctuary in large caps, which hits some green funds in the short run, but in the long term, things can only go in one direction.”

Mike Scott is a freelance writer specialising in environmental and business issues.

Green Futures July 2008 23

A thousand words

Easy rider The many freedoms of Paris now include the revolution of its bicycle wheels.

Two million times a month, somebody uses the Vélib ‘cycle freedom’ scheme launched last year, releasing one of the city’s 20,000 distinctive bikes from any of its 1500 automated lock-up stations.

French revolutions are for export too.

Londoners have been promised their own scheme on similar (if less ambitious) lines, as part of a drive to get one in ten of them joining Boris on their bikes for a round trip every day. © Francois Guillot – AFP/Getty Images

The Green Futures Interview

“Environmental work is political.

It’s saying to people: you deserve better.”

“ ”

Ignoring environmental degradation invites violence

T

hese days, we pretty much

expect our archbishops to be turbulent priests.

To dispense thinly veiled critiques of government policy along with seasonal blessings. To kick against every establishment, including their own.

In the five years since his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has shown ample signs of turbulence.

He has spoken out on everything from carrier bags to climate change, and of the “real possibility of social collapse” if we don’t address the environmental crisis.

It could mean “not only spiralling poverty and mortality, [but] brutal and uncontainable conflict… An economics that ignores environmental degradation invites social degradation – in plain terms, violence”.

He has called for deep cuts in carbon emissions on the basis of ‘contraction and convergence’. (This is the quiet revolutionary in the ranks of climate change strategies, aiming at equal per capita emissions for all, meaning huge reductions for the rich countries.)

He’s happy to take on economic theory, insisting that it “cannot be separated from ecology… Ecological fallout from economic development is in no way an ‘externality’ as the jargon has it: it is a positive depletion of real wealth, of human and natural capital. To seek to have economy without ecology is to try to…formulate human laws in abstraction from… the laws of nature.”

Williams clearly doesn’t shy away from an intellectual tone – even if at times it might dilute the message somewhat. (One of his addresses to the Lambeth Conference of Bishops was famously described as “the most erudite, though the least understood”.) And he’s keen to link a healthy environment with a healthy soul.

“If we live in a context where we construct everything, from computers to buildings to relationships, on the assumption that they’ll need to be replaced before long – what have we lost?”

“The environmental crisis is the major moral issue which confronts us – and I’ve got into trouble for saying so.”

I meet him in a building that’s lasted centuries.

Lambeth Palace, to be precise, home to Archbishops since the 13th Century. Step through the old wooden door in the gateway, and it’s a bit like going through Platform 93/4 to Hogwarts: you’re suddenly a world away

26 Green Futures July 2008

“

The environmental crisis is the major moral issue which confronts us – and I’ve got into trouble for saying so.

”

from the rush and roar of the 21st Century. Here, it’s all honey-coloured stone, quiet courtyards and wide sweeps of landscaped lawns bathed in spring sunshine.

There’s something collegiate about it, a place fit for contemplation. If you wanted a visible antithesis of ‘social collapse’, you couldn’t find better.

The academic air persists inside the archiepiscopal study, which, with its leaded windows, fireplace and comfy leather armchairs, could be home to an Oxford don. Appropriate enough, in this case, as Williams was professor of theology at Oxford until 1992 (and you can’t help wondering if, on occasion, he wishes he still was...).

And it’s there when I ask what first triggered his passion for green causes. I have a couple of Christian friends who (more or less affectionately) refer to him as the ‘Archdruid’ – in testament to his woolly appearance and Welsh origins. So I’m hoping for something a bit pagan, but instead I get Eastern Orthodox. “I was just finishing my doctorate studies, [which focused] on eastern Christian theology; Greek and Russian. And one of the writers I was studying at that time, Yannaras, was already writing in Greek journals about the environmental crisis as a Christian issue… I remember translating one or two of his shorter pieces into English and feeling this was really something I needed to get my mind around and my practice around…”.

It’s a characteristically studious response: one which chimes with those who see him as academic in not such a good way; an out of touch way. He has talked before of wanting “to get people to see that living in balance, living in rhythm, living according to some sort of… inner harmony, is actually a recipe for being more human rather than less.”

But it’s one thing to contemplate inner harmony in the civil surroundings of the palace: how does it play in Lambeth’s rougher council estates a mile down the road?

“Well, I think a lot of people living in those environments are acutely conscious of their surroundings. And you want to say to them: ‘Do you want a safe environment, do you want an environment that feels human… do you think you deserve better?

And what can you do practically to make this look like a place where people are taken seriously, because in such a setting you are on the receiving end of quite a lot of rubbish, of every sense, thrown at you by society.’”

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Photos: Gideon Mendel

Martin Wright meets Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.

“Actually, environmental work in that setting is a political gesture. A couple of years ago, we had a team of Christian youngsters – A Soul in the City – doing a lot of environmental projects around inner London, in collaboration with local communities like this, and that was the message, really – you deserve better.”

He’s wary of “getting too specific” on particular policies – “I can so easily sound nannyish when I start going on about speed limits”, for example – but says he’ll “keep pressing for” tougher targets on carbon cuts. And he cites the active involvement of the Bishops of London and Liverpool in particular, in climate change debates in the House of Lords.

If you’re outside the Church, it’s easy to forget just how many feathers can still be ruffled by such talk.

Williams admits that “I’ve rather got into trouble for saying that [the environmental crisis] is the major moral issue that confronts us.” But he senses the ground shifting. “The notion that there is absolutely nothing distinctively Christian about caring for the environment is pretty much a minority position now. It’s [mainly occupied] by only the very extreme bits of American evangelicalism, who would say that the earth’s going to end quite soon anyway so why bother?!”

They’re not ecstatic about his enthusiasm for interfaith dialogue, either, but he’s adamant that “this is not an issue that any one faith can tackle alone”. He’s chair of ‘Building Bridges’, an annual Christian–Muslim seminar, which has a strong environmental focus, and climate change is near the top of the agenda of wider ecumenical meetings involving representatives from Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu faiths, among others.

So does he feel he’s making a difference? “I don’t know. There are lots of voices, and I couldn’t claim that mine has any more impact than anyone else’s.”

He’s aware of the dangers of sounding “like a crank with ideas”. Does he think people are put off by his sermonising? “It doesn’t bother me that much. In a

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“ ”

People will moan about sermonising, but that’s what I’m paid to do

sense an Archbishop is set up for it. You expect people to moan about sermonising, but that is what you are paid to do! The challenge is, how do you stop it being just sermonising? How does what you say have any kind of credibility?”

Part of his answer lies in initiatives like ‘Shrinking the Footprint’, where the Church has committed to cutting carbon by 60%. This year’s Lambeth Conference will feature ‘voices of the vulnerable’ – contributions from people already being affected by rising seas in places like the Pacific and Bangladesh.

All emissions associated with the conference will be offset through forest projects in Burundi.

Climate-proofing the Church’s substantial investments will be a much tougher nut to crack, Williams acknowledges, but he points to an ethical working group that’s developing “preferential attitudes to environmentally responsible investment”.

So what about the great green sin of flying? “This year I’m trying to take a rather more radical approach to my own air travel. The only fixed [flight] this year is a trip to Auschwitz. After that I’m looking at travelling by train in Europe, and not going further afield, and just seeing what that feels like and what issues it raises.”

Meanwhile, he has bought a hybrid car, and is encouraging episcopal colleagues to do likewise.

What about cycling? “I can’t cycle – I keep falling off. I have a deaf ear, so my sense of balance is hopeless, I’m afraid.”

A few days after I met Williams, all hell broke loose over his remarks on Sharia law – a foolish comment on his part, perhaps, but one which was wilfully exaggerated out of all context by a media itching to portray him as the crazed ‘loon of Lambeth’. When it comes to the Archbishop, it’s not just Rowan Williams, it seems, that lacks any sense of balance.

Martin Wright is Editor (at large) of Green Futures.

Green Futures July 2008 27

Partner viewpoint

Partner viewpoint

Consigning carbon to captivity?

Yorkshire has many claims to fame. But it’s keen to shed one dubious distinction, as the region with the highest CO2 emissions. Yorkshire Forward has hatched a plan – with carbon capture and storage at its core.

Y

(YF) is looking for a truly massive cut in CO2 emissions. The region’s current high carbon dioxide output is largely due to hosting so many highelectricity-using industrial operations, mainly around the mouth of the Humber. Having Drax, the UK’s largest coal-fired power station, within the region’s borders certainly doesn’t help with its CO2 emissions totals either.

Plans for tackling this situation, drawn up

by YF, give an important role to what’s known as CCS (carbon dioxide capture and storage), the containment and burial of carbon dioxide in underground stores – where it is expected to remain for millions of years, so preventing its release into the atmosphere. If it were put into operation across the region on a big enough scale, this process could deal with many firms’ CO2, transported through a network of pipes.

YF is driving this use of CCS through the establishment of the Carbon Capture and Storage Partnership for Yorkshire and the Humber, a working group made up of representatives of the big CO2 emitters in the region and operators of the oil and gas fields in the southern North Sea. An initial feasibility study of the plans for a network, published in May, will be used to strengthen the group’s case for investment in CCS. The group, chaired by YF’s head of sustainable development Mike Smith, includes Drax (based near Selby), metals group Corus (which makes steel products in Scunthorpe) and energy giants BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips, all of which run plants nearby.

28 Green Futures July 2008

“We produce 60 million tonnes of CO2 per year around the Humber estuary, in a strip around 30 miles wide and 45 miles long.

It’s the region with the biggest CO2 output in Europe”, says Smith. “But that makes it potentially the biggest, quickest hit to reduce the UK’s CO2 emissions. We have the output and we have redundant pipelines running out to depleted oil fields in the southern North Sea so this is a massive

“ ”

The UK is ahead of the rest of the world. It must exploit that lead

opportunity.” Old oil and gas fields, he explains, are ideal locations for gas storage, and the introduction of CO2 also forces out any remaining oil or natural gas, offering potential income for the project.

However, establishing a network of the size required will still be hugely expensive.

Smith estimates the entire network will cost £30 billion, including the investment required to make industry in the region ‘carbon capture ready’, although it will lead to some equally huge CO2 emissions reductions.

So wouldn’t it be cheaper to fund ways of not producing that much CO2 in the first place?

YF has and still does support that, says Smith,

but, he goes on: “We’ve got to be pragmatic about this and the UK will be using fossil fuels for the foreseeable future so this is the way to control their impact.”

Before a network connecting the big CO2 producers can be established, the first step should be the construction of a new CCSready, almost zero-CO2 power station to prove it can be done. This is due to be built in Hatfield, South Yorkshire, by 2013.

For a power station that will have 90% of its CO2 output captured, it might be surprising to hear that its fuel will be coal, traditionally one of the worst polluters. But this 900MW power station will be the first in the world to use socalled clean coal technology (which allows relatively simple extraction of CO2) on a commercial scale. It will be built on a site adjacent to the Hatfield colliery, which was reopened in April 2007.

The company behind this plan and the coal mine is Powerfuel Power, founded by Richard Budge. He has entered his plans for the Hatfield power station, with YF’s backing, to a government competition – launched by prime minister Gordon Brown himself back in November 2007 – to find the best CCS demonstration plant. The prize is up to 100% funding for a 300MW demonstration system, and the winning entrant is expected to be announced later this year.

Budge believes CCS has to happen.

“We’re looking at taking away 15 million tonnes of CO2 per year. That’s a huge amount and would over-achieve our national Kyoto targets several times”, says Budge.

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He claims that, although this would be pioneering work, all the technology is proven – albeit not yet at a commercial scale – and available. “This is a viable solution and gives maximum efficiency for a low cost, as the economies of scale achieved will be great.

This is not hypothetical stuff”, says Budge, who also believes there is a political will to support the project.

Rig in our favour

Photos: A.P.S. (UK), MikeUK/istockphoto

orkshire Forward

Piping down: Humberside’s huge carbon footprint could shrink beneath the sea

Jeff Chapman, chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, shares Budge’s belief that government support and financial backing in particular will be forthcoming. “We’re never going to achieve the CO2 reduction targets we’ve been set unless we up the funding for these projects,” says Chapman.

He adds that, while much attention and support is given to renewables, CCS might

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prove the better option: “In Europe, 20% of all energy will have to come from renewables by 2020. This is an extremely difficult target and it would be much more cost effective to achieve the same emissions reductions through CCS. Eventually I feel the sense of this will be seen by politicians and the public alike.”

Chapman’s optimism also extends to the public’s acceptance of a technology that, to the uninitiated, sounds like it may present even bigger problems if the buried gas escapes. But thanks to the way the CO2 is handled, under pressure and in liquid form, he’s confident that the chance of leakage is very remote.

“These aren’t vast empty caverns that the CO2 is being pumped into, it’s the tiny internal structure of rocks,” says Chapman. “It’s not going to easily come out from a mile under the sea bed and there’s no driving force to do that anyway. If the CO2 is going into old gas or oil wells then they’ve already been proven to contain gas and CO2 for millions of years.”

Because North Sea oil has only been exploited fairly recently, much data on the seabed is available and reveals plenty of usable rock formations. These are strata of porous rock to pump the CO2 into, with impervious rock above them to ensure the gas is contained. So the conditions for the UK, and off the Yorkshire coast in particular, are near-perfect, Chapman says.

Not least because of recent regulatory changes. “The UK is way ahead of the rest of the world in developing policy in this area,”

says Chapman, who adds that the government has to act quickly to exploit that lead as several other countries, including the USA, Australia and Canada, have also been working on CCS technology.

Mike Smith echoes that point and hopes for strong support. “The government has an aspiration that the UK should be a world leader in CCS, and we really could be with this project,” he says.

Smith sees the global context as another strong plank in the case for CCS. With the world’s biggest developing countries relying on fossil fuels to meet their growing need for power, being able to sell them the expertise to clean up their emissions represents a huge export opportunity. “What’s really important is that we do this in China and India. Anything we do here will be dwarfed by their fossil fuel use,” he says.

Although it is still very early days, the many factors in the region’s favour certainly make the plan appear ripe for government backing. And if so, by the middle of the next decade the Yorkshire and Humber region may have a new claim to fame: being home to the world’s biggest CO2 disappearing act.

– Neil Wilks

Yorkshire Forward is a Forum for the Future partner. www.yorkshire-forward.com

Green Futures July 2008 29

Feature

“We’ve just seen the first big win in the fight to stabilise the world’s climate”

Wind will be massive Meanwhile, there’s some Texan-sized ambition going into wind power. “Rick Parry, the Republican Governor of Texas, is backing a plan to develop 23,000MW of wind power in the state. Just to put that into perspective, the entire capacity of wind worldwide has only just hit 100,000MW.” Ambition on that scale “has a certain infectiousness”, says Brown. In Maine, the (Democratic) government appointed a bipartisan commission to come up with a recommendation for expanding wind power. It unanimously recommended installing 3,000MW. “That would put them way ahead of Texas in per capita terms – and would meet a [sizeable slice] of state electricity demand. This is huge stuff.”

It’s happening with solar as well. “California [led by Republican Governor Arnie Schwarzenegger] jumped out with a major solar programme, and now you’ve got Maryland and New Jersey planning to outdo it, adjusting for population size of course. And then there’s Charlie Crist, the Republican who replaced Jeb Bush as Governor of Florida. There were five major coal-fired plants slated for Florida. They’re history now. [Instead], he’s planning on building the largest solar thermal power plant in the world.”

Lester Brown tells Martin Wright why, at last, there’s cause for optimism.

Washington is irrelevant

F

books like Seeds of Change (1970) and Who will Feed China? (1995) Lester Brown has been engaging with threats of ecological disaster – and pointing up potential solutions. Some of his predictions may have proven wide of the mark, but many of his concerns now look unnervingly prescient.

An advocate of wind and solar power since the days when most saw them as hopelessly fringe, he now believes we’ve reached a historical tipping point – one which will see a revolution in energy provision across the globe. And America, he says, could be the unlikely leader.

Coal is dead In Europe, many are forecasting the return of King Coal as oil and gas hit the peak. In America, says Brown, it’s a different story. “A year ago, the Department of Energy published a list of 151 planned new coal plants… Today, 59 of those are off the list. Either they’ve been refused licences by state governments, or the utilities have quietly pulled out because of mounting local opposition. And meanwhile, another 48 are being challenged in the courts.”

Wall Street seems to be listening, too. “Citigroup and Merrill Lynch have urged their clients to get rid of coal stocks. And major investment banks [such as] JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley have said they will not [finance new] coal-fired stations – unless the utilities can demonstrate that the plants will be economically viable after the government imposes restrictions on carbon emissions.”

30 Green Futures July 2008

“ ”

I always look at Wall Street, see where the venture capital’s going

“Now, the problem with that [from the utility’s point of view] is that no one knows what the cost of carbon will be… so there’s no way you can demonstrate the plant will be viable.”

But what about the much-vaunted CCS (carbon capture and storage) technology?

Hopelessly uneconomic, says Brown, citing plans for a US government-backed pilot scheme which has been scrapped in the face of soaring costs. “It was budgeted at around $900 million for a 175MW plant – not a large plant at all. Then in a matter of months it had spiralled to $1.6 billion, and was poised to go higher. And the Department of Energy just said, ‘Look guys, this is not economic’.

I mean, $1.6bn for a 175MW plant – it’s off the chart!

And they’d chosen a site where the underground storage was right there – it’s not as though they had to pipe carbon 300 miles to sequester it.”

Small wonder that investors aren’t exactly queuing up. “I always look at Wall Street, see what the venture capital’s doing. And I just don’t see any going into this technology.”

“It’s just possible that by the end of 2008 we’ll have something approaching a de facto moratorium on new coal plants in the US. We’ve crossed a tipping point on this issue, and it’s amazing how fast it has happened. This could be the first big win in the effort to stabilise the earth’s climate.”

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“All this is happening in a country where the federal government officials, the ones who go to climate negotiations in Bali and so forth, haven’t got a clue what’s going on. I mean, it’s as though there are two different countries. Washington has no involvement in this at all.”

Indeed, Brown thinks that the climate policy vacuum in Washington may even have helped encourage local initiative. It’s not just at state level, either. “The mayors have stepped up and started doing things. Over 500 have signed up to the goals of the Kyoto Protocol, and said, ‘We’re going to meet those, regardless of what Washington does’.”

Economics, not environmentalism

Photos: Charles O’Rear/CORBIS, Earth Policy Institute

or nearly four decades, in

This is not all fuelled by green belief. “Governor Parry isn’t an environmentalist. He’s doing this because it makes economic sense. So is [Texan oilman] T Boone Pickens. He’s put $10 billion in a 4,000MW wind farm in the Texas panhandle. A journalist asked him: ‘Why all this investment in wind?’ And Pickens replied: ‘You know, I’ve got tired of oil depletion curves.’”

Sound business sense, says Brown. “Unlike the Texan oil fields, there’s no way they’re going to deplete the wind! So when you build the infrastructure – the wind farms, the transmission lines and so on – you’re basically there for the long haul. Sure you’ll have to replace parts from time to time, but once it’s there, it can last as long as the Earth itself.”

And once you make that decisive shift to renewables, he adds, you start benefiting from all kinds of positive feedback loops. “For example, in the US, we use [a huge amount of] freight fuel to transport coal. If you phase out coal, you have a dramatic drop in diesel fuel use, and an associated fall in carbon emissions. It’s the same with water. If you have wind farms in place of thermal power plants (whether coal, gas or nuclear), water demand drops precipitously.”

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“ ”

If we don’t restructure the tax system, we’re not going to make it.

It’s that important.

Day One in the White House For the first time in American history, each of the main presidential candidates is committed to tackling climate change. So imagine it’s Day One in the White House.

What should be top of the agenda? “Restructure the tax system so markets tell the truth,” says Brown. “Reduce income taxes, raise carbon taxes. There are a lot of things we can do, but if I were to pick one, I’d say that this is indispensable. If we don’t restructure the tax system, we’re probably not going to make it. It’s that important.”

“We’re all economic decision makers. As consumers, as corporate planners, as government policy makers or investment bankers, we are all guided by the signals in the market, by the price signals. The problem is that we have been getting really, really bad information from those signals, and so we’ve been making really bad decisions, which is why we are in so much trouble today.

If we’d had an honest market a half century ago, we wouldn’t even have most of these problems.”

“And once you explain that this won’t mean any overall tax increase, you know what? Eighty, ninety percent of people will say: ‘Sure, why not?’.”

Lester Brown’s new book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, is published by W.W. Norton & Co. Martin Wright is Editor (at large) of Green Futures.

Green Futures July 2008 31

Feature

“A single, unambiguous price on carbon means that all decisions are being treated with parity.”

This brings us to the second area of controversy: how to calculate that price. What the Stern Review team did was to estimate the damage likely to be caused by climate change – the reduction in economic output caused by floods, changes to agriculture, sea-level rise and so on. Acknowledging that the more carbon we emit, the more catastrophic the effects of climate change are likely to be, Stern arrived at the conclusion that “if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.”

By putting price tags on climate change damage at different CO 2 concentrations in the atmosphere, Stern made possible a calculation of the cost to the global economy of each tonne emitted. And that’s what the government has done for its ‘shadow price’ – using the lower end of Stern’s estimates.

Paul Ekins, professor of energy and environment policy at King’s College London, is highly sceptical about this. Taking a low-end figure is based on an assumption that we are already on a path to drastic emissions reductions, thereby averting the worst effects of climate change (and making the ‘costs’ of carbon less). As Ekins points out, this is circular logic of the worst kind. The use of a low price is only justified by the assumption that we are taking strong action on climate change. Yet the low price itself guarantees that we do not take the necessary action, as it does not send a strong enough price signal.

Hence the third runway. As an exasperated Ekins wrote in The Guardian, this is “Alice-in-Wonderland economics.

One can just imagine the White Queen, who taught herself to believe six impossible things before breakfast, saying: ‘we are on a low-carbon emissions trajectory because I say we are, and that means I can emit as much carbon as I like!’”

Instead, says Ekins, the shadow carbon price should be set at a level that drives action to mitigate climate change, based on the actual costs of abatement – in other words, the cost of introducing measures that reduce emissions through low-carbon technologies or behavioural change. Dietz agrees that a carbon price based on the cost of abatement (rather than damage) would be a more meaningful basis for calculation. And government figures show that these costs, using some forms of renewable energy or carbon capture, could be £100 or more per tonne.

What price carbon?

Shadow carbon pricing is the government’s latest policy tool.

It needs sharpening, says Rebecca Willis.

f you want to cut carbon,

I

put a price on it. That’s increasingly the focus of climate change policy. The reasoning is obvious.

If it costs an individual or company nothing to emit carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases, there’s no economic incentive to reduce emissions, even though their adverse impact is enormous – amply justifying the now famous description of climate change as “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen”.

The Stern Review, which gave the world that phrase, was by no means the first attempt at carbon pricing, but it had a big impact on the government’s willingness to use it as a policy tool. Instruments such as the Climate Change Levy, a tax on non-domestic energy use, and the European Emissions Trading Scheme, were already attempting to correct this ‘market failure’ through pricing carbon. Now the logic is being applied, within the government’s own decision-making processes, through the development of a ‘shadow price of carbon’.

This shadow price is to be used in the cost-benefit analysis of all government policies or investment decisions, whether a new road or a new tax. Having assessed the likely quantity of emissions associated with different options, ministers must factor this in as a cost, at a set price per tonne of carbon dioxide – or the CO 2 equivalent in other greenhouse gases. The price set last December (subject to review) started at £25.50 per tonne of CO 2 for 2007, rising year on year to £59.60 a tonne for emissions in 2050.

In theory, this approach could prevent carbonintensive developments from happening at all. More likely, it could make lower-carbon alternatives more attractive.

So, for example, a new hospital boasting green design features and on-site renewables might be more expensive, in cash terms, than a rival scheme, but could come out as the cheaper option once a carbon price is included.

Sounds sensible. But since its introduction it has generated a huge amount of controversy. Things came

32 Green Futures July 2008

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Fair decisions depend on a single, unambiguous price

to a head in February when the Department for Transport launched a consultation on a third runway for Heathrow.

Using the shadow price, the DfT said that the carbon cost of the new runway would amount to £5 billion.

This and other costs were offset against an estimate of benefits to the economy, including the jobs created, the increase in passengers bringing business into the UK, and the reduction in delays. After crunching the numbers, the DfT could say that the benefits of the runway outweighed the costs by around £5 billion – and that this analysis was “entirely consistent with the Stern Review”.

Predictably, many disagreed. Criticisms centre around two aspects of the policy: • Is it right to try to cost carbon in this way at all?

• If you do price carbon, how should the price be decided?

Nick Mabey, founder of E3G and an expert in carbon markets, worries that using a carbon price in cost-benefit analysis is profoundly misguided. He accepts that it might help in deciding between two similar options, such as choosing between different types of fuel. But for big infrastructure projects like the third runway, he warns against “collapsing the comparison between scenarios into a single metric of price”. There are too many uncertainties over the monetary value of both costs and benefits to place much confidence in the figure that emerges. Neither does such an analysis acknowledge the issue of ‘lock-in’ – building a third runway is not easily reversible, and will make it harder to move toward more radical carbon cuts by reducing aviation in future.

Simon Dietz disagrees. An economist at LSE, he was previously a member of the Stern Review team. Like it or not, he points out, all government policies and plans are subject to a cost-benefit analysis, and “carbon will not be given the same level of importance as other considerations unless we can price it”. He also points to the need for a predictable, straightforward approach that offers some certainty to businesses and policy makers:

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Photos: AMEC Wind Energy, Richard Baker/Corbis

Long road to a level playing field

Shadow of the grid In something of a mutual backslapping fest, National Grid has won government praise for showing the way forward on carbon pricing by UK business – and the company has said it will use both the government’s approach and its annual shadow price.

The power distributor’s new decarbonising drive, announced in April, targets an 80% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. Annual and five-year reduction targets will be set next year, and the performance of managers will be measured against the resulting ‘carbon budgets’ as well as against more traditional business metrics.

Using the government-approved shadow spot price for carbon, the company says, will not only help it account for the environmental impact of investment decisions, but also be good preparation for operating under any future carbon tax or mandatory cap-and-trade regime.

So where does this leave us?

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Complex calculations, backed by questionable assumptions, could become a fig leaf for highly dubious, business-asusual decisions

”

There is general agreement that pricing carbon is a necessary, but not sufficient, way of ‘climate-proofing’ policy. It should be seen as one of a range of decisionmaking tools. Government is keen to see it widely adopted by industry too [see box]. But there is a danger, as in the example of the runway, that complex calculations, backed by questionable assumptions, become a fig leaf for highly dubious, business-as-usual decisions.

The Climate Change Bill, soon to become law, will set mandatory emissions targets, with a clear trajectory over the decades ahead. It is this that should define the overall direction of policy. Within this framework, the shadow carbon price – if set at the right level – could help to decide between competing policy and investment possibilities. For example, if a target is set for carbon emissions from transport, what balance should be struck between improving vehicle efficiency, providing better cycle facilities, or investing in public transport? Factoring a carbon value into these deliberations will help to uncover the best way forward.

Applying a shadow carbon price to policy decisions could also provide a useful stepping-stone to wider carbon trading, as more sectors of the economy prepare for emissions trading schemes. It could help us meet carbon reduction targets in the most efficient way. But it must be handled with care.

Rebecca Willis is an independent researcher and writer, and vice-chair of the Sustainable Development Commission.

Walling off senseless expansion

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Green Futures July 2008 33

Partner viewpoint

Comment

American Eye

Des res, future style

$4 a gallon? It may seem peanuts to British drivers, writes Polly Ghazi, but in shell shocked America, soaring fuel prices are triggering a revolution in commuter habits, and a fundamental shake-up of the auto industry.

Housing design for low carbon living will challenge our architects – and our aesthetics. Marie-Louise Schembri looks forward to it.

Increasing air-tightness also makes it more critical to provide enough controlled ventilation.

Under UK regulations you can do without ventilation fans, if you use trickle vents or passive stack ventilation instead. But whichever way you do it, the lost heat still needs to be replaced. Heat recovery – reintroducing the heat from extracted air to the incoming fresh air – would require roof lanterns or intricate chimney stacks, to provide the required ventilation using the stack effect or by harnessing low velocity winds. If the use of these solutions picks up in the future, it will have a significant impact on our urban roofscapes.

The appearance of our homes will also be affected by changes in materials and construction techniques.

Take the walls, for example. They are likely to become thicker as insulation demands increase. However, a brick facing external wall

Straws in the wind: from Grand Designs to a site near you

Expect to see more features such as: • Buildings with south-facing aspects and some rather unusual roof shapes, using asymmetric 30-degree pitches to exploit solar heat and light energy • Innovative ‘sunspaces’ and thermal walls, providing passively heated buffers between living rooms and the outside • External shading on facades, made more necessary by increases in summer temperatures, and by requirements for better air-tightness and insulation of future homes • Radically rethought internal layouts, such as ‘upside down’ designs to reduce overshadowing of the main living spaces by neighbouring buildings • Site-generated energy, whether photovoltaics on roofs or communal windturbines.

34 Green Futures July 2008

would have to be over 17 inches thick to meet the Energy Saving Trust’s ‘Advanced Standard’, incorporating a 220mm layer of mineral wool – which is itself impractical, when the maximum length for cavity wall ties is only 150mm. And houses with walls that thick would take up appreciably more land space too! So the implication of such insulation standards is that traditional wall construction will give way to more use of new light concrete products or (structural) insulated panels, thus completely changing the aesthetics of the building.

Or take the windows – often the weak points of a building’s skin in terms of thermal conductivity. A wide range of different glass types and technologies now offer reflective, absorptive and emissive properties suited to even the most extreme weather conditions.

And window frames have never had such complex profiles, incorporating material

The BaleHaus: thick walls, thin footprint

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heap gasoline has long been

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Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles this March – the first yearon-year drop since the 1970s

composites, sealants and warm edge ‘hybrid’ spacers.

To reduce heat loss through the building fabric and unwanted gaps, the pre-fabrication industry has developed higher specification, made-to-measure building elements. This approach is revolutionising the design and construction industry, changing construction detailing and processes, reducing site times – and requiring architects to work closely with the manufacturing industry and site personnel to develop new skills.

The deluge of new performance requirements over the next eight years may seem a little overwhelming. However, they do represent a positive push towards design and construction that is more considerate to the bigger picture. While the cost implications of achieving higher levels of the Code for Sustainable Homes may be a contentious issue, the process surely should not be obstructed by a reluctance to adapt to the ‘new look’. It should be embraced as a revived challenge for architecture to respond better to the turbulent climatic and socioeconomic context of the 21st century.

Marie-Louise Schembri heads the Sustainable Design Group at Entec UK.

Entec UK is a Forum for the Future partner. www.entecuk.com

www.greenfutures.org.uk

considered a God-given right in the States, rendering fuel taxes such as those imposed in Europe a political impossibility. But prices have doubled since 2004 to reach the unheard-of heights of $4 a gallon. Crossing that threshold (broadly equivalent to 50p a litre) has sent out massive shock waves – and, as the cost of oil keeps rising inexorably, the market has led where politicians feared to go.

Across the USA, faced with having to pay $100 to fill up an SUV which ekes out 10 miles to the gallon, commuters are reluctantly deciding that the economics no longer add up. Instead, they are turning in their millions to light rail and buses, bicycles and even motor scooters.

From Denver to Minneapolis, Seattle to Dallas and San Francisco to Nashville and Salt Lake City, bus and train use is up by 10-15% on last year. In some traditionally car-centred cities the growth is eyepopping – up 35% in Charlotte, North Carolina, and up 28% on a commuter rail link running alongside a huge highway between Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Sales of fuel-efficient motor scooters have jumped 24% in January – March 2008 compared with the previous year.

The result is enough to warm a climate scientist’s heart. In March 2008, according to the federal Transportation Department, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles than in March 2007 – a 4.3% drop and the first time in 30 years that traffic has fallen between one year and the next.

Illustration: Andrew Baker

housing is based on the Jetsons’ bubble on a pole, you’re probably on the wrong track (despite it being very land efficient).

But the shape of things to come is likely to be radically different – driven by the need to reduce carbon emissions, water consumption, waste to landfill, and the flooding provoked (or exacerbated) by the spread of urban development.

The government’s Code for Sustainable Homes has introduced mandatory standards as of May 2008, with staged targets between 2010 and the 2016 deadline when all new homes must achieve zero carbon status. The Code also encapsulates a number of other environmental issues besides carbon emissions, but this is by far the most challenging target – and designing new homes for low and zero net energy demand is likely to have the most significant influence on the way they look.

Photo: BaleHaus by www.modcell.co.uk

I

f you image of the future of

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Nor is this shift in travelling habits likely to be a flash in the pan. With gas pump prices now rising almost weekly, polls report that Americans are resigned to living with ‘high’ fuel costs for the indefinite future.

Which brings me to the second revolution underway; a fundamental shift among US auto manufacturers away from climate-killing gas guzzlers towards fuel efficient vehicles. For the past two years, US consumers have been progressively abandoning people carriers, leading the media to dub the SUV an “endangered species”.

And plummeting sales this spring of both sport utility vehicles (down by 38%) and small pick up trucks (down 20%) have got Ford, General Motors and Chrysler all apparently acknowledging that the writing is on the wall.

Ford's chief executive Alan Mulally gave the bluntest assessment, telling the Washington Post in May that the industry had “reached a tipping point” away from SUVs and that the shift in consumer preferences to smaller, more efficient cars was “now structural, not cyclical.” He also announced that Ford was cutting overall production by 15% for the rest of this year; the company will manufacture fewer SUVs, but more compact vehicles such as the Focus, Fusion and Edge. GM is also cutting production and jobs.

No longer pigeonholing hybrids and small cars as niche markets, Ford, GM and Chrysler are now openly engaged in a race to produce the most customer-friendly range of fuel efficient vehicles. All are designing a variety of hybrid-engine cars, SUVs and light trucks, as well as plug-in electric vehicles and models equipped with advanced gasoline and diesel engines. GM, for example, is developing a method of applying the compressionignition efficiency of diesel engineering to petrol engines, which will cut their fuel consumption by 15%.

According to industry commentator Warren Brown, writing recently in the Washington Post, vehicle industry executives are even secretly applauding the high gas prices because of the heavy investments they are planning to make in this new generation of vehicles.

Toyota, of course, remains out in front, recently marking the millionth sale of the best-selling hybrid Prius.

Half of those were bought in the US. But according to Brown, the big three US carmakers are snapping at Toyota’s heels, aiming to get models equipped with new fuel efficiency technologies to market as early as 2010.

Given that hybrids and electric vehicles still barely make up 1% of the vast US market, that won’t be a moment too soon.

Polly Ghazi is US correspondent for Green Futures.

Green Futures July 2008 35

Comment

Whitehall Watch

Forum update

Must sustainability always suffer from political short-termism? Peter Madden says it’s time to take the longer view.

36 Green Futures July 2008

whether our political class can measure up to the climate change challenge. Over the last couple of years, Cameron has provided some consensus on the big environmental issues, and something of a buffer against Daily Mail populism. He clearly wants to do the right thing on green issues and to be seen as a serious leader-in-waiting, rather than chipping away indiscriminately at Brown’s crumbling edifice. But after more than a decade out of power, the siren voices of short-termism and populism will be loud. Will he continue to be brave in championing the environment?

Leadership is one half of the equation.

The other half is re-engaging citizens in the political process. As long as political support and engagement remains shallow, it will be difficult for government, of whatever persuasion, to take the decisions necessary for the long term. Senior politicians from across the spectrum are now talking about rebuilding trust, empowering the people, and devolving power including through more participative democracy. Cameron has put “giving people more power and responsibility over their lives” at the heart of his philosophy, while Brown talks of “the citizen in control”. It is certainly time for some genuine devolution of power. All three major parties talk about it, while no government seems able to do it.

And when politicians do feel the need to play the populist card, wouldn’t it be great if they had some environmental aces up their sleeves? Let’s get away from the sense that environmental policies are always punitive and anti-aspirational. Rather than tax rises, how about some tax cuts or subsidies for green behaviours?

Peter Madden is chief executive of Forum for the Future.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Nine in ten of us in this country live in cities – and we’re all too familiar with congestion, pollution, poor or inadequate housing, and the profligate energy consumption which characterises urban living. So how, in a rapidly urbanising world, do we make city living both healthy and desirable?

That’s the question at the heart of Forum for the Future’s new project with the Sustainable Bristol City Region Programme. It’s bringing together leaders from the public, private and voluntary sectors to develop and implement solutions to these problems.

Why the Bristol region? The city was rated third in the UK in Forum’s sustainable city index last year, but the main reason behind the choice is the real potential for sustainable change – backed up by strong local support for action. As Bristol City Council leader Helen Holland says: “It is our overriding aim to make Bristol a truly sustainable city with a low carbon economy and efficient use of resources”.

When Jonathon Porritt launched the project this spring, he described it as “a unique opportunity to turn theory into practice in establishing the kind of sustainable urban living on which our future depends”. A growing number of cities the world over are now pioneering innovative new ideas, he said, “and leading cities in the UK need to be both learning from that network and taking a lead for themselves”.

With 90,000 new homes planned for the area, and a critical need for transport infrastructure to support it, the project will provide worldclass exemplar schemes in key sustainable mobility, the built environment, and other key areas including local food, waste, education and climate change. And the learning will be disseminated both nationally and internationally.

“Having immersed myself in Bristol life and met with a huge variety of organisations concerned about the city’s future sustainability, it’s clear that our task is considerable”, says Susan Warren, who is leading the project at Forum for the Future. “But, with so much energy, enthusiasm and commitment from all parts of the community, if we can create a sustainable city anywhere, it surely has to be Bristol.” – Claire Wyatt

New partners Forum for the Future has gained four new partners since the last issue of Green Futures – Corus, Finlays, Firmenich SA and Royal Dutch Shell.

For more information about partnership, visit our website at www.forumforthefuture.org.uk

Rethinking the suburb

Photo: iStock

“ ”

Environmental policies need not be punitive and anti-aspirational

Street at the moment. Energy and food prices are rising sharply. There is the looming threat of a recession. Opinion poll ratings are at their lowest ever.

In these circumstances, there is an enormous temptation to reach for the short-term, populist, panacea – or what politicians call “getting back in touch with voters”. A poor performance in the local elections – dump the dustbin tax; a small-scale protest convoy by hauliers – start backtracking on fuel duty; a potential economic recession – ditch the green stuff.

This would be a major mistake. The sensible response to the oil shock would be to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels and invest heavily in energy efficiency and renewables. This would make us much more resilient and competitive in the resourceconstrained world of the future. Increased demand for oil, coupled with dwindling reserves, means that prices are set to remain high.

For climate change, too, bold action now will save us an enormous amount of pain later. This is the message at the heart of the Stern Report – that it makes overwhelming economic sense to act now. However, although “taking tough decisions for the long-term” has become something of a mantra for Gordon Brown, there are signs that his fight for political survival is pushing him in the opposite direction.

The combination of high prices and looming recession mean that politicians face a paradox: at the precise moment we most need bold environmental action, it is most difficult to take for electoral reasons.

The lessons from the London mayoral election are harsh. Ken Livingstone, whatever you think of him, implemented bold and well-thought-through environmental policies. This counted for little when Boris Johnson was elected on a platform of dismantling the congestion charge and ‘anti-politics’.

The threat of being blind-sided by populists is very real, as governments across Europe are finding. But running away will not fix the problems in the long term.

There will, of course, be losers when governments take action to benefit the majority, but they should not and cannot pander to every interest group.

What we need instead is some real political leadership. This is what Brown promised he would give the country. Chasing the agenda doesn’t appear to be working for him, and is probably not what people want.

So how about a bit more courage? What, after all, has he got to lose?

But even more than Brown, it is David Cameron to whom we really need to turn for leadership. How he responds at this pivotal moment will help to decide

Illustration: Andrew Baker

I

t can’t be much fun at Downing

Sustainable cities, Bristol fashion

Forum’s new series of aheadof-the-agenda seminars, supported by Tesco, has kicked off in lively style.

Headlined “Living on the edge – can suburbs make a comeback?” the inaugural event was the first in a programme examining emerging trends in sustainability with a big potential impact on the retail sector.

With 80% of UK residents currently living in suburbs, many of them dependent on cars, the inherent sustainability of suburban living is open to debate. Forum’s futures team invited a panel of

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luminaries to the stylish Innovations Centre at Central St Martin’s to do just that.

The presentations from urban planner Peter Hall, Chris Leslie of the New Local Government Network, architect Richard Rogers and Tesco’s own director of community and government David North, made it clear that there are no cut-and-dried strategies for creating successful new large-scale developments.

For Hall, the success of such projects is contingent on efficient transport links and the distance to larger conurbations. Harlow, for example, a post-war New Town, has been bedevilled not so much

by inappropriate architecture as by its proximity to London and its residents’ unanticipated fondness for cars.

Rogers, too, acknowledged the need for efficient transport links but was more optimistic about achieving high housing densities within city limits.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, for him the issue was about the design of the houses and flats themselves – build attractive, efficient spaces on brown field sites where residents “can at least see a tree”, and the system will function, he said.

Other highlights included David North asking the audience if anyone lived in a suburb – and

getting only one ‘yes’ (apart from himself), thereby demonstrating either that our participants were hugely untypical, or that suburbs still carry the stigma that has made them such consistent targets for comedy writers over the years.

The debate will continue, but if new suburbs are to be part of a low-carbon future, the planners will have to think beyond cardependent transport.

– Alex Johnson The next debate in the series, titled ‘Can we shop our way to sustainability?’,will be on Monday July 7 at the Innovations Centre.

Green Futures July 2008 37

Unlocking ICT’s potential Information and communications technology is, increasingly, integral to our lives. Yet, for all the obvious efficiencies, the consequences – and the side-effects – aren’t all positive, and ICT’s contribution to sustainability can sometimes seem ambiguous.

Our new report, Connected – ICT and sustainable development, disentangles the issues, pointing the way to a new generation of more durable, energy-efficient and recyclable devices that could be produced in ethical factories, using a minimum of resources. Even more critically, it focuses on the strategic application of ICT at work, for travel, leisure and in the community, and its wide-ranging potential to contribute to a more sustainable future. It will be up to us to ensure that we unlock this potential, not just in terms of how we produce and use the technology, but also by planning the environmental and social fabric that we build with it.

Alchemy for today It’s a tricky business being an alchemist. In days of yore you could try pretty much whatever you wanted in your quest to make gold. But today’s business leaders are being asked to make wealth without damaging the environment.

Sustainable Wealth Creation within Environmental Limits is a new report from Forum which will provide comfort to alchemists and business leaders across the world. Not only does it say green alchemy can be achieved. It also explains how to do it.

It’s based on the premise that current approaches to wealth creation are intrinsically flawed, as they destroy the very capitals (e.g. natural and social) on which their futures depend.

Surely, it asks, the impact of business operations should enhance the things on which we all rely (e.g. fish stocks, forests or local communities) rather than deplete them?

Its approach to achieving this is based on The Natural Step (TNS) Framework – a systematic model which sets out four ‘system conditions’ that a sustainable business model should meet. A sixstep plan then makes it easy for business people at any level – and in any size of organisation – to get their heads around what they need to do to make this happen.

All these Forum reports are available to download from www.forumforthefuture.org.uk

38 Green Futures July 2008

How to be top

Where does the power lie?

Anna Birney, Forum’s new head of leadership and change

P

eople keep asking me about

my job title. The ‘change’ bit isn’t the issue; the question is about what we mean by ‘leadership’. We all use the term, in a variety of contexts, but its precise meaning can still provoke a lot of debate. For example, when we think about how to achieve a sustainable future, everyone agrees that it will involve leadership, but what are we actually talking about in this context?

For me, leadership is closely related to the concept of power. But it’s not just a simple top-down relationship.

Often when we think of leadership we have certain types of people in mind: those in positions of power, decision makers and politicians. Some are good, some not so good, but they all have something in common – they have taken or been given power to lead over us, because they have (or claim to have) the competence to take on such a role or position.

We tend to forget, however, where leaders get this first type of power – that it’s human activity which shapes the systems and structures in society that gives it to them. And there are two other forms of leadership that often get less attention.

We humans are very social beings. We depend on each other to be happy, to live, to learn and to survive; we are the people creating our future. So the second type of leadership comes from the power we get with and through our social relationships. Think social movements, think interactions and communication, shared experiences and even the feeling when you create a great idea with a friend in the pub.

Finally there is a type of power that we all have, and it comes from within us. Think about what really motivates you, what you really care about in life. Spend a little time getting in touch with inner values that often get hidden, and connecting with the things that make you feel happy and alive. When we start to act from this kind of purpose, we tap into the leadership potential within ourselves to realise the future we truly want to see.

That’s why I think in terms of three forms of leadership coming from different power bases: over us, with us and from within us. But the real trick for me is when you pull them all together. For us to reach a sustainable future, to fully transform ourselves, our communities, our organisations and the political and social structures, we do indeed need leadership. A leadership where we acknowledge our positions and the power it gives us, and come together to use the power of who we really are, to do something amazing. This, for me, is the starting point for exploring the meaning of leadership.

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S

ustainability is now a headline issue for businesses

across all sectors. So Forum for the Future’s leader business 2.0 report is timely – as well as rigorous, setting out a framework for how organisations can best deliver their products and services in a changing economy.

Drawing on extensive experience of working in partnership with leading organisations such as Marks and Spencer, Kingfisher and Unilever, Forum has analysed business operations in terms of ten key activities such as products and services, marketing and reporting. For each activity leader business 2.0 lists clear guidelines for leaders to measure themselves against – and use a template for success in the future.

Guidelines are all very well, but is anyone actually managing to deliver on their sustainability aims? leader business 2.0 provides the evidence to demonstrate that best practice is already happening. Case studies show organisations delivering sustainably in each of the ten key activities. The landscape is changing fast. Read the report to find out who is keeping up, and how.

“Our work with the leading businesses tells us that you can be sustainable and profitable at the same time and that it’s something all business show aim for. Our hallmarks show companies what that looks like and how they might go about it.” – Stephanie Draper, acting director of Forum’s business programme and co-author of the report.

Real green promises

W

hen people know

Tom Berry heads Forum’s work with the retail sector

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what I do at work, they tend to expect me to ‘know the answer’ to questions like: “Which is better, Fairtrade or locally grown?” It’s a bit frustrating, because there’s still plenty of space for the retail sector to move forward on several fronts at the same time. So why not buy some fairly traded coffee and some locally grown potatoes?

Since the retail business is massively consumerdriven, however, it is encouraging that people do increasingly want to make informed choices about the environmental impacts of the goods they buy. They’re also concerned about what to do at home – whether it’s washing at 30 degrees, or sorting the mounds of packaging for recycling. But they don’t always know who or what to believe. Even the growing mass of labels and communications can be a problem, creating confusion and mistrust instead of helping consumers understand the environmental credentials of goods. Then there’s the rise in corporate ‘greenwash’; complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency about false, unjustified or misleading environmental claims have more than quadrupled in the past year.

It’s a key challenges for the sector, something we are working on right now, to work out how best to engage with consumers and help them make those more sustainable choices. This, in turn, will drive change in other vital areas – how far to go on ‘choice editing’, how to support suppliers through a process of change, what kind of overall business model will make the most of the many opportunities. That’s why Forum is keen to stop companies falling into the greenwash trap – and why we have come up with a new report on ‘eco-promising’.

The four crucial questions it answers are: • What issues should producers and retailers be highlighting?

• How can they best communicate to consumers?

• How can they ensure that environmental messages align with broader business objectives?

• What benefits can business expect from better eco-promising?

Produced with the global business membership organisation Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), Eco-Promising: Communicating the environmental credentials of your products and services is full of invaluable practical guidance and industry examples – and concludes with eight practical steps to ensure that eco-labelling is most effective.

Honesty and clarity about a product’s big impacts, for instance, will help consumers navigate through the complex issues they face when they shop. Companies can begin by removing the worst sustainability ‘villains’ from their shelves, and offering incentives to buy less impactful products.

Integrating these actions into a clear corporate sustainability plan, and then communicating the plan effectively, will do no end of good for the brand and, hopefully, the planet too.

Retailers and consumer brands alike can use their marketing expertise to make the whole sustainability offer attractive – linking environmental virtues with such desirable attributes as quality, luxury, durability, good health, freshness and lower costs. Brands such as Green and Black’s chocolate have done this, for example, by marketing which emphasises the quality of the product as much as its organic ingredients. Taking sustainable products from niche to mainstream involves this kind of attention to the qualities that make them desirable, for more than just the green consumer.

– Tom Berry

Green Futures July 2008 39

Sustainable entrepreneur

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.uk

Hang the DJ Martin Wright meets Chantal Cook, co-founder of Passion for the Planet.

ABN AMRO Lesley Holloway, 020 7678 8000

Cushman & Wakefield Natalie Bennett, 020 7152 5589

Land Rover Jaguar Cars Ltd Fran Leedham, 01926 641111

Scottish and Newcastle plc Richard Heathcote, 01432 345277

Advantage West Midlands Simon Slater, 0121 380 3677

Dacorum Borough Council Elizabeth Savage, 01442 228739

Leeds City Council Tom Knowland, 0113 395 0643

Serco Group plc Simon Usher, 020 8843 2411

Aga Foodservice Group Alison Neville, 0121 711 6000

Devon County Council Dave Slocomb, 01392 382245

Lloyd’s Register Gill Reynolds, 020 7423 1854

Severn Trent plc Kathryn Barker, 0121 722 4314

AkzoNobel Elizabeth Stokes, 01928 511695

DTZ Cassandra Campbell, 020 7408 1161

London Borough of Croydon Kia Colbeck, 020 8726 6000

Alliance Boots plc Andrew Jenkins, 0115 968 6766

Duchy Originals Inger Cessford, 0208 831 6800

Middlesbrough Council Bob King, 01642 728233

Skanska Tanya Barnes, 01923 423906 Matt Janssen, 01923 423337

Anglian Water www.anglianwater.co.uk

Ecotricity Matt Thomas, 01453 756111

Marks & Spencer Rowland Hill, 020 8718 6885

Apetito Mark Lovett, 01225 753636

Ecover Belgium NV Mick Bremans, +32 3 309 2500

MCM Architects Mat Eastwood, 020 7902 0900

Arup John Turzynski, 020 7755 2580

EDF Energy David Ferguson, 07875 119978

Merrill Lynch Matt Hale, 020 7996 2054

Asda Julian Walker-Palin, www.asda-corporate.com

Entec UK Ltd Francesco Corsi, 0191 272 6128

Minoan Group www.minoangroup.com

Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy Jane Howarth, 020 7410 7023

Eurostar Louisa Bell, 020 7922 2442

Morley Fund Management Tim Barker, 020 7809 6000

BAA ltd Matthew Gorman, 020 7243 1264

Fife Council Neil Gateley, 01592 413552

The National Trust Mike Collins, 01793 817708

Balfour Beatty plc Sally Brearly, 020 7216 6813

Finlays Michael Pennant-Jones, 020 7802 3239

Nationwide Building Society Ian Duncan, 01793 657625

BBC Yogesh Chauhan, yogesh.chauhan@bbc.co.uk

Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227802435

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

BP Christine Dewey, 020 7496 4000

FirstGroup Terri Vogt, 07799 885171

Northumbrian Water Ltd Louise Hunter, 0191 301 34050

British Cement Association David Pocklington, 01276 608700

Flintshire Council Erica Mackie, 01352 703217

North West Regional Development Agency Allan Openshaw, 01925 400380

BT Environment Unit, 0800 731 2403

Friends Provident Amanda Adey, 01306 654420

OGC Buying Solutions Tristram Hardman, 01603 704522

Cadbury Alison Ward, 020 7851 9568

GlaxoSmithKline Jim Hagan, +1 610 239 5212

OZO Tamara Giltsoff, www.ozocar.com

Cafédirect Zachary Dominitz, 020 7490 9631

Good Energy Penelope Chapple, 01249 766090

PepsiCo Steve John, 0118 903 2730

Calor Paul Blacklock, 01926 318 773

GSH Group Neil Fright, 01782 200400

Powys County Council Heather Delonnette, 01597 827481

Cargill Europe Fiona Cubitt, 01932 861916

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

Pret A Manger Nicki Fisher, 020 7827 8888

Carillion plc Louise Rhydderch, 01902 316258

Halcrow Group Tim Broyd, 01793 812479

PruPIM Siobhán Hewitt-Devine, 020 7548 6729

CDC Group plc Innes Meek, 020 7484 7700

IGD Dr James Northen, 01923851919

Pureprint Group Yvie Dear, 01825 768811

Cheltenham Borough Council Carol Rabbette, 01242 774928

Igloo Regeneration Ltd David Roberts, 07900 882990

Rail Safety and Standards Board Joanna Gilligan, 020 7904 7655

City of London Council Simon Mills, 020 7332 1431

InterfaceFLOR www.interfaceflor.com

RBS David Graham, 0131 523 7453

Climate Care Michael Buick, 01865 207000

John Laing plc Peter Jones, 020 7901 3200

The Royal Academy of Engineering Ian Bowbrick, 020 7227 0504

Commission for Rural Communities Paul Pennycook, 01242 534056

John Lewis Partnership Gemma Lacey, 0207 5924412

Royal Dutch Shell Elfrida Hughes, +31610974798

Conoco Phillips Inger Mette Staalesen, +47 52 02 1818

Johnson Matthey Don Harrison, 020 7269 8400

RSA Paul Pritchard, 020 7337 5712

Co-operative Group Chris Shearlock, 0161 827 6209

JT Group John Pontin, 01275 373393

Royal Mail Group Martin Blake, 01252 528 681

Cornwall County Council Anthony Weight, 01872 322633

Kingfisher Christina Allen, 0207 644 1142

RWE npower Anita Longley, 01793 892716

Corus Stephen Blaylock, 01244 89 2713

Kraft Foods Jonathan Horrell, 01242 236101

Sainsbury’s Caroline Miller, 020 7695 3078

Crest Nicholson Paul Donnelly, 01932 264410

Lancashire County Council Debbie King, 01772 534195

S.C Johnson Ltd Chris Lambert, 01784 484100

40 Green Futures July 2008

South East England Development Agency Simon Richardson, simonrichardson@seeda.co.uk South West Tourism Neil Warren, 01392 353234 Swindon City Council Lynne Forrester, 01793 463197 Tesco Helen Chamberlin, 01992 644 542 The Tetley Group Sara Howe, 020 8338 4590 Tetra Pak Richard Hands, 0870 442 6623 Thames Water Utilities Darren Towers, 0118 373 9063 Time Warner Katherine McQuaid, www.timewarner.com/corp Transport for London Jeanette Baartman, 020 7126 3432 Triodos Bank James Niven, 0117 980 9721 TUI Travel Jane Ashton, 01293 588851 Unilever UK Thomas Lingard, 01932 261613 Virgin Atlantic Jill Brady, www.virgin-atlantic.com VisitBritain Shivah Jahangir-Tafreshi, 020 8563 3247 Vodafone Group plc 01635 672980 Warburtons Sarah Miskell, 01204 556600 Welsh Assembly Government Georgina Haarhoff, 029 2082 1724 Welsh Local Government Association Kevin Bishop, 029 2046 8669 Wessex Water plc Dan Green, 01225 526000 West Sussex County Council Karen Baker, 01243 756859 Willmott Dixon George Martin, 01932 584700 Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc Gillian Hall, gillian.hall@morrisonsplc.co.uk Wrexham County Council Michael Cantwell, 01978 292255 WWF-UK Dax Lovegrove, 01483 412395 Yorkshire Forward Mike Smith, 0113 394 9741

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O

ut there in digital radio land,

a wander through the welter of Planet Rock and Easy FM soundalikes can induce a disappointing sense that it’s all more choice, less quality. Until suddenly the rousing chords of Rock the Casbah give way to a voice taking animatedly about a breakthrough in wave power that could revolutionise the future for renewables. You’ve tuned to Passion – no programmes, no DJs, just “interesting stuff in three-tofive-minute bursts surrounded by the planet’s best music”.

So what does that pitch mean in practice? Well, everything from a burst of Rai, a squeal of Goldfrapp, and a breath of Kate Rusby – interspersed with grim warnings on biofuels and coral bleaching, perky tales of the benefits of cod liver oil, and some frankly bizarre stuff on empathetic outbreaks of morning sickness among men with pregnant wives…

It all seems to have struck a chord, in more ways than one. The Times named Passion for the Planet as one of its “five best digital” stations. The Daily Telegraph likes it, too – “a genuinely new concept in radio”. Its programming appeals to the advertiser-friendly ABC1 group and – despite the ‘alternative’ content – its 70,000 listenership divides almost equally between male and female.

Passion is the baby of Chantal Cook, producer and broadcaster, who worked her trade through the ’90s on everything from Virgin to BBC local radio, while feeling increasingly frustrated that her main interests – environment, alternative health – just couldn’t get a look in. These were the wilderness years for green issues, when your average local radio producer thought tackling climate change meant turning down the studio air con.

So along with a group of fellow travellers, Cook launched an alternative strand on Canterbury-based CTFM. It proved to be something of “a testing ground” for what eventually became Passion. “I thought, ‘these are the things I’m interested in – is it just me, or will other people like them too?’ And it turned out to be really, really popular…”.

Moving on to setting up an English language service in Switzerland, she feared she was marking time. “I’d always planned to have my own radio station by 35, and that was fast approaching. And I thought, ‘what am I doing jumping around from station to station – I should really be doing this properly!’”

Meanwhile, the dawn of digital radio was opening up a brave new world for specialised, niche broadcasters.

Suddenly you didn’t have to adopt the ‘Smashie and Nicey-style’ lowest common denominator pitch in an effort to secure a precious slice of airwaves. Cook spotted the potential in 1998, while launching four

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“ ”

A mix of music, perky messages, and some frankly bizarre stuff

Neither Smashie nor Nicey

Europe-wide stations for WRN. “That opened my eyes to what the future of radio was going to be like. So while the rest of the industry was saying, ‘this is never going to happen, it’s never going to work’, I was there in the thick of it saying, ‘Well actually, I think it will.’”

So she left WRN, hooked up with CTFM colleague Kenny Stevens, and set about finding investment and winning a licence. Most digital licences are awarded on a regional basis to consortia made up of a mix of stations.

Passion is part of the DRG group, which also includes Gaydar and the Ministry of Sound. They aimed high to start with, pitching for the London licence. They faced two rival groups, “so there were lots of petitions and letter-writing and getting people to write letters for us” before they won out in 2001. That was a springboard to winning other licences in Bristol, Devon, Peterborough and Essex, among others.

Finding sufficient investment wasn’t easy – but it was mitigated by the fact that costs can be kept to a minimum.

Passion broadcasts from a small office (and tiny studio) in an unprepossessing business park at the end of the District Line in deepest Wimbledon. Cook says the station is now “just about breaking even, which is in line with our forecasts”, and with the digital signal spreading wider each year, the prospects for expansion look promising. They’ve now launched a Passion Club, bringing together listeners for real life events such as birdwatching expeditions and chocolate tastings, as well as offering them discounts on everything from radios to advertising.

Passion isn’t to everyone’s taste, of course. It promises that “you won’t get… preached at, chanting, or tips on knitting your own muesli”, but it still sails close to the edge of wackiness on occasion; soft Californian accents extolling the virtues of chakra balancing might well put the odd listener in touch with their inner cynic.

Still, try anything alternative, and you always risk ridicule.

“Some people will buy into it”, says Cook, “while others will sit there and think, ‘I don’t believe that’ – or even ‘that almost makes me angry, it’s so ridiculous!’. But go back 30 years and the greenhouse effect was completely fringe science – now it’s absolutely mainstream. All we ask is people listen with an open mind.”

And whatever the interviews or musical mix, there’s never any danger of a particularly melodic intro being drowned out by Smashie yelling: ‘Don’t touch that dial, news is next, right after this from Morcheeba!’ www.passionfortheplanet.com Martin Wright is Editor (at large) of Green Futures.

Green Futures July 2008 41

Feature

Photo: Ed Gillespie

Right seat, wrong napkin

42 Green Futures July 2008

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Ed Gillespie, Creative Director of Futerra, is working on a book about slow travel. He and Mark travelled to Brussels courtesy of Eurostar. Tickets from St Pancras or Ebbsfleet to anywhere in Belgium normally cost from £59 return.

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A trip for two to Barcelona Newcastle Manchester

Amsterdam London

to

Bu

Paris

da

pe

st

Key Time in hours

kgCO2/person best case/worse case

Geneva

Cost (£)

125 267

369

> The site offers straightforward, demystifying advice on travel by train and ship > You can’t book, but it does provide links and contacts with agents and rail companies > It offers clear, current information on train services and ticket costs across the world from Siberia to Senegal (not a connecting service!)

323

What is seat61.com?

www.forumforthefuture.org.uk

17 66

“ ”

Flying doesn’t always save you time.

enough of that, sonny, time to get a real job’. It doesn’t feel like work, but I love the fact I no longer have to commute, that the information I give is free and always will be, and that it enables me to travel.”

And travelling we are. I’m interviewing Mark as he sits in Seat 61, his favourite spot in the first class Eurostar carriage that gave the site its name. We’re speeding through Flanders’ fields to Brussels to enjoy Moules Frites and Trappist beer.

The website began rather humbly back in 2001 following a debate with a film producer cousin about what movie character they’d play. Mark settled on the enigmatic ‘Man in Seat 61’. A few days later he picked up a ‘Teach Yourself HTML’ book and created his first web pages, outlining rail routes from London to several key

17

curry.” Mark Smith’s reaction to the first payment he received for ‘The Man in Seat 61’ (www.seat61.com) is somehow typical of the man behind this pioneering train travel advice site [see box].

Surfing on the back of a surge of interest in slow, lowcarbon travel, Seat61 now attracts half a million visitors a month. Mark modestly declines to reveal how much it’s making from affiliate scheme payments and the like. But it did enable him to give up his day-job at the Department for Transport last autumn… It was a big but liberating leap.

Rejecting the notion of a ‘lifestyle business’ (“I hate the term”), he does confess to feeling guilty, in a very British way, about making money from what started as a hobby.

“I half expect someone to turn around and say ‘That’s

Florence

Experience

450

T

hat’s good – it’s buying me a

16

“

7.5

Ed Gillespie meets The Man in Seat 61

Who wouldn’t want to swap the misery of the airport queue, for the luxury AND low carbon virtues of overland travel in Europe? But it’s not always that easy to arrange. The information is there (courtesy of the brilliant Seat 61), but it’s difficult to book. Even if the journey time is comparable, it’s more expensive. And there’s no easy one-stop shop to sort everything out for you.

This is the early feedback from Forum For The Future’s research on its new Overland Heaven project. There are clear barriers that need tackling. But there are also opportunities to make train, bus and ferry travel more attractive.

By addressing them, Overland Heaven aims to help change the landscape of European travel, because those journeys have the potential to be a real positive choice. Once you’re over the initial booking hurdle, you can relax, or work, on the train to Florence; party on the ski train to Geneva; or bird-watch on the ferry to Amsterdam.

The overland trip to Barcelona [below], with a carbon footprint as much as 90% less than flying, is just one example. Leaving London by Eurostar on Friday afternoon, there’s time to finish off a bit of work before you get to Paris.

Dinner and a good night’s R&R on the sleeper (saving you a night’s hotel) brings you into Barcelona bright and early on Saturday morning – ready for the weekend.

As our diagram shows, it does take longer than the plane and it is more expensive. But it’s so much lower in carbon and potentially much more relaxing and productive too. For carbon we cite a range – because there are better planes and better trains and worse ones too. A full fuel efficient coach is better than a half empty diesel train… but it’s safe to say that even the worst scenarios for overland travel are much better than flying. – Stephanie Draper

204

Riding with the Rail Guru

Creating overland heaven

150

European cities, and boldly announcing: “Do you know you can reach Africa by train in 48 hours?” An email from the Guardian’s travel editor followed, to which Mark’s first reaction was “Which one of my friends is winding me up now?” But the enquiry was genuine and his site was made their ‘Website of the Week’ in May 2001.

It was all the encouragement Mark needed, as he began to appreciate that his voice wasn’t just a ‘cry in the wilderness’. Motivated by the paradox that ‘it’s so easy to travel by train, yet so hard to find out how to do it’, he spent a couple of hours a day developing the site during his journey to work, building it up into something extremely impressive in both its detail and its accessible, down-to-earth tone.

A glimpse at Seat 61’s guest book is testimony to the appreciation of his visitors. It’s a gushing deluge of gratitude, and disbelief that the comprehensive, practical information has all been collated by one man, serving a market utterly failed by rail companies and travel agents.

There are good reasons for this, as Mark, with his old rail regulator’s hat on, explains. “Eurostar is not interested in selling tickets beyond Paris; similarly there’s little benefit or incentive to encourage cross-selling of tickets between different European train companies. The travel world, whether it’s business or leisure, wants to push you towards flying, as it’s too much hassle to organise the alternatives.”

It’s because of these frustrating institutional barriers that people want Mark to ‘hand-hold’ them through the often archaic ticketing processes of the global rail industry. His site attracts a mixture of train enthusiasts, those that are mortally afraid or just fed up of flying, and folk who, like me, have consciously forsaken aviation for environmental reasons.

On the train vs plane debate Mark is scathing, describing the current growth in short-haul flights as “totally ludicrous”. He’s swift to point out the flaws in the time and cost arguments that superficially favour flying. “The cost of a cheap flight doesn’t include airport tax, luggage fee or transport to and from the airport either end, so comparing only direct ticket prices is unfair. Equally, flying doesn’t always save you time”, argues Mark, expounding on the advantages of city centre to city centre travel and the comfort of Spanish ‘train hotels’. ‘To arrive in Barcelona for a morning meeting you’d either have to fly out at the crack of dawn, or the day before and have a night in a hotel. By train the cost of the hotel is included and you’re asleep for most of the journey. You don’t check into a hotel and say ‘How many hours does this hotel take?’”

So how can we bring about a revolution in rail travel and lure people off planes? “We need to level the playing field and tax aviation fuel. Taxes should be proportionate to carbon intensity. They are supposed to correct market failure, and global warming is potentially the biggest market failure in history.”

As for the future of his site, Mark is confident that it has reached a critical mass that a bigger, commercial rival would find hard to emulate. Seat61 is not a booking service and Mark has no intention of turning it into one.

“It won’t make me a millionaire”, he shrugs, “‘but as long as it pays the mortgage I’m happy. The site helps people and sustains my family. What could be better?”

booking

Barcelona

door to check in check-in journey arrival

Green Futures July 2008 43

Feature

Partner viewpoint

Energy for change

Power without responsibility?

Solar power lights Tibetan tents

Leading companies are starting to take climate change seriously.

So why, asks Dax Lovegrove, are the energy majors lagging so far behind?

Bad fortune built on tar sands

Ashden Awards showcase innovative low-carbon solutions from Tibet to Truro.

44 Green Futures July 2008

Saving forests, cooking dhosas

“ ”

For the first time they have electricity. And all for the price of a yak.

The stove is the brainchild of the Gaia Association, which is now starting to supply it for use in refugee camps elsewhere, as well as for new housing in the capital, Addis Ababa.

These are among the winning projects in the international category of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy. Founded in 2001, the Awards celebrate innovative schemes which provide clean, affordable energy for local communities, while at the same time tackling climate change and other pressing environmental threats. Al Gore, who presented the prizes to last year’s winners, described the Ashdens as “a forceful reminder that simple, practical and often inexpensive ideas can make a great difference”.

This year’s UK winners include: • Kensa Engineering, Cornwall, which has come up with a design for a simple ground source heat pump, capable of being installed by plumbers and builders, so bringing this highly effective technology within reach of a wider, non-specialist market.

• Ringmer Community College, East Sussex, where pupils play a leading role as ‘Eco Reps’ in monitoring energy use. They also encourage schoolmates and teachers in this part-solar and wind-powered school to cut energy consumption.

• Leeds City Council, which is reaching 25,000 homes a year with major improvements to insulation, glazing and heating.

• Global Action Plan, for training workplace teams to get energy-saving messages across to over 86,000 employees.

According to Sarah Butler-Sloss, executive chair of the Awards: “These amazing finalists embrace a sense of urgency that needs to be reflected more widely in energy policy and practices – before it’s too late. With stronger financial incentives and streamlined planning processes, we would see a lot more initiatives like these.”

Winners receive prize money of between £10,000 and £40,000, as well as business and technical support to help them take their work further. Applications are now open for next year’s Awards at: www.ashdenawards.org Martin Wright is Editor (at large) of Green Futures.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

C

limate change: the

Photo: Jiri Rezac/WWF-UK

14,000 feet above sea level in China’s Qinghai province, a Tibetan herdsman lashes a small solar panel to his tent. For the first time, he and his family have electricity. Its clean, clear light outshines their dim, smoky butter lamps. There’s power for a radio-cassette too, and a charger for a mobile phone. Now, he says, they feel in touch with the outside world… And all for the price of a yak, which he sold to finance the purchase.

Their solar system is one of 360,000 installed as a result of the work of the Renewable Energy Development Project, which has helped Chinese companies sell a whole range of systems at prices which are affordable for local people in remote areas. Many of these are members of China’s minorities, mostly Tibetans and Mongolians.

A restaurant owner in Kerala, India, lights the stove to cook his dhosas and breathes a sigh of relief. Unlike his old stove, it burns cleanly, using much less wood.

That not only keeps his customers happy – it helps keep the threatened forests of the Western Ghats intact. It’s been developed by TIDE, a local NGO which is helping local entrepreneurs sell a huge range of ‘clean burning’ technologies to southern India’s small businesses.

In a narrow, wooded valley in Brazil’s deep south, an engineer opens a valve and sets free a cascade of water.

It surges into the blades of a turbine and sends them spinning, generating electricity which is fed into local farms and villages. It’s unobtrusive, ‘run-of-the-river’ hydro power – far preferable to the huge dams which have blighted Brazil.

CRERAL, the regional electricity co-operative who developed it, are confident that they will eventually be able to meet all their customers’ demand from this local, sustainable source.

In a refugee camp on the Ethiopian border, a Somali woman lights a small cookstove.

It’s simple technology, using ethanol produced from molasses – a by-product of Ethiopia’s sugar cane farms – as fuel. It means she no longer has to walk for miles to harvest firewood – an activity which not only strips bare the fragile soil in this arid region, but also puts her at risk of assault and even rape.

Photo: Martin Wright, Ashden Awards

H

igh in an upland pasture,

phrase is on the lips of princes, pollsters, primates and premiers, and increasingly it’s part of public parlance too. Google lists no fewer than 37.4 million online references. It’s also being heard more and more in executive suites and shareholder meetings across the world – as corporate boardrooms at last seriously acknowledge the importance of the issue.

With the Corporate Leaders Group engaging on public policy to support the drive towards climate change solutions, there’s also a real sense that businesses are starting to embed meaningful climate strategies and greener business models, in line with national moves towards a low-carbon future. Indeed, National Grid, Cadbury, and other leaders are well on track to cut their emissions by 80% by 2050, in line with the latest climate science.

WWF is working on this single issue with more companies, business organisations, government departments and local authorities than ever. Our partnerships with big hitters such as HSBC and M&S are well known and continue to develop. It’s with those kinds of companies – the ones who are prepared to significantly improve their own environmental performance, and engage the world around them with a reform agenda – that WWF is keen to be involved, to accelerate what must inevitably be a lowcarbon economy.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

But where is the energy sector in all this?

In contrast with the many positive actions among government and other industry sectors, many of the energy giants plod along maintaining outdated business models, investing, for example, in excessively carbonintensive unconventional oil projects, or submitting applications for new coal-fired power plants with at best vague promises that the carbon emissions may be captured in future.

BP and Shell are undermining any previous low-carbon moves with their involvement in the Canadian Alberta Tar Sands.

The extraction, refining and other production processes involved in obtaining oil from this source uses significantly more energy, and emits correspondingly more carbon, than exploiting conventional oil.

Extraction of tar sands in Alberta, which affects an area the size of France, is set to increase to five times the current level at a phenomenal cost to the local environment and to Canada’s Kyoto commitments.

Meanwhile, the extreme lack of environmental credentials in the Shell-led Sakhalin II project recently led to the collapse of its submission for support from the UK government’s Export Credit Guarantee Department. A WWF-UK application for judicial review, with Corner House, led to the Sakhalin Energy Consortium withdrawing its bid for financial underpinning. Nearer to home,

Shell’s withdrawal from the London Array wind farm project is yet further evidence of the company’s increasingly unsustainable practices.

In Kent, E.ON is seeking planning permission for a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth. WWF’s view is that new coal plants without active carbon capture facilities from the outset have no role in a low-carbon economy. E.ON’s plans to build new coal power stations fly in the face of its Wind of Change marketing campaign which focuses on renewable energy.

Part of the problem is the distinct lack of leadership in the power sector. Although operating under tough constraints, the preoccupation with compliance isn’t going to cut it in the changing climate (no pun intended).

The recent report, 80% Challenge: Delivering a low carbon Britain, published jointly

by WWF-UK, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the RSPB, shows that our climate and energy security rely on a major change in the way the energy sector works.

Businesses in this space now need to push the energy services business model, get into demand management, raise their game on renewables, diversify away from fossil fuels and help to drive new regulatory frameworks and market systems.

Speaking a few months ago at a WWF seminar in London, the prime minister declared: “The climate change crisis is the product of many generations, but overcoming it must be the great project of this generation.”

With business and industry – including, we hope, the energy sector – on board, we intend to play our full and positive part in that great project.

– Dax Lovegrove is WWF-UK’s head of business & industry relations.

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

Green Futures July 2008 45

Letters

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Innovation with that ‘wow’ factor I couldn’t agree more with Chris Sherwin [GF68 p38]. In my experience, regardless of the focus of the innovation process (sustainable products or not), most organisations struggle to innovate. They lack the ability to do so, and tend to rely on ad hoc success led by visionary, energetic and focused individuals willing to overcome the internal inertia and fight all the necessary battles, often alone.

The opportunities and demand for sustainable products and processes simply increases the pressure to get a ‘sustainable innovation process’ together in order to compete.

Brendan Dunphy

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In response to your article [GF68 p39, ‘Facing up to techno-fix?’], are there not also environmental consequences of further ICT? For every watt of power used by ICT equipment another watt is used to cool it. We are putting more and more data on equipment, all requiring power virtually 24/7. Has anybody worked out whether email or post is the most sustainable?

Alastair Mumford

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Market interference Instead of going to the wall, banks can have a bail-out from the Bank of England. There’ll never be a more blatant example to show that, when needs must, it’s OK to put to one side all that guff about governments not interfering in the market.

So could we please interfere just a little bit and ban the new coal-fired power stations? Please, just a little carbon tax? Just enough to tip the balance in favour, on a purely cost basis, of clean power technologies?

Hamish C

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Barclays Capital Commodities research has calculated that, if Virgin Atlantic’s recent biofuel experiment [GF68 p14] was replicated more widely, it would take the entire global annual coconut crop just to keep Heathrow alone operating – for just 18 days!

Rupert Fausset Forum for the Future

A limit on choice?

What percentage of people does Mr Lowcock believe would support his overall speed limit proposal [Soapbox, GF67 p37, ‘Life begins at the 30 limit’] voluntarily, and accept such dramatic and wholly artificial limits on their personal mobility?

Phil Brown

The carbon cost of web-based services

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Virgin biofuels

www.greenfutures.org.uk

On highways I like to travel between 70 and 85 mph. Going fast is such a rush.

But more important is the impetus to escape local merchants. I have three choices for groceries; a farm stand half a mile away, a mini market two miles away, and a full-featured supermarket four miles away. I always go to the supermarket. Why? I can get everything I need for less money and less time – two hours every ten days, versus trips every couple of days to the closer stores. If they had no competition because of transportation limitations, I would be paying a huge premium.

Another example is hardware stores. I have two within a five-mile radius of my house. I don’t go to either of them because I can’t stand the employees. It is the worst customer service I've ever seen. Instead I go a half hour either to a medium-sized regional hardware store or to Home Depot. Better service, better products, better prices.

As for medical care, I would be dead today if I had to count on local doctors. I could go on but I think you get the point. Transportation, especially convenient decentralised transportation, produces economic and social freedoms that are worth maintaining.

‘Country Mouse’ on the blog

Why not post a comment or join the debate at

www.greenfutures.org.uk where your views will speedily reach our many thousands of online users.

You can always email us in the usual way at letters@greenfutures.org.uk Those of you who are averse to, or unskilled in, the ways of the wired world, can of course still send letters by post to: Green Futures (letters), 19/23 Ironmonger Row, London, EC1V 3QN

letters@greenfutures.org.uk

Letters

Green tariffs and British Gas The British Gas Zero Carbon tariff [GF68 p22] is very much a renewable tariff, backed by LECs, REGOs and 12% ROC retirement above obligation.

It also offsets all electricity and gas emissions and provides help with reducing energy usage. It is the confusion that reigns in green power communications, and the lack of any Advertising Standards rules, that led to the claim against British Gas [for calling it “the greenest tariff on the market”] being upheld. A standard is absolutely vital now, and it needs to go much further than just the 'minimum legal requirement'.

A representative of together.com who worked with British Gas on developing this tariff

CORRECTION: Our beech tree howler In the previous issue’s Briefings [GF68 p4] we mistakenly said: 1 kg – the amount of carbon dioxide one mature beech tree can process in one minute.

That's about as much as is emitted by driving a car 5km.

Peter from oneclimate.net wrote to query this. As he said: “We’ve been working hard to reduce our footprint as a family, from 10 tonnes a year to around 5 tonnes. However, we are lucky enough to live in a wood with around 100 mature beech trees. If your figures are right, then they dwarf all our efforts. Our 100 trees would, on these figures, save us 144 tonnes of CO2 a day or 52,560 tonnes a year. This can’t be right, can it?”

No, it can’t. It’s wrong by a factor of 30. The original calculation, by Aloys Bernatzky in his 1973 book Baum und Mensch (Tree and Man), was 28.2 kg in 12 hours. A simplified figure, of 1kg every half hour, has been circulating recently. We picked that up, but unaccountably scrambled it somehow and got 1kg per minute. Apologies, and thanks for pointing it out.

Green Futures July 2008 47

Letteanother rs And thing

Letters “Like crying wolf when all seems quiet, it’s counter-productive to bang on endlessly about the dangers of climate change”

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Faced with a mix of recession and a muddle of climate change denial, it's time to extol green joys, not taxes, says Martin Wright

A

a ‘perfect storm’? Of a recession combining with a surge in populist denial of global warming?

That was the first thought that struck me on seeing how gleefully some of the press picked up on a study by scientists on shifts in ocean circulation. Researchers had suggested these could lead to lower temperatures, offsetting the effects of global warming till 2015 or so.

The Telegraph’s headline, “Global warming may stop, scientists predict”, epitomised the mischief of a media desperate for ammunition to dent the scientific consensus. To be fair, the article itself concluded with a decent, balanced account. But how many of the paper’s readers would bother to get that far once their prejudices had been confirmed? Precious few, to judge by the surge in posts to the paper’s ‘Have Your Say’ slot, citing the new study as yet more evidence of “the biggest con-trick ever played on the human race” – an excuse for the government to tax us to death.

Small wonder, perhaps, that polls show growing scepticism on climate change. Left unchecked, its impacts will almost certainly dwarf the worst that any recession can throw at us.

But while most of those remain on the distant horizon, they can seem small and inconsequential by comparison – especially when viewed through a veil of rain.

All of which makes it tough for politicians to justify anything approaching ‘green’ taxes – however reasonable. And that’s why it’s all the more vital to stress the many ‘winwins’ on offer in tackling climate change. Such as the joys of slow travel and local food, the thrifty nobrainer of energy efficiency, and the

48 Green Futures July 2008

Slow but sexy

“ ”

Far more people voted to give up their car than give up flying

virtues, in security terms, of generating more of our energy from our own winds, woods, waves and sun.

It might be tempting to keep banging on about the looming apocalypse, but it’s likely to be selfdefeating – like crying wolf when all seems quiet. If the vast majority of climate scientists are right, then global warming will soon be back on the front pages, whether we like it or not.

Travelling hopefully If you said ‘slow travel’ to someone a year or so ago, they’d have assumed you were describing a particularly gruesome crawl into Paddington.

Now the Sunday supplements are filled with features extolling the joys of the Slow Train to Provence. Like its slow food cousin, this comes imbued with a sense of quality, of luxury even.

None of which has escaped the attention of the upmarket tour companies, who’ve cottoned on to the fact that they can charge a lot more for a slow week in France than a fast fortnight in Bali. Everyone, it seems, is tripping over themselves in a race to go slow.

And not before time. There’s little prospect of zero-carbon planes taxiing down the crowded runways.

Sooner or later, we may simply not have the luxury of choice. It’ll be go slow, or don’t go at all.

Which may be no bad thing. In rediscovering the ‘essential slowness’ of travel, perhaps we’ll reacquaint ourselves with the lost virtues of reflection, of contemplation. We may appreciate the subtle shifts in geography, in culture, which can come into focus through the windows of a train, say, rather than passing in a blur between departure lounge and hotel.

Maybe it’s a chance to take the slow route to the soul…

Or maybe it’s just a bit of a middle-class fad. Another excuse to look down our noses at the hoi-polloi, jetting off on their Ryanair stag breaks to Rejkyavik, while we enlightened few feel all smug and insulated on that slow train south…

If so, it won’t be the first time that an element of aspiration has helped drive behaviour change: it happened with organic food, it happened with fair trade, and it could happen with green energy, too.

But it might take a while. Chairing a debate on slow travel at the RSA recently, I carried out a couple of impromptu surveys. First, I asked everyone willing to give up long-haul holiday flights to show their hands.

A scattering of palms were raised – maybe 1 in 10, at most. And that, remember, was flying for pleasure alone – not work or ‘love miles’.

Then I asked how many people would find it easier to give up their car than give up flying. The room was a sea of raised hands…

Martin Wright is Editor (at Large) of Green Futures.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

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