Green Futures - No.76 by Green Futures

No.76 April 2010

Slow fashion changes gear Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2025: what world are you wearing?

Sun, sand and sparks: will the Sahara light up Europe? Out of thin air: why CO2 could fuel the future Tornados to turbines: small town America takes the lead www.greenfutures.org.uk

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Contents

Features

Regulars

Partner viewpoints

20 Future fashionistas

riefings – The cutting edge B of news and green innovation

lick here and save a forest C WWF

thousand words – The carbon A suckers from under the sea

iring up the coffee grounds F Food and Drink Federation

ustainable entrepreneur – Andrew S Mercer of 2OC – the man who puts turbines into the gas pipes

eat, the friend beneath our feet P Natural England

he Knowledge – Anna Simpson talks T to Ian Cheshire, CEO of Kingfisher

ne Kingdom Street: suave, O yet sustainable Skanska

orum update – What towels can teach F us about behaviour change, and how to make your FD love sustainability

Letters – Readers respond to Green Futures online and in print

onathon Porritt – Clashes over climate J change are rooted deep in human nature

With the death of fast fashion, will sustainability storm the salons? Trish Lorenz and Martin Wright peer down the catwalks of the future.

26 The light at the end of the desert Photos: Christopher Raeburn; The Bellona Foundation, Bill Watts, Exploration Architecture and Seawater Greenhouse Ltd; jamydesign/istock ; lisasaadphotography/istock ; Skanska; Chimera

Number 76 April 2010

he Sahara could soon be the source of a T sizeable slice of Europe’s electricity. Duncan Graham-Rowe concentrates on the sun.

30 Tornado blessing

blast of green renewal is blowing across A small town America, reports Jessica Forres.

32 Air supply

Can we turn CO2 from greenhouse pollutant into abundant clean fuel? Duncan GrahamRowe investigates.

Front cover: Photography by Sean Michael. Collection by Tara Baoth Mooney.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

o save water, recycle paper T Pureprint

Briefings: Sun seeker, p18

Green Futures April 2010 1

Comment

About us Green Futures is the world’s leading magazine on environmental solutions and sustainable futures. Its aim is to demonstrate how a sustainable future is both practical and desirable – and can be profitable, too. Readership includes key decision-makers and opinion-formers in business, government, higher education, the media and NGOs. The flagship publication of Forum for the Future, Green Futures is financed by subscribers, advertisers and charitable foundations, and by contributions from members of its partnership programme.

Partners are selected on the basis of their demonstrable commitment to the pursuit of sustainable development. They take an active part in the debate through Partner Viewpoint pages, where they share their views and experiences. Partners also receive a wide range of other benefits, including targeted free subscriptions, involvement in networking events, and access to the expertise of the Green Futures team and Forum for the Future as a whole. If you’d like to join us as a partner, please contact Katie Shaw: 020 7324 3660; katie@greenfutures.org.uk

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

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

Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227802435 www.firmenich.com

Naomi Korolew, 020 3057 2524 www.bp.com BT plc Environment Unit, 0800 731 2403 BUPA www.bupa.com Ecotricity Matt Thomas, 01453 756111 www.ecotricity.co.uk Ecover Mick Bremans, +32 3 309 2500 www.ecover.com Energy Saving Trust Paula Owen, 020 7654 2411 www.energysavingtrust.org.uk

Food and Drink Federation Julian Hunt, 020 7420 7125 www.fdf.org.uk Marine Stewardship Council James Simpson, 020 7811 3315 www.msc.org Natural England Julian Lloyd, 0300 060 0243 www.naturalengland.org.uk Pureprint Group Richard Owers, 01825 768811 www.pureprint.com Royal Mail Group Martin Blake, 01252 528681 www.royalmailgroup.com

Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd Jack Cunningham, jack.cunningham@sainsburys.co.uk www.sainsburys.co.uk Skanska Jennifer Clark, 01923 776666 www.skanska.com Triodos Bank William Ferguson, 0117 980 9770 www.triodos.co.uk TUI Travel plc Jane Ashton, 01293 645911 www.fcenvironmentandpeople.com Unilever plc Helen Fenwick, 01372 945000 www.unilever.com Vodafone Group Chris Burgess, 01635 677932 www.vodafone.com WWF Dax Lovegrove, 01483 412395 www.wwf.org.uk

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

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2 Green Futures April 2010

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

AkzoNobel Elizabeth Stokes, 01928 511695 www.akzonobel.com

Editor in Chief MARTIN WRIGHT

Green Futures would like to thank: Alex Hickling and Sam Jones (interns) Helius and Melanie Thompson (proofreading) Shelley Hannan (web) Editorial Overseas House, 19-23 Ironmonger Row, London EC1V 3QN Tel: 020 7324 3660 Email: post@greenfutures.org.uk Subscriptions Circa, 13-17 Sturton Street, Cambridge CB1 2SN Tel: 01223 564334 Email: greenfutures@circaworld.com Green Futures is published by Forum for the Future Registered Charity Number: 1040519 Company Number: 2959712 VAT Reg. Number: 677 7475 70 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, 2010

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Editorial

Contributors to this issue include:

dmit it, you’re a fashion victim.

OK, so you may not obsess over the latest catwalk cool, or still be in sackcloth mourning Alexander McQueen – but most of us conform, more or less, to current trends. And it’s hardly surprising. The desire to dress in season and style seems to run through every culture in the history of civilisation. Environmentalists are not going to wish fashion away. Indeed, look around the average NGO office (I just have), and the place is full of subtly stylish people in muted Howie’s colours. The days of wearing your heart on your organic hemp sleeve are, mercifully, over. But we shouldn’t confuse our inherent sense of style with the shoptastic frenzy of fast fashion which has swept through the last 20 years – dirt cheap, and deeply unsustainable. In ‘Future fashionistas’ [p20], we explore how a combination of resource pressures and technical breakthroughs is unleashing huge changes in an industry which, paradoxically, has until now been one of the most conservative. Meanwhile, if you’re concerned about climate change, you probably feel like a fashion victim, too. Go back a few years, and green wasn’t “just the new black, it was the new red, blue, pink and White Stripes” [see ‘And another thing’, GF59]. Trouble is, anything that suddenly springs into fashion gets flung out of it just as quickly – and rather more brutally. And that, in effect, is what’s happened here. The basics of climate science are still boringly solid. It’s just that, aided and abetted by a few clumsy statements and sloppy errors by climate scientists, the media’s decided that the whole thing’s just so last year, darlings. It really isn’t that surprising. Environmentalists have been whipping up scare stories for so long, that people eventually wondered if they were crying wolf. Sure, climate change is scary. But if you want to win hearts and minds, it’s far better to excite people about all the rich possibilities of a sustainable future than try to panic them into submission. Take energy. In ‘Tornado Blessing’ [p30], Jessica Forres discovers how it took a natural disaster to turn one midwest town into a green beacon. And it’s not alone. From Kansas to California, in small town America, something is stirring. Small steps in the midwest, but giant ones in the Sahara. If the optimists are right, [‘Light at the end of the desert’ – p26] this could soon be the source of a sizeable chunk of Europe’s electricity, thanks to concentrated solar power – a technology whose time has surely come. As has, to a less glamorous extent, that propounded by Andrew Mercer [p34]. His simple technique of putting mini-turbines in the gas network to harvest the potential of pressure differences conjures new energy virtually out of thin air. Which is precisely the aim of the third breakthrough technology featured in this issue. Sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere and turning it into fuel [p32] may seem like a distant dream, but the science is sound enough. You don’t need to ‘believe’ in climate change to see the advantages of such innovations in an age of growing energy insecurity. But their relevance will be all the more obvious when global warming steams back onto the front pages. Much of the media is so fickle that a couple of hot summers should be enough to make that happen. But next time round, let’s hope environmentalists have the sense to leave the hair shirt at home. Because in every conceivable sense, it’s just not cool.

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

www.greenfutures.org.uk

When Duncan Graham-Rowe isn’t scaling the heights of El Capitan in Yosemite (he should be about halfway up as we go to press) he’s an award winning science journalist. Formerly on the staff of New Scientist, he now writes regularly for The Economist, The Guardian and Nature. In this issue, he sums up the latest thinking on capturing green energy from deserts – and from CO2.

Andrew Purvis has written extensively on food and travel for the Observer, Independent and Telegraph, among others. An accomplished and enthusiastic diver, he regularly gets below the surface of issues such as fair trade, overfishing – and obesity. On page 34 he explores an altogether healthier kind of CHiP: Combined Heat and intelligent Power.

Journalist Jessica Forres works at the Washington-based World Resources Institute. Formerly a reporter for WAMU 88.5 FM, the city’s much-cherished National Public Radio station, she abandons the capital for Kansas on p30, finding out how a tornado blew in a flurry of fresh green thinking in the heart of the midwest.

As CEO of Kingfisher, Ian Cheshire combines a hefty corporate responsibility with environmental enthusiasm. At times the two collide – as with the decision to stop selling patio heaters in the company’s B&Q stores. He’s a member of the Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change – and something of a francophile. Appropriately so, as Kingfisher owns French supermarket Castorama.

Green Futures April 2010 3

Briefings

Briefings Fire water makes a spark

Dyed wire It’s a T-shirt – it’s a power pack. Stanford University researchers have designed what is effectively a fabric battery, dubbed ‘eTextile’, which can be both washed and worn.

One of Islay’s leading whisky distilleries is set to power itself. Bruichladdich will use its yeast-rich waste water to fuel an anaerobic digester.

Back to bikes for Beijing

Simple human movements such as walking or even breathing could power everything from pacemakers to iPods, say researchers, via a nanoscale chip implanted in the body.

4 Green Futures April 2010

Once the Kingdom of the Bicycle, Beijing’s streets have recently been swamped by cars. Now city authorities want to revive the bike, with an initial target of 23% of all commuting journeys by 2015.

The decrease in total car ownership in the US during 2008-09 (from 250 million to 246 million). For the first time since World War II, more cars are being scrapped than sold, and the number of first time buyers has dropped from 17 million in the 1990s to 10 million. However, there are still five cars to every four US citizens.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Photos: pixhook/istock; MaxFX/shutterstock; Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis; Viorika/istock

Briefings

A haven under the waves

Supergrid to span EU New designs for wind farms could combine clean energy with marine conservation. According to a study by zoologists at Stockholm University, the turbine foundations provide a safe habitat for fish, crabs, mussels, lobsters and other marine life – out of reach of bottom trawlers.

9 Riding the wave

A new North Sea supergrid could unleash the power of offshore wind to meet Europe’s growing electricity demands – and bring desertsourced solar power to the north.

For humanity en masse, greed trumps virtue. So we have to welcome into our solutions the ordinary compulsions of selfinterest, and also celebrate novelty, the thrill of invention [and] the pleasures of ingenuity. Ian McEwan in Solar

Photos: SHOPTOOMUCH/istock; Mainstream Renewable Power; Hammerfest Strøm; The Bellona Foundation, Bill Watts, Exploration Architecture and Seawater Greenhouse Ltd

The UK’s marine power sector is poised to make a splash. Its six most promising technologies are to share in £22 million worth of new funding to kick start their commercial application.

9 Desert bloom Swathes of the world’s deserts could be transformed into ‘renewable energy oases’ using a combination of vast greenhouses, algae and concentrated solar power, according to plans unveiled by the Bellona Foundation’s Sahara Forest Project.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Green Futures April 2010 5

Briefings

Water of life for rice Mini hydro to the rescue for the Philippines’ endangered terraces

Nacelle-mounted laser (top) anticipates the breeze

Turbines see the wind coming Laser-based radar equivalent helps turbines prepare for every gust Smart turbines that can predict changes in air current could dramatically boost the efficiency of wind power. Existing turbines are designed to rotate into the wind and adjust their blade angles, but this only tends to happen periodically – whereas wind conditions are often much more changeable. But a laser-based equivalent to radar, called LIDAR, will make it possible to monitor wind speeds up to 200 metres away from the turbine, says Torben Mikkelsen of the Risø National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Denmark. Ground-based LIDAR had previously been explored for monitoring wind conditions. But this is the first time anyone has looked at positioning the laser between the blades on the nacelle of the turbine where it can continuously monitor oncoming wind, according to Mikkelsen. It’s also the first time that this sort of predictive approach has been used to adjust the turbine on a continual basis, he claims. Monitoring the wind at a distance allows time to change the direction and pitch of the blades to maximise their efficiency, says Mikkelsen. It also reduces the load the turbines have to withstand – by up to 50% in extreme gusts – helping to extend their life. Tests on the Nordex N90 2.5 MW turbine suggest that under optimal conditions LIDAR can improve turbine efficiency by as much as 8%. – Duncan Graham-Rowe

There seems to be magic in the way the rice terraces of Ifugao Province in the Philippines cling to the mountainsides at around 1,500 metres above sea level, covering an area greater than 10,000km2. But it will take more than magic to keep them there. Frustrated at the lack of basic services such as electricity, growing numbers of Ifugao people, whose ancestors cared for the terraces for thousands of years, are abandoning the traditional way of life and migrating to the cities. As they leave, so the forests which cloak the hilltops are prone to loggers. Terraces collapse through lack of management, falling victim to the growing floods and erosion which also affect communities in the plains far below. It’s a vicious cycle, and one which until now has proved hard to break. Now a new fund to restore the terraces could hold out hope – thanks to a 200kW mini hydro plant at Kiangan. The plant, which cost $1 million, is a gift from e8, a consortium of electricity providers from the G8 nations. It is expected to generate 1,450MWh, meeting close to one fifth of the province’s electricity needs, and earn US $70,000 a year for the new Rice Terrace Conservation Fund. The plant operates on the ‘run of the river’ principle, allowing energy to be harnessed without damming a valley. The money is earmarked for improving quality of life for Ifugao communities, bolstering local agricultural enterprises centred on the terraces and protecting fragile watershed forests. The role renewable energy can play in building a sustainable future for the terraces was first championed by the local Save the Ifugao Terraces Movement (SITMo). Its micro hydro projects have brought electric light and power to hundreds of families in remote highland villages, and won it an Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy in 2005. As Marlon Martin, SITMo’s Chief Operations Officer, argues, the rice terraces are more than just a pretty picture: “They are a system of people, culture and the environment. Neglect one and the rest will come crumbling down”. According to Ashden Award judge David Fulford, the new hydro plant signifies a shift in scale for SITMo. Given that the terraces were created to make use of rainforest springs, it’s a neat turn of fortune that hydro power is now at the heart of the campaign to halt their decline. – Julian Rollins Where there’s a hill, there’s a way

Photos: Nordex SE; Martin Wright

Saving civilization is not a spectator sport – everyone has to get involved. Lester Brown in Dirty Oil

6 Green Futures April 2010

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Briefings

Weak signals from the future Waterscraper

One up on the yellow submarine – how about a giant floating underwater ‘skyscraper’ as your new abode? Your pad offers a 360º view onto shoals of herring and the occasional circling whale. Giant turbines harness power from the waves, the pedestrian port on the surface is sheltered by huge photovoltaic sunshades. And there’s no need to sail to the shore for your weekly shop: a combination of aquaculture, hydroponics and rainwater harvesting keeps the complex self-sufficient. – Anna Simpson

Seeing is believing

Body builder

Augmented reality vision could leave the snazziest Apps in the past. You just pop in a contact lens embedded with hundreds of tiny semitransparent LEDs, and the day begins. Colours are more vivid and resolution is immaculate. Every word spoken by your new Italian lover appears in translation before your eyes. Arrows pop up to point out the turning you need to take, and when you need the internet you just blink at the link… – AS

Forget endless waiting lists for life-saving organs, and incentives such as Israel’s first claim policy for those willing to donate. All you need is a blueprint and the right sort of ink to print your own. Just feed a few healthy cells into a computer, load the bio-ink cartridge and select the blueprint of your chosen organ. The 3D printer churns out layer after layer of cells, building your bespoke body part. With the first human vein recently printed, we could see residents in heavily polluted urban areas file claims for new lungs, or replacement limbs granted to crisis victims. – AS

Forum for the Future’s blog tracks weak signals from the future: www.forumforthefuture.org/ futures/weak-signals

In the pink in 2030 Peter Madden finds tomorrow’s pulse

Photos: zigloo.ca; alexey_ds/istock

By 2030, we can expect our clothes, food and local authorities – as opposed to our doctors – to check we’re in shape. The health system won’t be as we know it. Instead of spending billions on cures for the ailing, it will invest primarily in prevention and day-to-day wellbeing. Stethoscopes will sound out our surroundings. The precise contribution of pollution to disease and ill-health will be known, and public demonstrations will call for more green space or demand fast food outlets are banned. For climate change and affordability reasons, as well as health, vegetarianism will boom, growing from around 7% of the UK population today to more like a quarter in 2030. Foods to enhance health, such as nutraceuticals, will be top sellers. Health monitoring will be ubiquitous. Your toilet will check your urine and flag up anything untoward, and clothes with built-in heart rate and body temperature monitors will keep an eye on you. And there’ll be rewards for wholesome lifestyle choices: bonuses from your employer if you go vegetarian, or government tax breaks for running a race. If ever you do feel a bit peaky, remote diagnostics will get you back on your feet. Home testing and down the line advice mean you’ll not have to leave your house. Whether this vision fills you with hope or horror, it’s likely for a number of reasons. With an ageing population, the burden on the NHS is increasing, and public spending is struggling to keep up. Preventative medicine is a great way to cut costs. At the same time, advances in science and information mean we

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Hoping for the all clear…

know much more about the causes of ill-health, leading to more effective interventions. And with climate change impacting, decision makers will look for solutions which simultaneously tackle emissions and improve health. A lot of it is already out there. GPs offer exercise on prescription. The market for health-promoting foods such as probiotic yoghurts, fortified breakfast cereals, and cholesterol-lowering margarines, is booming. And last autumn, The Lancet published a special edition on how low-carbon behaviours can keep you fit and well. ¥ Peter Madden is CEO, Forum for the Future.

Green Futures April 2010 7

Briefings

Fire water makes a spark AD brings energy independence to a whisky island Any scotch drinker worth their malt will tell you that whisky packs a punch. But now one distillery on the Scottish island of Islay is taking this quite literally and using it to generate electricity. Bruichladdich Distillery hopes to solve several energy problems in one go by installing a new type of anaerobic digester, says owner Mark Reynier. For the last decade Islay distilleries have been required to transport their industrial waste water to a pumping station on the island where it is piped out to sea. And this, says Reynier, has led to an increase in Bruichladdich’s energy bill and its carbon footprint. What’s more, with a single cable from the mainland offering an antiquated and unreliable source of electricity, the distillery has had to depend upon two diesel generators as backup. Reynier considered a range of different possible solutions, from biomass to carbonised pellets, but in the end anaerobic digestion (AD) seemed the best fit. “We want something that doesn’t require an engineer’s oversight or more energy to get it running, and which provides practical and real benefits,” he says. Not only is AD a proven technology, but it offered Bruichladdich an alternative to paying for the right to dump 800,000 litres of pot-ale waste water each year, a by-product of the distillation process. “This is basically warm water that’s rich in dead yeast,” says Reynier. “For the digesters, it’s ideal.” If a month-long trial this spring is successful, the pot-ale will be pumped into the digester continuously. The only by-product would be pure water, which could be used to clean the production units, or added to the whisky for dilution to commercial strength. The plant is expected to generate 80% of the distillery’s electricity, with the remaining 20% sourced from the mains. Reynier hopes to install another modular AD unit in the future, which would cover all of the distillery’s energy needs and allow him to sell any surplus back to the grid. Until recently, AD plants were only available on an industrial scale, but a new generation of affordable compact bio-digesters, built by Northamptonshire firm Biowayste, makes it practical for smaller companies to install them on site. – Duncan Graham-Rowe

Whisky (and power) galore! Bruichladdich turns yeast into sparks

Lasers cut new hope for fusion Breakthrough could see small-scale nuclear reactions in 2010 Scientists have been battling to make nuclear fusion work for more than half a century, and seem to be forever ‘no more than 20 years away’ from success. As it happens, the €10 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is still only in the process of preparing the site for their colossal prototype, and not expected to run commercially before 2050. But a recent breakthrough could see fusion take off later this year. Scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California have found that by using lasers to ignite and control the nuclear reaction, instead of the ITER approach involving powerful magnetic fields, fusion reactors may be viable on a much smaller scale. The NIF group is planning to ignite a reactor later this year. “They have a fairly ambitious schedule for late summer or early fall,” says Joseph Minervini, Head of Fusion Technology and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If this kind of work pays off, it promises a near limitless source of energy.” – Duncan Graham-Rowe

Unlike fission, which splits atoms, fusion bonds charged atoms together, forming a heavier nucleus and releasing enormous amounts of energy. The essential ingredients are deuterium and tritium, both hydrogen atoms with the same number of protons in their nucleus, but with different numbers of neutrons. The oceans contain an almost limitless supply of deuterium, and, according to Minervini, it is possible to design a fusion reactor that produces its own supply of tritium.

8 Green Futures April 2010

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Photos: ramberg /istock; Mark Reynier

Fusion basics

Briefings

Desert bloom Can a combination of greenhouses, algae and CSP drive back the dunes?

Photos: The Bellona Foundation, Bill Watts, Exploration Architecture and Seawater Greenhouse Ltd; Hammerfest Strøm

There are two firmly established truisms about deserts. One: there’s not much you can actually do with them. And two: they’re getting bigger. So wouldn’t it be nice if someone came along with an idea that not only created food, water and energy in desert areas but also helped to combat their expansion? That’s precisely what the Norwegian non-profit Bellona Foundation claim to have done with their Sahara Forest Project (SFP). The project proposes to build renewable energy ‘oases’ in deserts around the world – ‘sahara’ being the Arabic for desert. Each complex would include large greenhouses that use seawater pumped from the coast and evaporated by hot desert air to create cool, humid indoor climes and fresh water for irrigation. A 10,000 hectare greenhouse would evaporate over a million tonnes of seawater a day. The salt would be captured and reused as a nutrient in giant pools where photosynthesising algae bind carbon dioxide into biomass. And at the heart of the complex would be a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant: a vast array of mirrors focusing the sun’s rays to drive turbines through steam. Vegetation would be planted at each ‘oasis’ to rebuild the soil and help resist further desertification. Local communities would benefit from

the creation of jobs, as well as from the algae biomass which can be used as food, fuel, fodder or fertiliser, and from a local source of electricity. According to Professor Janet Hooke, an expert in desertification processes at the University of Liverpool, “the synergy of using the various technologies at once is good”. But she calls for caution and a thorough examination of potential consequences for the local environment. “The run-off from the greenhouse structure in rainstorms could lead to land degradation,” she warns. “And although the general principle of using vegetation to prevent desertification is a sound one, the best way to go about it is debatable.” Such reservations might soon have an answer. The SFP’s first test centre is due to be built this year, with sites in Africa, the Middle East, Australia and the US currently being scouted. If successful, the first fullscale working facility could be flowering in the desert by the end of 2011. – Dixe Wills

If there’s any reason for hope, it lies in man’s occasional binges of cooperation. To save our planet, we’ll need that kind of heroic effort, in which all types of people join forces for the common good. George Meyer, writer for The Simpsons

Riding the wave New funding gives head start to six marine projects A new fund worth £22 million has been set up to develop the UK’s six most promising marine energy technologies. Wave and tidal power is thought to be 10 years behind offshore wind in its development, but the Marine Renewable Proving Fund, financed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, will speed up the first commercial projects. According to Tom Delay, Chief Executive of the Carbon Trust, wave power alone represents an economic

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Splashing out on potential

opportunity to the tune of £2 billion for the UK. He called the fund “the start of a major new industry that will generate jobs and wealth”. Among the projects set to benefit are: • Pelamis Wave Power’s second generation P2 machine, to be tested in Orkney this summer • Atlantis’ 1MW AK-1000 tidal turbine, also to be tested off Orkney this year • Hammerfest Strom’s 1MW HS-1000 tidal turbine, to be installed as part of a 10MW array in the Sound of Islay by 2012. – Anna Simpson

Green Futures April 2010 9

Briefings

Like this, but with sails

Back to bikes for Beijing Cycle targets part of the answer to congestion

The world’s first ‘fossil-free’ freighter to sail in 2012 World shipping accounts for 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but the world’s the world’s first fossil-fuel-free cargo ship is set to sail in 2012. It will draw 60% thrust from sails, and the remaining 40% – in calm conditions or when manoeuvring in port – from a bio-methane engine. The methane is to be sourced from municipal waste in Dungannon, Northern Ireland, and London, and processed at a biogas plant on the UK’s south coast. A full-scale demonstrator ship designed by Rob Humphreys, the man behind Ellen MacArthur’s world-famous ‘Kingfisher’ yacht, is set to run from Riga to Teesside in 2012, and will inform the final specifications for a commercial prototype in 2013. The demonstrator has a 3,000 tonne capacity – the most common and one with a significant market. A sharp rise in demand for low carbon shipping is anticipated in 2012, with an estimated 45 million tonnes of feedstock to be imported to supply the UK’s first biomass-powered electricity generators. B9 Shipping – a sister of the renewable energy company B9 – aims to be there to supply the first generator, MGT Power. “If the biomaterial were transported into the UK using fossil fuel, it would negate some of the emissions saved in power generation,” says Diane Gilpin of B9 Shipping. “Our new vessels offer a commercially viable, environmentally friendly alternative.” A comparably sized cargo ship running on fossil fuel emits on average 16 tonnes of CO2 a day. According to B9, if all 10,000 comparably sized ships were to run on 100% renewable energy, 52 million tonnes of CO2 would be saved in a year. If demand continues to grow, B9 hopes to produce larger ships, capable of longer voyages, in the future. – Anna May Shamoon

China in slow motion

The fall in bee numbers in the UK over the last two years, according to government figures. But awareness of the impact on the productivity of British crops is on the rise. Sainsbury’s has declared that a Gloucestershire store will maintain eight bee hives, with special landscaping to suit its new residents. And £1 million has been made available by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to investigate the decline.

10 Green Futures April 2010

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Photos: Diego Cervo/shutterstock; Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis

Low carbon cargo on course

In Beijing, once the definitive bicycle city, authorities are responding to growing congestion and ongoing smog by setting a new target: for 23% of commuters to pedal to work by 2015. Ambitious? It may not seem so, when you consider that four fifths of the city’s population cycled to work back in the 1980s, but now the car is king and the proportion has dropped to 19.7%. To complement the target, new infrastructure for cyclists is to be wheeled in, with improved bicycle lanes, more parking facilities and a rental scheme to put a further 50,000 bikes on the roads by 2015. Small changes to infrastructure can make a big difference for commuter cyclists. Copenhagen has introduced new foot rests to help you catch your breath at the lights, and two-wheelers in London can now signal that they are waiting for the green bike by pressing a button. But it will take more than cycle-friendly traffic lights to lift the proportion of morning journeys into central London by bike up from 1.7%. Sustainable transport charity Sustrans is calling for national targets to be set, alongside measures to deter car-users, such as a fuel duty escalator, parking levies and road pricing. “The gap between government aspiration and delivery on the ground is huge,” says Jason Torrance, Policy Manager at Sustrans. He hopes to see the sort of changes that are making a difference in other European cities, for example, Copenhagen’s policy of priority for cyclists at junctions, and Munster’s cycle ‘beltway’ around the city centre. – Julian Rollins

Briefings

Capitals warm up to EVs London, Amsterdam lead on infrastructure for electric vehicles

Every avenue’s electric

If the plug-in electric vehicle (EV) is the future of the urban car, then efficient and flexible recharging infrastructure will be crucial to its success. And London Mayor Boris Johnson plans to be in on the act. His five-year plan for EV delivery promises to put all Londoners within one mile of a charging station by 2015, with a total of 25,000 charging points spread between commercial, public and residential premises. The plan aims to kick-start the first 100,000 EVs on London’s roads – presumably in place of existing vehicles –

Share in the dream?

and commits the Greater London Authority to buying 1,000 of them for its own fleet. Meanwhile, Amsterdam is putting €3 million of city council money where its mouth is, matching plans to install 200 charge points by 2012 with subsidies for companies looking to replace conventional vehicles with EVs. The Electric Transport Project grants, available to businesses and entrepreneurs, go up to €15,000 for a car, €45,000 for a truck and €250,000 for a whole fleet. Intended to meet up to half the additional purchase cost compared with standard fuel vehicles, the subsidies amount to a bid by the city to put commercial users at the forefront of a market transformation. A further incentive is reserved parking for EVs in the city. – Roger East

Running on empty

A rare opportunity to bet on a car Victor Kiam famously liked the Remington shaver so much, he bought the company. So how many of you would jump at the chance to buy shares in Tesla? The Californian start-up company that brought you the Roadster electric dream machine could soon discover how far it can capitalise on its eyecatching profile. Literally capitalise, that is – for Tesla recently registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a $100 million initial public offering (IPO). An IPO is a rare event in the US motor industry. It’s over 50 years since the last big one, when Ford went public. One thing is for certain: it is prospects, not proven profits, that Tesla is offering. Although total sales of the Roadster had brought in over $100 million by last September, the takings have been swallowed up several times over in costs. Now the company has pretty much bet the farm on successfully bringing its Model S Sedan to market. Meanwhile it expects to remain a loss-making concern “for at least the foreseeable future”. For Julian Parrott, Partner at financial planners Ethical Futures, the investment remains “an adventurous punt for those with confidence in the market”, especially with infrastructure for recharging at an early stage. But, he says, the development “takes away the comedy angle and moves on discussion about electric cars as a viable alternative to the combustion engine”. – Roger East

Photos: Fedor Selivanov/shutterstock; sitox/istock; Zoran Karapancev/shutterstock

Punt or shunt?

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EV batteries juice up quicksmart Who wants to swap a quick stop at the roadside pump for a long night’s wait while their car recharges? Not many. But now a new fast charging system means you won’t have to. Developed by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the ‘Level 3’ 440V fast-charge stations can boost an EV battery back up to 80% capacity from zero in just 15 minutes. The stations are being promoted in the US by EV manufacturer THINK, which hopes to win sales in the commercial fleet market when its City car goes on sale there later this year. Another step towards easy charging for EVs is undergoing tests at the Fraunhofer Institute in Magdeburg, Germany, as part of the Harz.EE Mobility Project. Researchers are developing a smart system to tell drivers how much juice their batteries have left, where the nearest recharging stations are, how much they cost to use, and whether they offer electricity from renewables. They’re also aiming to establish the best pattern for charging points in the region. – Roger East

Green Futures April 2010 11

Briefings

Rubbish comes in from the cold Fuel cells to generate electricity from waste The world’s first power plant that converts rubbish into gas for use in advanced fuel cells could begin construction in the UK as early as next year. An international consortium, led by UK outfit Waste2Tricity, plans to create synthesis gas by heating carbon-based waste, including plastics and organics, at temperatures higher than the sun. The ‘syngas’ – a gaseous fuel mixture that includes hydrogen and carbon monoxide – will then, for the first time in a commercial power unit, be streamed into the latest alkaline fuel cells to generate electricity in a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. According to Peter Jones, a director at Waste2Tricity, the UK buries between 35 and 40 million tonnes of biomass a year in landfill – representing a huge missed opportunity. “It’s increasingly expensive to dispose of,” he says, “and a valuable source of fuel which we should be using to generate low-carbon power.” Like similar pilot plants in Canada, Taiwan and Japan, Waste2Tricity uses plasma – electrically conductive gas – in an

oxygen-deprived environment to generate temperatures of between 5000 and 8000°C. But this is the first time that plasma gasification of waste has been married to fuel cell technology to generate electricity. Jones claims that ditching the usual gas power plant will mean efficiency savings of “up to 60%”. But David Fulford of the Ashden Awards isn’t convinced that the efficiency gains would justify the cost of the project. “The gasifier depends on a plasma arc that generates

£251

very high temperatures,” he explains. “The generation and maintenance of this electric arc require very sophisticated technology and very good insulation. It seems to be rather an expensive way to destroy waste!” A further complication, he adds, is that fuel cells are very sensitive to contamination, and so the materials going into the arc (waste from landfill, in this case) would need to be free from heavy metals, sulphur and chlorine. The pressures to find efficient solutions for our waste are increasing. This year the National Audit Office reiterated doubts first raised in 2006 about the UK’s ability to meet its 2013 EU landfill targets, which could lead to huge fines. The price for dumping a tonne of waste in landfill, currently £40, will rise to £72 in 2013. The deterioration of the UK’s existing nuclear and coal facilities is also putting pressure on the Government to find new solutions to meet our energy needs. Waste2Tricity and their partners are seeking a capitalisation of £135 million for their first 50,000 tonne-capacity plant. But with the UK’s rising energy prices, combined with a looming EU bill for our waste, perhaps this opportunity is too hot to throw away. – Alex Johnson

The yearly sum coughed up by the average UK household for green products according to The Co-operative Bank’s Ethical Consumerism Report. This marks a significant increase from £23 per household per year in 1999. In the US, sales of ethically branded products reached $38 billion by the end of 2009 – up 8.7% on 2008.

New device will promote efficient driving on buses

12 Green Futures April 2010

Bus travel in Aberdeen is about to become an even greener option. Transport company FirstGroup has announced that it will fit a device to all 180 of its buses in the Granite City to help drivers reduce fuel consumption. DriveGreen detects driving movements and, by displaying a red, amber or green light, informs the driver how efficiently they are accelerating, braking and cornering. Trial results have shown that drivers guided by the technology would use 500 litres less fuel in a year. If rolled out to all of FirstGroup’s 8,500 buses, the company anticipates a saving of 130,000 tonnes of CO2: “the equivalent of removing 24,000 cars from the roads”. “Eco-driving not only improves fuel efficiency but results in smoother driving as well,” adds Rupert Fausset, Forum for the Future’s transport expert, “so passengers should feel the difference too.”. – Dixe Wills

Breakdowns – a thing of the past? A separate instance of technical wizardry has designs on making roadside assistance organisations redundant. Wireless communication company Trimble is developing Driver DNA, a device that collects diagnostic messages sent by a car’s electrical and mechanical equipment and alerts the driver to the possibility of a breakdown with a text or e-mail. The prophetunder-the-bonnet will be launched towards the end of the year.

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Photos: Hank Morgan/Science Photo Library; Simon Price/firstpix.co.uk

Driving down bus pollution

Briefings

South Korea bets big on renewables

Taking solar to scale: the Sinan photovoltaic plant

Green stimulus helps shape business plans South Korea’s cleantech companies are going for growth. Their Government is expecting them to invest over $3.4 billion in the sector this year. And a new law which takes effect this April will direct 2% of the country’s GDP towards promoting environmental technologies. The country’s “low carbon, green growth” stimulus package, launched last year, [see GF72, p9] gained worldwide attention. Its ambitions, such as creating close to a million new green jobs, left US analyst Jesse Jenkins of the California-based Breakthrough Institute worried that his own country would be “left in the dust by Asia’s cleantech tigers”. But South

Korea’s approach is more sophisticated than just throwing public money at the environmental sector. We’re now seeing a spate of regulations and initiatives coming through that promise big boosts for the country’s domestic market. Energy companies, for instance, are being pushed into building or buying in solar photovoltaic capacity by a new renewable portfolio standard (RPS) that requires them to get a proportion of their electricity from a variety of green sources. It’s stimulating the growth of large scale production, such as Sinan (left). And the rollout of a “million green homes by 2020” programme will similarly stimulate the country’s PV, renewable heat and fuel cell power generation businesses. These include global players like Samsung, whose latest c-Si

Photos: STF/epa/Corbis

600%

The anticipated growth rate of the carbon accounting industry over the next two years, according to Groom Energy Research. Despite international scepticism as to the viability of a carbontrading scheme, investment in the coming months is expected to dwarf 2009’s total of $46 million. Industry giants Microsoft and Computer Associates are investing in carbon accounting software for the likes of Wal-Mart and Tesco, and bespoke systems to manage copious data for sustainability reporting are on offer from software company Benchmark.

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solar cells (with a claimed efficiency of 18%) were unveiled to an international audience at February’s vibrant Expo Solar event in Seoul. Other key targets include improving the efficiency of the electricity distribution network with a “smart grid” programme. The energy ministry announced in January that this might require government investment of some $2.4 billion, but that the lion’s share of the money, some $21.8 billion between now and 2030, would come from the private sector. On a smaller scale, but still potentially highly significant for a country so dependent on oil fuel imports, is a hydrogen vehicle programme with a target of 500 vehicles on the road by 2012 – and 12 hydrogen fuel stations in operation to service them. – Roger East

150

The maximum number of people with whom any individual can have a meaningful sense of community. First premised by anthropologist Robin Dunbar and said to have roots in brain capacity, the figure appears to be reflected in everything from villages to military units to Facebook-style social networks.

Green Futures April 2010 13

Briefings

Supergrid to span EU

2009 biggest ever year for worldwide wind China, the US and the EU stormed ahead on wind last year, adding 33GW to the global tally. The EU increased its overall wind capacity by 10.16GW, of which 0.58GW offshore. China totted up even more, doubling its capacity for the fifth year running. The US also added almost 10GW – a record boost, thanks to economic stimulus measures which confounded fears of a fallback following the boom of 2008. Wind power capacity (GW)

China EU US Rest of world Power sharing, sea to shore

New in 2009

Total installed capacity

13.0 10.0 10.0 4.5

25.1 74.7 35.0 23.0

Source: EWEA and Global Wind Energy Council

Offshore wind growth spurs plans for major European infrastructure A new European grid could unleash the power of offshore wind to meet Europe’s growing electricity demands. In the North Sea alone, a projected 118 offshore wind farms with a combined capacity of 68.4GW could deliver 13% of the electricity currently used by the countries concerned. The proposed North Sea Countries’ Offshore Grid Initiative would link them via thousands of miles of undersea cable carrying high voltage direct current (HVDC) to electricity substations across the region. Plans are for the new infrastructure to be operational before 2030.

An initial declaration was signed in December by EU energy ministers from the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland – and non-EU member Norway has since joined the partnership. The ten countries aim to sign a Memorandum of Understanding later this year, confirming the role of offshore wind in the big league of European power generation. Key selling points for a project that’s likely to cost up to €30 billion, funded ultimately by commercial electricity consumers and private households, include: • unlocking major region-wide trading opportunities in renewable power • economies of scale in the construction phase, compared with a series of national efforts

• the ability to balance out a drop in wind power in one place with higher production elsewhere, minimising concerns around the intermittency of wind (see GF74, p13) • experience with an HVDC system described by the European Commission as “one of the building blocks of a future European supergrid” – the kind of thing that could make sense of bringing desertsourced solar power to power-hungry northern Europe. Major industry players keen to see this proposal take shape have now set up a Brussels-based lobby group. ‘Friends of the Supergrid’ includes Siemens, Areva, 3E and Mainstream Renewable Power. Meanwhile, Scotland and Ireland are looking jointly at Irish Sea grid linkages. – Roger East

UK ambitions The Crown Estate, owner of the UK seabed, has agreed to nine new development zones, opening doors for various initiatives with a combined capacity of 32GW.

Where

Dogger Bank

Hornsea

Norfolk Bank

Capacity

9GW

4GW

7.2GW

Simons Project Ventures Mainstream Renewable Power

Scottish Power Vattenfall

Key players RWE Npower SSE Renewables Statoil Statkraft

14 Green Futures April 2010

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Image: Mainstream Renewable Power

Major projects include:

Briefings

A schooled approach to carbon cuts

‘Please Sir, can I have…less?’

Investing in the next generation of energy monitors Schools in the UK account for 9.25 million tonnes of CO2 each year, according to the Sustainable Development Commission – that’s over 1.3% of total carbon emissions. But a combination of renewable energy generation, efficiency measures and education to raise awareness of the real cost of energy could turn the tide.

Following recommendations by the Zero Carbon Task Force, the Government has set a target for all new schools to be zero carbon by 2018. Plans to make it happen include new design, renewable energy generation on and off-site, and measures to monitor and offset emissions. And to help schools take a first step towards carbon cuts, a £12 million fund has been set up offering free energy display meters to schools across England.

Richard Dunne, head teacher at Ashley Primary School in Surrey, knows what a difference asking children to keep an eye on energy can make. “Do the measuring from the start, keep it simple and see how much you use,” he prompts. Dunne’s school won an Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy in 2009 for cutting electricity consumption by more than half, saving 14 tonnes of CO2 a year. Alongside energy monitoring software, they installed double-glazing, low watt laptops, a biomass boiler, solar thermal heating and PV lighting. Immediate savings in carbon and cash aside, involving children in emissions cuts is an investment in the future – and ministers aren’t the only ones to see this. The consultancy C-Change offers business an alternative way to spend an offset budget or engage stakeholders, by pairing them up with a local secondary school. The school benefits from a baseline energy audit, workshops involving pupils and staff, and support to finance low carbon initiatives, such as food gardens. The project, dubbed ‘Eco-Mission’, has paired The Guardian with the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school in Islington, and the taxi firm Greater London Hire with Ravenscroft School in Barnet, among others. – Gail Purvis www.c-changesc.org

Fabric softener loses the bottle Retailers cut waste with new dispensers

Photos: Ashley Primary School; WRAP

Asda became the first retailer last month to trial self-dispensing technology (see New Ideas That Work, p14) in a move to help consumers cut costs and waste by offering concentrated fabric softener in pouches that are reusable up to 10 times. According to WRAP, the new system could offer a 96.3% reduction in weight and volume of packaging sent to landfill, when the pouch is reused. The liquid is transported in bulk – as opposed to ready packaged plastic bottles – to storage facilities ‘back of store’, and then piped to the aisle. For customers who refill the pouch, the same volume of fabric softener is up to 40p cheaper than the bottled equivalent. “There’s been lots of green innovation in the fabric care industry, starting with things like lightweighting, recyclable plastic or carton packs,” says Chris Sherwin, Head of Innovation at Forum for the Future. “Some manufacturers changed from powders to tablets to pouches. Asda’s trial of instore refill is the next logical breakthrough. It’s exactly the kind of innovation we need.”

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Reuse and use again WRAP hails Asda’s instore refill trials as part of a “reusables revolution”, also including B&Q’s reusable pack to deliver kitchen worktops – an initiative which has contributed to savings of over £1 million a year on packaging. In line with the trend is Tesco’s ‘buy one, get one later’ offer (see GF75, p15), which allows the consumer to come back for their freebie once there’s space in the fridge.

But the real ‘two for one’ offer, Sherwin adds, will come when the industry integrates fabric conditioners into washing detergents themselves, cutting out one product altogether. – Evie Serventi

Green Futures April 2010 15

Briefings

Dyed wire

Conductive ink gives rise to fabric batteries Researchers at Stanford University have opened the gates for affordable electronic fashion that could see t-shirts charge your phone or redesign themselves before your eyes. By dipping fabric into an ink made up of carbon nanotubes, and then drying it in an oven, the research team created and maintained an electrical connection across the whole surface area. The result is effectively a fabric battery, dubbed ‘eTextile’, which can be both washed and worn. The team found that the porous character of lightweight natural and

“He just kept looking at my top…”

synthetic fibres is ideal for absorbing the conductive ink. The treated textiles proved to be more efficient than previously developed paper batteries – and are also much stronger and more durable. According to Yi Cui, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford, who heads up the research team, eTextile has a density of 20 watt-hours per kilogram. He claims that a piece weighing 0.3kg could store three times the energy of a mobile phone battery. Cui expects the development to lead to new, low-cost approaches to energy storage, as well as sparking new fashion designs. – Julian Rollins

£3 billion

The sum the Carbon Trust aims to save by offering free ‘energy saving action plans’ to any UK company that spends between £50,000 and £3 million a year on energy bills. The service has already helped B&Q save 10,000 tonnes of CO2 since 2008, by engaging staff with energy saving measures and improving the efficiency of their buildings

Rag and bone When asked to build a greenhouse on zero budget, Sebastien Ramirez took a trip to the scrap yard and came back with… windscreens. His design mimics rooftop tiles, overlapping the screens to make the structure watertight and allow for solar convection heating. Ramirez’s penchant for recovery over recycling embraces a growing movement. Eastex Materials Exchanges, which span the east of England from North Yorkshire to Essex, are amongst a growing group of service providers that allow organisations to sell or give away surplus industrial wares. With everything from trouser presses and pheasant feathers, to waste fuel oil residues offered by big players including John Lewis and Her Majesty’s Prison Service, the burgeoning recovery industry clearly has scope for growth. As Kim Coley, Eastex Coordinator at the Peterborough Environment City Trust says, “People are keen and able to commit to more sustainable strategies. The difficult thing is letting people know of the channels to help them do so”. – Sam Jones

16 Green Futures April 2010

My other one’s a Porsche

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Photos: MaxFX/shutterstock; Sebastian Ramirez

Windscreen greenhouses just the start for reuse of surplus wares

Briefings

Building blocks Concept mines landfill as raw construction material If you’ve seen Pixar’s animation WALL-E, the concept of the robot waste operative may seem familiar. But for a group of architects and scientists based in New York, the idea deserves serious thought. The non-profit collaboration Terreform ONE (Open Network Ecology) has conceptualised a new generation of waste compacting ‘robots’ to put the vast quantities of municipal rubbish to good use – as giant bricks. Dubbed ‘Rapid Re(f)use’, the project claims that it has found a way to rebuild seven Manhattan Islands at full scale, using only materials recovered from landfill sites. The thought-provoking vision is intended to promote debate about waste, but is based on existing technology, according to Terreform Co-founder Mitchell Joachim. “If I were an alien looking down from space I would think that cities were an engine whose primary purpose was to produce landfill,” says Joachim. The robots would combine software used in automated 3D printers with techniques found in industrial waste compaction devices. Equipped with ‘jaws’ for greater precision, they would compact the waste into simple interconnecting shapes that could be used to build new structures. The machines would also distinguish between different types of material, separating out plastics for windows, organic compounds for temporary biodegradable structures, and so on. – Julian Rollins

Architecture of the future: a load of rubbish

Water tank

Photos: Mitchell Joachim, PhD, Terreform ONE; Ultra Green

Car to run on hydrogen from water Three predictions habitually featured in 20th century visions of the new millennium: humans would colonise the moon, eat meals consisting solely of brightly coloured pills, and drive around in water-powered cars. We’re dragging our feet a little on the first two, but a clean technology provider may soon be bringing us a little taste of the third. Ultra Green has announced that it is funding research into an Electro Hydrogen Generator (EHG) designed by Oxford-based OM Energy Ltd. Powered by exhaust fumes, the EHG uses an innovative electrolysis system to extract hydrogen from water, fed from a small tank, and mixes it with the vehicle’s fuel supply by co-firing. The goal is a 20% saving in fuel and emissions. The device is to be tested later this year on a 1.6 litre 4x4 and a large 12 litre military vehicle. Assuming all goes well, the EHG could then be retro-fitted to private cars whose engine management systems can be reprogrammed to reduce the amount

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of conventional fuel used. Ultra Green Chairman, Tony Blakey, sees the innovation as “the obvious interim step before pure hydrogen fuel becomes readily available on the forecourt”. Hugo Spowers, head of hydrogenpowered car manufacturers Riversimple, gives EHGs a cautious welcome: “I think

these things can actually do some good... but the heat recovery and cracking of water to make hydrogen would have to be fantastically efficient”. So drivers may not be refuelling at the kitchen tap quite yet, but at least they may not spend quite so much time at the petrol pump. – Dixe Wills

Green Futures April 2010 17

Briefings

Future fjords

Elegant, and electric

Danish town invests in wind, biogas and beauty Nordic cities have long been at the cutting edge of sustainable urban planning. Copenhagen’s Vesterbro springs to mind, with its solar panels, rainwater recycling and district heating; New Heden, the “green lung” of Gothenburg, where cycle paths weave through undulating glass buildings topped with turf; and Vällingby, a historic suburb of Stockholm, now home to Europe’s biggest geothermal energy plant. Now, the Danish town of Augustenborg is getting a green makeover, with a pedestrian-oriented space on the banks of the fjord, with ground source heat pumps, wind turbines, and biogas on the marina side, and solar PV roofscapes on the urban side. Cars are to be kept in the background, but even the parking area is to be a source of energy, with vibrating kinetic plates that generate electricity when cars pass over them.

Like a leaf to the light

The plans, Copenhagen-based by Deve Architect, were approved after winning the Europan 10 competition for future-proof, multifunctional and, above all, attractive urban environments. The judges commended the integration of renewable energy solutions into the landscape, in response to their call for “a close scrutiny of [the city’s] existing qualities”. The makeover will be funded by Sønderborg Municipality as part of Project Zero, an ambitious master plan to render the whole region carbon neutral by 2030. Irving Jensen, spokesperson for the council, explains that Sønderborg “wishes to be become one of the most dynamic and attractive growth centres in Denmark”, with business development, human wellbeing and culture at the heart of its vision. – Andrew Purvis

Sun seeker These spiralling skyscrapers are part of a self-sustaining urban ecosystem proposed for London by Team Chimera at the Architectural Association. Dubbed ‘Mangal City’, the structure draws on phyllotaxis – the mechanism which determines leaf patterns to maximise exposure to sunlight and moisture. The leaf-like residential pods sit on ‘branches’ that twist towards the sun to maximise warmth, light and PV potential. – Sam Jones

18 Green Futures April 2010

The prospect of harnessing kinetic energy from simple body movements to produce electrical power has moved one step closer, thanks to researchers at Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology. They have developed a tiny new nanoscale chip made of PZT (lead zirconate titanate) which, embedded in silicone rubber sheets, produces electricity when the sheets flex under pressure. This can come from simple human movements such as walking – if the chip is incorporated in a shoe – or even breathing, with the chip planted in the body next to the lungs. Such a configuration would in theory enable it to power heart pacemakers, so doing without the need for risky surgery to replace conventional batteries. PZT is much more efficient than most other ‘piezoelectric’ materials (those capable of transforming kinetic to electronic energy). It converts over 80% of the kinetic potential – opening up the possibility that simple actions such as breathing or walking could eventually power anything from phones to I-Pods. – Martin Wright

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Photos: Deve; Chimera; Viorika/istock

Kinetic energy from breathing could power pacemakers – even phones

Feature

For the past twenty years, we’ve lived in a time of fast fashion – cheap, disposable and deeply unsustainable. Now that’s all set to change – even if the clothes look much the same. Trish Lorenz and Martin Wright peer down the catwalks of the future. 20 Green Futures April 2010

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Photo: Christopher Raeburn

Future fashionistas

Photo: ASOS

hen Captain Kirk asks Scotty

to beam him up, when Luke Skywalker battles Darth Vader, or the family get together in 1950s cult cartoon The Jetsons, the clothes the protagonists are wearing look very little like the fashions we see on our streets today. Film makers of past generations regularly envisaged a 21st century with a penchant for silver and white and a preference for skin tight, all-in-one body suits. But now we’re here, the future of fashion is looking both more prosaic and more radical. More prosaic because there’s little sign of a revolution in aesthetics (Lady Gaga aside, silver lamé body suits have yet to storm the high street). The clothes we wear in two or three decades’ time will probably appear a lot like those of today. But it’s looking more radical because a combination of new technologies, environmental crises and rapidly shifting cultural norms are promising to transform the fashion industry beyond recognition. For now, we live in an era of fast fashion. Prices have plummeted, and clothing has become virtually disposable. T-shirts specially made for everything from hen nights to corporate jollies are worn once or twice and discarded. Why keep something you don’t like when you can buy a less garish replacement for £1.99? At that price, it’s hardly worth washing. Consumers in the UK alone – many of them still in their teens – buy four times as many clothes as they did in 1990. Clothes are more affordable, and less sustainable, than ever before, and much of the mainstream clothing industry is predicated on fast fashion stretching into the future. But now there’s growing evidence that this era is coming to an end – and that, one way or another, fashion is set on a more sustainable course, although the route it takes there could be a winding, bumpy one. For a start, there are signs that the rampant consumerism which has characterised the last 20 years is itself going out of vogue. The recession has played its part, of course. Citing the dramatic decline in retail spend, Martin Giles of The Economist writes: “The recession has sparked a profound shift in shoppers’ psychology.” Consumers have “responded with an emphatic ‘no’ when asked if they want to consume more. There has been a backlash against bling”. And it’s no crunch-induced blip, he argues. Dilys Williams, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion, agrees. “We’re seeing real fatigue among consumers around the idea of having more and more stuff. There’s a drive to entice us to buy, but people are bored with [their purchases] almost before they get them home. [We’ve reached] a point where the cycle has become monotonous.” As new becomes less novel, so it’s starting to lose its appeal. Some see evidence of a flight from quantity and bling to quality and ethics. “People are starting to question what they are buying”, says Anthony Waller, of ethical fashion retailer People Tree. The company’s grown by 20% in the past year, despite the crunch, and other ethical

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Rebirth of the cool: parachute silk turned into a dress (left) and bottle tops into shoes (below)

“ ”

There’s been a backlash against bling

brands are booming, too. It’s a trend which hasn’t gone unnoticed by textile exporters. Convinced of the size of the potential market, India recently set a target of $1 billion worth of organic cotton product sales by 2012. The ripples have even reached the dubious shores of Miss England. At the semi-finals of last year’s competition, contestants had to abandon the traditional swimwear/ evening dress style in favour of an eco-conscious category. With Ethical Fashion Forum director Elizabeth Laskar on the judging panel, contenders sashayed past in dresses made from everything from discarded magazines and milk bottle tops to parachute silk. Mainstream retailers are responding. Take Marks & Spencer. Over 5% of its clothing sales are now from organic or fair trade sources: still a small proportion, but growing fast from a standing start three years ago. M&S’s Krishan Hundal insists it’s customer-driven. “They are [becoming] much more interested in the materials used in clothing. And in the future I think we will see that those materials have to be sustainable, and traceable, right through to the packaging.” Consumer pressure may not always be the main driver. As climate and resource concerns intensify, the future of the industry will also be shaped by factors such as ever-tighter trade agreements, environmental regulation and labelling standards. Increased pressure on water and land for food and/or fuel could see textile crops the subject of civil tension, even wars… Working out possible scenarios for the future – and what they might mean for the prospect of genuinely sustainable fashion – is at the heart of the Forum’s Fashion Futures project. Smart businesses need to be prepared for the full range of possibilities – from a world of local, low-carbon clothing to one where carbon capture and storage and open markets unlock a fast-paced, high-tech market [see panel, ‘It’s 2025. What world are you wearing?’]. In one scenario flagged up by Forum, the clothing industry of 2025 could have responded to environmentally aware consumers by digitally tagging every item. So when you go into a shop for a pair of jeans, you’ll start off by checking where, how and by whom they were made, simply by scanning the tag with your mobile. Any queries? You click onto the in-store cam and talk directly to the producer. Outdoor clothing specialist Patagonia is already heading in that direction. Its web-based ‘Footprint Chronicles’ (www.patagonia.com/web/eu/footprint) gives a snapshot of the origins and make-up of selected products: you can, for example, click on information about the workplace in Hanoi in which your puffa jacket is sewn – or the Japanese factory which makes its recycled polyester fabric. Woollen sportswear maker Icebreaker has gone a step further: each of its merino wool sweaters incorporates a (wait for it…) ‘Baacode’. Type it in to the website (www. icebreaker.com/site/baacode), and you can trace your wool back to an individual farm – though not, as yet, to an individual sheep.

Green Futures April 2010 21

Feature

Concern over ethical sourcing is one thing, but if sustainability is really to catch on the catwalk, then it needs to look cool rather than quirky – even if its market is ‘green aware’. Unlike their peers of a generation ago, today’s environmentalists are less inclined to wear their virtue on their badly-cut, slightly smelly hemp sleeve. Designers such as Tristan Gribbin and Marion McKee have latched onto this market: their SUST label (as in sustainable, and ‘sussed’) combines organic cotton with chic modernity. New York-based Luke McCann, Timothy Schmidtke and Robert Lido came up with the Japanese phrase ‘Mottainai’ – ‘what a waste’ – for their menswear label, bristling with both style and impeccable organic credentials. It’s a beguiling vision: the nation’s youth turning away from dirt cheap towards clean and green. But sceptics might well argue that for every sussed shopper checking the ethical creds of their threads, there are a dozen more piling into Primark for a brace of cheapie jeans and tops. So, is sustainable fashion condemned always to be stuck in the niche? Not necessarily. A world where resources such as water and soil are being stretched to the limit, where climate change is kicking in with a vengeance, simply won’t be able to support a constant tide of ultracheap clothes. In their place will be clothes designed to last, and to weather tough times. And we’re not talking chunky knits and organic cotton. These consume valuable reserves of land and water. In this scenario, manmade fabrics have come to the fore, providing personalised, high-tech style. Synthetic fibres that are less carbon- and water-intensive are woven into immensely durable and stain-resistant garments, guaranteed to keep out any weather while holding their shape and freshness for days of constant wear. The only thing natural about them is the way they use biomimicry to respond to sudden changes in the weather: expanding to trap heat in the cold, or fluffing up to fend off the rain. Technology is already creeping in to clothes today. German designer WarmX (above right) makes a range of ‘electric wear’ that includes tiny silver fibres woven into the fabric with small rechargeable batteries to keep the wearer warm. Philips is experimenting with Lumalive,

22 Green Futures April 2010

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The clothes of the future could be cultured from bacterial cellulose, with the ultimate aim of growing a dress in a vat

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Stain-free future: new fabrics such as this spill-safe dress (right) are paving the way for massive savings in water and increased durability

a light-emitting textile. Beneath the fabric are LED lights that don’t compromise the softness of the cloth, so it’s still comfortable to wear. The lights can spell out messages, blend in with a colour scheme, or simply convey the wearer’s mood. And Philips is now working on ‘emotional sensing’ – a technique where the garment itself would read and project the emotional state of its owner. Another chance to wear your heart on your sleeve… Then there’s clothing for people who really don’t want to be seen at all. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico are working on a new camouflage system using a nanotech-based ‘chameleon suit’. This would automatically take on the hues of the surrounding environment, allowing a soldier to literally blend into the background. It’s a far cry from the cheap t-shirt – though whether in practice such high-tech clothing will actually prove more sustainable is a moot point. More promising, perhaps, is the Biocouture project – a collaboration between designers at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and CelluComp, a Scottish ‘sustainable biotech’ company. It’s experimenting with ‘growing’ clothing from bacterial cellulose – a more or less renewable resource. In theory, the production methods could require far less energy and resources than cotton clothes. The ultimate aim, says Biocouture, “is to grow a dress in a vat”. And if you think all of this is a bit too much of a technological cornucopia to be true, you’re not alone. There’s another all too plausible future where sustainability isn’t delivered by design but imposed by circumstance. It’s a future where we’ve conspicuously failed to tackle climate change, where energy and water shortages are widespread and severe, and resource costs spiralling. Prices have shot up, and new clothes are fast becoming unaffordable for everyday wear. There are no cool techno-fixes in sight to get us out of the mess. But where technological innovation is failing in 2025, alternatives are positively thriving. Creative recycling is rampant. Companies are developing ranges of remade clothing, and clothing co-operatives are on the rise, with people clubbing together and buying collectively to save costs. Clothesswapping is routine, and high-tech ‘clothing libraries’ are

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Photos: Philip Lange/shutterstock; WarmX

Light cotton, heavy footprint: manmade fibres such as WarmX (right) may go easier on the earth than ‘natural’ textiles

Photo: Laurne Devenney/California College of Art

springing up to meet demand. These not only help give people clothes they couldn’t otherwise afford; they help foster a sense of community. Some initiatives around today already imbue that. Take ‘Swishing’ – the clothes-swap party scheme which has spread rapidly across the UK. Its founder, Lucy Shea, CEO of sustainable communications consultancy Futerra, says it’s “creating communities based on common interest rather than geography. Swishing works because of the social aspect of it. The growth in social media like Facebook and Twitter has helped too; people use them to arrange parties and broker broader social networks. We’ve seen a 600% growth on our website over the past four years.” Meanwhile, the industry is starting to pick up on the potential for recycling. In Brazil, the Super Cool Market encourages customers to trade in their own clothes as part exchange for new (or other second-hand) ones. In Britain, Junky Styling deconstructs and redesigns charity shop pieces, while From Somewhere creates new clothes from factory waste (such as end-of-roll materials, swatches and off-cuts). Dilys Williams believes it’s a key trend. “A lot more could be done to adapt existing items, to help consumers experience fashion in different ways than simply by buying something new”, she says. Mainstream retailers are also seeing the commercial possibilities in reuse. Nike’s Trash Talk basketball trainer is produced from manufacturing waste. The upper is waste leather (real and synthetic) from the factory floor; the mid-sole uses scrap foam. The Bottletop project reuses ring pulls, bottle tops and other waste items to create bags and accessories, training up local craftsmen in Brazil and elsewhere. Dorothy Maxwell, lead of the Sustainable Clothing Roadmap on behalf of the UK Environment Department (Defra), thinks this is a crucial part of the future. “Reducing consumption is part of the issue, but it’s not the only solution. Investing in closedloop systems that enable us to reuse and recycle is important too”, says Maxwell, who is also Technical Director at Global View Sustainability Services. And she concludes: “We have to accept that consumers like shopping and want to buy.” For now at least, that much is clear. But as fast fashion fades, it’s just possible that our obsession with shopping may fade with it. As Martin Giles says: “Many people no longer seem consumed by the desire to consume”. And if that shift survives the next retail boom, there is no shortage of other, much more sustainable, models – from swishing parties to high-tech clothes libraries – waiting to satisfy our endless appetite for remodelling ourselves.

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As fast fashion fades, our obsession with shopping may fade with it

It’s 2025. What world are you wearing? We know our clothes say something about who we are, but they also express the world we live in: lifestyle demands, resource pressures, global trade and political trends. Fashion Futures, a recent report by Forum for the Future, looks at the implications for the industry of four different global scenarios. > Slow is beautiful A tightly regulated world makes less mean more The older the jacket the sweeter the tweed. You found yours on vBay: twentieth century vintage reworked for a feminine fit by the Nigerian co-operative for coastal refugees. You wouldn’t exactly call it a steal – priced to include the tailor’s wage, additional fibres (from organic sugarcane), solar-powered shipping and climate tax – but it keeps your footprint in check. > Community couture Creativity compensates for worldwide resource shortages Your closet’s no longer your own, since you signed up for the Local Clothing Scheme. You spend two hours a week at Patch ’n’ Match, and get ten garments a month – on loan – in return. Sometimes you dream of buying a new frock, one made with real virgin fabric, perhaps for a wedding… But the price of cotton is soaring after last year’s drought drove land grabs to the limit, and no occasion seems to justify the expense. > Techno-chic Markets thrive on free trade and fast transformation Never in history has there been a better fit. Body scanners make the cut to fit your curves, and intelligent fibres give or take as your weight fluctuates. Modular clothes and digital dyes help you keep up with the micro-seasons of instant global fashion. And every item you buy adds to climate adaptation funding for lowincome countries. You miss your days as a model – but with the rise of virtual fitting rooms, no one’s willing to wait for the catwalk. > Patchwork planet Global tensions and tariffs spur localised trends You can tell at a glance where someone hails from. Even home-grown, hand-knitted items are tagged with flags, catch phrases, icons and stripes following years of conflict over resource shortages and intellectual property. Only a few multinational brands survive – the ones quick to camouflage themselves in the local landscape. Your personal styling service ‘You-nique’ is taking off, since one of your clients was tweeted by Vogue. – Anna Simpson The report Fashion Futures is available here: www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/ fashion-futures You can also watch animations of the four scenarios here: www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/ fashion-animations

Research: Anna May Shamoon

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Green Futures April 2010 23

A thousand words

Star performers Starfish have emerged as one of our less obvious allies in the fight against climate change. New research by the National Oceanography Centre at Southampton shows that along with sea urchins, sea cucumbers and other echinoderms, they absorb around 100 megatonnes of carbon every year. That’s equivalent to 2% of all human emissions. It is thanks to the fact that their shells and skeletons are largely composed of calcium carbonate – a natural absorber of carbon. But there’s a twist in the tale. The increasing acidity of seawater – believed to be caused in part by rising temperatures – could weaken the bodies of starfish and their relatives, so reducing their ability to soak up the carbon. Photo: Tobias Bernhard/photolibrary

Feature

New frontiers for solar: an artist’s impression of CSP as applied to the Sahara Forest Project (see p9).

The light at the e Across the world’s sunbelts, concentrated solar power is emerging as a blindingly obvious answer both to global power – and local water – needs. But can it reach the scale required, asks Duncan Graham-Rowe.

26 Green Futures April 2010

www.greenfutures.org.uk

nd of the desert D “ ” Image: The Bellona Foundation, Bill Watts, Exploration Architecture and Seawater Greenhouse Ltd

esertification is a dirty word,

but deserts are not entirely without their uses. Plans are underway to transform swathes of the Sahara into a glimmering sea of mirrors, with the goal of piping cheap, clean and efficient solar energy into the heart of Europe. Dubbed the Desertec Industrial Initiative, it will create vast fields of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants – arrays of mirrors which focus the sun’s energy to turn water into steam, and so drive electrical turbines. From there, the power will flow through a network of low loss transmission cables to pipe electricity into the existing European grid, via Spain. The £240 billion venture, which brings together such big energy names as Siemens and E.On, is designed to meet as much as 15% of Europe’s fast-rising electricity

www.greenfutures.org.uk

CSP holds two trump cards: efficiency and scale

demand by 2050. And the first electrons could be coming onstream in as little as five years’ time… This, says Jonathon Porritt, is something of a second coming for CSP. “It was first introduced after the oil shocks of the 70s and early 80s, but as soon as oil prices fell, all investment in that particular technology stopped.” But now that the cost of carbon is playing into the economics of energy production, CSP is looking increasingly promising. According to Keith Bowen, director of engineering at UK-based Circadian Solar, it holds two trump cards: efficiency and scale. “It scales extremely well,” he says. As the size of the plant increases, the relative costs come down. Large CSP plants can produce power for a quarter of the cost of that generated by standard solar photovoltaics, adds Bowen.

Green Futures April 2010 27

Feature

Solar, lighter

Efficiency is improving rapidly, too. Twenty years ago, the maximum efficiency you could get from the sun was 15-20%, compared with over 50% for fossil fuels. “Today,” says Bowen, “[CSP is] closer to 40%.” And for those who live in or near deserts, that means it can also play a role in securing another vital asset: water. CSP is ideally suited to powering desalination plants. Taking salt out of water is a simple enough process, but one that uses a lot of energy. For developing countries where power shortages are a growing problem, as well as luxury resort islands where resources are scarce, Bowen argues, CSP could be an ideal solution – producing clean water and power at the same time. A common criticism directed at both solar and wind power is that they’re inherently intermittent: the sun only shines in the day, the breeze doesn’t always blow. But recent advances in CSP could keep the power flowing all night long. Desertec is designed to operate 24 hours a day by superheating water to temperatures of 260ºC, sufficient to create steam at high enough pressures that it will keep driving turbines and generating electricity long after the sun has set. An alternative approach, which is being explored by Solar Reserve in California, is to use the thermal energy to melt salt. Molten salt retains heat long enough to drive a turbine for much of the night. The company is hoping to build a 150MW solar plant in the Sonaran Desert, which would use 17,500 mirrors, each 24 metres wide, to heat salt to 565ºC. This would be enough to store up to seven hours of the sun’s energy.

28 Green Futures April 2010

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Superheated water will keep generating electricity long after the sun has set

There’s a lot of promise in this sort of approach, says Bowen. “It’s been around for a while and is fairly well developed.” But, he says, like other forms of CSP, it tends to work best on a grand scale, typically plants of 50MW or above. Another development that should also help to spur CSP is the availability of better solar maps. These are detailed layouts of the earth’s surface that show historical information about the amount of sunlight different locations receive. These data sheets have long been available from places like the US Government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, quantifying typical solar trends in different geographic regions. Now companies like 3TIER in Seattle, Washington, are making it possible to target locations for solar power not just by general region but at much higher resolutions. This enables prospective CSP developers to zero in on ideal sites. 3TIER’s maps are the first to take into account not just solar activity but also the impact of long-term and seasonal wind variations. These can be significant between locations just a few kilometres apart, and affect the energy required to continually readjust the position of the mirrors. Using this sort of approach, it has become possible to choose sites that will optimise energy output, says Gerry Wolff, Coordinator of DESERTEC-UK, an independent advisory group of CSP enthusiasts. In fact, he says, it’s been calculated that a single patch of the Sahara, just 114,090 square kilometres in area, receives enough sunlight to meet the entire world’s electricity demands through CSP.

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Photo: ischlueter/istock

CSP may be a simple idea, but it doesn’t come cheap. It’s not easy building in the middle of a desert, and there are fairly substantial costs involved in constructing all the mirrors and central receiver towers, which have to withstand extreme temperatures and continuously pump water up to the collector. One solution to this is to dispense with the steam turbines and instead concentrate the light on highly efficient photovoltaic solar cells – the approach taken by Circadian. Another novel approach, under experimentation at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, is to construct cheaper lightweight towers, containing a second set of mirrors at the light collection point. These are used to redirect the light to heat water at ground level, precluding the need to pump it up the tower.

> Map: DESERTEC

So what’s stopping us? Partly cost, says Wolff. Hovering at around 10-20 US cents per kilowatt hour, CSP “looks a little bit on the expensive side”, compared with gas at about 5 cents. But this is likely to change when the volumes increase, he says. Indeed, three studies carried out by the German aerospace industry suggest that CSP could eventually become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe. “Until about 2017, electricity from CSP will probably be more expensive,” concludes Wolff. But then, as economies of scale kick in, it will become cheaper and increasingly attractive. It is certainly attracting growing interest. The World Bank recently announced it is investing $5.5 billion into the development of CSP across North Africa. And last year, Morocco, the only North African state with no oil production of its own, declared its intention to become a pioneer in CSP as a way of cutting reliance on oil and gas imports. It plans to build five plants with a total energy production of 2,000MW by 2020. In light of such investment, the Desertec Industrial Initiative seems less of a leap of faith. The technology to transmit the electricity across the vast distances to Europe has been well established for decades, says Wolff. But realistically, it only needs to reach as far as Spain, since Europe already has an international electrical transmission grid. This, Wolff adds, acts a bit like a pond, in the sense that it doesn’t matter where you fill it up from. “So countries as far north as Sweden would immediately benefit.” The consensus on CSP now, says Jonathon Porritt, is that although it’s extremely ambitious, it’s also quite

www.greenfutures.org.uk

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CSP could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe

•D ESERTEC forsees a single market in electricity across the ‘EUMENA’ (Europe, Middle East and North Africa) region, where a common grid allows European utility companies to buy their electricity direct from CSP plants in North Africa and the Middle East. •H igh-voltage DC transmission lines link the electricity from CSP plants to the European grid, with only 10% of the electricity being lost over a 3,000km distance. •M ultiple transmission lines enhance energy security, and diversify the portfolio of European renewable energy sources. • J ust 1% of the land area of the EUMENA region would be required for the CSP plants and the entire associated transmission grid infrastructure. • Each year, a square kilometre of desert in North Africa recieves an amount of solar energy equivalent to 1.5m barrels of crude oil.

realistic. Besides the potential to generate vast amounts of electricity, the growing need for renewable sources of desalinated water makes CSP an excellent candidate for support, he says. The irony is that in years to come we may find ourselves looking to deserts not just for power, but also for water. ¥ Duncan Graham-Rowe is a former staff writer for the New Scientist and a regular contributor to The Economist and The Guardian.

Green Futures April 2010 29

Feature

Tornado blessing

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f everything is going well

in your life, you don’t pay attention to your surroundings”, says Bob Dixson, Mayor of Greensburg, Kansas. “When everything is gone, you reassess what’s important.” For Greensburg, everything went on the morning of May 4, 2007, when a force five tornado with winds of more than 200 miles per hour blew the small prairie town off the map. Within minutes, its past was reduced to rubble. Ten people died, Dixson and scores of other residents lost their homes – and suddenly this quiet, conservative community had to think about its future in an entirely new way. With a population of just 1,400, says Dixson, the town could easily have disappeared, if it were not for a few determined residents who came up with the idea of putting Greensburg back on the map – as the greenest town in the US. Having experienced the power of nature at first hand, they were taken by the idea of working with, rather than against, it. Among the prime movers was Daniel Wallach, a social entrepreneur living just outside Greensburg. At the first town hall meeting held just a week after the storm, he and his wife argued that, since the community had to be rebuilt pretty much from scratch, it made sense to do so in as energy efficient a way as possible. They expected resistance, but instead found widespread support – including from Steve Hewitt, the city administrator, and Dixson himself – who would go on to be elected Mayor a year later. Part of the reason for this enthusiasm, he believes, is that Wallach ensured the plan spoke to the town’s roots. “We’re an agricultural

30 Green Futures April 2010

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Our ancestors taught us to take care of the land. That’s what we’re doing now. We’re building a town for future generations

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community. Our ancestors taught us to take care of the land. That’s what we’re doing now. We’re building a town that will last for future generations.” Wallach set up Greensburg Greentown, a non-profit and non-partisan group to spread the word about green rebuilding, while Hewitt and his team drew up energy efficient reconstruction plans. In December 2007, the city became one of the first in the country to pass a resolution requiring all new public buildings larger than 4,000 square feet to meet the US Green Building Council’s demanding LEED Platinum standards. Among those meeting that standard is the town’s new school – something of a flagship for its green reconstruction. Due to open in August 2010, it’s a spacious, airy design, using natural light to illuminate corridors and classrooms, all under a green roof. Ground source pumps draw on geothermal energy for both heating and cooling, and rainwater is harvested and stored in cisterns to irrigate the garden and grounds. A wind turbine helps meet the school’s electricity needs. The ‘positive irony’ of harnessing the same energy which destroyed the town in order to power its new school has not been lost on the residents. Wind, too, provides over a third of the electricity for the rebuilt Kiowa County Memorial Hospital – another LEED Platinum building. This actively encourages patients and staff to use energy efficient vehicles by providing designated parking spots for them. The business community is following suit. A high street bank is upgrading for LEED certification, and even the town’s funeral home is being rebuilt as a model of energy efficiency.

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Photo: jamydesign/istock

When a tornado wiped the small town of Greensburg off the map of Kansas, it unleashed a wave of green renewal. So can it sweep across America? Jessica Forres reports.

It’s not all been plain sailing, though. Two years after Greensburg was hit by the tornado, it got buffeted by the chill winds of recession – along with the rest of America. As purse strings tightened, cities and towns across the country had to scrap for federal support and green business investment. But in this fight, Greensburg’s ecoprofile began to tell in its favour, says Dixson. It helped the town win dedicated green funding from the likes of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Agriculture and Commerce Departments, as well as companies and private foundations. The town council’s new-found emphasis on sustainability is also attracting green businesses, including two energy companies, John Deere Renewables and Native Energy Inc, which have developed Greensburg’s first wind farm. Opening this spring, the 12MW plant will power more than 4,000 homes. “Green businesses, more than any others, rely on their reputation and integrity”, says Wallach. “Being connected to a community that has the same reputation they are looking to establish gives them a jump start.” His Greensburg Greentown group is keen to bolster the town’s reputation by developing it as an eco-tourism destination. The first step will be a chain of 12 model eco-homes, each featuring the latest energy efficient and green living products. The idea is that they will serve as ‘living laboratories’, where tourists can come to experience cutting edge green living in attractive surroundings. So where Greensburg leads, can others follow? Dixson thinks they can. “Towns and cities across this country see disaster every day, from landslides and hurricanes to crime and foreclosures”, he says. Rather than treat these as unmitigated tragedies, he believes they can use them as a spur to motivate their communities, providing the impetus for making the pursuit of sustainability and quality of life the driving force of local government priorities. Federal stimulus dollars can help, allocating $42 billion for energy-related investments that range from homeowner tax credits to direct government grants. Savvy cities can use these to kickstart regeneration – cities like Indianapolis, which received $8 million in energy efficiency and conservation block grants. Its Republican Mayor, Greg Ballard, is using them to help private companies carry out green retrofits of nearly 70 city and county buildings, expected to save an estimated $2 million a year in energy bills. For Ballard, who created the city’s first Office of Sustainability, the recession gives the chance to lay

A thousand mayors to cool the climate

Dixson: When everything is gone, you reassess what’s important.

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Towns and cities across this country see disasters every day, but they can spur a better quality of life

Greensburg catches the breeze

While Washington held back from endorsing global climate accords, the country’s mayors embraced them – in the form of the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. It was launched by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels on February 16, 2005, the same day the Kyoto Protocol became law for the 141 countries that have ratified it. To date, more than 1,017 Mayors have committed to reducing carbon emissions in their cities by 7% below 1990 levels, in line with Kyoto.

a foundation for some much needed fresh thinking. “There’s a certain way you need to go and we’re pushing in that direction”, he says. “I think the average American is looking for this, but you still have to change the mindset of those who didn’t grow up with an environmental awareness.” The cities-wide trend toward sustainability is not new, says Nancy Frank, Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The only difference now is the presence of the federal government. “Cities were headed down the sustainability road before the economic stimulus.” But added impetus has come out of the recession. “They see the long-term financial benefit and competitive advantage they will have over other cities in the future”, she concludes. It’s a lesson which James Brainard, Mayor of Carmel, Indianapolis’s sprawling suburb, has taken to heart – starting with traffic lights. Home to America’s first automated traffic signal, Carmel is now replacing 50 key traffic intersections with roundabouts. Mayor Brainard says these bring immediate benefits in the form of fewer idling cars, and therefore reduced exhaust emissions. Brainard’s overarching goal, though, is to design Carmel as a place where residents can live, work and play all within a 15 minute walk. “We have to compete with other cities that have better climates,” he explains. “The only way for us to do that, is to build a better environment.” ¥ Jessica Forres is a freelance journalist and writer with the World Resources Institute in Washington.

Photos: Joah Bussert; American Structurepoint Inc; The City of Greensburg

Rising from the rubble: one of Greensburg’s model eco-homes

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Green Futures April 2010 31

Feature

Air supply Imagine a green fuel that could power our cars, keep the wheels of industry turning, and wean us off our addiction to oil. A fuel that could stop climate change in its tracks, and send carbon levels plunging to pre-industrial levels. A fuel that allows business as usual to carry on as before – emissions and all.

t sounds like advertising copy

from fantasy island. But now a combination of applied solar power and lateral thinking could just turn this into reality. It’s actually not that far-fetched a scenario. Trees and algae have been turning CO2 into fuel since the dawn of time, unlocking the chemical energy within this molecule to power metabolic processes. Now, some scientists believe we can follow. With a little ingenuity, it is already possible to transform CO2 into anything from petrol to natural gas. And thanks to centuries of industrialisation, we appear to have a plentiful supply of the stuff floating around us in the atmosphere. So if we can just find an efficient means of extracting CO2 from air and converting it into a useful fuel, it should be possible both to power our future and scrub our atmosphere clean. But there is, of course, a catch. Carbon dioxide is a very stable molecule. So any conversion processes will take a lot of energy. The question is, can these processes be refined to ensure that less energy is used to create this fuel than is provided by it? The key challenge is to convert CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO), by removing one of its oxygen atoms. Once you have CO, the process of creating hydrocarbon fuels such as petrol is easy. It’s achieved through a reaction known as the Fischer-Tropsch process – most commonly used to synthesise liquid fuel from coal. First developed in the 1920s, this has a somewhat notorious history. It was used by Nazi Germany to turn some of its vast coal

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It could conceivably both power our future and scrub our atmosphere clean

reserves into fuel for Panzer tanks, and later by apartheid South Africa to sidestep sanctions. Now concerns over peak oil have seen a sharp revival of interest. But getting from CO2 to CO requires either a lot of energy, or billions of years worth of evolutionary chemical nous. The US Government’s Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have opted for the former approach, developing a system that takes its energy source from concentrated solar power [see box, ‘Sunlight into Petrol’]. As Green Futures goes to press, researchers from Bristol and Bath Universities in the UK have also announced plans for solar-powered CO2-to-fuel conversion. Unlike many large-scale initiatives to tackle global warming, converting CO2 into fuel for domestic use can appeal to the most self-interested government – even a ‘climate sceptic’ one. And as interest in carbon conversion hots up, so others are exploring new technological avenues. At the University of Oxford, Dermot O’Hare has been investigating chemical means of achieving the same results – which could potentially be used in places where solar energy isn’t so abundant. Using highly reactive molecules called Lewis bases, O’Hare has shown that CO2 can be encouraged to react and break down at much lower temperatures to produce the fuel methanol. Over in Asia, Fumio Inagaki is hoping to let nature take its course. Based at the Japan Agency for MarineEarth Science and Technology, he has been exploring the talent of seabed bacteria to turn CO2 into methane,

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Photo: bensueley/istock

Because that fuel is… CO2.

or natural gas. Although this process is generally pretty slow, taking billions of years, Inagaki is now exploring ways to accelerate it to a mere century. But converting CO2 into fuel is only half the problem. We also have to develop ways to suck the stuff out of the air in the first place. And this is no easy task. Although there have been some successes in capturing carbon from industrial flues, extracting it from the ambient air at concentrations of less than 400 parts per million is a lot tougher. No one doubts the technical feasibility – but the holy grail is doing so in a way which could prove remotely cost effective. At the University of Calgary, David Keith believed he’d found a solution in the form of a process which extracts carbon dioxide from air via ‘spray towers’. As air is drawn into the towers, it is sprayed with a fine mist of an alkali solution. This bonds to the CO2 to form droplets of sodium carbonate, which is collected at the bottom of the towers and passed onto subsequent stages that separate and collect the CO2. The technology was promising enough to launch a spin-off company, Carbon Engineering Ltd, although this has now abandoned the spray model in favour of packed towers, akin to water cooling towers. With several million dollars of venture capital funding, the company is also working on another air-capture system, dubbed the Air-Contractor, which it believes could capture around 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year on a commercially feasible basis. Meanwhile. California-based Carbon Sciences Inc. are developing a biocatalytic process to convert CO2 emitted from a power plant into fuel (see graphic below). And Klaus Lackner, a Columbia University physicist and long-time advocate of ‘air capture’, has developed a prototype capable of collecting tens of kilograms of CO2 per day. It’s all impressive stuff, but it’s at a small scale and an early stage. As Stuart Haszeldine, carbon capture expert at Edinburgh University, points out, the UK alone spews out 200 million tonnes of CO2 each year. So, the key question is whether any of these technologies can scale up to the kinds of volumes required. And scale is certainly needed. According to Sandia, if all of America’s 100 million-strong vehicle fleet were to run on fuel derived from CO2 under its ‘Sunlight to Petrol’ programme [see box], then the solar power plants alone would cover 2,250 square miles. And this

Fossil fuel power plant

Sunlight to Petrol

Carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules are taken from carbon-dioxide source. Carbon atom

Graphic: JacksonBone for carbonsciences

Oxygen atoms (2) Water (H2O)molecules are taken from water source. Water source

Oxygen atom

“ ”

Converting CO2 to fuel is only half the problem. We also have to suck the stuff out of the air in the first place

The project is dubbed ‘Sunlight to Petrol’ (S2P). And, according to Nathan Siegel, one of the principal scientists working on it, the result is a renewable means of converting CO2 into CO: “What we’re doing is reversing combustion,” he says.

doesn’t include the vast number of air-scrubbing towers required to capture the CO2 in the first place. Given the heroic scale of the engineering requirements, and the fact that as a concept air capture is still relatively unheard of, it’s hardly surprising if its proponents are facing what Keith calls a credibility gap. Then there’s the fear that if we do eventually manage to start actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere, it will create a culture of complacency, effectively giving industry a licence to pollute. It could make today’s debates over the morality of carbon offsets look mildmannered by comparison. Haszeldine acknowledges that it’s still very early days for this kind of research, but adds: if this is successful, it has more potential than any other means proposed to actively reduce CO2 levels and ultimately reverse global warming. Given that potential, he says, can we really afford to ignore it? ¥ Duncan Graham-Rowe is a former staff writer for the New Scientist and a regular contributor to The Economist and The Guardian.

The molecules are put through a biocatalytic process in which oxygen atoms are removed from CO2 and H2O Biocatalysts transform carbon and hydrogen atoms into basic hydrocarbons. Carbon and hydrocarbon atoms combined.

Hydrogen atoms (2)

At Sandia Labs, scientists are using mirrors to focus the sun’s rays intensely on a chamber containing a reactive material – in this case, cobalt ferrite ceramic – raising its temperature to around 1,500ºC, at which point it releases an oxygen atom. As it heats up, the ceramic rotates, so it passes through a second chamber which is slightly cooler – a mere 1,100ºC – to bring it into contact with the carbon dioxide. At this temperature the ceramic reacts with the CO2, forcing it to give up one of its oxygen atoms, and so reducing it to CO. The material then passes back into the hotter chamber, and the process is repeated.

Oxygen removed

Gasoline

Hydrocarbons transformed into a variety of fuels:

Jet fuel Diesel fuel Methanol Propane Butane

Carbon Sciences Inc.’s biocatalytic conversion process

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Green Futures April 2010 33

Feature

“There’s enough pressure in the world’s gas pipelines to make every nuclear power station redundant.” Andrew Purvis talks to Andrew Mercer of 2OC, the man who puts turbines in gas pipes.

hat’s the bold claim of Andrew

Mercer, setting out the rationale behind his Bath-based renewables company, 2OC. Founded in 2005, it aims to harvest clean electricity and heat from the waste energy produced by gas pressure reduction stations (PRSs), of which there are 12,500 in Britain. “I can recognise them in a heartbeat,” Mercer says, describing them as “pipes, shaped like an L on its back, going into a big lump of metal – typically next to a gasometer”. Not the most technically precise description, perhaps – and Mercer acknowledges as much with a laugh: “I’m an accountant by training,” he apologises. With a capacity for lateral thinking to match his head for figures, Mercer’s first success was in software development. His company, One Meaning, which created what was to become Microsoft’s Universal Modelling Language (UML), was sold to Oracle in 1999. Next he set up the mentoring organisation Footdown, and at one of its forums met Michael Edge, who made his money building and selling Chase de Vere, the financial services company, and is now chairman of 2OC. They soon discovered that they shared a passion for environmental solutions, and so started casting around for a suitable company in which to invest. It wasn’t long before they heard about a project in Switzerland that was generating electricity using a turbo-expander. “That’s the piece that goes in the pipe, which bypasses the pressure reduction station,” Mercer explains. At which point a little further explanation is probably called for. When gas emerges from the ground, it does so at high pressure – and this has to be reduced before the gas can be used safely in homes and by industry. “It passes from a small pipe to a larger one,” says Mercer, “through [something called] a Joule-Thomson valve.” The reduction in pressure is accompanied by cooling to as low as -40˚C, creating a permafrost in the valve, pipes and subsoil. “It’s like holding your finger over an aerosol nozzle,” Mercer says. “It gets very cold.”

34 Green Futures April 2010

Mercer: energy, whether we like it or not, is the primary platform through which we change our society

“ ”

But is geopressure renewable? The debate was long and littered with U-turns

On the positive side, high pressure gas can be used to drive a turbine in the pipe, generating electricity – the turboexpander used in the Swiss project. On the negative side, super-cooled gas has to be preheated using gas boilers – a perverse waste of energy. “We know how much pressure is in the system,” Mercer says, “so we can work out how much energy is being put through the valves” – hence his statement about closing down nuclear power stations. On the back of this resource, called geo-pressure, 2OC was formed. “The name was chosen because it’s CO2 reversed,” says Mercer, “indicating that we were part of the solution that would reverse the effects of fossil fuel generation. Two degrees centigrade was also the temperature change beyond which warming of the planet was believed to be unstoppable.” At that time, geo-pressure was a hotly debated subject and the technology was at first excluded from the Government’s Renewables Obligation (RO). This is the scheme by which electricity generators have to buy a minimum proportion of their power from renewable energy sources. So if geo-pressure were recognised as ‘renewable’, then anyone generating power from it would have a clear market advantage. The debate hinged on how much of it was natural, and how much was due to compression – the manmade pressure used to push gas around the network, especially at peak times. “We spent a lot of time with the National Grid, working it out,” says Mercer, “and even with compression at its maximum, [the man-made element] accounts for only 12-14%.” Then there was the question as to how a technology could be renewable if it depended on natural gas – a finite resource. The debate was long and littered with U-turns, but finally, in January 2008, the Government concluded that “geo-pressure is renewable and can be carried by a variety of fluids that will in time replace the natural gas in these reservoirs.” With neither the time nor the temperament to wait for government approval, Mercer had by then developed the technology several stages further. Known as CHiP

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(Combined Heat and intelligent Power), this uses the world’s most efficient combustion engine to generate 14MW of electricity. “The energy we are using now is exactly the same,” he says, “and we are still bypassing the valve with the turbine. All we have done is choose a different part of the Renewables Obligation to generate the electricity. It’s a different technique.” Fuelled by vegetable oil (from rapeseed grown by local farmers as part of their normal food crop rotation) but also able to run on biogas, the engine is sited next to a pressure reduction station. Heat from the engine is used to warm the super-cooled gas in the PRS, allowing the gas boilers to be switched off – with huge savings in energy and emissions. At the same time, turbines inside the pipeline generate 3.5MW of electricity, and surplus heat is captured and converted into a further 1MW. The combined output is nearly 20MW – enough to power 50,000 homes – plus 5MW of heat to warm the gas supply. “At peak times, when the little turbo expander is working its heart out, we can get it up to 80% electrical efficiency,” says Mercer. Use any spare heat in a district heating system, and CHiP can achieve an overall efficiency of 95% or more. The intelligent part is that peak electrical output exactly matches peak demand for gas in the winter; the higher the pressure of gas in the system, the greater the efficiency. In a joint venture with the National Grid, called Blue-NG, Mercer and his team are now building the first CHiP energy centre in Beckton, east London. Planning permission has also been granted for a second plant in Ealing, in the west of the capital, and both should be supplying local homes and industry by late 2011. Now Mercer is applying the technology to CSP (concentrated solar power – see p26), which uses mirrors to focus the sun’s energy on water, converting it to steam to drive turbines. The mirrors have to be cooled with fans, river water or seawater, all of which have environmental drawbacks. “Imagine putting a CSP

“ ”

The higher the pressure of gas in the system, the greater the electrical efficiency

plant by a pressure reduction station,” Mercer says. “You take the cold from the gas to cool it and at the same time generate more electricity. You can double the output and halve the cost.” His company owns the intellectual property rights to that idea, and a project will begin shortly. Next on Mercer’s radar are computer data centres. These too need to be kept cool – a process which uses vast amounts of energy: so much so that computers may soon overtake aviation as a source of CO2. “There is more heat per square inch coming off a processor than off a nuclear power station,” says Mercer, “and every MW generated requires a MW to cool it.” 2OC will shortly be making an announcement on that subject, too. Though he sounds like a man who scours the modern world for areas of energy wastage, Mercer’s passion is “localising and autonomy” rather than climate change. “In the next few years,” he says, “we are going to have power blackouts, we are going to have water problems. I think it would be quite sensible to be selfsufficient.” With this in mind, he is building a zero carbon house in Bath, built into a hillside for insulation. “It will be off grid, off water, off sewage,” he says – and he has signed an agreement with the council, allowing them to demolish the house if it ever connects to the mains. “Energy, whether we like it or not, is the primary platform through which we change our society,” Mercer reckons, “and we are running out of resources.” This, he hopes, will force people “to think more sustainably and make the transition to a different way of living.” With its heritage orchard, beehives and 30 acres in which to grow food, his eco-estate is an example of that. “The vision behind it,” he says, “is to exert a lighter pressure on the earth.” All the while harnessing, he might have added, the pressure surging through the gas pipes beneath it… ¥ Andrew Purvis is a regular contributor to the Observer and the Daily Telegraph.

Pipe down, power up: 2OC’s turbine (left) harvests power at the pressure reduction station (right)

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Green Futures April 2010 35

Comment

Ian Cheshire CEO Kingfisher (B&Q, Castorama)

“Look. We’re using three planets’ worth of resources, and we only have one planet!” …but the opportunities for a business prepared to lead in this area far outweigh that… There’s massive growth in insulation and LEDs. If your only business was in selling incandescent lightbulbs, then you’ve got a problem. But if you’re a retailer who can see what your customers are going to want two or three years down the line, how to encourage that process, and be ahead of them, so that when they get there they know to come to you – then you have an opportunity.

We were stuck in a tick box mentality

I was never arrested as a roads protestor or anything, but I had been interested in the environment as a teenager. So when I came to B&Q, I saw an opportunity for the business to have a voice on sustainability. We were doing all the right things – a founder member of the Forest Stewardship Council, reducing volatile organic compounds in paint… blah, blah… But it had got lost in the corporate mindset, becoming a “Yeah, of course we do that – tick! So what?” sort of thing. I wanted to make it part of the brand, so I pushed for it to be part of One Planet Living, and got involved in the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership.

People love talking about their tomatoes

There’s a really interesting behaviour change dimension to all of this. It’s the difference between someone coming over to tell you about CO2 and the need to shrink your footprint – and someone asking you about how you grow your own. You get this very real excitement from people talking about the shoots coming up, their first tomatoes, and so on. A lot of people feel very responsible for the future of the planet – if you have

36 Green Futures April 2010

children it’s staring you in the face – but people need to know what really makes a difference, what they can do that’s useful.

The magic formula is 20:40:20

It’s easy to make the operational base of a business sustainable. You look at the buildings you use, the way people get to them, their efficiency and waste – you can put your arms around all of that. But customers are more interesting. As I see it, they’re 20:40:20. I mean, 20% get it, and are making an effort. Another 40% are predisposed. They’re not convinced about climate change – particularly with recent media scandals – but if you say to them, “Look. We’re using three planets’ worth of resources, and we only have one planet!” – then they look worried. We already serve the first 20%, we need to focus on the next 40%. I doubt we’ll spend much time with the remaining 20%.

The inconceivable is happening in France

France is traditionally sceptical about sustainability but interestingly, our environmental products are selling slightly faster over there. And I’m struck by how many French brands are using the environmental agenda in their TV advertising – inconceivable five years ago. They have a very different take: nuclear is seen as very green, they have a much stronger focus on location – ‘le terroir’ – and they have a more intelligent work/life/society balance. What they haven’t had is a media push anything like that in the UK or Germany. They’re interested in ‘grands projets’ – techno-fixes, engineering – and so the environment has only recently emerged as a consumer issue. ¥ Ian Cheshire was in conversation with Anna Simpson.

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Photo: Xxxx XXXXX

e’ll lose £2 million by dropping patio heaters next year…

Forum update What’s all the fluff about?

Photo: lisasaadphotography/istock

Stephanie Draper on hotels, towels and behaviour change How many times do you arrive in your hotel room and celebrate the fact that its environmental programme exhorts you to reuse your towel? Not often, I imagine. Of course, avoiding washing towels every day helps, but it’s hardly going to save the planet on its own. But you’d be surprised how much we can learn from towels. The messages that encourage us to put the towel on the rack and not in the bath have been scrutinised by social psychologist Robert Cialdini and others. They provide some interesting insights into how to persuade people to do the right thing. Hotels generally tell us that keeping our towel for more than a day is all about doing our bit for the environment. And a lot of people respond to that. According to this research, 40% of us reuse towels at least once per hotel visit. Not bad. But when the same establishment changes the message to “the majority of people who stay in this hotel have reused their towels” the reuse rate increases by 26%. Make that even more specific – “the majority of guests who have stayed in this room have reused their towels” – and the reuse rate goes up 33%. Now if you ask me, this is a bit weird. I don’t generally like to think about what other hotel users might have done in there before me! But clearly the guests identify more with people who they see as close to them. This is a demonstration of the importance of ‘social proof’ in achieving behaviour change. People are driven by the need to conform to social norms – and that largely means they like to do what everyone else is doing. Yet the environmental movement often uses exactly the opposite psychology to try to persuade. We explain that there are lots of people polluting and it must stop, that everyone is littering and that it is ruining

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our streets. And that can simply be counter-productive. Cialdini et al did another study of the US Petrified Forest National Park. When visitors were told that lots of people had been taking bits of the trees and that it had to stop if the forest was to survive, this actually increased the theft from the forest. Unwittingly, this message had suggested to people that everyone was at it, it was the social norm, and that they’d better get their bit of tree before it was all gone! We may not like it very much, but it seems that we are, after all, like sheep. Rather than asking people to buck the trend, we need to show that being green is all about going with the flow. We need sustainability behaviours to be the social norms. And that means we need to take social proofing into account when we are trying to persuade people to change. ¥ Stephanie Draper is Director, Change Strategies

New partners Since the last issue of Green Futures, Bottletop, the British Council, Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council, Thomson Reuters, the United Nations Environment Programme and Volac have joined Forum for the Future as partners.

www.forumforthefuture.org

Green Futures April 2010 37

Tomorrow’s leaders

Toby Sawday

sectors that don’t do much in sustainability, and realised what a gargantuan challenge it is to turn a large company around.

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

Why I chose the MProf? I’d had two or three years in work, and really loved the practical challenges of business, but I still wanted to become deeply ensconced in sustainability issues. I didn’t want to return to the world of academic theorising, though, so the course’s hands on approach appealed.

Career to date After university I was doing some research for Alastair Sawday Publishing – my father’s firm – on a guide book to India. As it happened, the editor dropped out – so I was basically told to bugger off to India and come back with a book! After the Masters, I worked for the sustainability consultancy Beyond Green. But I quickly realised that if I was to be giving my creative energies to anyone, I wanted it to be my family business. So I came back to Sawday two years ago and looked after sustainability and business development. I then took over the whole shebang at the start of this year. It’s been a baptism of fire in applied leadership skills!

Class of: 2004-05 Currently: Managing Director, Alastair Sawday Publishing

What I learnt I found the leadership aspect fascinating. It was the first time I’d gone through a truly reflective experience, looking at my own way of being and how that impacts on other people. It challenged my patriarchal view of leadership. And I developed empathy with those trying to make shifts across

What I plan to do next We’re trying to turn Sawday from a publishing company into a media company, so that we’re present on more platforms than simply print – it’s a big cultural shift. We’re also starting two new companies: an eco-hotel in Bristol, and a sustainable holiday company developing yurts and tree houses. Advice for future leaders Through some pretty hard lessons I’ve learnt that the old-school, patriarchal style of leadership has completely lost any relevance. Effective leadership is about listening and communicating and, above all, being self-aware. An appetite for understanding yourself is a massive stepping stone. Without that, I can’t see how you’d be even vaguely effective as a leader! Interview by Katie Shaw.

Can the public sector step up?

Helen Clarkson argues the case for bold strategies on sustainability

year or so ago,

the Welsh Assembly Government asked Forum: “What would it look like if we were to become the leading public sector organisation on sustainable development?” This should have been easy to answer, with 12 years’ experience of working with public sector bodies under our belts. But when we dug deeper we found that, while lots of organisations are making great changes, few have really got it right.

38 Green Futures April 2010

Few are taking a systemic approach to sustainable development, with policy, strategy, resources and delivery aligned. The private sector case for sustainable development has been well made over the years. Many businesses are finding the opportunities in taking a sustainable approach, and seeing the risks in short-term thinking. But public sector bodies seem to be more commonly focused on compliance, simply reacting to legislation as it is implemented. In short, the public value case for sustainable development has not been well made. So in our new report, Stepping up: a framework for public sector leadership on sustainable development, we’re opening up that debate. We want to show that it is possible to create public value by addressing market failure, building resilience and renewing the social contract. There’s plenty of good practice out there to emulate. Officers at Malmo city council in Sweden are being encouraged to build networks and get creative in finding solutions. A competition in Bogota invited community groups to find answers to problems in their area. And Curitiba,

Brazil, is often cited as an exemplar on sustainability. Its visionary leader, Jaime Lerner, pushed through policies that were unpopular on paper (such as pedestrianising streets) – but that found him re-elected for three terms (see Sol e Sombra, p22). Without good examples in the UK public sector, we’re missing out on what some of the rest of the world are enjoying, such as improved health due to a really good transport policy, or warmer homes with lower carbon emissions. Huge cuts in public expenditure promised by all political parties in the coming years make this topic more urgent than ever. Public sector organisations will have to do more with less, while offering better public services. We hope this guide provides a starting point and inspiration for just that. ¥ Helen Clarkson is Deputy Director at Forum for the Future. This report was based on work originally commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government, although it does not necessarily represent their views.

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Best case

The way to a Finance Director’s heart

David Bent on how to win hearts, minds and finance directors to the sustainability cause Good environmental management has saved telecoms group BT more than $700 million. Clearly, there was a strong business case, which sharp-eyed analysis and financial tools helped to find. But uncovering that case is harder than it sounds. For many corporate sustainability professionals, identifying a really persuasive argument is something like the quest for the holy grail. So I’ve used my accounting background to ask why the business case can be so difficult to pin down, and share some lessons I’ve learnt on the front line. The first lesson is that there is no “one size fits all”. Companies have different drivers of shareholder value and face different material issues. Take Cadbury, which went fair trade to secure the future of its supply chain and engage the consumer. It’s a happy example of harmony between the business case and the so-called ‘societal’ one, where the wider social benefits of action on climate change and inequality are taken into account. But there’s no automatic correlation between these two cases, and – unfortunately – there are still plenty of ways to make money without being sustainable. Over time, we can expect regulations and investor expectations to bring the inherent logic behind sustainability and business agendas closer together. However, the problem with external pressures is that companies fall into a ‘compliance mentality’, resenting the costs and refusing to see the benefits. One of the ways out of this trap is to stress the opportunities. Business leaders love opportunity and hate the thought that they might be missing out. Fundamentally, corporate sustainability is asking how your company will be successful so many years down the line,

because almost all the things you currently rely on – energy, supply chain, consumers, investors, regulation – are going to change. For example, GE’s Ecomagination initiative has more to do with inventing a new future for the company than improving its energy efficiency. Often, a change of tack will need sign-off from the finance director, and a qualitative argument about future opportunities isn’t going to clinch the deal. What you need is numbers. The best way to get them is a pilot scheme. The ideal one would be resource-light and relatively unimportant, so that your probings don’t trigger defence routines. Paradoxically, it isn’t vital that there is a great business case for whatever you investigate. What’s important is for people to see that you are searching for how sustainability can create profits. Once you’ve passed the pilot and the door’s open for more, what should you do next? How can you tell which sustainability related decision has a really strong business case behind it? Let me go back to the work Forum for the Future did with BT, which helped the telecoms group save $720 million in operating costs over five years. BT wanted to identify the financial

benefits of good environmental practice for reporting. They narrowed that down to some particulars: transport, energy and remote working. They knew from the start what they wanted to get out of it: more profit for the same amount of work. When they started exploring possible changes they found that, for each piece of environmental good practice, there’d be a number of positive outcomes. One thing they looked at was increasing the number of homeworkers. Less office use cuts office spend, for a start. Staying at home saves on transport time and costs. Home-workers use some of the time they’re not travelling to do more work. And both outcomes reduce net greenhouse gas emissions. So did they just sit back and smile at the results? No. When they began to tell stakeholders and shareholders about the value of sustainability, they realised they were wielding a powerful marketing tool – one which they could use to promote teleconferences, for instance – in a neat, cost-saving, profit-making loop. ¥ David Bent is Head of Business Strategies.

Images: Norebbo/shutterstock; Katerina Havelkova

Paint the town green Paint is a prosaic-sounding product – but it’s not without its environmental downsides. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) given off by many paints have been linked to various health problems, and the manufacturing process itself is surprisingly energy- and water-intensive. With 400 million litres sold each year in the UK alone, these are issues well worth addressing. Typically, they’re tackled in a rather incremental way. But now Akzo Nobel, owners of the Dulux brand, and paint users Carillion Construction, have teamed up with Forum to apply the techniques of sustainable innovation to the whole lifecycle of paint – and the result is a radical departure from business as usual. The new product, dubbed Ecosense, is virtually free of VOCs,

www.greenfutures.org.uk

and has a carbon and waste footprint of around half that of standard paint. It’s an example of Forum’s innovation work in practice, as captured in a new report, Paint the Town Green, available at www.forumforthefuture.org. An article exploring the full potential of this work will follow in the next Green Futures. ¥ – Martin Wright

Green Futures April 2010 39

Forum for the Future works in partnership with over 100 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

Advantage West Midlands Tom Anderson, 0121 380 3500

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

Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council Phil Monaghan, www.knowsley.gov.uk

SC Johnson Chris Lambert, 01784 484100

AkzoNobel Elizabeth Stokes, 01928 511695

Cornwall County Council Anthony Weight, 01872 322633

Kraft Foods Jonathan Horrell, 01242 236101

Severn Trent Kathryn Barker, 0121 7224314

Alliance Boots Andrew Jenkins, 0115 968 6766

Corus Ceri George, 01244 892460

Leeds City Council Tom Knowland, 0113 395 0643

Skanska Jennifer Clark, 01923 776666

AOL Time Warner www.timewarner.com/corp

Ecotricity Matt Thomas, 01453 756111

London Borough of Croydon Peter McDonald, 020 8760 5791

Sony Ericsson Fortuné Alexander, 020 8762 5857

Arup Chris Trott, 020 7636 1531

Ecover Belgium NV Mick Bremans, +32 3 309 2500

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

South East England Development Agency Nick King, 01483 484200

Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy Jane Howarth, 020 7410 7023

EDF Energy David Ferguson, 07875 119978

London Borough of Waltham Forest Jane Brown, www.walthamforest.gov.uk

South West Tourism Neil Warren, 01392 353234

Aviva Investors Steve Waygood, 020 7809 6000

Energy Saving Trust Paula Owen, 020 7654 2411

Tata Beverage Group Sara Howe, 020 8338 4590

AXA Insurance Truska Angel, 07974 833109

Entec UK Ltd Francesco Corsi, 0191 272 6128

Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) James Simpson, 020 7811 3315 www.msc.org

Balfour Beatty Jonathan Garrett, 020 7216 6837

The Environment Agency Brian Francis, brian.francis@ environment-agency.gov.uk

Bank of America Merrill Lynch Matt Hale, 020 7996 2054 Benchmark Software Simon Harvey, 01458 444010 BCME Sophie Brown, sophieb@chocolatecom.co.uk Birmingham City Council Sandy Taylor, 0121 303 1111 Bottletop Cameron Saul, cameron@bottletop.org BP Naomi Korolew, 020 3057 2524 British Council www.britishcouncil.org British Waterways Jim Stirling, jim.stirling@britishwaterways.co.uk BT Environment Unit, 0800 731 2403 Bupa www.bupa.com Cadbury Alison Ward, 01895 615568 Cafédirect Whitney Kakos, 020 7490 9540 Capgemini James Robey, 0870 904 5761 Cargill Europe Fiona Cubitt, 01932 861916 Carillion Louise Perry, 01902 316258 Carmarthenshire County Council www.carmarthenshire.gov.uk City of London Simon Mills, 020 7332 1431 Colors Fruit Craig Schaefer, 01354 691 340

Eurostar Louisa Bell, 020 7922 2442 Fife Council Neil Gateley, 08451 555555 Finlays Michael Pennant-Jones, 020 7802 3239 Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227802435 FirstGroup Terri Vogt, 07799 885171 Food and Drink Federation Julian Hunt, 020 7420 7125 Friends Provident Sandra Latner, 08452 683135 GSH Group Maxwell Segal, 01782 200400 Guardian News and Media Jo Confino, jo.confino@guardian.co.uk Halcrow Group Nick Murry, murrynja@halcrow.com Heineken UK Richard Heathcote, 01432 345277 IGD Dr James Northen, 01923 851919 InterfaceFLOR Ramon Arratia, 020 7490 3960 Interserve www.interserveplc.co.uk Jaguar Land Rover Fran Leedham, fleedham@jaguarlandrover.com John Lewis Partnership Gemma Lacey, 020 7592 4412 Johnson Matthey Sean Axon, 020 7269 8400 JT Group John Pontin, 01275 373393

Marks & Spencer Rowland Hill, 020 8718 6885 Middlesbrough Council Bob King, 01642 728233 Morrison Construction Guy Wilson, guy.wilson@ morrisonconstruction.co.uk Natural England Julian Lloyd, 0300 060 0243 www.naturalengland.org.uk

Tesco Ruth Girardet, 01992 644053 Tetra Pak Richard Hands, 0870 442 6623 Thames Water Utilities Darren Towers, 0118 373 9063 Thomson Reuters Julia Fuller julia.fuller@thomsonreuters.com TJX Europe Jo Murphy, 01923 473089

Network Rail www.networkrail.co.uk

Transport for London Helen Woolston, 020 7126 3976

NHS Bristol Angela Raffle, angela.raffle@bristolpct.nhs.uk

Triodos Bank William Ferguson, 0117 9809770

O2 Simon Davis, simon.davis@O2.com

TUI Travel Jane Ashton, 01293 645911

Panasonic Simon Eves, 01344 853325

Unilever UK Helen Fenwick, 01372 945000

PepsiCo UK & Ireland Andrew Smith, 0207 734 0582

United Nations Environment Programme Niclas Svenningsen, +33 144 37 14 33

Powys County Council Heather Delonnette, 01597 827481

VisitEngland Jason Freezer, 020 8563 3180

Pret A Manger Nicki Fisher, 020 7827 8888

Vodafone Group Chris Burgess, 01635 677932

Prudential Fay Hogg, 020 7548 3581

Volac Andy Richardson, 01223 208021

Pureprint Group Richard Owers, 01825 768611

Warburtons Sarah Miskell, 01204 556600

Rail Safety and Standards Board Joanna Gilligan, 020 7904 7655

Welsh Assembly Government Victoria Thomas, 029 2082 1667

Royal Dutch Shell Elfrida Hughes, +31610974798

Wessex Water Dan Green, 01225 526000

Royal Mail Group Martin Blake, 01252 528681

West Sussex Council Daire Casey, 01243 752287

RSA Paul Pritchard, 020 7337 5712

Willmott Dixon George Martin, 01932 584700

RWE npower Anita Longley, 01793 892716

Wm Morrison Supermarkets Gillian Hall, gillian.hall@morrisonsplc.co.uk

Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Jack Cunningham, jack. cunningham@sainsburys.co.uk

WWF-UK Dax Lovegrove, 01483 412395

Kingfisher Christina Allen, 020 7644 1142

40 Green Futures April 2010

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Partner viewpoint

Green game changing

Radical newcomers are running between the slow feet of big business. Dax Lovegrove has some clues on keeping up.

Photo: AM29/istock

ou open a search engine

and enter the term ‘forest investment’. It draws up the leading land acquisition consultants, and a few ads. Nothing unusual for the user – but the funds generated by the clicks and screens go straight into protecting those trees… The search engine Ecosia does just that. Its unusual financial model means that at least 80% of the income generated through advertisers and sponsored links is ploughed into forest protection initiatives via a partnership with WWF. For Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity without growth, this is a prime example of business redefining success in the private sector. It’s largely thanks to the company’s environmental ‘slant’ that this new entrant has been able to make its mark on a highly competitive market, dominated by long-established global players. Enterprises like Ecosia are a sign that, while Copenhagen left us disappointed, there’s still an appetite in the private sector for change. And not just incremental change but the innovative disruption that’s needed to meet global sustainability challenges. What do I mean by ‘innovative disruption’? Well, to add briefly to Anna Simpson’s discussion in New ideas that work (p14), it’s the unusual and unexpected products, services, alliances, public policies and financial models that have the potential to change the way business is done. WWF has begun to collate evidence of this appetite for change. And in particular, ‘green’

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game changing – where radical methods and models are aligned with ecological stewardship. But how do people come up with an idea that’s so ‘new’ it could revolutionise the market? One recurring ingredient in the examples we’ve studied is a cross-sector partnership, bringing different perspectives and motivations into the mix. What do you get if you cross a data centre and an agricultural research institute, for example? It’s been tried, and the result was a greenhouse. Telecity Group is an international provider of IT services and data centres. It has struck up an agreement with the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), and built a greenhouse right next to one of its data centres in Paris. This way, the INRA’s research into how plants adapt to changing climates is supported by waste heat from the adjoining data centre. It’s an exciting illustration of industrial ecology, where waste from one company becomes a resource for another. But partnerships aren’t the only way to do things differently. In some cases, the catalyst has been state intervention. In the US, dramatic reform of public policy frameworks has enabled California’s power sector to sell fewer electricity units and instead offer more energy-saving services, without losing money. Here’s how it works. The commission sets a revenue target for utilities, to cover both costs and an approved profit rate. It estimates how much power it will sell, and then sets an energy price that should allow the utility to meet its revenue target. If it overshoots its target, the surplus is returned to consumers.

If it undersells, the rates are increased to make up the difference. It’s called ‘decoupling’, because it removes the link between production and provision, making utilities indifferent to sales. As a result, California’s energy demand has dropped, while that of other US states has doubled. And when it comes to inspiring change at street level? Designer Stephan Bischof looked for ways to draw social and environmental benefits out of public objects and behaviours. One result was the wheelie bin urinal, now being trialled in Lewisham, South London. The idea is that people on their way home from a liquid night out on the town can conveniently use a contraption that doubles up as a household waste unit and a kerbside toilet. The deposits from passers-by are mixed with dried grass and other composting materials in a separate compartment. So instead of antisocial puddles on streets and in subways, you get bio-fertiliser. The game changers are here, and already threatening conventional business thinking. New products, services and alliances may seem a distraction, but they might be the lifeboat to survive the ship. ¥ Dax Lovegrove is Head of Business and Industry Relations at WWF-UK.

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

Green Futures April 2010 41

Partner viewpoint

Fired up on coffee

The food industry has grounds for high expectations when it comes to cutting carbon, says Andrew Kuyk. first fuel of the morning and a welcome after-dinner hit, but for some it’s even standing in for the National Grid. Anaerobic digestion (AD) plants have started to process spent coffee grounds as fuel, supplying more than 20% of the energy required for two Nestlé factories, in Tutbury and Hayes. And why not throw the rest of your breakfast into the mix, too? The yeast from the savoury spread we either ‘love or hate’ is being harnessed to drive Unilever’s Burton-on-Trent Marmite factory. AD is an increasingly popular solution for industry – cutting energy costs and waste in one go, while reducing dependence on fossil fuels and the grid. The Nestlé and Unilever Full of beans: Nestlé’s factory in Hayes

42 Green Futures April 2010

plants are just one part of their creative response to a challenge set by the Food and Drink Federation (FDF). In 2007, FDF introduced its Five-fold Environmental Ambition, which includes a 30% reduction target in carbon emissions against a 1990 baseline, by 2020 [see box ‘Biting ambition’]. Another of the Ambition’s success stories is Pepsico’s Walkers crisps factory in Leicester. In 2008, it reduced its energy use by 15% – contributing to a 9,000 tonne reduction in CO2 emissions. Now, it’s busy investing in more efficient gas combustion technologies. Collectively, FDF members have reduced their carbon emissions by 19% since 1990 – the equivalent of one million tonnes of CO2. Undoubtedly, an impressive achievement. But if you’re into driving change, the next question is always ‘How do we raise the bar?’ That’s where the Carbon Trust’s Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA) programme comes in. It’s offering £15 million to “rethink the way manufacturers operate from the ground up” (in the words of Mark Williamson, the Trust’s Head of Innovation), by probing every process, from raw material supply chains to equipment maintenance. The programme hopes to cut costs for manufacturers by more than half a billion pounds over the next four years, and carbon emissions by more than three million tonnes. It’s focused particularly on SMEs, which are more likely to benefit from this level of funding, and to have the opportunity to make really major reductions, compared with larger

operators which can plug into regulatory policy such as the Emissions Trading Scheme. Two food sectors – industrial bakers and sugar confectioners – have stepped forward to see how they too can make major cost and energy savings, and are working with FDF on the IEEA. All of which raises expectations that the challenge of meeting our long-term aspiration of a 30% reduction by 2020 will be achieved. ¥ Andrew Kuyk is Director of Sustainability at the Food and Drink Federation.

Biting ambition Long-term targets of the FDF’s Five-fold Environmental Ambition, launched in 2007, include: • 30% reduction in carbon emissions against a 1990 baseline, by 2020 • zero food and packaging waste to landfill by 2015 • significant reductions in food packaging levels, in association with WRAP • ‘fewer and friendlier’ food transport miles • a 20% reduction in water use across the industry against a 2007 baseline, by 2020.

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

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Photos: gerenme/istock; Steve Aots, Art of the State

or many of us, coffee is the

Partner viewpoint

The friend beneath our feet

Land demands are putting pressure on peat. Can green farming schemes make preservation pay?

Photos: Moorefam/istock; Argument/istock

magine if scientists could

devise a carbon sink twice as effective as the world’s forests. And imagine if this feat of engineering could double up as home to myriad plant and wildlife communities. There’d be hallelujahs, and Nobel prizes would surely follow. As it happens, there’s no need for years of dedication and research to make the vision reality. It already exists, beneath our feet, in the form of the world’s peatlands. But serious damage through drainage, burning, cultivation and extraction, could turn these bulwarks from friend to foe. It is estimated that two billion tonnes of CO2 – or 5% of global carbon emissions – is lost to the atmosphere every year from degraded peatlands. And with three billion tonnes locked away in the UK’s peat bogs alone, further destruction could deal a catastrophic blow to the climate. A significant report by Natural England, the Government’s independent adviser on the environment, found that 96% of deep peat in England has already been exposed to some degradation. According to the latest mapping information the main drivers behind the damage include: drainage for crops, livestock and forestry; moorland burning; extraction for garden compost, and air pollution. As writer and ecologist Jeremy Purseglove once said, “Our destruction of places like Hatfield Chase [a rare swathe of low-lying peatland in Yorkshire] for horticultural peat is the ecological equivalent of knocking down a cathedral and using the dust to line the garden path”.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Peat restoration schemes, such as the Moors for the Future Partnership, are helping to reverse the trend. Supported by the Peak District National Park Authority, Natural England, the National Trust and others, it uses fast growing nurse crops such as grasses and heather to stabilise peat for up to ten years. This buys time for natural vegetation to re-establish itself. But perhaps the best hopes lie in financial incentives for farmers to protect and enhance their land. Schemes like Natural England’s Uplands Entry Level Stewardship – launched in February 2010 – and Higher Level Stewardship offer rewards for land management practices that reduce the loss of peat to soil erosion, water run-off and wildfires. By signing up for five to ten year land management programmes, farmers can earn up to £62 per hectare per year. Such schemes now cover two thirds of England’s farmland and demonstrate that it is possible to combine food production with the delivery of a wide range of vital land services – including healthy peatlands, clean water and flood-alleviating wetlands. They will come into sharper focus over the next two years as EU member states decide how the Common Agricultural Policy should be shaped. The outcome could have significant implications for peatlands and their role in our response to climate change. ¥ Robin Tucker, Executive Director of National Delivery, Natural England

Wet and wondrous

Peat is an accumulation of dead organic material that does not fully decompose because of waterlogged conditions. Over the millennia, peatlands have become one of the world’s largest land-based carbon sinks, preventing a third of soilbased carbon from mixing with air to form CO2. Moreover, by storing up water, they reduce the risk of flooding and erosion. Peatlands cover 11% of England’s land area, storing around 580 million tonnes of carbon in a variety of terrain from the northern uplands and Dartmoor to the East Anglian Fens and Somerset Levels. Home to unusual plants, including sundew, butterwort and bladderwort, they are also valued for their biodiversity. Sphagnum mosses illuminate the bogs with their vivid green, yellow and rust hues, and dunlins, curlews and bitterns flock there to breed.

Natural England is a Forum for the Future partner. www.naturalengland.org.uk

Green Futures April 2010 43

Partner viewpoint

Thy Kingdom come

Suave new offices in London embody a vision that could transform the construction industry. were laid for new build, local people were offered jobs and training in relevant skills. Imagine… If all the materials were sourced in local quarries... If 97% of site waste was recycled or reused, along with much of the water... If an enthusiastic efficiency campaign cut electricity use to a minimum… If all journeys to the site were measured and monitored, and visitors encouraged to use public transport… It may sound like a pipe dream, but this was a reality at One Kingdom Street, London (pictured above) – and Jennifer Clark, Director of Environment at Skanska, the company behind the project, sees no reason why it shouldn’t be the case for all new build. “We have the technology – we don’t need to wait for legislation to catch up,” she argues. “We know we have to change the way we work, and we believe that by acting first we can create and lead a new market.” Skanska was one of the first major UK contractors to make environmental management a critical function of the business, and One Kingdom Street set the benchmark. Added stimulus came from the client, Development

44 Green Futures April 2010

Securities, which demanded a study to assess the carbon impact of every aspect of the project. This exposed endless ways to reduce emissions, combing inefficiencies out of everything from processes and products to the design itself. It all kicked up a lot of dust, but the first outcomes were an ‘Excellent’ rating from the BRE environmental assessment – and a happy client. Clark is adamant that this isn’t green window dressing. “We are a business, and we run for profit,” says Clark. “But we’ve come to believe that a sustainable business is a profitable one. It’s about building competitive advantage for the long term. If we move beyond mere compliance and focus on ‘future-proofing’, then we are helping to bring about a new – possibly unrecognisable – construction industry. One where green accounting is common place, where carbon budgets are linked to performance – and everyone shares in the benefits.” An admirable vision, but you have to bring people on board to make it happen, “starting with your colleagues and moving on to your clients”, admits Clark. As a first step, the

company created working groups to discuss what the world might look like in 2020 and beyond. What resources will we have at our disposal? Will plastics be too expensive to use, or even banned as a building material as oil reserves dwindle? And then, rather than treating the eventualities as problems, how can we turn them to our advantage? “We try to extend the same approach to clients,” says Clark. “For example, we bring Jonathon Porritt in to lead workshops on how we can respond to pressing environmental issues. Working alongside clients like this is a powerful bonding exercise. It helps us to understand where they are coming from and what their needs are – and to build lasting relationships with them. At the end of the day, that’s much more important than sharing a warm glass of white wine at Twickenham...” ¥ – Charles Reynolds

Skanska is a Forum for the Future partner. www.skanska.com

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Photo: Skanska

magine if every time foundations

Partner viewpoint

Mills run dry From pulp to paper is a thirsty process. Can the industry shrink its water mark?

Speaking volumes How the water footprint of paper from virgin wood compares to 100% de-inked (recycled) pulp, in cubic metres of water per tonne of pulp: Virgin: 30m3 Caused by: – growing the trees – washing the wood – separating out the cellulose – turning pulp into paper – steam-drying the paper Recycled: 9m3 Caused by: – removing the ink – turning pulp into paper – steam-drying the paper

Photo: zanardimarco/istock

nock a glass of water

over this page. The fibres will soften, the ink will run, the corners will curl. Wet paper is no good to anyone, but few people realise just how much water goes into producing the dry, white page. “You need water to grow the trees, clean the wood, separate out the cellulose from the lignin, turn the pulp into paper, and then steam dry it,” says Gilles L’Hermitte, Sustainability Development Manager at paper manufacturers Arjowiggins Graphic. Which all adds to the argument for recycled paper. “If you start with an ‘urban forest’”, as L’Hermitte calls it, “you’ll need much less water to turn old pulp into new paper than if you start with a tree.” Arjowiggins Graphic estimates that their mills use up to 47% less water for paper from de-inked pulp

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than from virgin sources. And, they claim, because the recycled pulp has to be cleaned so many times to rid it of all the ink, it comes out even whiter than the virgin page. Green Futures, which is printed on 100% recycled stock, should be visible proof. Along with many other sectors, the paper industry is waking up to the size of its water footprint – and the need to shrink it. Last year, the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) became the first federation member of the European Water Partnership, which aims to push the water issue up the agenda for policy makers and business alike. CEPI also signed up to the Water Footprint Network, the non-profit partnership set up by WWF, UNESCO and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, amongst others, to increase awareness of water use.

But while some mills wait for legislation and incentives, others are taking a lead. Dalum, a Danish mill owned by Arjowiggins Graphic, is driving its footprint down by recycling water up to 13 times internally before sending it to a biological treatment plant. The plant gathers any organic material along the way for use in fertiliser, before discharging the clean water into the Naestved Canal. And in Bessé-sur-Braye, a small town in the Loire, another Arjowiggins mill is capturing the steam used to dry the paper to drive a combined heat and power plant, selling electricity back to EDF. Of course, the industry’s concern for its environmental impact comes second to (and is driven by) concerns about its future – with worries over the impact of electronic media high on the list. “The market in the UK for coated woodfree paper declined by about 20% in the last year,” says David Cook, Managing Director of Arjowiggins Graphic, “and we’re not likely to see that come back. Digitalisation could halve the demand overnight. You can’t bury your head in the sand. Newsprint has adapted: we have to adapt as well.” So how does a paper company react to falling demand? In part, says Cook, by redesigning themselves as communication experts, rather than just paper providers. “There’s a huge demand for really clear information to help business make informed judgements about the best ways to get their message across. It can’t always be paper.” ¥ – Anna Simpson The water footprint of this page depends as much on the printing press as the paper mill. Green Futures is printed by Pureprint, who keep consumption to a miserly two cubic metres of water per million A4 pages.

Pureprint is a Forum for the Future partner. www.pureprint.com

Green Futures April 2010 45

Comment

Letters Aviation in the dock

Print versus digital

The article ‘Two sides to every story’ (GF74, p44) says Google’s new data centre in Oregon is expected to use “as much energy as Newcastle”. But how many people will use the resource supplied by that data centre? If the city had a transient population of tens of millions, the statistic might be useful. Otherwise, it sounds like grandstanding. Overall, print may well stack up better than one might instinctively think, and the carbon cost of our digital infrastructure is certainly enormous. But, as debate on climate change has shown, selective statistics help no one. Nick Kaijaks

The article ‘Will the future take flight?’ (GF75, p18) implies that airline growth within a carbon cap will mean a lot of offsetting, but how can you guarantee that the warming impact of a flight has been offset by emission savings elsewhere? Just 15 years ago we didn’t fly nearly as much as we do now. Would it really be such an inconvenience for each of us to fly just once a year or less? Reducing the amount we fly is the simple solution to the low-carbon aviation conundrum. Aviation can fit into a realistic climate safety plan only if we do less of it – and there’s an urgent time scale. The airlines will have to stop talking about growth and start thinking about contraction. Domestic flights should be banned and airport expansion ceased. Air industry workers will have to look for other jobs. ‘Ramfucious’

Green case for cuts

There’s certainly a green case for spending cuts (GF74, p48). To say otherwise implies we think every bit of public spending results in wellbeing to a higher value than its cost in pounds. Greens ought to be ‘small state, big society’. To rely on ‘big government’ goes against principles of mutualism and self help and – worse – treats the Government as some sort of magic store of goodies that we can consume at zero cost. Applying that attitude to national budgets is as destructive as applying it to the environment. Paul G Slatter

Peak oil is history. It happened in 2008. Today, the price of oil is $82/barrel, four times the average price in the 1990s. Globally, aviation lost tens of billions of dollars last year, and will again this year. Global demand for aviation fuel is down because there are fewer planes in the air. Air Japan has just been given another billion dollars to stop it going broke. Year on year, there will be less oil available to buy, worldwide. More and more is going into cars bought in India, China and Brazil. Less and less will go into planes in recession-hit, cashstrapped western countries. The age of mass aviation is over. ‘hopefulcyclist’

Bottling out on water

The feature ‘Will the future take flight?’ (GF75, p18) is very thorough, but isn’t it time we aimed our concerns [about lowcarbon transport] elsewhere? The target is always aircraft and cars – because they are the heaviest contributors to the problem. But they are not, I think, the best place to start. Boats, and in particular cargo, are very polluting, inefficient pieces of machinery. They could provide a source of revenue for alternatives to diesel engines, and perhaps be used to trial technology before it is adapted for cars and aviation. ‘Herve’

Your article rather misses the point about the value of bottled water (‘Bottled water on way out’, GF75, p17). Bottled water is one of the healthiest and most natural drinks you can consume: it’s the only fluid you need for a healthy lifestyle. Despite this, the average Briton drinks just 200ml of water a day – less than one out of the six to eight glasses of fluid recommended by the Food Standards Agency. The growth of bottled water has displaced sugary drinks, and when sales of bottled water slipped back in early 2009, the sugary drinks hike added a further seven billion calories and 1,700 tonnes of sugar to the nation’s diet. Bottled water actually has the lowest environmental impact of all bottled drinks. James Laird, Consultant to the National Hydration Council

GF: See p10 of this issue for the latest on renewably-powered ships

46 Green Futures April 2010

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Education, education, education…

To give the UK a chance of a less bumpy ride to a future low-carbon fuel economy (GF72, p20), we’ll need a realistically minded and well informed populace. Secondary schools are currently full of teenagers who have no idea of saving energy or other resources – because their parents haven’t practised it. The curriculum needs to be refocused to address this, if they are to cope as workers, parents and utility bill payers. Greg Dance

Wifi as human right

I like the sound of this ‘wifi in a box’ contraption (‘Downloading the sun’, Sol e sombra, p20). People are starting to see an internet connection as a basic human right. Whilst many people are restricted from access through poverty, initiatives like this open up the possibility of a good internet connection and the resulting benefits to many more people, particularly in remote communities. ‘Drummond’

Wind off the radar

Retro complications

In ‘Cosying up’ (GF75, p36) Marian Spain argues that without consistent messaging from all sources, homeowners risk going away thinking that retrofit solutions are more complicated than they’d hoped. But retrofitting existing housing stock can be incredibly complicated and costly. Even simple concepts, such as filling cavity walls and under floor insulation, can be too expensive to implement. There’s an interesting discussion about this taking place on TransitionCulture.org. Steve Atkins

There may be more simple ways [than ‘stealth turbines’] to avoid objections to wind power development from Air Traffic Control (‘Wind off the radar’, GF75, p9). Penny Coates, CEO of the East Midlands Airport, has stated that it will become carbon neutral on the ground by 2012. They have planning permission for three wind turbines on the airport near to the control tower. Recently, they received an application for a commercial wind farm eight miles down their centre line, and felt they had to object in case there of a blanking effect on the radar. I offered to take Nick James, Head of ATC at the airport, for a ride in my helicopter, and we ‘pretended to be a wind turbine’ at 180 metres [wind turbine towers measure up to 80 metres]. As the radar did not pick us up, they were able to withdraw their objection. Tony Marmont, Prof Dsc Dtech, Air Fuel Synthesis Ltd

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

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Comment

Rainforests’ role challenged

I read your article (‘Forest Futures’, GF74, p26) with interest and agree with the importance of preserving the global rainforests. However, I think in view of the recent climate change controversies, we should be careful not to exaggerate the importance and function of rainforests. A standing rainforest is not a carbon sink in almost all cases. Rainforests typically have shallow soils and most carbon captured in vegetation is rapidly recycled to the atmosphere as CO2 by decay once the plant dies. They do not produce much stored carbon – coal or peat. And they are certainly not “the world’s most effective carbon sinks”. That role is claimed by the oceans, particularly where carbonate rich sediments are being produced. Andy Cowley

What’s a weak signal?

I can see the attraction of weak signals from the future (GF75, p30). But Hugh Knowles has chosen a terrible leading example for his article. Maybe more people will one day take to buying anti-ageing IV drips on their way to work. But we’ll have a long wait for evidence of its effectiveness. In the past, it’s been either a myth or a hoax, and has had no effect on life expectancy. Ignoring the past is no way to honour the future, especially when trying to separate signals from noise. Callum Johnston Hugh Knowles responds: As you say, maybe more people will one day take to buying anti-ageing IV drips on their way to work – and this is precisely what makes my example reasonable. As I hope the article makes clear, the study of weak signals is not about making predictions, but rather broadening horizons about what might happen. And what is interesting about them is not the technology, but rather the behavioural changes they suggest. Plenty of people undertake behaviours with little or no scientific evidence to back up their actions. Whilst I agree that it is important to refer to the past to understand what changes could come about, it is unhelpful to suggest that a technology will not work in the future, simply because it has not succeeded yet.

Green Futures April 2010 47

Comment

JonathonPorritt “Opposing views of human nature are at the heart of the climate change debate”

ustin Rowlatt, the BBC’s Ethical

Man, recently did a programme for Radio 4 investigating the proposition that the green movement is somehow responsible for the collapse of public confidence in the science of climate change. I often feel inclined to hurl things at the radio, and the urge on this occasion was overwhelming. Justin seemed astonished that the green movement is not “at one” on how best to engage with the general public on climate change. He’d spotted that there are huge differences in the advocacy and strategies of different organisations, many of them incompatible. Obviously! The green movement has always been a very broad ‘church’ – an analogy worth considering. After all, if the Church of England can embrace gay-bashing, science-trashing creationists on the one hand, and treehugging, hell-denying vicars on the other, why shouldn’t the green movement be home to an equally diverse range of persuasions? It’s easy to see how this impacts views on climate change. Some organisations are convinced we can ‘techno-fix’ our way into a low-carbon world, through an apocalypsedefying combination of energy efficiency, carbon capture and storage, renewables and (for a growing number of people) lashings of nuclear power. Others have long since come to the conclusion that there is no solution to climate change within today’s growth paradigm, and that we should all enthusiastically embrace lives of stripped-down simplicity. Important to that mindset is the conviction that this particular model of capitalism is in terminal decline – even if climate change meant nothing more to us than the difference between one day’s weather and the next. But Justin was outraged that anyone would consider challenging capitalism to be an essential part of our response to climate change. For him, it was out of the question that climate change should be seen as no more than a symptom (however threatening) of an inherently unsustainable system. He found that asking people to reconsider their behaviour within that system had a “whiff of social engineering” about it, which left him feeling “rather uncomfortable”. I’m being a bit harsh, but it was frustrating to see the real culture clash between different organisations so

48 Green Futures April 2010

superficially glossed over. If you analyse conflicting ideas about how we should be addressing climate change, you will see that, at the heart of the matter, lie opposing views about human nature. Try it: place yourself on my ‘human perfectibility ready reckoner’. At one end of the scale we have those arguing that we are all genetically ‘programmed’ to prioritise shortterm self-interest at the expense of everyone else, and that conspicuous consumption is simply the latest expression of our primitive drive for status. At the other end are those who firmly pin the blame for the grotesque profligacy of today’s economy on decades of hugely seductive marketing campaigns on the part of big business, on the loss of a ‘moral compass’ and on the venality of contemporary politicians. It’s the time-honoured ‘nature-nurture’ debate. Saint Augustine and Pelagius would have little difficultly locating their starkly different views on original sin within it! But it has a huge bearing on how we address climate change. If you believe that human nature is fixed (and fixed in the wrong place), then passionate appeals to people to consume less, to live more simply (‘so that others may simply live’) and to focus on quality of life rather than quantity of consumption are clearly going to be seen as forlorn. Or patronising. Or even self-indulgent. But if you subscribe to the view that human nature is not fixed – that dominant cultural values can shift easily (and often have) – then it all looks very different. The priority in this case is to lay out a values-based case for low-carbon living, with the emphasis on intrinsic reward mechanisms, such as feeling good about oneself, one’s relationships and the work one does. Expect these contrasting positions to become more pronounced over the next couple of years. Both have merit. At the risk of sounding ‘third-wayish’, they could almost certainly rub along together – as long as politicians know what they are trying to achieve through different policy interventions. It’s all a bit abstract, of course. Difficult to pin down. So much easier to make programmes about greens hurling mud at each other, and destroying the case for action on climate change in the process. ¥ Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. Jonathon’s blog is available as a podcast at: www.jonathonporritt.com Listen to Jonathon at: www.ipadio.com/phlogs/JonathonPorritt

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A Bigger Picture

Economics for a Finite Planet

‘A brilliant and compelling account. ’ Jonathon Porritt ‘A new movement seems to be emerging, and this superbly written book should be the first stop for anyone wanting a manifesto. .. In terms of a worldview for the new decade and beyond, this could well be the most important book you will read.’ The Guardian ’A must-read for anyone concerned with issues of climate change and sustainability bold, original and comprehensive.’ Anthony Giddens, Emeritus Professor, LSE

’We need a new economy and this book creates an inspiring, believable vision of what it can be. Read it.’ Caroline Lucas MEP, leader of the UK Green Party ’A brilliant and much-awaited book.’ Safia Minney MBE, Founder of People Tree ‘This book presents a serious challenge to conventional econcomics.’ Charles Middleton, MD, Triodos Bank UK Hb • £16.99 • 9781844076758

Hb • £12.99 • 9781844078943

The Three Secrets of Green Business

Surviving the Century

Facing Climate Chaos and Other Global Challenges

Unlocking Competitive Advantage in a Low Carbon Economy

’The combined analysis presented here of why current arrangements are failing the future and clear insights of the way to go, offer us hope.’ Mary Robinson, President of Realising Rights, Ethical Globalisation Initiative

‘Brilliant! The most comprehensive and practical business guide I have ever read about environmental issues.’ Jo Bennison, Director, Daxi Environmental

Surviving the Century is the first major publication by the World Future Council (WFC), a new international voice for future generations. Reflecting the positive mission of the WFC, each chapter addresses a different critical issue in a systematic and constructive way, describing and analysing the topic before indicating real solutions.

‘There is something there for everyone - the person looking for simple practical help right through to the deep thinker.’ Doug Harris, Stride Environmental

Pb • £16.99 • 9781844076123

Pb • £16.99• 9781844078745

‘A must read for enterprise managers that want to move towards sustainability.’ Dr John Ehrenfeld, Chief Executive, Industrial Society for Industrial Ecology

20% DISCOUNT for Green Futures readers Use voucher code GF10 when ordering any Earthscan book at www.earthscan.co.uk