greenfutures No.80 April 2011
Tipping point The hunt for the place where change happens
A game of persuasion: what works, what doesn’t for behaviour change Shake up the systems: what happens when you see the wood for the trees A smaller splash: how to shrink your water print
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Remember the AIDS icebergs? Those public information films of the late 80s, which tried to terrify people into changing their sexual behaviour… It’s a moot point how successful they were. The message was one of deep fear – images of icy waters and gothic gravestones. Have sex and you’re dead, it implied. Without actually telling you what you could do about it. It was a classic case of what’s now known in behaviour change circles as ‘fear without agency’: scaring the hell out of people without giving them the means to take action. We’ve come a long way since then. Or have we? In ‘The Persuaders’ [p26] we look at what works, and what doesn’t, when it comes to helping people behave in more sustainable ways. When it comes to something as subtle as shifting deeply embedded habits and attitudes, the fear factor is spectacularly unsuccessful. It’s tempting to conclude that part of the reason for the rise in climate scepticism is the relentless ‘cry wolf’ tactics of environmentalists and governments alike. It’s all too easy, when the wolf doesn’t appear round the corner, to decide it was never really there. Cue mass denial. The best kinds of behaviour change, it turns out – the ones that really stick – are those we do together, with our friends, neighbours, colleagues and peers. Which, in an age when we all worry about the atomisation of society, is rather heartening. It’s one thing to change individual behaviour, of course; quite another to shift a whole system, such as food, energy or finance, towards sustainability. But that’s the challenge Forum for the Future has set itself with its new strategy, as unveiled in ‘The wood for the trees’ [p21]. It’s about finding the place where change happens. And, just as with behaviour, there’s growing awareness that it lies in the points where people and organisations come together: the links in the chain. If there’s one system which is crying out for root-and-branch reform, it’s food. After years of enjoying ever cheaper food, without worrying too much about the social and environmental cost, we’re starting to see the consequences. Rising food prices helped trigger the revolutions of the ‘Arab Spring’: they might well unleash a lot more far-reaching upheavals in years to come. In Tomorrow’s Food, Tomorrow’s Farms – the first of two special editions published with this issue – we look at what a truly sustainable food system might look like 20 years down the line, and how we might get there. Forum’s aim to shift whole systems isn’t just driven by the fact that it’s the best way to achieve change. It’s also informed by a sense of urgency: a realisation that we simply don’t have the luxury of time to keep tinkering at the edges. That same sense has led some scientists to call for more drastic measures. And they don’t come more drastic than geoengineering. Some view the idea of interfering in the very essentials of our atmosphere – whether by whitening clouds with seawater, or sending millions of aerosols into the sky to bounce back the sun – with horror: an act of potentially deadly hubris. Others think it could be our last, best hope of staving off catastrophic climate change. We’ve teamed up with the Royal Society to explore the issue in depth in our second special edition, Under new management: can we re-engineer the climate? Read it and decide for yourself.
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Professor John Shepherd is one of the UK’s most eminent public scientists, advising on a range of controversial issues such as fisheries management, radioactive waste and climate change. He has played a key role in the Royal Society’s exploration of geoengineering, as featured in our special edition, Under new management: can we re-engineer the climate? Miriam Turner [see Tomorrow’s leaders, p36] leads InterfaceFLOR’s innovation strategy – convening key players from the design community, NGOs and business to accelerate sustainability. A biological scientist by training, she has an MBA from Barcelona’s ESADE Business School – hence no doubt her fluency in both Spanish and salsa. Anthony Kleanthous has transformed a successful career in marketing – for the likes of AstraZeneca and PayPal – into one on sustainability, particularly around food issues. A senior policy adviser at WWF-UK, Anthony brings his expertise to bear on our second special edition, Tomorrow’s Food, Tomorrow’s Farms. Peter Madden is Chief Executive of Forum for the Future. An influential advocate for sustainable development for over 20 years, he’s well attuned to political realities, having previously worked as a ministerial adviser. He was formerly Director of the Green Alliance and Head of Policy at the Environment Agency.
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Contents 09
Number 80 April 2011
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31 41 Features 16 Walking on water If you thought carbon footprinting was tough, wait till you get to water. With supplies falling fast, smart companies are seeking ways to shrink their thirst. David Burrows dips a toe in the tide.
26 The persuaders Behaviour change is the holy grail of sustainability. So why do so many strategies to achieve it fail? And which actually work? David Burrows, Anna Simpson and Martin Wright report.
20 The wood for the trees Anna Simpson unveils Forum for the Future’s groundbreaking new strategy for system innovation.
31 Wood burner? Biomass conversions are all the rage for small scale heat and power. But could they ever take over from coal as the fuel of choice for vast plants? A Green Futures investigation.
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the backdrop of a world map, the droplet appears, for a fleeting moment, to be holding the planet within it.
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Briefings
Regulars
Partner viewpoints
The latest in green innovation, including:
4T he future in context Peter Madden
40 Keyhole surgery Retrofit without the tears Skanska
5 Light engineering Solar sails speed the spaceships 7 Radiant bodies Crowdsourcing heat from commuters 8 The bold and the brilliant The chicest and smartest of new building designs 11 Tianjin can where Dongtan can’t China’s second eco city set to soar
Cover shot Our cover, by high speed photographer Markus Reugels, captures the fraction of a second where a droplet of water is about to splash. Photographed against
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24 A thousand words Tightly-packed crop terraces: a glimpse of the future? 35 Forum update Five ways to build a low-carbon Britain; the three must-haves of effective collaboration, and a new column from sustainable business guru, Sally Uren 48 Jonathon Porritt Why you just can’t ignore population
12 An app a day Tap here to save the planet…
41 In search of food security Business as usual? Not an option. The Food and Drink Federation
44 Turning point The One Planet Future: business leaders respond WWF-UK 45 Sun shade Government U-turn puts solar in a spin Ecotricity
42 Dutch courage How one country took unsustainable fish off the menu Marine Stewardship Council 43 “Come on you greens!” Can sport raise its game? Pureprint
15 The juice The latest on electric vehicles
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Peter Madden
Briefings
The future in context
Light engineering
Solar sail: by sunbeam to the stars
Putting the sunbeams to work The force is with us, even if it is very small indeed. Scientists have long been aware that radiation of any kind exerts pressure, and light is no exception. In the 1920s, the Soviet rocket-designer Friedrich Zander suggested that a spaceship could be propelled solely by sunbeams and over time could reach very high velocities. Sure enough, in May 2010 the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the world’s first spacecraft designed to use solar propulsion as its primary driving force. IKAROS – or the ‘Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun’ – unfurled a polyimide sail, and set out for Venus, which it reached, as expected, in December. The sail is 14 metres square but only 7.5 microns thick, and its highly reflective surface doubles the thrust the sun gives it, to all of 0.112 grams-force. Now a team of researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York has demonstrated another trick light can do. Take a transparent rod, semicircular in cross-
Young at heart
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Plant-like reactor turns CO2 and sunlight into fuel
More candles, less cake
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section and thinner than a human hair, and direct a beam at it. As the stream of photons flows through it, the pressure they exert first rotates it until it finds equilibrium and then pushes it, not in the direction of the stream but at a particular angle to it. It’s not unlike the way the flow of air round an aerofoil creates ‘lift’. Tiny as this effect is, such a ‘lightfoil’ could have applications not only in the near-vacuum of space but even on Earth. “The advantage of these rods”, explains Ortwin Hess, Professor in Physics and Leverhulme Chair in Metamaterials at Imperial College London, “is that you can use a lot of them together.” And on the nano scale, he adds, even very small
effects can have a gigantic impact. So what is it good for? The pressure light exerts is minuscule, and so there are only two contexts in which it can be harnessed: in space, where there is a near-total vacuum and therefore almost no resistance to the force it applies; and in nanotechnology, where the things that need moving have a very small mass. It’s possible that the energy of light could be harnessed to drive micromachines, or transport very small loads through a liquid. “It’s still a big challenge,” says Hess, “but then the challenges that have already been mastered are quite amazing!” – Huw Spanner
into smaller particles of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and oxygen. The O is allowed to escape, but the CO and H are harnessed as a syngas – a precursor of liquid hydrocarbon fuels. The reaction requires temperatures of up to 3,000°C to work, and so the team took it to Switzerland, where a High-Flux Solar Simulator can generate heat output equivalent to that of 1,500 suns. The current prototype has gross inefficiencies: less than 1% of the solar energy is actually harnessed directly to create the syngas. However, the researchers claim that a number of technical improvements currently under investigation (better insulation, for one) could increase the reactor’s efficiency to as much as 19% – enough to make it commercially viable. According to the paper, published in Science, the fuel produced “offer[s] exceptional energy density and convenience for transportation”. Dave Reay, Senior Lecturer in Carbon Management at Edinburgh
University, describes the technology as “exciting”, but adds that it’s “no silver bullet for energy supply or greenhouse gas emissions”. However, he adds, “if it becomes a useful new part of the energy security tool kit, [that would be] fantastic”. For lead researcher Sossina Haile, the commercial viability is “very much tied to policy. If [the US] had a carbon policy, something like this would move forward a lot more quickly,” she says. – Lucy Tooher
Flower power
Peter Madden is Chief Executive, Forum for the Future.
Photos: California Institute of Technology, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
In a couple of decades’ time, some of us will be living much longer, but looking much younger. On current trends, by 2035 nearly 100,000 people in the UK will live to be 100, with a good few even passing 110. Advances in medical science combined with healthier lifestyles should push back the onset of conditions like heart disease and diabetes, so that more people enjoy more years of active life. On top of these steady improvements, many scientists are predicting much bigger leaps in longevity. The rapid advances expected in genomics and regenerative medicine could mean that people start to live very much longer. Indeed, there are serious scientists who believe there is someone alive today who will live to be 1,000. Ray Kurzweil, an American guru of ‘extreme longevity’, is popping a stomach-churning 200 pills a day with the aim of still being alive when the breakthroughs that allow such an extension of the human lifespan take place. Not only will people invest in living longer, they’ll also spend (even more) time and money trying to look younger. Research labs will compete to find the interventions that really do take years off your looks. And if current trends continue, cosmetic plastic surgery will be routine.
that find their way into the ecosystem? How and where will the older population live? We could certainly expect to see more single person households, which are on balance less efficient. And if we extend life expectancy without concurrent drops in the birth rate, total numbers will increase, testing still further the planet’s environmental limits. Unless we can find ways to live lighter, as well as longer, on the Earth, increasing our years may turn out to be a poisoned chalice.
Photos: azgek / istock
Just how far can we stretch our health?
Indeed, in Britain, some people already pop out for plastic surgery in their lunch hour – and, as a nation, we spend more on it than we do on tea! These trends are nothing new. Human history is peppered with quests for immortality and the elixir of youth. And, of course, long life and good looks will not be evenly distributed. Wealth differentials already affect life expectancy. But we can expect to see some people buying ‘life’ more explicitly – through medical interventions. This, combined with the impact of obesity and bad diet on the poorer sectors of society, could lead to a yawning gap in life expectancy. So what will these trends mean for sustainability? Will we invest more in a healthy diet and an improved environment, in the hope that we can enjoy both for longer? Or will our money go on surgery and on pharmaceuticals
Have you ever basked in the warm summer sun and wondered whether we could mimic plants – combining the power of its rays with carbon dioxide to produce energy? If so, you’re not the first. The technology to harness the sun’s energy for creating syngas out of CO2 has been around for a while [see ‘Air supply’, GF76, p32]. But high energy demands and low efficiency have kept it from being more than a commercial daydream. Until now, that is. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (CIT) have found a way to smash previous records for CO2 dissociation in a new prototype reactor. CIT’s prototype concentrates the sun’s energy onto ceria, a ‘rare earth’ metal catalyst that is actually about as common as copper. When CO2 and water vapour are rapidly passed over it, they break down
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From lavatory to laptop? Biogas could provide portable power Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are pioneering a methane fuel cell which could provide portable storage for small-scale power generation, and an affordable alternative to conventional short-lived batteries for laptops and other portable devices. Expense has held back the development of hydrogen fuel cells, which have an optimum operating temperature in excess of 800°C. Noble metal catalysts – such as platinum, currently selling at £1,780 per troy ounce – are needed to reach these temperatures, but exposure to them accelerates the breakdown of other components. The new micro-scale solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is designed to run on a variety of hydrocarbon fuels, including methane, which can be generated cheaply from organic waste through anaerobic digestion. The research team, led by Shriram Ramanathan, believes the optimum operating temperature of the
Radiant bodies
cell could be lowered by up to 500°C, saving energy and making it more practical, too. Cheaper catalysts, such as nickel and nickel oxide, can also be used, lowering costs. “This technology is very promising for clean and portable energy”, claims Ramanathan. Applications include a power source for small vehicles, such as forklifts, scooters, and recreational vehicles, and portable, efficient power for remote and rural areas. On a smaller scale and at lower temperatures, Ramanathan believes SOFCs will eventually be able to power portable electronics. So how long do we have to wait? The research has attracted $500,000 of capital investment from Allied Minds, a corporation specialising in early stage university business ventures, and the Harvard Office of Technology Development has established SiEnergy Systems, LLC to commercialise the technology. SiEnergy is seeking further investors and industrial collaborators to target high-end commercial and military mobile power applications. – Lucy Tooher Warm bodies below, warm building above
Amber light for greener flight
Geothermal installations to crowdsource heat
“I’m not an optimist. Neither am I a pessimist. I’m a very serious ‘possible-ist’. It’s a new category, where we take emotion apart and work analytically with the world.”
The glow of many a hot and bothered commuter will be harnessed for local heating in Stockholm and Paris. Swedish realtor Jernhusen is investing SEK 1 billion in the regeneration of Stockholm Central Station, including an innovative geothermal system to capture and channel the body heat of its 250,000 daily commuters. Heat exchangers in the ventilation system will convert surplus low-grade body heat into hot water, which will then be pumped to heat office space in the nearby Kungsbrohuset building, also owned by Jernhusen. The plans, due for completion in June 2012, also include
Hans Rosling, Co-Founder and Chair of The Gapminder Foundation, gives a TEDtalk on global population growth.
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contend with. Tom Enders of Airbus reportedly estimates that biofuels are currently 25 times more expensive than aviation kerosene. As soon as ASTM gives the nod to what’s technically known as hydrotreated renewable jet (HRJ) fuel, Lufthansa can start gathering experience. It will be using supplies from Finnish company Neste Oil, derived from vegetable oil, in an Airbus A321 plane, and closely monitoring the effects in terms of performance, pollution, soot, maintenance and so on. The six-month project, at an estimated cost of €6.6 million, is predicted to save 1,500 tonnes of CO2 emissions. – Roger East
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heating for a public housing project, topping up the local district heating network. The apartment block, owned by Paris Habitat, is connected to the station via a disused stairwell which will house the pipes, eliminating excavation costs that would otherwise have made the project too expensive to pursue. As a result, Paris Habitat expects to cut its heating bill by up to a third. Forum for the Future’s Head of Built Environment, Martin Hunt. notes that “Geothermal technologies have been around for a long time and are commercially viable. It looks like this application of heat recapture technology will only make sense in busy public spaces, but if the numbers stack up I can see it could be used on a wider scale.” – Sam Jones
$45 billion The amount the Chinese Government invested in wind projects in 2010 – almost half the total sum invested by the G-20 nations ($95 billion). This substantial investment ensured that approximately one in every two wind turbines that went live in 2010 were situated in China. China’s installed capacity is now 43.4GW, out of a global total of 194.4GW.
Photos: Jernhusen AB; btrenkel / istock
Keen-to-be-greener airlines really do want biofuel to fly. Lufthansa was set to start using it from April, for a six month trial period, in a 50/50 mix with kerosene on its Hamburg to Frankfurt run. The company was keen to chalk this up as a first for a scheduled passenger service, after a spate of successful in-flight tests. These tests were carried out over the last two years with various biofuel blends by half a dozen operators around the world, along with the US military.
Lufthansa had anticipated approval by now from ASTM International, the regulatory standards body. But it’s having to hold its horses, apparently because engine makers like Boeing want more test data to make sure their warranties won’t be compromised in any way. As a result, prospective investors in aviation biofuels are holding back too. But investment is needed to ramp up the sustainable production of biofuels to anything like commercial scale. Not to mention the logistical challenge of making biofuel blends available on tap at airports around the world. There’s also the cost question to
Photos: ChepeNicoli / istock; Lufthansa
German airline on the marks for extended biofuel pilot project
the replacement of all lighting in the station with LEDs, with the aim of obtaining Green Building certification. The system could reduce the energy costs of the office block by up to 25% – a significant saving given Sweden’s cold winters and costly gas. The common ownership of the two buildings makes the transfer of energy a clear win, but – says Klas Johnasson, one of the developers – if real estate owners collaborate, there’s no reason why the project could not be replicated on a commercial basis. A similar initiative is underway in the Paris Metro at Rambuteau station. Warmth generated by passengers in the platforms and corridors, combined with heat from the movement of the trains, will supply underfloor
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The bold and the brilliant
Costa Navarino, Greece This vast luxury resort in the Peloponnese sets out to preserve both the flora and fauna of the salt-swept bays, and the area’s architectural heritage – which harks back to King Nestor’s palace – while bringing new money and serious ambition to a region in need of regeneration. Some 16,000 displaced olive trees have been preserved and replanted, along with 800,000 indigenous shrubs, in a conservation scheme involving agricultural scientists, landscape architects and topographers. Living roofs extending over 5km2 shelter buildings designed to make the most of natural light and shade. All of the site’s electricity needs should be met by a 22MW photovoltaic system; it will be cooled by seawater and warmed by geothermal. Water use is carefully monitored, and recycling schemes are accompanied by educational programmes making visitors more aware of the the local environment.
Great architecture strikes the eye, not the environment The best of new build is designed to complement the landscape, both aesthetically and through the efficient use of natural resources. As Martin Hunt, Head of the Built Environment at Forum for the Future, puts it: “If a building is going to be called ‘worldclass’, it’s vital that sustainability is integral to the design.” These leading examples of new architecture will inspire visitors to remember their dependence on the great outdoors, however snug or smart it is inside. From Switzerland to Singapore to Scunthorpe, the one thing they all share is their interaction with their surroundings. Designed along ‘bioclimatic’ principles, each building draws on the local climate and the lay of the land (geology, topography and vegetation) to maximise natural shelter, warmth, light and ventilation, and – wherever possible – to harvest and conserve water and energy.
ArtScience Museum, Singapore Inspired by the form of a lotus, Singapore’s newly opened ArtScience Museum in the heart of the Marina Bay development is a striking addition to the waterfront, with ten dramatic ‘fingers’ curving up towards the sky. Like all flowers, this too needs water and light.
Architect Moshe Safdie designed the Museum to allow natural light to illuminate the curved interior walls of the ‘fingers’ through skylights at their tips. Its dish-like roof gathers rainwater, channelling it down a 35-foot drop at the core of the building, towards a reflective pool on the lower floor. From here, it’s redirected to a cooling cylindrical waterfall feature, and – more prosaically – recycled for use in the museum toilets.
Sports Academy, UK The design for Scunthorpe’s £15 million Sports Academy is inspired by the surrounding parkland and aims to enhance it. Six dome-shaped pods covered with heather and grass shelter the swimming pool, sports hall, fitness suite, dance studio and climbing column. According to architects Andrew Wright Associates, this structure offers the smallest possible surface area,
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Photos: Ben Ainsley; ETH-Studio Monte Rosa Tonatiuh Ambrosetti
This $6.3 million glittering aluminium shell bears little resemblance to a traditional mountain refuge. Nicknamed ‘Bergkristall’ (Mountain Crystal), the Swiss Alpine Club’s new shelter for hikers and climbers cuts into the rocky landscape, catching the rays reflected by the snow. A 16kW photovoltaic system integrated into the southern facade generates 90% of the building’s electricity, with excess stored in lead-acid accumulators. In the summer, water from the melting glaciers is harvested and stored in a large reservoir 40 metres up the slope. Waste water is filtered and recycled, and solar showers loosen up any aching limbs. A digital energy management system monitors demand, and even processes weather forecasts and anticipated visitor numbers for maximum efficiency. The Hut will also be used as a centre for research into resource efficiency by Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).
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“This is our generation’s Sputnik moment... We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.”
Photos: Temes S; Andrew Wright Associates with S&P Buro Happold and North Lincolnshire Council with Yorkshire Forward
Monte Rosa Hut, Switzerland
keeping the costs and energy involved in supplying building materials to a minimum. Due to open in July 2011, the Academy will draw on its surroundings for natural light and ventilation, as well as 80% of its anticipated heat requirement, which will be generated by local wood chippings and ground source heat pumps. The plans also include a lagoon, green corridors to connect new habitats, and greywater collection from the showers to supply external water features. – Fiona King and Anna Simpson
President Obama in his State of the Union 2011 address.
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Money grows on it
Eco town, take two While much of the housing market struggles to find its feet, a wave of plans for sustainable towns is sweeping across the UK. Among them is Sherford, to the east of Plymouth in South Devon, designed by the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. The Prince’s first eco town, Poundbury, has had mixed reviews. Built on Duchy of Cornwall land in Dorset in the 1990s, its vision included social cohesion, priority for pedestrians and a traditional country village aesthetic. Its architecture has been widely praised, and it’s proved popular with many. But some residents and others grumble that nostalgia won out over functionality. The gravel-covered footpaths are a nuisance, there’s no attempt to dissuade people from driving, and the house design prioritises tradition over energy efficiency. On the upside, Poundbury is providing useful lessons for new developments. The design for Sherford combines conservative aesthetics, such as its Georgian-style high street, with the
ultra-practical principles of ‘New Urbanism’. All day-to-day requirements, from workplaces and schools to transport hubs and shops, will be no more than five minutes away from where people live – by either public transport or foot. Plans for the town, expected to house 12,000 people within the next 20 years, also include a 500-acre park and sports ground, an organic farm, allotments and two communityowned wind turbines. Overall, Sherford aims to produce half its energy needs from onsite renewables, with the windpower complemented by solar thermal or PV on three out of every four buildings. Eighty percent will also be equipped to harvest rainwater, for use in flushing the toilets or watering the garden, and greywater recycling will also be implemented wherever possible. All homes will be built to the EcoHomes Excellent standard, and planners are considering car-free zones. Impressively, a recent environmental impact assessment concludes that the town will produce a net biodiversity gain, as Sherford’s rich mix of green spaces brings new habitats to land previously carpeted in monocultures.
As a solution to nearby Plymouth’s sprawl, “this is as good as [it is] likely to get, given the current economic conditions”, says Dr. Joe Ravetz, Co-Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology at Manchester University. Ravetz praises the focus on accessibility in the town, but argues that “a light rail or tram connecting it to Plymouth” is needed, too. A similar scheme is underway in Cornwall. The West Carclaze and Baal eco-community is a joint venture by Orascom Developments Holding and Imerys, involving the Eden Project and key public sector bodies. It will have walkable neighbourhoods, extensive parkland and lakes, efficient and affordable homes, and a range of renewable energy solutions, including ground source heat pumps, concentrated heat and power, and solar PV. Meanwhile, the North West Bicester Eco Town is awaiting planning permission, following criticism from The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) that its eco-credentials aren’t ambitious enough. – Emilia Hungerford
The amount of additional investment in low carbon solutions needed year on year if the EU is to cut its domestic emissions by 80% by 2050. The European Commission’s roadmap for moving to a low-carbon economy calls for investment – equivalent to 1.5% of EU GDP per annum – in renewable energy, smart grids, passive housing, carbon capture and storage and the electrification of transport.
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The Leyland Cypress is the ultimate privacy tree, spreading its evergreen leaves so thickly and quickly that neighbours end up in arms over
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restricted views. But what’s it really worth? The South Devon Borough of Torbay, where 14.5% of all trees are Leylandii, is determined to find out. Using open source software developed by the US Forest Service, the local council is calculating the value of its urban forest – not just the notorious suburban cypress, but grander trees, too. It’s not an idle endeavour. Beyond their aesthetic value, trees provide vital ecosystem services: cleaning the air, managing rainfall, storing carbon, reducing noise pollution and stabilising temperatures. Take out a tree, and you lose a free service. But until now, little assessment of the financial burden caused by the damage or destruction of local trees has been undertaken in the UK. Torbay Council’s Arboricultural Services team is using i-Tree Eco software to measure the environmental services and corresponding financial values of local trees. The project, a collaboration involving Forest Research and Natural England, collects data on the way trees: • save energy: their shade cools buildings in summer, and offers some shelter from winter winds • store and sequester carbon (and at what rate) • reduce pollution through filtration.
It will also assess the ‘structural value’ of the trees, including the cost of replacement. The findings will be used to establish a UKwide benchmark for valuing trees. Initial findings have thrown up some big numbers. They suggest that Torbay’s 818,000 trees have a combined structural value of about £218 million. They store carbon at a rate of 4,200 tonnes a year, a sequestration service worth nearly £1.5 million in total. According to Kenton Rogers, the lead consultant in the consortium, “the trees with the largest canopies deliver the most benefits, but here in Torbay – with its views of the sea – these are the trees especially vulnerable to developers”. In the US, i-Tree Eco has already made its mark. A study valuing the ecosystem services of New York’s trees at $122 million a year prompted Mayor Bloomberg to back the planting of one million trees over a ten-year period. Putting a price on natural resources may go against the grain for naturalists and aesthetes, but as Pavan Sukhdev demonstrated with The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study [see GF78, p43], financial costs represent a ‘bottom line’ which holds sway for communities, businesses and policymakers alike. – Alex Johnson
Tianjin can where Dongtan can’t China’s second eco-city attempt could yet succeed
Photos: Architecutre in Motion; imagestock / istock
€270 billion
Open source software to transform urban forestry
Photos: Eric Crichton / Corbis; Surbana Urban Planning Group
UK picks up pace (and experience) on eco-towns
Putting money on trees
China’s much-hyped ‘zero-emission’ city of Dongtan [see ‘Greening the Dragon’, p12] may remain stuck firmly on the drawing board, but hopes are high for another eco-metropolis at Tianjin, on the Pacific coast 150km from Beijing. Tianjin Eco-City, a $607 million joint Sino-Singaporean project, is just over two years into development, with completion due in 2018 at the earliest. Built on 30 km2 of reclaimed wetlands, Tianjin will feature solar and geothermal energy, use waste heat from a nearby power plant for district heating, and have 50% of its water needs met through recycled or desalinated water – taking pressure off the area’s shrinking water table. Its buildings will conform to “strict green standards”, though as yet there isn’t a lot of detail as to exactly what that will mean in practice. The city will eventually be home to 350,000 residents, with wetlands features preserved and greened with plentiful trees and parks. So far, so impressive. Peer closely at other goals, though, and some look rather
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unimpressive: “all water from taps to be potable” should surely be taken as read, while meeting a paltry 15% of the city’s energy needs from renewables by 2020 is hardly a stretch target when you’re starting from scratch. But then remember that this is China, where eco-metropolises are a very new idea indeed. In a country whose capital has six ring roads (and counting), Tianjin’s target to have 9 in 10 journeys made by bike, foot or public transport, thanks in part to a planned rapid light transit railway, is verging on the courageous. Intriguingly, it includes a carbon target – albeit expressed cannily in relative economic terms, rather than an absolute or per capita goal – as follows: the carbon emission “per unit GDP should not exceed 150 tonnes per US$1 million”. Measuring this could be a complex task, to say the least. But perhaps the greatest innovations are social, not environmental. In a country where the rich-poor divide is a growing issue, the eco-city’s planners have put down some brave markers. A total of 20% of residential units are set aside for public housing, situated in amongst the rest, so that rich and poor rub shoulders in common community malls
and parks. Again, this is a trend away from the ‘rich ghettos’ springing up elsewhere in the country, summed up by the goal that the city will have “100% barrier-free access” – no gated communities, in other words. While Dongtan foundered on a lack of clear political support, Tianjin is backed by some local heavyweights. Its steering group includes Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng and China’s Vice Premier Wang Qishan. Madeleine Sturrock, Managing Director of PanCathay Consulting, has watched the scheme take shape. “What’s good about the Eco-City is that they have taken time to formulate their plan. In the two years I’ve been visiting, I’ve seen ideas evolve with intelligent ways of living, working and leisure built into the plan.” – Fiona King and Martin Wright
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An app a day
Greenie points
Gamechanging technology at your fingertips
Loyalty schemes reward sustainable living choices
The rise of mobile applications, or ‘apps’, means technology could transform the basic things we do day to day: heating our homes, going to work, walking the dog, getting the groceries... Environmentalists and social entrepreneurs have been quick to figure out the potential for smart software on the move. You may not have found sharing public transport with some ‘early adopters’ – all headphones and greasy fingers swiping silently at their touchscreens – inspiring. But what if your fellow commuters were busy helping to preserve the fragile ecosystems we depend upon, monitoring their energy consumption and picking up useful skills? Far from being just a distraction, apps are already helping people live more responsibly. So what’s out there, and what difference will they make to prospects for sustainability?
Move over, cuddly polar bear. Traditional ‘save the planet’ approaches to incentivising low-impact living may have met their match in the rise of loyalty schemes that reward green consumer and lifestyle choices. In South Korea, the Government has recently announced plans to introduce a nationwide green credit card programme, where credits awarded for sustainable consumption choices are converted into rebates on utility bills, or directly into cash. Credits are earned by using public transport, collecting used batteries, or opting for a low-carbon detergent. For Hong Sung-pyo, Head of the Korean Green Purchasing Network, it’s “a chance to change the current mantra that living green is tough to achieve”. Policy innovations on this scale will be key to reconciling national sustainability goals with mass behavioural change, says Joel Makower, Chairman and Executive Editor of GreenBiz Group. But, he adds, “every society has a different relationship with its government: they
Seasons: Apple only; serves United Kingdom, Central and Western Europe, US, Canada and Australia; £1.19 Boskoi: Android; data concentrated in Central and Western Europe and US; free Barcoo: Apple, Android, and a range of smartphones including Nokia, Samsung and Blackberry; UK and mainland Europe; free
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Avego: Apple only; UK, US; free greenMeter: Apple only; UK, US; £3.71/$5.99 A Glass of Water: Apple only; UK, Sweden; free Walk It!: Android and Apple (in the US only); $0.99
Treelogger With ‘TreeID’ the most determined towny could call a dendrologist’s bluff. Simple questions about the bark, leaves, fruit and location help you match a tree with its name. But soon, an augmented reality app from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) will identify plants in an instant based on their leaf structure. All you’ll need to do is point your phone and click. For the NSF, it’s a foolproof way to crowdsource valuable data on biodiversity. Tree planters, meanwhile, can use Apple’s ‘Tree Spacing Calculator’ to decide how best to lay out their orchard, based on irrigation, soil quality, tree number and height. And if you’d like to plant a tree but lack the get-up-and-go, buying ‘A Real Tree’ contributes to reforestation and forestry education projects around the world, in partnership with Sustainable
TreeID: Apple only; UK (an Android imitation is available in the US); £2.39 Tree Spacing Calculator: Apple and online; US; free A Real Tree: Apple only; US; $0.99
Housekeeper
Have you got the bottle?
No more clumsy dials on your boiler. Hook your home up to the ‘PassivEnergy’ App to monitor and control its temperature wherever you are. Tell it when you’re just a few minutes away and the heating will kick in to welcome you back. ‘Control4’ lets you do the same for your water, lighting, music, locks and alarms. You can programme your taps to source water according to local availability, or your thermostat to respond to the temperature outside.
A new school in the Philippines has...
PassivEnergy: Apple only; free for PassivEnergy customers Control4: Apple only; free – Alex Johnson and Anna Simpson Green Futures is launching its own app. Get a daily hit of the brightest and best innovations with GF Inspire. Watch this space.
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Photos: Huang Xiaoyong / Corbis; Kristel Marie F. Gonzales
Confused consumers hover by the fruit and veg stalls, counting the food miles and trying to remember what’s regional and ripe – but there’s help at hand. The GPS-enabled app ‘Seasons’ will suggest regional produce ripe for the picking, and point out the nearest farmers’ markets. For the foragers among us, ‘Boskoi’, from Urban Edibles, maps out local fruit and herbs, complete with guidance on how to help yourself and what not to take. Users share their secrets, from fennel and blackberries in Toronto, to plums and elderberries near a Watford rugby club. For the less adventurous, Barcoo lets you scan barcodes in the supermarket for fresh insights into the supply chain: who picked and pressed the olives for that pesto?
It’s the hitchhiker’s dream. ‘Avego’ is a real-time ridesharing app, matching drivers and riders as their paths cross. The app’s not only free, but lucrative for the driver, with payment transferred automatically from the rider’s account as they leave the car. For low emissions, Apple’s ‘greenMeter’ weighs up your rate of acceleration and cruising speed against factors such as your fuel of choice, the vehicle’s aerodynamic drag and the weather, to give you real-time feedback on your performance. A clearer nudge comes from Toyota’s ‘A Glass of Water’, which sploshes about on your dashboard threatening to spill on your lap if you brake too hard [see p30]. Of course, the greenest option is to leave the car behind. ‘Walk It!’ turns your smartphone into a pedometer, estimating your pace and keeping a record of how far you’ve gone.
Harvest International, Trees For The Future and the UNEP Billion Tree Campaign.
Photos: MadCircles / istock; farbenrausch / istock; Ulrich Mueller / shutterstock
Foodlover
Freewheeler
will each have to experiment to find the right policy mix.” Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of communications agency Futerra, welcomes the financial incentive for low-carbon choices. “There’s a collective benefit in making greener living choices”, she says. “Now, individuals can be motivated by those choices too.” In the private sector, similar plans are afoot. Eurostar and Green & Black’s are among a network of retailers setting up the green loyalty scheme, Ice. Each £2 spent on products identified as sustainable by the Soil Association, the Forestry Stewardship Council and the Energy Saving Trust earns the consumer 15 points, worth between 15-30p depending on how they are spent. Flexibility is key: points can be traded immediately, and mixed with other payment forms (cash, card). Jude Thorne, Ice CEO, sees a need for green loyalty incentives across the full spectrum of consumer behaviour, from everyday activities to ‘once in a lifetime’ buys. “In every aspect of life”, she argues, “there needs to be a sustainable alternative”. – Nick Chan
Illac Diaz, Executive Director of MyShelter Foundation, and a host of volunteers have taken the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ mantra to heart with a new school built from discarded bottles in San Pablo, south of Manila. The bottles are filled with adobe, made from local mud which sets like concrete, and layered within a steel frame. The resulting wall, Diaz claims, is three times stronger than one built with traditional materials (wood, bamboo and straw) – which is no small thing in a country regularly hit by typhoons. The bottles were collected at a community centre; volunteers provided the labour, and the land was donated by the local government. Of course, the novelty factor helped to win support – although San Pablo isn’t the world’s first case of ‘bottle build’. In 1907, a saloon owner in Nevada built a house from beer, whisky and soda vessels when lumber was scarce. It’s still standing. But the most impressive example is arguably the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple in Thailand’s Sisaket province, a labour of love by Buddhist Monks using a million old Heineken and Chang beer bottles. On a more prosaic scale, any visitor to Namibia’s Damaraland will be familiar with the holding pens for livetock made from discarded drinks cans.
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Projects like these “demonstrate resourcefulness and an innovative way of thinking that many more mainstream designers, builders and communities need to adopt if we are to cope with resource scarcity”, says Martin
Hunt, Head of Built Environment at Forum for the Future. MyShelter Foundation, which also builds schools and homes from bamboo and earth, is looking to repeat the project on the Philippines island of Cebu. – Sam Jones
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Bang to environmental rights Constitutional reform grants Kenyans the “right to a clean and healthy environment” Environmental rights have been explicitly recognised as part of the constitutional relationship between Kenya’s Government and its people for the first time. Adopted last year following a referendum, the new constitution grants every person “the right to a clean and healthy environment, which includes the right to have the environment protected for the benefit
of present and future generations through legislative and other measures”. Local lawyers have welcomed the step. Maurice Makoloo, Director of the Institute for Law and Environmental Governance, Nairobi, says that the new legal provisions would have a “profound effect” on prospects for environmental litigation. Specifically, says Makoloo, they will alleviate procedural barriers to court hearings, and improve public access to information about the environment. “These new rights elevate discourse on environmental
issues to a higher level”, he adds. Kenya faces severe problems of deforestation, which have been blamed for widespread soil erosion in many of the country’s hilly regions. Laws preventing forest clearance are widely flouted. Kenya joins a growing band of low-income countries enshrining environmental protection in constitutional law. Neighbouring Ethiopia’s first comprehensive statement of Environmental Policy, which includes the mandate that developmental projects “shall not damage or destroy the environment”, was approved back in 1997. Ecuador followed in 2008, granting “nature [the] right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution”. For Niall Watson, Programmes Legal Adviser at WWF-UK, considering the environment as a human right is a “powerful national statement”, and one which mirrors the rising prominence of environmental concerns in the developing world. But will a step change in environmental protection result? Christoph Schwarte of the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development in London cautions that, while legal traditions and contexts vary, environmental rights have often been only of “marginal” practical significance. “The extent to which there is further legislation and the mechanisms that provide means for citizens to claim rights” will have to be closely watched, he says. – Nick Chan
Kenyan sunride
The juice: the latest on EVs What a scoop The charge speed of lithium ion batteries used in EVs could be increased by up to 60 times, thanks to a new electrode material developed by a team at New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, potentially opening the door to a new generation of electric cars. The new material, dubbed ‘nanoscoops’ because its microscopic structural composition resembles a series of ice cream cones, can endure extremely high rates of charge and discharge that would cause the electrodes used in today’s lithium ion batteries to weaken and break. As a battery charges and discharges, the electrodes grow and shrink accordingly. Over time, these volume changes build up stress which can cause the battery to fail. Our mobile phones and laptops are designed to charge slowly to protect their batteries from failure. The carbon, aluminium and silicon structure of the nanoscoops electrode allows it to accept and discharge lithium ions at increased speeds, without sustaining lasting damage. The Rensselaer research team, led by Professor Nikhil Koratkar, charged and
More than a pinch
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“high-tech varieties are usually hybrids, for which they have to buy seeds each year, and which can require a lot of fertiliser and pesticide input.” Berger hopes the Tamil Nadu halophyte programme will be a success. She argues that it offers “a more sustainable approach than the widespread conversion of [salinified] croplands to shrimp farms – as has happened in Bangladesh”. – Tim Hirsch
Loves salt – powers planes?
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Photos: Unalozmen / istock
Millions of people living in coastal communities face additional food stress from the intrusion of salt into agricultural soils, due to poor irrigation, tidal flooding and rising sea levels. Faced with such a challenge, many talk of using genetic modification to create a new strain of salt-tolerant crops. But a very different approach is starting to reap rewards in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Here, research is focused on commercialising existing plants which naturally have a high salt tolerance. A project funded by the Indian Government at Vedaranyam is running a trial to grow halophytes – the 2% of terrestrial plants that naturally thrive in salty conditions – on a commercial scale. Some species are already used as fodder crops, but now they’re also being considered as sources of protein in livestock feed and edible oils, and as feedstock for biofuels. Salicornia, a relative of the edible samphire found along Britain’s coasts, has caught the attention of NASA and some commercial airlines as a potential feedstock for aircraft fuel. It’s part of a wider programme of
grassroots development in the area, including restoring mangroves – which can do much to absorb the impact of tsunamis such as the one which struck Tamil Nadu in 2004. In Sri Lanka, meanwhile, NGO Practical Action is working with farmers to develop their own crop varieties. “Farmers can breed traditional varieties for improvements themselves”, says Rachel Berger, Practical Action’s Climate Change Adviser, whereas
Photos: Dinesh Valke; WLDavies / istock
Can salty soils bring new money to vulnerable coasts?
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discharged a nanoscoops electrode at a rate 40 to 60 times faster than conventional batteries over 100 continuous cycles, while maintaining a comparable energy density. Today’s EVs depend on supercapacitors in conjunction with conventional batteries to perform high-energy functions, such as starting the vehicle. Koratkar believes the invention of nanoscoops could enable the two separate systems to be combined in a single, efficient unit. – Sam Jones
Researchers from Moi University, Kenya, have designed an electric motorbike to run on batteries which can be charged by solar PV. The first motorbikes could be on the roads by mid-2012, following patenting of the concept. Jeremy Muriuki, 26, one of the project innovators from Moi University, claims the bikes can run for an average of 24 hours on a single charge, with a top speed of 75km/h. Interest in solar powered devices has risen rapidly since the Kenyan Government announced a tax cut of 15% on the sale of all solar products in June 2010. The commercial development of the concept bike has won the support of the National Council of Science and Technology, a government agency, which has pledged $15,000 per year for the next two years, with the possibility of renewed funding thereafter. “We are encouraging creative ideas by funding projects – mostly related to how solar energy can be applied in the Kenyan transport sector,” said Shaukat Abdulrazak, the council’s Chairman. Meanwhile, Peugeot is bringing electric twowheelers into the mainstream with the E-Vivacity scooter. Its 4kW engine runs on a lithium ion cobalt battery, with a recharge time of four hours, and a range of 80-100km. – Gitonga Njeru
La vie en bleu Parisians will soon be zipping round Charles de Gaulle Etoile in little blue bubble-like cars, as the world’s first municipal electric vehicle (EV) hire scheme gets underway. Mayor Bernard Delanoë has pioneered the €110 million Autolib initiative to complement the Vélib bicycles, introduced in 2007. The fleet of 3,000 lithium batterypowered cars is designed by Italian partner Pininfarina, best known for their work on desirable brands like Alfa Romeo and Ferrari. Manufactured by French company Bolloré, they will be available later this year from 1,000 self-service hire points throughout the city. The four-seater ‘Bluecars’ will be able to travel about 250km on one charge, with a full recharge taking around four hours. They’re designed for efficiency rather than pace: a top speed of 130km/h won’t thrill Jeremy Clarkson. But for people simply wanting a straightforward car to hop across town in, they could be ideal. They come equipped with GPS and an emergency call button in case of an accident. Subscription to the scheme costs just €12 a month, with additional charges of €5 for the
first half an hour of use, €4 for the next, and €6 for each subsequent 30-minute slot. The charging rates are clearly designed to favour single, short-ish trips, rather than compete with mainstream car hire schemes. Bluecar needs to attract just 160,000 subscribers to cover its costs, an achievable feat in a city where 58% of the population do not own a car, and 16% of those who do use it less than once a month. Low-carbon vehicle designer and entrepreneur Hugo Spowers waxed lyrical about the scheme. “It kills a lot of birds: embodied carbon, congestion from parked cars, the cost [of ownership] to consumers...” Another fan is London Mayor Boris Johnson, who is keen to copy his Parisian counterpart on this scheme, as he did with the bikes. Discussions have opened at the London Assembly, but so far no funds have been allocated. – Sam Jones
Green Futures April 2011
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Walking on water
Look around you: at home, in the office, on the train, in the cafe… Almost everything you see took significant amounts of water to produce, source or transport. We depend on this precious resource for our health, our food, our infrastructure and industry. But until now, we’ve taken its abundant supply for granted, and paid very little for the privilege. These days of plenty will soon be over. Consultants McKinsey predict that by 2030 global water requirements will have grown from
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4,500 billion m3 today to 6,900 billion m3. Such a hike means demand will exceed our current reliable and accessible supplies by 40%. And these are becoming increasingly unreliable as climate change kicks in. So who will feel the pinch? The answer’s simple: we all will – and not just because of headline-hitting drought. Supply chains for everything are at risk: from food to clothing, from cosmetics to concrete. Heavy industry needs water pressure to slice through steel; data
warehouses need a constant flow to keep the servers cool. This isn’t just a problem for the future. Droughts across the world’s cotton belt triggered price rises that slashed the margins for high street retailers. The recent Russian dry spell led to export bans and historic highs in the price of wheat. Nestlé’s chairman has gone so far as to suggest that there’s a risk of running out of water before oil. [For more on these and other water issues, see ‘Thirsty work’, in our
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Photos: SAB Miller
If you thought carbon footprinting was tough, wait till you get to water. With supplies falling fast, smart companies are seeking ways to shrink their thirst. David Burrows dips a toe in the tide.
accompanying Special Edition, Tomorrow’s Food, Tomorrow’s Farms.] Last year, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) asked 302 of the world’s largest companies – mostly in food and drink, tobacco, metals and mining – how significant a concern water is to them. Over two thirds replied that they were already facing problems including water shortages and rising prices for extraction. Many are taking action to cut consumption, setting goals and reporting against performance. But this looming crisis is demanding something more rigorous than the watery equivalent of energy targets. “It’s beginning to dawn on companies that the supply could dry up”, says CDP’s Head of Water, Marcus Norton. “They want to get a handle on the risks, not only within their own operations, but up and down their supply chains.”
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Hence the growing interest in comprehensive ‘water footprinting’. It’s not an entirely new concept. It was first used in 2003 to calculate annual average water consumption per head, across a range of countries. Yemen had the smallest, at 619m3; the US topped the chart at 2,483m3. No surprises there. Then research shifted from countries to consumer goods, and the picture got more intriguing. We discovered that the average cup of coffee takes 140 litres to produce; an apple 70, and an egg 200 – mostly for feeding the hens. But one of the most detailed studies assessed the water footprint of … beer. In 2009, a report by WWF and SABMiller found that it takes 155 litres of water to make just one litre of beer – in South Africa. If you’re brewing in the Czech Republic, though, the footprint is just 45 litres. But before you reach for the Pilsner, there’s a catch: when it comes
to water, size isn’t the be-all and end-all. This is what makes water footprinting a good deal more complex than its carbon equivalent, where it’s a simple case of the smaller the better. “The big difference is that carbon is a global concern, whereas water is a very local one”, explains Rob Lillywhite, a senior research fellow at the University of Warwick. A kilogram of CO2 emitted in Spain has exactly the same effect on the atmosphere as one emitted in New Zealand. But with water, the impact depends on the degree of water scarcity in the area it’s taken from.” Much as SABMiller found. The company has also mapped its water footprint in Peru, Tanzania and Ukraine, and identified different totals – and challenges – in each location. Even within South Africa, footprints varied. Barley grown in the hot and arid Northern Cape, and maize in the flat grasslands of the North West province, depend
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Fifty thousand litres of lamb
Unilever may have more success. “We can’t tell women to have shorter showers, but we can develop hair conditioners that don’t take so long to rinse out,” says the company’s Sustainability Director, John Temple. Unilever, which makes household brands such as Dove, Persil and Timotei, has already brought a new conditioner to the Indian market, albeit one used on clothes; it requires a third less water to rinse out. In a country that is water stressed, the potential environmental impact could be significant, but there is a social benefit too: less water means less time spent fetching and carrying it, a laborious chore which can keep children from attending school and women out of employment. Unilever was able to identify this opportunity thanks to an expansive footprinting exercise: work that has, says Temple, proved “a fabulous resource for R&D and spotting new opportunities”. The company footprinted 1,600 of its products based on the metrics of waste, carbon and water. Temple says carbon is pretty straightforward, but with water “it’s a steep learning curve. However, if you take a pragmatic approach then it can be a very useful exercise.” While the approach must be pragmatic, the results can throw up a few surprises – or ‘outliers’, as statisticians like to call them. Without water footprinting, whoever would have known that Turkish people are the “pre-wash champions of Europe” with 44% indulging compared to the 7% EU average. But when Turks do their laundry, the study found, they also tend to under-fill their machines. As a result, this water-stressed country is consuming 30% more to clean clothes than the global average. With a well-known brand, Omo, already established in the market, Unilever had the scope to help change that. “We ran a big PR campaign with WWF to highlight good laundry habits, stop prewashing [because it wastes water and energy] and reassure people that Omo washes brilliantly without [it],” says Temple. “Life cycle measurements like [water footprinting] allow you to spot these outliers and work on approaches to tackle them.” That isn’t always easy, he
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adds. “Trying to reduce our impacts at the consumption end is the biggest challenge we face. But, if we can encourage people to use different products that consume less water then we can make a real difference.” Changing consumer behaviour is one possibility, but some are looking to water footprinting as a means of changing entire sectors. Balfour Beatty, the construction company, is one of a handful of those outside the food and drink industry who have jumped
Plastic less drastic One company’s journey to put footprints into practice
Photos: Martin Wright; DougVonGausig/istock
it’s harvesting water lost in the cooking process, and using it to clean, peel and slice the potatoes as they enter the plant [see ‘Condensed version’, GF79, p11]. Spuds can be up to 80% water, most of which evaporates to give the crisps their crunch. Simply by placing cold lids above the steam to capture condensation, and installing filters in the waste pipes, PepsiCo can harvest over 3,000 litres of clean water an hour. It really can be as simple as that. For other companies, the end user is where the action is – or rather, needs to be. When Aquafresh toothpaste makers GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) commissioned a water footprint tool to identify potential savings, they came up with a surprise: no less than 99.7% of the toothpaste’s footprint comes right at the end of the chain – when people brush their teeth – largely because they leave the tap running. It was an area completely outside GSK’s control. Not to be deterred, the company launched a ‘Chiudi Il Rubinetto’ (switch off the tap) campaign in Italy, an area where domestic water supply could be at risk in the future. “It’s one of the few examples of an FMCG company marketing to its customers around water use”, says David Symons, a director of consultants WSP, which carried out the footprinting work for GSK. “What’s more, it’s an example of how to take an academic concept [water footprinting] and apply it to your business.” Persuading consumers to change behaviour – even in the simplest of areas – can be an uphill struggle [see ‘The persuaders’, p26]. So what about developing products that do the job for you? That’s the thinking behind a new concept for a ‘waterless’ washing machine, which uses nylon beads as cleansing agents, cutting water use by 90%. Designed by Leeds-based Xeros, this hit the spotlight a year ago when it was listed by WWF as a ‘green game changer’. But despite the ubiquity of dry cleaners on the high street, the public have so far struggled to accept a domestic washing machine that doesn’t need water. A less revolutionary approach adopted by
More wash, less water
Photos: locke_rd/istock
largely on irrigation using groundwater (known in footprinting terminology as ‘blue’ water). But in the Southern Cape and Mpumalanga province, there’s enough rainfall to quench the same crops with ‘green’ (rain) water. Elsewhere, it’s a different story. Take lamb. Cranfield University calculated that the production of a kilo of English lamb requires over 50,000 litres of water. On the surface, that sounds hopelessly unsustainable, and should be enough to put you off kebabs for life. But a whopping 96.6% of it is ‘green’ water. Many lambs graze rain-fed grasslands where water scarcity isn’t a problem, which means, says Cranfield, that the actual hydrological impact of English lamb production is “very small”. If location can make all the difference, so can timing. It’s one thing to take 100 litres from the ground in Suffolk, say, when it’s still soaking up the spring showers. Go back in the height of summer, when the water table is much lower, and it’s another story. The same applies with bells on in a country like India, where using a thousand litres of water during the dry season has a dramatically different impact than it would during the monsoon. So when it comes to working out the water footprint of a product or activity, a single figure doesn’t cut it. As Andy Wales, Head of Sustainable Development at SABMiller, puts it, “a water footprint is much more than just a number”. It’s a story, fleshed out with when, where and how. But conveying this level of detail to stakeholders, from the consumer to the business strategist, presents a challenge. It’s a lot to squeeze into a single label, let alone a single figure – which is what a wave of eye-catching statistics has led many to expect. WWF-UK’s water footprint expert, Ashok Chapagain, admits these headline figures (some of which he had a hand in calculating) are great for raising awareness about the extent to which water is embedded in our lives, but not helpful as a basis for decision making. He says businesses need to look behind the numbers, and into the detail: “That’s where the really great data is.” When SAB Ltd, the South African franchise, mapped the water use of its crops onto local availability, it found that the North West has sufficient resources to support the maize production, despite its dependence on irrigated water. More vulnerable, according to the study, is barley growing in the Southern Cape. There’s doubt as to whether, with a changing climate and growing population, there’ll be enough rainfall to meet future demand. So in this particular case ‘blue’ water is better than ‘green’. Overall, agriculture takes the lion’s share of water at 85%, compared to 10% for industry and just 5% in the home. So it’s no surprise that much of the early work on water footprinting has involved food and drinks companies. Smart players, though, are finding ways to cut water use right across their footprint. Take PepsiCo, owners of Walker’s crisps. First it cut use out in the fields [see Tomorrow’s Food, Tomorrow’s Farms; now
It’s the food and drink businesses that have led the way on water footprinting – indeed the methodology is very much biased towards the sector. Now, others are catching the wave. Swedish plastics manufacturer Borealis is one. It’s recognised that the footprint of the materials it’s developed use in water and sewage pipe systems is considerable. About 17 million m3 a year, to be precise. It isn’t the most water-intensive operation in the world, but Borealis knew that water was becoming a hot topic and felt there was sufficient need to look at any risks. “If we build a plant it’ll be there for 30 years, so we want to know that in 30 years’ time we’ll still be able to run operations from that plant,” explains European Affairs Director, Sylvain Lhôte. “We’d identified water as an issue some time ago, and we’d been following the progress with water footprinting, so we wondered: ‘Could it work for us?’ Could it help us fill some of the gaps we had in the knowledge of our operations and our supply chain?”
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in with both feet. The infrastructure group is working with consultants Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) to develop a water footprint tool for both its internal operations and a variety of construction products. This will mark a shift in direction for water footprinting which, to date, has been most useful to manufacturers. “It’ll enable us to look at the design of a project, and the materials we are using, and determine whether there’s a way of reducing the water impacts ‘by design’,” explains Lynne Ceeney, PB Head of Sustainability for Europe and Africa. “No one has done anything like this on this scale in construction before.” Ceeney admits there is a plethora of issues to understand, but there’s no chance of anything being swept under the carpet. “There’s a risk that we could end up spotlighting waterintensive products that are being sourced from water scarce areas, but we need to deal with that. We’re not doing this so we can strike products off a list, but so we can get a better picture of where the risks are in our [work] and the construction industry more widely, and what we can do about them.” Eventually Ceeney would like to have a database where companies can compare products. “It won’t be possible to [do a direct comparison] of every product”, she admits, “but at least we’ll be able to see the emerging patterns in the supply chains and where the risks are. For instance, do we bring dry or wet
So, in 2008, Borealis offered itself up as a “happy guinea pig” to the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden (KTH) for an experiment that would result in the first ever water footprint assessment of plastics. Using Water Footprint Network guidelines, they embarked on a detailed pilot study of the most prosaic of products: a polyethylene crosslinked (PEX) pipe plumbing system for a 100m2 apartment. It’s hardly stuff to set the heart racing, but it helped Borealis and KTH sort through various methodological challenges and data gaps, and distinguish between direct and indirect impacts. “We found our direct water footprint to be quite low – ranging from 1.2 to 6.5 litres of fresh water per kilo of finished product,” says Lhôte. “But the indirect footprint originating from feedstock can triple the figure. So we’re looking at about 4m3/tonne of finished product (or 17 million m3 a year in all). But that doesn’t tell us much at all – now we need to relate the data to the local level.” That’s the complicated bit. Borealis has now drawn up a range of guidelines looking at water availability, quality, risk, flow and discharge at seven of its manufacturing sites. Later this year, it should be in a position to define what the sustainable management of water might look like for the company, site by site. And that’s the level at which
product to a site, and how does that affect the other impacts like carbon?” In the eight years since Professor Hoekstra introduced the concept of water footprinting, the science has come a long way. Corporate attitudes towards water scarcity have changed over that time, too, with some businesses already facing risks. However, the marriage of scientific advancement and business requirement can be a complex one – and nowhere is this more apparent than for water footprinting. The organisation charged with ‘counselling’ that relationship is the Water Footprint Network, a collaboration of businesses and scientists. It’s just published a manual which, says Executive Director Ruth Mathews, should help companies understand in more detail what their water use is, and guide them to take the most significant steps towards good water stewardship. The likes of SABMiller, PepsiCo and Unilever are already on the journey, while others, like Balfour, are just setting out. Many more will be keeping a close eye on water footprinting going forward, says Stuart Orr, Freshwater Manager at WWF International. “We will all need to do a better job of accounting for our water. To set targets and benchmarks, to show best practice, to anticipate consumer trends, to answer investor questions and to adhere to regulatory frameworks and laws. In all these cases a water footprint is relevant.” David Burrows is a freelance writer.
it has to operate, if the exercise is to have any meaning. “Unlike the case of carbon emissions, we can’t just give every plant a set figure and tell them to cut water by that amount.” The company is already taking action on some of the findings. On one Belgian site, for instance, where water stress has been identified, a drainage water recovery project is helping to reduce groundwater use by 30%. Other applications are sure to follow. It’s also still relatively early days for water footprinting as such, though, and Lhôte cautions that there is a long way to go before it proves as powerful in practice as it does in theory.
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Food for thought: a whole system in transformation
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Photos: Thomas Struth/Prix Pictet; Yancy Davis
Seeing the big picture is just the first step to changing whole systems for the better. Anna Simpson brings the future into focus. “The word for world is forest”, wrote the sci-fi novelist Ursula K Le Guin in the 70s. Unwittingly perhaps, she put her finger on one of the best illustrations of the complex web of causes and effects at play on the planet. Take any of the systems on which we depend – such as the supply, distribution and sale of food, or the financial transactions and investments that define our economy. Each is as intricate and interlinked as a forest, and – just as forests play a wider role in shaping our climate – so these key systems shape our society, and the chances of our enjoying a sustainable future. Think your way into a forest. Thousands of trees stretch up to the sunlight – some ancient, others saplings. Creepers and vines weave around their trunks, and in the shade thrives a crop of coffee, nourished by soil enriched with rotting leaves. Up above, monkeys swing between the branches, and macaws make their nests in the hollows of trees. At dusk, the flowers of the Annona tree give off a sweet perfume, attracting beetles and flies. The sun rises, the petals fall, and the pollen-covered insects fly off into a new day… Give one corner of this ecosystem a tug, and in another corner a tree comes crashing down. If we have to ask why, it’s because we’re not seeing the wood for the trees. But the rainforest isn’t just an illustration of the need to see systems as a whole – powerful as it is. It’s a case study, too. For much of the 1980s, environmentalists shouted themselves hoarse demanding an end to rainforest destruction, and were largely ignored by the timber trade and its retail customers. By 1990, some were ready for a different approach. That was when a group of campaigners, together with traders, buyers and forestry experts,
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sat down in a room in California. They met to discuss whether it was possible to identify supplies of tropical hardwoods which could be harvested sustainably, and to distinguish them in the market place. The eventual outcome was the formation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which certifies timber and wood products sourced from sustainably managed forests across the world. Today, the FSC logo applies to over 140 million hectares across five continents. It’s a great example of change on a significant scale – change that no single company or organisation, however ambitious or well-resourced, could have achieved alone. It needed leaders from right across the system, without any direct links in the supply chain, to get together and look at the bigger picture. They began by reaching a consensus on what good forest management actually means, and then had the guts to ask, ‘How do we get there?’ The result, as is so often the case when a whole system is held up to the light, was an original idea: a practical innovation for doing things differently. It may sound relatively simple – but it’s all too rare a story, says Stephanie Draper, Director of Change Strategies at Forum for the Future. “Sustainable development is awash with projects that improve something locally, campaigns which tackle one issue, and technologies with lots of potential which aren’t rolled out.” Many of these disparate initiatives are taking us in the right direction, Draper says, but are unlikely in themselves to create the wholesale shift we need to deal with the risks posed to our ecosystem, and thereby to our economies which depend on it. This is the thinking behind Forum for the Future’s ambitious new strategy to bring leaders and innovators together to look at
whole systems – such as food, finance and energy – and work out what sort of actions and interventions are needed to set them firmly on the path to sustainability [see panel, ‘Systems shift’, p22]. Take tourism as an example. A low-impact travel agency might encourage tourists to journey overland, but what happens once they reach their dream destination? How much of the local water supply is hoarded by the elegant hotel? How do the top-rated restaurants source their food? Does money spent on attractions and souvenirs stay in the community, or does the lion’s share end up in the pockets of traders far away? Getting the most out of tourism, with the least impact on the environment, takes more than isolated actions by individual travellers, tour companies or regulators. It means bringing together all these actors, from travel agencies to destination governments and community representatives. This was the conclusion of a recent project to help the UK outbound tourism industry plan for 2023, led by Forum for the Future in partnership with ABTA and The Travel Foundation. It may sound over-ambitious, but any alternative approach is almost by definition inadequate. And as Draper points out, compared to 1990, “we live in an age where, largely thanks to ICT and social media, it’s easier than ever to join things up”. It’s not just that we can get more done by working together. A broader perspective shows up risks we might not have seen coming, and makes us less likely to reinvent wobbly wheels when we try to address them. “Systems thinking can shine a light on inconsistencies”, says Dan Crossley, who heads up Forum for the Future’s work on food. “Take misdirected protein in the food chain. Nearly 50% of cereals
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are used in animal feed: that’s huge swathes of land which could be used to fight famine.” You can’t seriously expect a multinational food retailer to care about land use. Or can you? When PepsiCo executives started using some possible future scenarios to look at their role in the food system, they soon realised that whether or not they cared about the environment, their business was entirely dependent on it. They saw that, if we don’t use fundamental resources like land sustainably, then the future of essential crops like corn and sugar is by no means certain. Similarly, when they thought about the various pressures weighing on their suppliers (climate change, water scarcity and rising demand, to name just a few), they realised it wasn’t just about ethics. They were looking at a real threat to their profits. Out of these musings came a programme which has helped to guarantee a future supply of corn through direct relationships with 300 small-scale farmers in Mexico, and has instigated a massive switch from palm oil (implicated in rainforest destruction) to sunflower oil. And that’s not all. The same programme brings together PepsiCo and the Inter-American Development Bank to ensure farming remains an attractive option for the next generation in Latin America, by addressing regional issues from water and sanitation, to youth development, to disaster relief.
Forum for the Future has a new goal. We want to transform the complex systems which serve our fundamental needs, such as food, energy and finance, so that they are fit for the challenges of the 21st Century. The need for new ways to increase wellbeing within environmental limits is more acute than ever. If we’re going to design and implement effective solutions, then we have to begin by recognising the complex causes of these challenges and how they interconnect. This means thinking and working within the whole context. We need to know what influences our decisions, actions and behaviours, and we need to understand how things join up. To do this, we are putting ‘systems innovation’ at the heart of our new strategy. Why this change in approach? We have
15 years’ experience doing great work with business, government and the public sector. But in spite of our achievements, it is clear that if we want to tackle problems such as climate change or vulnerable ecosystems, we can’t take a piecemeal approach. Doing a bit here and a bit there won’t change things at the speed or on the scale we need. Our new strategy looks at whole systems. It draws on ‘complex systems theory’, as set out by the likes of Donella Meadows. Meadows observed that there are levers, or particular places within a system – such as a company, a city, an economy – where a “small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything”. We will focus, initially, on three critical global systems that underpin our lives and the prospects for sustainability: energy, food and finance. These are areas in which Forum for the Future can already bring to bear a depth of expertise and a breadth of relationships.
Poised at the point of transformation
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For each, we need to identify the barriers that are stopping them from being sustainable. Then we can work out what innovations and what fresh thinking are needed to overcome those barriers – and where the strategic ‘tipping points’ are, where interventions have the most chance of transforming the whole system. Key questions we’ll be asking include how we can change the finance system so that it rewards long-term thinking, and how we can take sustainable energy systems to scale. As a ‘Forum’, one thing we do very well is bring together different players to tackle complex problems in new ways. We’ll play the role of ‘informed enablers’, convening new alliances between business, public service providers, NGOs and entrepreneurs. We’ll also draw on our experience of working with others creating practical solutions. As well as a clearer understanding of how a whole system works, we need innovative products, services and business models that can help shift it to a more sustainable equilibrium. So take energy: we will work with the people who generate it, sell it, and use it, and who set the policies which affect how all those things are done. And we will use disruptive innovation, to challenge the settled, unsustainable way of doing things, and to discover new opportunities for getting it right. We are impatient to put the brightest and the best of these solutions into practice: new technologies and infrastructure to build the green economy; intelligent production to bring us goods and services at a fraction of today’s economic and environmental costs; smart new ways to live and travel, work and play. We intend to capture and share the learning, too, drawing out the best practice in both collaborative and disruptive innovation to flesh out the stories. We want our work to be a global resource for practical knowledge about sustainable development. Our ultimate aim is to enable change on a scale that works in a practical, interconnected way across whole sectors and systems that are essential for sustainable living. If we succeed, we won’t simply help deliver a more sustainable future. We will also make our lives more secure, more enjoyable and more prosperous here and now. Peter Madden is Chief Executive, Forum for the Future.
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Photos: Stephane Couturier/Prix Pictet
Peter Madden unveils Forum for the Future’s bold new strategy.
Photos: Markus Reugels/Prix Pictet
Systems shift
Forum for the Future is convinced that we need much more of this sort of imaginative collaboration, and so it’s setting out to make it happen by bringing the right people together. “There’s a real appetite for it among leading companies”, says Crossley. “People are getting the message about the benefits – especially as initiatives like the Sustainable Food Laboratory (SFL) show signs of success.” Of course, opportunity is a big part of the pull. SFL offers companies the chance to cut costs by linking up distribution streams, so that, for example, a van taking products from a rural farm to a city superstore doesn’t make the return journey empty. Others take a more aggressive approach. A smarter system could mean more mergers and acquisitions. Or it could mean a whole new set of faces. Take Forum for the Future’s recent project, ‘Gatecrashing the Energy Sector’. This encouraged innovative start-ups, especially in the ICT field, to shake up traditional ways of working in one of the world’s most crucial – and unsustainable – sectors. Any major shift is likely to involve new products or services that make old ones redundant. In recent years, we’ve sent the fixed-line phone, the fax machine and the CD player to the dinosaur graveyard. What’s next? Start-ups like Streetbank and WhipCar remind us that ownership itself can be more a hassle than a help. Why pay parking and maintenance costs
when you can use your neighbour’s car for the weekly trip to the game? Such systemic questions are surfacing in finance, too, says Alice Chapple, Director of Sustainable Financial Markets at the Forum. “Players want to get a sense of where the economy will be in a few years time. Recently we’ve been approached by big banks like Barclays, RBS and HSBC – all of them saying, ‘We need to understand the context’.” In some ways, the context stretches as far as you like. Forget about the old piece of string – today’s ‘unanswerable’ is ‘How broad is a system?’ Wherever you draw your chalk circle, there’ll be overlap. There’s the impact of speculation [that sits in the finance system, right?] on the price of wheat [food, surely?], fuelled by rising oil costs [energy, then?]. Understanding the context is just the first step. The next is daring to ask how it else it could work: what the best possible system would look like. And then you have to try it. This is what pioneers do – they open up the way to a new system by doing things differently. Forum for the Future’s approach is based on the premise that if you have enough innovators, or pioneers, working with a shared vision, their combined tapping and knocking will tip the whole into a more sustainable place. Anna Simpson is Deputy Editor, Green Futures.
High tech production line: unleashing the potential of disruptive innovation
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Intensive farming The intricacy of crop terraces on the volcanic slopes of Semarang, in Java. A combination of naturally fertile soil and meticulous husbandry yields three harvests a year, giving the lie to the notion that productive farming is all about vast fields and huge machines. As fears over food security grow, so does the need to combine the best of traditional farming with the latest in sustainable technologies. Our best hope of feeding the world rests on diversity and resilience. Photo: Georg Gerster / Panos
The persuaders If we’re going to cut the impact of our lifestyles down to a size the planet can manage, many of the things we do every day will have to change. That’s no secret. The good news is that we have a host of technologies and strategies available here and now to help us do just that. The bad news is we don’t use them. So how can we change our behaviour on anything like the sort of scale required? Ask an expert, and you’re likely to be hit with a litany of tried and trashed techniques. Top of the list is initiatives that offer information and nothing more. Thanks to a slew of public education campaigns, more people than ever are aware of
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climate change and the impact of CO2. Today, almost 50% of Brits know what a carbon footprint is, up from 25% in 2007, according to a survey by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. But it also found people had little appetite for making far-reaching changes in their own behaviour. “In other words”, says Lorraine Whitmarsh, of Cardiff University’s School of Psychology, “people do not act in accordance with what they know or [say they] care about”. It’s a point reinforced by environmental psychologist Doug McKenzie-Mohr. In Fostering sustainable behaviour, he cites studies which found that numerous sustained efforts to educate people about the impact of their behaviour failed to make a difference.
Take for example the One-Tonne Challenge, a major Canadian media campaign. It reached 51% of the population – but to no effect. According to the report, many Canadians found it “too inconvenient or time-consuming” to change anything, and weren’t sure how to go about it. Other campaigns were much clearer about what to do – but their outcome was just as disappointing. In the Netherlands, projects which provided households with information on energy conservation and water efficiency, accompanied by workshops and a state of the art handbook, were found to have absolutely no impact on behaviour. “If environmental education worked (and, remember, we started back in the 50s)
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Photos: salihguler/istock
Behaviour change is the holy grail of sustainability. So why do so many strategies to achieve it fail? And what actually works?
we wouldn’t be having the problems we’re having”, points out Ray De Young, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment. Meanwhile, says McKenzie-Mohr, “millions have been squandered on advertising campaigns, because the barriers [to more sustainable lifestyles] go far beyond a simple lack of awareness.” As the old adage goes, you can lead a horse to water – but getting it to drink is another thing entirely. Especially if what you want is not for the horse to just take a sip, shrug and wander off, but for it to have a good gulp, mull it over and come back for another… and eventually decide that this particular stream will be its preferred watering spot for the rest of its days. One obvious answer, surely, is to make it worth people’s while to change. In other words, bribe or reward them to do the right thing. On the surface, this works. Tesco went all out to sell 10 million low-energy lightbulbs in 2009, telling shoppers that each one could save them £9 a year. Within seven days, Tesco had sold more energy-saving bulbs than it had in the whole of 2006. Result? Solitaire Townsend, Chair of sustainable communications company Futerra, who has led a range of research on behaviour change, has her doubts. “It is an obvious way in, yes – [but] it’s an obvious way in for everything. It’s an obvious way to sell piles of crap, as much as it is to sell behaviour change.” And the danger, she adds, “is if you sell something purely on the basis that it’s cheaper, you get no loyalty to that behaviour. We know this from other money-saving messages. The moment something comes along that’s even cheaper, you are off. That’s how capitalist society works. You have competition on price: you have absolutely no loyalty to that decision.” Which may explain the failure of the muchvaunted Residential Conservation Service, brought in by the US Congress. The act granted homeowners the right to free energy audits to find ways to save energy, and then interest-free loans to carry out the work – with the aim of cutting consumption by 20% per home. Nearly 6% of households targeted took up the offer, and 50% had work done as a result. Not wildly impressive, perhaps, but a lot better than nothing. However, says McKenzieMohr, a final evaluation revealed energy savings of no more than 2-3% per participating home – a pretty paltry return. The National Research Council concluded that the service had assumed that people would make all necessary changes to save money – forgetting the “rich mixture of cultural practices” that influence what we do in our homes, and how far we’ll change them. “Of course, if you give someone an astounding amount of money, you get a dramatic rate of change.” concludes Raymond De Young. “But you have to ask, would they do it without the reward? Could they convince their friends to do it?”
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If anyone can convince their friends to do something, it’s Hermione Taylor. When she decided to cycle over 2,000 miles to Morocco, she felt a bit bad asking her cash-strapped mates to sponsor her. So instead, she asked them to do something instead. Over 200 friends, and friends of friends, agreed to specific carbon-saving actions, from washing their clothes at 30°C to cutting down on burgers. Together, they saved over 16 tonnes of carbon: the equivalent of 83 flights from London to Morocco. What’s more, almost three quarters of the sponsors carried on the actions beyond the two months. “The response was staggering”, says Taylor. “Even my ‘meatoholic’ brother now only eats meat once a week. He realised that he didn’t become a raving hippy just by changing his habits.” Taylor founded The DoNation to encourage other social groups to show support for each other by doing, not spending. “Your friends know what you’ve pledged, and can (informally) monitor whether you’re sticking to it”, says Taylor. “And you’re going to stick to it, because you’re not the only one making an effort, and because you get the chance to talk about how well you’re doing, or ask for help if you’re finding it tough.” Taylor isn’t the only one to have spotted how great a difference the desire to impress or fit in with others can make. Such ‘social proofing’ is key to many successful strategies. “A live, warm, blood-thumping human being is top trumps when it comes to changing behaviours”, explains Townsend. “It’s one of the reasons we still have car showrooms. Human interaction is much more likely to affect your decision than anything you read online – however logical, clear and comprehensive that is.” In fact, our concern for how we are perceived is so great, she argues, that we’re affected by people we don’t even know or like. “So, if the car salesman, or another dad you meet in the park, says, ‘I don’t see you as being a Volvo man’, you don’t then make a decision about whether or not you are going to accept that label. It just sneaks into your head.” You buy it, in other words. And you don’t buy the Volvo. Another effective behaviour change box ticked by Taylor’s model is a sense of solidarity. “One of the reasons why people are passive”, explains John Thøgersen, Professor in Economic Psychology at the Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences, “is that they feel no one else is doing anything. When it comes to climate change, your contribution is so small it doesn’t really matter. What matters”, he goes on, “is what other people do. If you don’t perceive that many people are also saving energy, then you [feel] a bit of a sucker, because you lose something without helping the problem.” For Thøgersen, this suggestibility comes down to the basic way we function as humans: “We’re social animals, and we learn the right
way to act by observing others. That’s how we conquered the world.” It’s hardly surprising. For the vast majority of human evolution, we have lived in small groups, on which we’ve pretty much depended for our survival. We learnt the hard way that we were much more likely to get eaten by a tiger or killed by marauders if we strayed from the group, stood out from it too much, or lost its approval. So it’s not surprising that some of the most effective behaviour change techniques are those that involve people doing things together. It’s a lesson taken to heart by Transition Together, part of the Transition Towns movement, which aims to help communities make the switch to a low-carbon, ‘post-oil’ lifestyle. Transition Together, a finalist in this year’s Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, features groups of neighbours and friends in the Devon town of Totnes, who meet up regularly to work out what they can do by way of living more sustainably, and support each other in doing it. The actions may be simple enough – buying local food, using low-energy lights. But as Peter Capener, an independent energy and community adviser who has observed it closely, points out, the scheme “generates real enthusiasm that is based as much on the social interaction as it is on the subject matter”. People love coming together in a shared endeavour, says Capener, and “it creates the kind of reservoir of commitment” that can keep the momentum going over time. This can help people to go beyond the ‘been there, done that, changed the light bulb’ approach to behaviour change – and instead look at the roots of their unsustainable behaviour, “at the stories we tell each other around what success means in society”. Having your commitment witnessed by your neighbours can be a spur, too, says Christopher Rootes, a Professor of Environmental Politics and Political Sociology
Hermione Taylor: just ask your friends
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Consumers behave like a flock, observing each other’s movements and following trends
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separate bins for organic waste and plastic, to keep waste out of the rivers. Kelly from Sunderland responded: “Pleased you can have a cleaner environment. Still in the UK not everyone does what you’re doing now – it only takes seconds.” It’s a safe bet her teabags go into the compost caddy. Other campaigns target the sense that your own personal behaviour doesn’t really matter, by creating peer groups across vast geographies. Advertising agency Wieden and Kennedy decided to cut energy use in its office by 10% over a year. But instead of just keeping the savings, they launched the “OFFON” campaign, teaming up with the non-profit SolarAid to fund PV panels to provide lighting for The Cheryl Children’s Home in Nairobi. So, turning the monitor off at the end of the day might mean a child has enough light to do her homework. For a community to embrace lasting change, argues De Young, it needs two things. One is a clear idea of the problem to be solved. The other is for its members to play an active role in figuring out and implementing the solution. He gives the example of a community in west Berlin challenged by a research group to reduce, not just their waste output, but their commercial intake. Neighbourhoods were brought together and asked to experiment, and the result was a 16% decrease in the weight of new purchases over six weeks. The researchers went away happy with the initial results, and came back a year later, fully expecting the level
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Photos: Visuals Unlimited/Corbis
in the UK through the Persil brand, with the strapline “lots of small actions = a big difference”. Consumers behave very much like a flock, observing each other’s movements and following trends, says Sally Uren, Deputy CEO of Forum for the Future. So if you motivate them as a group you can convince them that their own simple steps can indeed make a difference. But, she adds: “The consumer is also very clear that business needs to do its bit. There needs to be a clear contract between the brand and the consumer, based on a sense of: ‘I will if you will’.” As with DoNation, a lively relationship is at the heart of any success. Brands need to keep on their toes with this, says Uren, fbecause that relationship is changing fast: “The traditional model of a linear value chain with consumers at one end and producers at another, with multiple intermediaries in the middle, is rapidly evolving. Consumers are now often producers themselves, too. So, a brand that makes no reference to the origins of its production can’t engage the consumer effectively.” Tea brand Tetley has taken this on board with its Farmers First Hand initiative, where tea drinkers in Britain chat via Facebook with tea pickers on the Lujeri estate in Malawi. Farmers and estate workers upload photos, messages and video clips; consumers can come back with questions and comments. Recently, John from the Mulanje district told the group how the Rainforest Alliance has supplied Lujeri with
Photos: Henrik Karlsson/Johner Images/Corbis
at the University of Kent. Take a walk down the streets of Hampshire, for instance, and you won’t have to go far before you come across a house with a card in the window which lists a number of energy-saving activities and highlights the ones that household is putting into action. It’s part of a simple scheme called the Greening Campaign, the beauty of which, says Rootes, is that it “starts small, asks little and tries to establish a community norm. Bigger changes can be the sum of small changes.” Indeed, the Greening Campaign has saved 3,000 tonnes of CO2 across 180 communities – so far. Such “tangible markers of progress” are key to sustaining motivation, says Capener. Barnet Council in north London now uses posters to publicise individual actions. These show how many households on that street have pledged to reduce their carbon footprint. There’s a similar scheme in Kansas called the Take Charge Challenge: a “friendly competition” between 16 towns to reduce their energy use and so take charge of their energy future. Over 6 million kWh were saved in 12 months, and the measures taken have ‘locked in’ future savings amounting to 7 million kWh a year. A range of supporting events included one where children played vampire hunters – scouring their homes for ‘energy vampires’ that sucked the most power. Some behaviour-savvy brands have cottoned on to this approach. Take Unilever’s Cleaner Planet plan, currently being promoted
Social circles: behaviour change works when we do it together
of consumption to have bounced back. But not only had the cut been maintained: it had dropped by a further 5%. Why? “It was the group process”, De Young explains. “There’s no reason that the experimentation and sharing would stop when the researcher goes away, because the reward is in the activity itself.” Trying a solution out for size makes it much more likely to stick. Take cycle hire schemes, says Townsend. “Buying a bicycle is a major commitment: it’s not just a financial outlay; you’re also putting a line in the sand to say that you’re actually going to cycle. That’s quite scary, and not something many people are prepared to do. A ‘Boris Bike’ [the London cycle hire scheme named after the city’s mayor], on the other hand, allows you to have a little bit of a pootle about, and see whether you’ve got the gumption and the leg power to actually get around.” The bikes tick several behaviour change boxes: they’re simple, cheap, effective and there’s obvious social approval – the streets are full of them. They’re both a cause and a consequence of the surge in cycling in the capital, which has now clearly passed a tipping point on the journey from eccentric to mainstream. They also imbue an element of fun – another obvious, but rarely used, technique for breaking down established behaviour patterns. That’s the premise behind Volkswagen’s Fun Theory website. It offers a showcase for creative projects, such as an ‘arcade’ bottle
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How not to do it... Despite mountains of evidence that the fear factor fails to win hearts and minds, governments and greenies alike keep pressing the scary button. As part of its widely derided ‘Act on CO2’ campaign, the UK Government blew a reported £6 million on a series of ads themed around nursery rhymes. Picture two children peering into a stone well against an arid backdrop, with copy lines which read: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought.” Then it added: “It’s our children that will really pay the price.” Effective? “It’s a perfect example of everything that can be done wrong”, says Townsend. “First, it tells people they’re bad parents – never a good thing to do when you’re trying to get them on your side. And it creates a sense of fear without first giving people a sense of agency – a belief that they can do something about it. That’s actually been shown to suppress immune systems. So is it any wonder that people respond by going deep into denial? That’s a pretty natural reaction and I have enormous sympathy with
it. You’ve just dumped a whole bucket-load of fear and guilt on them and told them their children will suffer, for heaven’s sake!” It’s a telling comment which highlights just how damaging scare tactics can be. “By raising fear, without raising a sense of agency, we are making people more stressed, more worried, less healthy and less likely to take positive action. I actually use [those ads] as an object lesson in how not to do it”, says Townsend. “They were that bad.” Schoolchildren were also the subject of another high profile flop last year, but this time they weren’t going thirsty, they were being blown up. As was Gillian Anderson (star of The X Files), and ex-footballer David Ginola. The viral video, directed by Richard Curtis for the one year anniversary of the well-respected and – until that point – largely successful 10:10 campaign, shows a variety of people dying in an explosion of blood and gore after they confessed to not doing their bit on climate change. It ends with the caption: “Cut your Carbon by 10%. No pressure.” Intended to be hip, witty and ironic, it rebounded spectacularly. It succeeded in portraying environmentalists as guilt tripping, callous and vindictive – exactly the colours in which climate change deniers had been painting them for years. The video was promptly pulled by 10:10, but the damage had been done.
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to walk more and drive less. It had a simple message: by walking, you can create a greener environment. So it stretched huge canvases across seven of the city’s busiest pedestrian crossings. On the canvas lay the outline of a big black leafless tree. On either side of the tree, along the pavements, were sponge cushions soaked in green, washable, quick-dry paint. As pedestrians trudged over the crossing they stepped on the sponges and their soles left leaf-like prints on the tree. The green pedestrian crossing was then extended to 132 roads in 15 cities across China. The mix of physical art and a campaign video reached nearly four million people across the country. The video went on to scoop the Green Awards 2010 Grand Prix and Best Green Advertising Award. A zebra crossing that turns into a tree ‘works’ by introducing the unexpected into the everyday. An alternative approach focuses on what Whitmarsh describes as “those disruptive moments in people’s lives when they are more receptive to new ways of doing things. For example, if they are moving house, they might well be more likely to reconsider how they get from home to work.” It holds out the tantalising prospect of estate agents playing an unlikely role as green messengers… Less traumatic (usually) than a house move is a music festival. This is one of the most exciting things a large proportion of the audience have ever done, which by Whitmarsh’s logic makes them far more open-minded. And this means there’s more chance of inciting sustainable thoughts. Green power outfit Eco Charge exploited this by designing an installation using solar and pedal power to recharge 2,000 mobile phones and cameras a day. “We were the busiest area of the festival – apart from the bars and stages,” says Eco Charge Director, Alex Brenan. “It was a great way to connect with a massive amount of people and deliver a sustainable message. We were receiving messages from fans asking how to build their own pedal power rigs at home.”
Biomass conversions are all the rage for small-scale heat and power. But could they ever take over from coal as the fuel of choice for vast plants?
What works... • Social proofing • Peer-to-peer messaging • Timely interventions at ‘life changing’ moments • Surprises and fun
What doesn’t... • Information campaigns • Scare tactics • Guilt trips • Isolated messages out of context
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Photos: BL Images Ltd / Alamy
recycling bank that mimics a slot machine and has proved 50 times more popular than a ‘standard’ bottle bank nearby, and the piano staircase in the Stockholm metro which has tempted many a pedestrian away from the escalator by making music as they trot up and down. Toyota echoed the approach with a novel way to cut fuel consumption. This has been the subject of numerous public education campaigns, along the lines of ‘save money – save your engine – save the planet’, which have largely failed to make a difference. Toyota took a different tack. If you put a tumbler of water on your dashboard, and then tried to avoid any of the contents splashing over the rim, you’d incidentally be driving in just about the most economical way possible. Toyota invited drivers to try it, filmed them, and even created an app: a picture of a tumbler full of water fills the screen of your iPhone. When the phone moves, so does the virtual tumbler, splashing water over its sides in proportion to the motion. So just put your iPhone in its cradle on the dash, and see if you can keep the glass full… Such prompts for instant behaviour change are unlikely to result in immediate, sweeping changes in long-term habits. You’d be a fool to expect any old staircase to make music for you, just because one of them did. But what such creative campaigns can do is make people stop and think about habits they normally don’t even perceive. “There’s no silver bullet [for them]”, says Steve Connor, Director of communications consultants Creative Concern. “But we do know that people aren’t constantly searching the net for information on sustainability: they’re looking for porn and cheap flights. So we need to cut through that and take more risks if we are going to encourage more urgent action. We need to be more creative – we need to make change irresistible.” One way of doing so is to spring a surprise into the daily routine. The China Environmental Protection Foundation took this approach to prompt the people of Shanghai
Wood burner?
Whatever approach is taken, painting attractive pictures of sustainable lifestyles is a crucial part of the package, says Caroline Fiennes, Executive Director at the Global Cool Foundation. For too long, she says, sustainability campaigns geared towards changing behaviour have been dreamt up by the greenies, for the greenies. “So they perk up and everyone else switches off.” “Environmentalists”, comments Townsend acidly, “are very good at identifying what people should desire – not what they actually do desire.” For Fiennes, that means “we need to shut up about being green, and instead make carbon saving cool by appealing to more people about the things that interest them”. So, get on a bus because you get lots of lovely time to yourself; go on holiday by train rather than flying, because you’ll have a better adventure; turn your heating down because it’s better for your skin. Global Cool teamed up with Eurostar, RailEurope and Mr and Mrs Smith Hotels to film various celebrities on train-based holidays, featuring the destinations reachable within a sensible time – and the pleasure you can have on the way. “We showed that you get time to read, have lunch with a friend in Paris and dinner in Geneva. And how good the bars are on German trains,” explains Fiennes. It addresses what Townsend describes as one of the biggest obstacles to behaviour change: “No one has bothered to find out what is actually desirable about a low-carbon lifestyle” – and so our visions fall rather flat. “People are supposed to think eating healthily is desirable. It’s not. What’s desirable is what comes from healthy eating: having better sex, feeling lighter, having more energy and so on.” The trick then, is to identify ways in which we unconsciously associate living greener lives with ones that are more pleasurable and satisfying, too – and which bring us closer to our neighbours and our friends, enjoying the fruits of a shared endeavour. It really does seem to be as simple – and as challenging – as that. – David Burrows, Anna Simpson and Martin Wright.
Photos: DDBA China
Shanghai surprised: turning a zebra into a tree
They call it Megawatt Valley. From the green floodplain of the rivers Ouse and Aire in North Yorkshire rise the concave cooling towers of some of the biggest names in British coal power: Ferrybridge, Eggborough, Drax. The last of these is the UK’s largest single generator: with its dozen cooling towers and nearly 4GW output, it provides a whacking 7% of the country’s electricity – and emits the most CO2 from any single source.
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Drax intends to change the last part. It has already invested in turbine upgrades that provide for ‘co-firing’ – mixing coal with biomass. As a result, up to 12.5% of the fuel it burns today comes from forest and crop waste, some local, some imported, as well as specially grown crops of Miscanthus, or elephant grass, provided under contract by around 100 local farmers. It has plans to build three new biomass-only plants, each with a
capacity of 290MW. Now it is talking about an even bigger leap: converting one of its six 660MW coalfired units to run entirely on biomass. In the words of Melanie Wedgbury, Head of External Affairs, Drax is planning to “take coal out of the mix, and replace it with renewables”. It is, she adds, “an exciting prospect”. But it’s a pricy one, too. Conversions of this scale cost money: industrial quantities of
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help reinvigorate the forestry sector, he says. “In a healthy market, you’d have a balance between supply and demand. At the moment there’s a huge abundance of supply. There is no shortage of biomass in the UK, Europe or globally”, concludes Candlish. “There’s enough to fuel the world’s primary energy needs five times over.” Fighting talk. But an ample supply is one thing: an ample and sustainable supply quite another. Drax says that any biomass it burns is sourced sustainably, and Candlish points out that biomass energy ROCs won’t in any case be awarded unless this can be proved to be the case. But Rupert Fausset, Principal Sustainability Adviser at Forum for the Future, sounds a note of caution: “There’s only a limited amount of certified timber [available]. If you buy a load and burn it, someone else may have to go to other, uncertified, forests to get hold of their supply.” Such ‘displaced demand’ issues, particularly in developing countries, can be hard to estimate, or control. And even if it is sustainably sourced, what if that source is across the Atlantic – or further? Won’t transporting it halfway across the globe wipe out the benefits? No, says Candlish. “Even if you use woodchips imported from 4,500 miles away, you’ll still only be producing about 10% of the emissions that would be generated if you sourced the same amount of electricity from burning natural gas… People talk as though biomass has to come from the next village”, he adds, “while at the same time they’re quite happy importing oil from Venezuela or coal from Australia…” Wedgbury agrees. “The idea that importing biomass [negates the carbon advantages] is just a big myth. We calculate the total carbon footprint from field to furnace, whether imported or domestic”, she says, and the results show that Drax is comfortably meeting its commitment that burning biomass will achieve emissions reductions of 70% compared to coal. Which is just as well, given that the domestic market alone can’t at present meet demand. That need not always be the case, however. As part of the Supergen Bioenergy Project, Patricia Thornley of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research leads a team which has analysed the UK’s potential for sustainable biomass. They concluded that a minimum of 5% of the country’s total energy demand – for electricity, heat and transport fuels – could be met entirely sustainably through biomass. It sounds a relatively small proportion, but their definition of sustainable is deliberately cautious, ruling out, for example, any imports of wood. Instead, the biomass will be drawn from sources such as waste wood from forest management, short-rotation coppice, straw and even poultry litter, among others. All of which, however, begs the question: is burning biomass to produce electricity the most effective way to use it? Paul Ekins, Professor
of Energy and Environment Policy at the UCL Energy Institute, thinks not. “I’m not convinced that it is a good use of biomass, to burn it in large power stations at a maximum efficiency of 40%”, he says. “We need to be looking for a way of making much more energy bang from the biomass buck than those kinds of efficiencies.” Instead, he recommends burning the biomass in CHP plants and using the waste heat in district heating systems, significantly increasing efficiency. It makes more sense to subsidise mid-scale biomass-fired CHP, to make a “real push” as a country to get CHP systems installed. “It’s a proven technology in other countries,” he says. “We know it can work.” Consultant Dick Bradford agrees. He led Barnsley’s pioneering drive to convert its council heating systems from coal to wood, winning an Ashden Award in the process. “Power stations chuck lots of heat into the sky [which is] such a waste”, he says. “And super power stations are out in the middle of nowhere, with twice as much dumped in the sky, because there’s nowhere around to use that heat. We have to replace power stations anyway. Why don’t we have smaller power stations serving cities, providing both heat and power?” Given the option between using the heat and wasting it, the choice seems clear, but of course there are complications. At the moment, there’s no guarantee that anyone would buy heat, so there’s no incentive to capture it, though that could change later this year with the launch of the Renewable Heat Incentive. This would guarantee payment for every unit of heat generated for a fixed term (such as 5 pence per kWh over 10 years). But small-scale CHP systems and district heating aren’t common in the UK, says Ekins: “We don’t have any tradition of municipal energy supply… The best known example is Copenhagen, where practically the whole city has evolved into a district heating scheme. But in order for that to work, you’ve got to have strong regulatory structures, because people have to be obliged to take the heat.” Many buildings have their own central heating systems – gas or electric – so it would take a significant infrastructural and regulatory upheaval to shift to district heating. Candlish agrees, warning that the technology is difficult to implement in Britain, because customers don’t tend to sign up and commit to heat for the life of a plant. Local authorities are an exception to that, he says, but then you’re waiting for the “natural replacement cycle” of public facilities. “The loss of heat really is a big deal”, adds Thornley. “It means power stations are chucking out 50% of useful energy as waste. You can pipe heat a long way – 20 to 30km. It costs money but it’s not impossible. But in the UK we just don’t have the infrastructure.” Over time, she hopes there will be a strategy to address this, perhaps involving incentive payments for recovering heat, and long-term partnerships
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between generators and, say, social or private housing developers. “We need CHP”, says Candlish, “but it’s not currently that efficient at a small scale, and it’s hard enough building a power station as well as finding someone to promise to take your heat for 10 years. So while we’re building up capacity on the heat side, it’s legitimate to still have largescale generation.” So however promising the prospects of CHP long term, simply converting existing coal-fired plants to biomass may be a quicker, cheaper, easier and more practical way of bringing down emissions. And looming regulatory changes might act as a spur, too. Several of the UK’s coal-fired plants are expected to close by 2016 because of the Large Combustion Plant Directive, which regulates air quality emissions from coal plants, including sulphates, nitrates and dust. These plants have decided not to reduce emissions and will have to close instead, unlike Drax, which has fitted flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) so it can continue generating. There also remains the possibility of an emissions performance standard, which would
limit the allowed CO2 emissions of new coal plants. The Energy Bill of 2008 contained wording to the effect that no new power plant may emit more than 400kg/MWh of CO2. Compare that with Drax at just over 1400kg/ MWh in 2009), though it didn’t survive to the final legislation. So, old dirty plants will close, while new plants will need to prove they can dramatically reduce emissions – and/or ensure the carbon is captured– if they are to be built at all. Those which remain will be faced with a businessas-usual future where they will be penalised for their carbon under the EU emissions trading scheme. Given the choice of fitting carbon capture and sequestration technology – a comparatively unproven and expensive route – or using alternative fuels like biomass, coal generators may find themselves looking increasingly to the latter option as the path of least resistance. It’s not a case of ‘either/or’, says Thornley. Co-firing biomass with coal – with CCS in place – could be a very effective method of carbon reduction. Get it right, she adds, and “you could even be getting negative emissions”.
This year’s model Biomass is fast becoming flavour of the century among power generators. Photos: Heatherwick Studio
it. The most obvious source of such largesse would be the Renewables Obligation, the government support mechanism for largescale renewable generation in the UK. For the moment, it leaves co-fired biomass a poor relation of other renewables. Offshore wind, for example, qualifies for two renewable obligation certificates (ROCs) per MWh; non-energy crop biomass is awarded just half of one. That supposedly reflects the relative expense of offshore wind as a technology, but as Wedgbury points out, that still doesn’t make biomass economical. “In many ways we’d rather use it than coal, but we can’t afford to”, she says. At present, Drax is just cautiously ramping up the biomass proportion of co-firing. But if the support regime shifts in favour of biomass, says Wedgbury, then it would start work on the full conversion as a demonstration project. So could this be the start of a mass conversion from coal to biomass? Are we poised to see the world’s coal power plants transformed into giant wood burners? Mark Candlish, Director of the Renewable Energy Association and Chair of its heating and cooling group, has already been through the conversion process, albeit on a smaller scale. Back in 2004 he was Commercial Director of Slough Heat and Power, overseeing its 80MW combined heat and power (CHP) plant shift to burning locally sourced woodchip and waste paper. The scheme was a commercial success, and was later sold to power utility Scottish and Southern. But getting it up and running was no picnic. Everything from the fuel storage system to the conveyor needed to be replaced, explains Candlish. “They were all built for coal, and wood chips blocked them up. For the first year we could only run because the engineers operating the plant were prepared to continually free blockages using poles and air lances.” One of Candlish’s main headaches was sourcing the fuel. “We had to create whole new supply chains from the forestry and waste industries to get sufficient volumes”, he says. Given that this process was difficult for a smallscale unit like Slough, the challenge is an order of magnitude greater for Drax. So, is there enough of the stuff out there? And can we source it sustainably? Recent scare stories have painted a picture of ancient forests being incinerated in a ‘rush to biomass’, and of Britain being forced to rely on imports from halfway across the world – making a nonsense of energy balances. All wildly exaggerated, says Candlish. “Forestry ... has never been in a more depressed state – there are vast resources being wasted right now. Trees are worth virtually nothing at the moment”, which means woodland managers have no incentive to manage their estates properly, thinning them out to allow healthy growth and let light in for wild flowers. “I live near a wood, and every 20th tree is lying on the ground. It’s not even harvesting sunlight…” Biomass power could
New-build biomass plants are in various stages of completion around the UK, including a 350MW station planned in Port Talbot that will run on woodchips, and the dramatic 49MW plant designed by Thomas Heatherwick at Stockton-on-Tees, which has just been granted planning permission.
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Wedgbury is keen to make the case. “We’re saying to Government: ‘Look, you have these carbon targets, so why not achieve them in the least cost way?’ Using biomass for electricity generation will allow you to do that. Even if you have to increase the level of support, it will still cost less than putting everything into offshore wind.” In a world where we have to cut CO2 emissions but keep the lights on, this relatively low-hanging fruit may prove difficult to resist. As Thornley puts it: “While aspiring to get the best possible savings in the long term, we shouldn’t rule out something which can help us now in terms of the global climate. We don’t have a lot of time on our hands: we need to act now.” Rupert Fausset, meanwhile, offers Drax some advice in sustainability. “They need to be open about where they’re getting the biomass from, and they need to hold it up to scrutiny,” he says. “It would be really great to see an organisation tackle this, to do it in the open – share the learning – and then everyone can move forward.” – Chris Alden, Michael Ashcroft and Martin Wright
It’s not all megafish. Small-scale biomass is increasingly popular: successful local authority projects include the Ashden Awardwinning work by Suffolk County Council, which has installed 20 wood-fired boilers in schools and offices, providing a total heat output of 3.2MW. Drax isn’t a lone convert. Coal-to-biomass conversions are happening around the world. In the US, for example, a 155MW coal plant in Georgia is being reborn as a 96MW wood-fired one. But Drax’s plant is four times that size: an unprecedentedly huge beast for metamorphosis. If it proves successful, it could unleash a wave of similar large-scale conversions across the globe.
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The Government’s Feed-in Tariff (FiT) review has sent many potential investors in large-scale solar packing. But steaming on with the 5MW Kernow Solar Park is Cornwall Council. As extensive budget cuts take the wind out of the sails for many local governments, this defiant leadership is pretty astonishing. The UK’s first councilowned solar park had been planned as an income-generator, with a payback period of ten years at the current FiT levels. Whether revised rates will prevent its success remains to be seen. As the Council’s Cabinet Member for Climate Change, Julian German, points out, the Kernow Solar Park is not simply a profit-led initiative, it’s “part of our effort to cut carbon emissions and stimulate a low carbon economy for Cornwall”. And this bold investment in the future on the part of local governments is exactly what we need if we’re going to hit our 2030 carbon reduction targets. That’s the conclusion of a new study led by Forum for the Future with funding from the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT). Building a Low-Carbon Britain considers the kind of local policies that could tackle the challenge of climate change over the next
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20 years and meet the needs of communities. Quite what a low-carbon local economy looks like is up for grabs: will it have wellbeing and lowimpact lifestyles at its heart, or will it rely primarily on new technology to deliver the emissions cuts and be a motor for growth? Will a high price for carbon drive sustainable business, or will government have to stamp on commercial opportunities for the sake of the climate? These questions and scenarios feed into the study’s five strategic recommendations for local government bodies, to help them play their part in getting us to a low-carbon 2030: 1. R ethink your role Financial hardship will prompt a rigorous search for new revenue streams and business models. Councils need to get to grips with carbon monitoring, taxation and incentives to ensure the changes are for the better. 2. I nvest in the future Councils should shift their own spend towards energy-saving solutions, and create planning conditions favourable to large-scale renewables. 3. B uild local resilience Keep risks to a minimum by investing in climate change adaptation and emergency planning, and look after valuable ecosystems and water resources. 4. P revent social exclusion Vulnerable
groups could be isolated by higher carbon and oil prices. Make sure those at risk have the necessary skills and access to the relevant technology. 5. F oster innovation Public services will have to undergo radical changes. Ask which ones we really need, and how they can best be delivered. Then support businesses and communities through the transition. Zoe Le Grand offers public and private sector bodies strategic advice on sustainability at Forum for the Future. www.forumforthefuture. org/files/Building-a-low-carbon-Britain.pdf
New in the Forum Network Since the last issue of Green Futures Ella’s Kitchen and Mars Drinks have joined Forum for the Future as members, and Arjowiggins Graphic, HewlettPackard, Ingersoll Rand, Kyocera Mita UK Ltd, Quintain, Small World and Sony Europe have joined as partners.
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SallyUren
Tomorrow’s leaders 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.
Miriam Turner Class of: 2003–04 Currently: Innovations Director Europe, Middle East, Africa and India at InterfaceFLOR Why I chose the MProf It was actually Alastair Sawday [publisher of Special Places to Stay] who told me about the course years ago. After my first degree, I had worked for Arcandina, an educational charity in Ecuador which uses a cartoon series about animals on an ark to raise awareness of sustainability and wildlife conservation. Then I went to India to co-write one of Sawday’s books, and did my interview for the Masters course from there. What I liked about it was the opportunity to dip your toe into other sectors and see where you could make the most change. What I learnt When you’re working with people across sectors, you have to recognise that everyone has their own language and their own motives. They vary greatly
from a non-profit to a business. So it’s important to be able to translate. I saw my role as the ‘glue’ between different sectors, helping them to meet and stick together. Making those connections enables change to happen – it’s a real skill in sustainability. It was also a huge privilege to go to the Leadership Trust so early on in my career. That’s where I learnt about the importance of seeing so-called failure as a learning experience, a means to success in itself. Career to date I was offered a short-term contract for InterfaceFLOR in India – and I’m still with the company seven years later! I went out to India initially to ask big, open questions, like how you can create a product that has both a social and environmental story to tell. I worked with all sorts of different stakeholders – the design community, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and non-profits. I drew massively on the facilitation skills I’d learnt on the Masters course. One group I convened came up with FairWorks – the new [fair trade] business model for modular carpet tiles. It was a great idea, but turning it into a commercial reality was really difficult. Since then, I’ve gone from coordinating innovation projects, to managing them, to directing them. I could never have guessed it would take me this far.
Introducing a new regular column from Forum for the Future’s sustainable business guru.
What I plan to do next We’re spinning out a couple of R&D projects at Interface that I’d like to see working successfully. They’re my way of demonstrating how open innovation – I mean, letting ideas flow in and out of an organisation – can accelerate sustainability in the business context. It’s all about working with partners to share risks and rewards, which is ultimately what the transition to a sustainable world will need. If we can prove this with a big brand like Interface, that will feel like a real achievement. The innovation and sustainability worlds are really colliding now: systems thinking is sustainability.
February 2011. Central London. The CEO of a major multinational takes the stage in front of over 1,000 senior people from business and NGOs, to give a compelling presentation about how his organisation is dealing with its direct sustainability impacts. Proof surely that sustainability is now mainstreamed in business? Indeed, this is impressive stuff: a sign of how seriously business leaders now take sustainability. So, we can all relax. The top guys get it. Well, not quite. The CEO mentioned above unwittingly went on to offer the audience much more accurate coordinates for where his business is on its journey towards sustainability. When someone piped up with that supremely inconvenient question about whether he saw the company’s sustainability programme ever prompting the business to rethink its growth strategy, back came the answer very quickly: “No”.
Advice for future leaders If you don’t ask, you don’t get: you need to become a professional irritant! When you’re starting a career, you think that everyone knows more than you, and question what you have to add. But, if you have an idea and present it in an engaging way, people say “yes” to you. There’s actually more danger of people saying “yes” than “no”. Once, at the eleventh hour, I pulled together a consortium of partners to pitch for funding for a new fibre technology. The idea ended up winning €1 million for a four-year project, and a Rushlight Award. It’s scary where you might end up!
Anna Warrington shares the three must-haves of effective collaboration.
UK’s first community-owned power station.
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Lewes lets the sunshine in
Photos: scottyh / istock
supporting the social enterprise – led by Ouse Valley Energy Services Company Ltd (OVESCo) – for the past two years, along with a group of experts working on a pro bono basis. “It’s really exciting to see OVESCo putting our guide to establishing and running low carbon community revolving funds into practice,” says Dawson. The Feed-in Tariff review hangs a bit of a black cloud over the Lewes project, he admits. He hopes the incentives will remain high enough to make a success of the project – and that this will help central government to recognise the wider benefits to the economy of local low-carbon investment. “But”, he adds, “it’s a race against time”. – Anna Simpson
Sally Uren is Deputy Chief Executive at Forum for the Future. @sallyuren
Better together
Miriam Turner was in conversation with Katie Shaw.
Sun fund
Harvey Brewery in Lewes, East Sussex, is going solar with a 100kW rooftop PV array, thanks to an innovative community-based fund. The £150,000 installation has been paid for entirely by local people and businesses who can expect a modest 4% return. But there’s more to come. Eventual profits will be ploughed into new projects over and over again, driving a cycle of low-carbon growth. “This will be Britain’s first community-owned revolving fund”, says Will Dawson, who works on innovative financial models at Forum for the Future. The Forum’s Climate Finance project, which helps public sector organisations find ways to make money and cut carbon, has been
Oh dear. According to many, we are currently witnessing the next industrial revolution – the one where business puts sustainability at the heart of its operations. If this is a revolution, then most businesses are still in the first wave of change. They see sustainability through the lens of their organisational goals. Which is why the question around what constitutes sustainable economic growth is so difficult. There are far fewer examples of organisations who have upgraded their lens on sustainability to take a wider view – a systems view. One in which they begin to look at the broader, indirect impacts of their business on both society and the planet. This is the next wave of the revolution. And it needs to happen soon. It’s all very well to see squillions of businesses with carbon reduction targets, tweaking the sustainability credentials of their goods and services. But if we are producing more and more stuff, which is only slightly more sustainable, then on aggregate, it’s likely that carbon emissions will keep rising and key resources will either run low, or run out. Frustratingly, many businesses still insist on using ‘normalised’ targets – to reduce carbon or water intensity per volume of sales – instead of absolute targets. So the impact per product may be less, but they’re selling more. For me, the next wave of this sustainability revolution must be characterised by a fundamental shift in perspective from ‘my business’ to ‘our world’. The question changes from ‘How can we reduce our impacts?’ to ‘What is our role in a sustainable future?’ It’s a much harder question to answer, but one that can’t be avoided for very much longer.
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It constantly surprises me that stories of big buyers squeezing suppliers are so rife. Competition and contractual edge may have tradition on their side, but there are other ways to work together – both in the supply chain and out of it – with benefits all round. So how do we know effective collaboration when we see it? Since 2005, Forum for the Future has been working with the Royal Academy of Engineering to bring engineers (sparky newcomers and established directors alike) together to solve particular problems. They come from across the board – from urban planning and construction to rail to water to roads. The programme, Engineers of the 21st Century (E21C), has thrown up some real insights into what works and what doesn’t – and from that we’ve drawn three absolute ‘musts’. Top of the list is trust. Without openness
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and honesty between the people and organisations involved, a project often misses the mark for all involved. Organisations need to know they are equal partners in ventures; otherwise the same old gripes about power balance get in the way. An independent facilitator makes a big difference here – and this is a key role for Forum for the Future. The second must is getting inspired and imaginative together. If partners co-create a project or solution, the buy-in will be high, and the process will foster lasting mutual respect. So the starting point for Forum’s project work is always a challenge to be solved, not a set solution. We try to bring together people from different disciplines with contrasting perspectives to spice up the ideas pot. And, almost without anyone noticing, we encourage people to leave job titles and seniority levels at the door.
And lastly, the individuals involved need to see what’s in it for them – on a personal level. Altruism and wider benefits for the organisation may play a part – but this can sit alongside a boost to their own career, skills and professional contacts. In an E21C project, the senior-level steering group act as mentors, not managers for once, and we make sure everyone gets to know each other, sharing skills and building stronger relationships. The result is that each organisation gets far more out of it than just the delivered solution. They get the confidence to address problems in new ways. Given the scale of the challenge, the more effective collaboration the better. Anna Warrington works on sustainable business models and supply chains at Forum for the Future. www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/E21C
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Forum for the Future’s Network brings together business and government to create a sustainable future; inspiring new thinking, building creative partnerships and developing practical innovations to change our world. We aim to transform the critical systems that we all depend on, such as food, energy and finance, to make them fit for the challenges of the 21st century. For more information, visit www.forumforthefuture.org AkzoNobel Elizabeth Stokes, 01928 511695
Delphis Eco www.delphisworld.com
Alliance Boots Andrew Jenkins, 0115 968 6766
Ecotricity Helen Taylor, 01453 761316
Arjowiggins Graphic Shannan Hodgson, shannan.hodgson@arjowiggins.com
Ecover Mick Bremans, +32 3 309 2500
Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy Jane Howarth, 020 7410 7023 Aviva Investors Steve Waygood, 020 7809 6000
EDF Energy Darren Towers, 07875 110 289, darren.towers@edfenergy.com Ella’s Kitchen Alison Lindley, alison@ellaskitchen.co.uk
Jaguar Land Rover Fran Leedham, fleedham@jaguarlandrover.com
Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Jack Cunningham, jack.cunningham@sainsburys.co.uk
John Lewis Partnership Moira Thomas, 0207 592 4413
SC Johnson Chris Lambert, 01784 484100
Johnson Matthey Sean Axon, 020 7269 8400
Skanska Jennifer Clark, 01923 776666
JT Group John Pontin, 01275 373393
Small World Henry Rawson, +852 2799 3998 www.interiorsourcing.com
Kingfisher Jamie Lawrence, 020 7372 8008 Jamie.Lawrence@kingfisher.com, Kraft Foods and Cadbury Jonathan Horrell, 01242 236101
Balfour Beatty Jonathan Garrett, 020 7216 6837
Energy Saving Trust 020 7227 0398 www.energysavingtrust.org.uk
Bank of America Merrill Lynch Matt Hale, 020 7996 2054
Entec UK Ltd Francesco Corsi, 0191 272 6128
Benchmark Software Simon Harvey, 01458 444010
The Environment Agency Brian Francis, brian.francis@environment-agency.gov.uk
London Borough of Croydon Bob Fiddik, Bob.Fiddik@croydon.gov.uk
Eurostar Louisa Bell, 020 7922 2442
Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) James Simpson, 020 7811 3315
Fife Council Neil Gateley, 08451 555555
Marks & Spencer Rowland Hill, 020 8718 6885
Finlays Michael Pennant-Jones, 020 7802 3239
Mars Drinks www.marsdrinks.co.uk
Birmingham City Council Sandy Taylor, 0121 303 1111 Bottletop Cameron Saul, cameron@bottletop.org British Council www.britishcouncil.org BT Richard Spencer, 0773 663 6882 Bupa Andrew Smith, 020 7656 2343 Cafédirect Whitney Kakos, 0207 033 6022 Capgemini James Robey, 0870 904 5761 Cargill Europe Fiona Cubitt, 01932 861916 Carillion Louise Perry, 01902 316258 Carmarthenshire County Council www.carmarthenshire.gov.uk Chi Group www.chilondon.com City of London Simon Mills, 020 7332 1431 The Co-operative Group Chris Shearlock, www.co-operative.coop Danone www.danone.com David Lloyd Leisure www.davidlloyd.co.uk Delhaize Group www.delhaizegroup.com
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Kyocera Mita UK Ltf www.kyoceramita.co.uk
Sony Ericsson Gustaf Brusewitz, gustaf.brusewitz@songericsson.com Sony Europe www.sony-europe.com Tata Global Beverages Sara Howe, 020 8338 4590 Tesco Ruth Girardet, 01992 644053 Tetra Pak Rupert Maitland-Titterton, 0870 442 6000 Thames Water Utilities Helen Newman, 0118 373 8343
O2 Simon Davis, simon.davis@O2.com
Thomson Reuters Julia Fuller, julia.fuller@thomsonreuters.com
Panasonic UK Simon Eves, 01344 853325
Triodos Bank William Ferguson, 0117 980 9770
Food and Drink Federation Nicki Hunt, 020 7420 7132
PepsiCo UK & Ireland Andrew Slight, Andrew.Slight@pepsico.com
TUI Travel Jane Ashton, 01293 645911
Friends Provident Sandra Latner, 08452 683135
Powys County Council Heather Delonnette, 01597 827481
GSH Group www.gshgroup.com
Pret A Manger Nicki Fisher, 020 7827 8888
Halcrow Group Nick Murry, murrynja@halcrow.com
Pureprint Group Richard Owers, 01825 768811
Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227802435 FirstGroup Terri Vogt, 07799 885171
Heineken UK Richard Heathcote, 01432 345277 Hewlett-Packard Scott Nyulassy, www.hp.com
Quintain Louise Ellison, lellison@quintain.co.uk Rail Safety and Standards Board Shamit Gaiger, 020 3142 5380
IGD Dr James Northen, 01923 851919
Rexam Plc sustainability@rexam.com, www.rexam. com
Ingersoll Rand www.ingersollrand.com
Royal Dutch Shell Elfrida Hughes, +31610974798
Innovia Films Lucy Cowton, 01697 342281
RSA Paul Pritchard, 020 7337 5712
InterfaceFLOR Ramon Arratia, 020 7490 3960
RWE npower Anita Longley, 01793 892716
Unilever UK Helen Fenwick, 01372 945000 Vodafone Group Chris Burgess, 01635 677932 Volac Andy Richardson, 01223 208021 Warburtons Sarah Miskell, 01204 556600 Wessex Water Dan Green, 01225 526000 Willmott Dixon George Martin, 01932 584700 Wm Morrison Supermarkets Steven Butts, Steven.Butts@morrisonsplc.co.uk WWF-UK Dax Lovegrove, 01483 412395
www.greenfutures.org.uk
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In search of food security
Keyhole surgery Can a new partnership unlock the door to a multi-million pound market in green retrofit?
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immediate effect, businesses need to ensure that they make investments that bring value both today and tomorrow.” Arup and Skanska are combining their skills in architectural, engineering and financial risk analysis to find out where the best returns are, and exactly what’s needed to deliver them. And they’re not just talking about a series of quick fixes: the aim is to offer clients an ongoing monitoring and management service to take full advantage of the building’s energy (and cost) saving potential. As Glover puts it: “This partnership bridges the gap between sustainability and value. It allows portfolio holders to… meet the requirements of new legislation, improve performance and reduce risks.” And crucially, he adds, it will help them “satisfy the sustainability criteria of tenants, owners and investors”.
There’ll be no more business as usual, says Andrew Kuyk of The Food and Drink Federation.
Refurbishment, of course, is only the first step on the road to efficiency. The day-to-day use of a building accounts for 20% of the overall management cost. Simply educating tenants about efficiency has been found to cut energy use by around 15%. A separate partnership between Skanska and advanced technology company GE will offer occupiers opportunities to learn about smart building management solutions, and how to get their own building running at maximum efficiency. “We can no longer work in silos”, concludes Craig Sparrow, who heads up Skanska’s Green Business Team in the UK. “Property owners deserve a better response from our industry.” – Anna Simpson Skanska is a Forum for the Future partner. www.skanska.com
Getting fit Green retrofit is the next big thing for the UK’s commercial property market, according to Skanska’s March 2011 report, Towards Zero. A survey of senior executives in the sector revealed the extent to which commercial developers are ready to reap the benefits. • Just over half (53%) had seen increased interest in green retrofit and refurbishment, and 33% perceived it to be the next big thing in the commercial property sector.
• 78% reported a positive outcome, citing increased client or tenant demand, proven reduction in energy consumption and improved marketability of the property. • Of those who hadn’t yet embarked on a refurb, nearly a third intended to do so in the future – with 47% of those viewing it as a potential source of profit.
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Photos: Eric Michaud / istock
• Over a third (35%) had already undertaken a green retrofit or refurbishment project.
Photos: Haveseen / istock
Eighty per cent of the UK’s current building stock will still be standing in 2050. So if we are to meet our climate targets, we can’t just focus on designing shiny new zero-carbon developments. We need to do much more to make our existing homes, hospitals and offices fit for purpose in a low energy, low waste world. The opportunities are immense – but so is the scale of the challenge: the green retrofit and refurbishment market is worth in excess of £10 billion a year in the UK alone. But no one can harvest that potential single-handed. It’s not just the number of properties, but the diverse groups of people who will have to be on board to – quite literally – open the doors. A survey of senior executives in the UK’s commercial development sector revealed that 71% believe retrofit projects “are hard to get right because an integrated and planned approach is needed from the outset” [see box, ‘Getting fit’]. Now a new partnership has been launched which addresses that head on – and which could make investment in this vitally important field a commercial no-brainer. Construction giant Skanska has joined forces with engineering and planning consultants Arup to overcome these teething issues by providing a one-stop shop. Their combined design and delivery service will help property owners spot opportunities, and turn them into real value on the balance sheet. Careful selection is the key. “It can be virtually impossible for portfolio holders to identify which retrofit and refurbishment initiatives would have the most impact on a property’s market value”, says David Glover, Arup’s Global Property Market Leader. “While short-term cosmetic upgrades may have an
If there’s one thing that strikes me as I read through the findings of the Global Food and Farming Futures report, it’s the sheer complexity of food security. Painstakingly researched, Global Futures seems quite balanced in its message. But anyone hoping for a tidy list of key actions for organisations and policymakers will be disappointed. There are no quick fixes, no ’one size fits all’ solutions, says the report, which was commissioned by the UK Government to explore the increasing pressures on the global food system between now and 2050. Simply avoiding meat, or going organic, won’t cut it – and nor will more controversial proposals, like genetic modification, though they could all play a part. What the report asks us to accept is that business as usual is no longer an option. We’d be fools to underestimate the scale of the challenge we face. Simply put, we have to produce more food to feed a growing world population, while at the same time using fewer natural resources. Unless we find a way to do this, we risk significant disruption to vital ecosystems, and more climate change. But if we’re going to have any chance of rising to the challenge, a lot will have to change. So what does this mean for food producers in the UK? For a start, we need a clearer understanding of what ‘sustainable food’ really is. Take the common assumption that ‘local’ is always best. It doesn’t apply if you end up emitting more CO2 to grow something in the UK, rather than in a warmer climate – even taking transport emissions into account. ‘Seasonal’ can also be misleading,
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as virtually everything is in season somewhere on the planet at any one time. The answer has to be a proper life-cycle approach. We have to look at how resources are used across the supply chain, from farmer to retailer – and by consumers, too. In a recent interview, I was challenged as to whether population growth was in fact good for food businesses. More people equates to more demand, which in turn means more opportunity for profit. It’s a logical argument, but it has its limitations. A simplistic capitalist approach such as this fails to take onboard how businesses in the food sector are responding to the issue of sustainability and why it matters to us. As Unilever CEO Paul Polman said at the 2011 City Food Lecture, his company “requires a stable environment and a continuous supply of raw materials to survive and grow”. Of course growth is key, but it is no longer a case of choosing between sustainability and the bottom line: the food businesses of the future must deliver both. So how should they go about it, and where can they look for solutions? Industry-wide initiatives such as our Five-fold Environmental Ambition – which has supported UK food manufacturers in reducing their CO2 emissions by 21% against a 1990 baseline – are a step in the right direction. But more must be done. Global Futures argues strongly for a joined up approach – across the food supply chain and in policy. This is something the Food and Drink Federation has been advocating for some
time. As the voice of UK food manufacturers, we have long made the case for Government to understand the economic and strategic importance of food, and to take a long-term view of the challenges facing the sector. The report is timely. Ministers will use it to influence discussions on global food security at the forthcoming G20 meeting, and it will inform the UK’s position on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Common Fisheries Policy. We agree with the emerging view within Defra that we need to move away from the CAP to develop a longterm ‘Common Sustainable Food Policy’ for Europe. But quite how we will achieve that in the context of the EU political framework remains unclear. There’s much unrealised potential for science to make a positive contribution, offering solutions from fuel-efficient tractors to bio-technology. Global Futures recognises this, and stresses that we must stay open to all options, and scrutinise them in free and unbiased debate. Perhaps the most valuable thing the report offers is a sound platform for business leaders and policy makers to discuss the best ways to deliver food security. And a good dose of political clout for a catalyst. Andrew Kuyk is Director of Sustainability at the Food and Drink Federation. The Food and Drink Federation is a Forum for the Future partner. www.fdf.org.uk
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Dutch courage “ Come on you… greens!”
The Dutch market has ruled out unsustainable fish, but will others follow, asks Huw Spanner.
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cultures and economies? “Obviously, the drivers vary in different markets”, says its Chief Executive, Rupert Howes, “but the take up of our independent certification and labelling programme in countries such as Japan, Vietnam, South Africa and elsewhere goes to show that the MSC concept is transferable. And there’s a growing evidence base for the positive change it drives in the way our oceans are fished, too.” The priority now is to go to scale. There’s no silver bullet to the global challenge of overfishing, but the MSC has a significant role to play. By recognizing and rewarding good practice, its programme creates incentives for other fisheries to improve their performance. And if you add policy reform, advocacy and industry leadership to the bait, there’s a good chance of a healthy catch. Huw Spanner is a freelance editor and regular contributor to Green Futures. The Marine Stewardship Council is a Forum for the Future partner. www.msc.org
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Photos: Pgiam / istock
Since then, progress has been dramatic. In 2008, only the herring fishery was MSCcertified; now, six Dutch fisheries are, with five more under assessment. North Sea plaice, once red-listed by the NSF and WWF, is back in the shops. One certified supplier is Ekofish which has a strict quota, avoids areas with vulnerable seafloors and closes during the spawning period, and has proven that its (significantly reduced) bycatch comes from healthy stocks. “If you had told me four years ago that the flatfish fishery would make such huge changes,” says Dr Steins, “I would have said you were crazy.” Even Greenpeace (though it insists that bottom-trawling can never be sustainable) has acknowledged that improvements have been made. Today, nearly 800 products in Dutch shops carry the MSC label. Public awareness is growing. A survey in March 2010 found that 40% of fish-buying Dutch shoppers recognised the MSC logo and 21% knew what it meant. A new survey this spring is expected to return much higher figures. Can the MSC carry such weight in other
Photos: Gonzalo Enriquez MSC
It was – if the metaphor can be given a positive spin – the perfect storm. Four years ago, much of the Dutch fishing industry was foundering. Fuel costs were rising, and the expense of lugging heavy beam trawls around the North Sea was bankrupting many and driving others to decommission their boats. Then, three NGOs pitched in. The North Sea Foundation (NSF) and WWF-Netherlands produced a ‘traffic light’ card advising consumers which fish they could eat with a clear conscience, which they had best avoid, and which they shouldn’t touch on any account. Meanwhile, Greenpeace began a more aggressive, global campaign against ‘bottom-trawling’ – the practice where heavy nets are dragged across the sea floor, with potentially devastating effects to the marine ecosystem. It was “a happy coincidence”, says Dr Nathalie Steins, who runs the Benelux office of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). “Dutch retailers are really anxious that Greenpeace might give them a bad reputation.” The national food retailers’ association, CBL, decided to act. It drew up a ‘seven-step plan towards sustainable seafood’, endorsed by the NSF and WWF, which included a commitment that by the end of 2011 the only wild-caught fish its members would stock would carry the MSC label. At the time, hardly any MSC-approved fish was on sale in the Netherlands, but the world’s largest retailer, Wal-mart, was already on course to be MSConly, and clearly that was the way the wind was blowing. So the Dutch fishing industry had a choice. It could continue trawling in the old, high-impact, fuel-hungry ways and risk losing its domestic market. Or it could make a lot of difficult and expensive changes and gain the cachet of sustainability. In July 2008, it signed a historic ‘memorandum of understanding’ with the NSF, WWF and the (then) Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality which undertook that by the end of 2012 almost all the country’s fisheries would be either MSC-certified or under assessment. Eager to facilitate this, the Dutch parliament voted to make a total of €1.5 million available in grant aid to fisheries seeking certification.
“Twenty years ago, it wasn’t called the green agenda. It was called business.” There’s a note of pleasant disbelief in Simon Taylor’s voice. The Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Chelsea Football Club recently scooped a People and Environment Achievement (PEA) Award, a new scheme in association with The Co-operative to reward individuals showing innovation, inspiration and perseverance in their sector. Taylor’s surprise isn’t just sparked by the limelight – though he admits he was quite taken aback by the professionalism of the ceremony, and found it “a huge honour even to make the shortlist”. What really gets him is winning such recognition for actions that are already amply rewarded on the balance sheet. “A lot of good business practices have environmental practices attached to them”, he tells me. “There are little things like how you can halve your paper consumption overnight – and then there are cost and energy saving measures, like building management systems. I started at Chelsea six years ago, and we already had a system that turned the lights off when you left the room.” Now all lighting at Chelsea’s home ground, Stamford Bridge, is being replaced with LEDs, and motion sensors turn down the temperature if no one’s around. Heat recovery coils reclaim the warmth from extracted air and store it for use when needed. At the Cobham training ground in Surrey, meanwhile, water is collected from the turf roof and stored in a moat-like reservoir to irrigate the pitch. This moat has a dual function: it also reflects sunlight to warm the basement, which makes up a third of available space for training. Landfill waste has also been cut to zero at both Stamford Bridge and Cobham, with the majority sent to the White City Depot – one of Europe’s most advanced recycling centres. Taylor is adamant that Chelsea “doesn’t want to start preaching to other clubs” – but he hopes that it can have some sway over its 19 million global fans. “We can reach them through Facebook groups, Twitter, ticketing and travel information...” It’s this savvy approach to behaviour change that stood out at the PEA Awards. Chelsea provides its fans with free coach and train travel
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Chelsea FC is emerging as the unlikely leader of a green wave in sports and adventure, says Anna Simpson.
for selected away games to encourage fewer car trips, and has introduced a liftsharing scheme to get more fans per gallon to the stadium. Of course, all of this helps build a sense of community among the fans and loyalty to their team – assets that no club underestimates. For some, it’s business sense. For others, it’s the sheer love of sport. “We were climbing in the Andes, and we had this idea”, says PEA Award-nominee Alex Smith of Fuel for Adventure. “It doesn’t make sense to be out there enjoying the great outdoors [while at the same time] spoiling it too. You need lots of food, but you have to be really careful about what you leave behind. It’s all very well advocating biodegradables like bananas, but have you ever had one in your pocket for a full day’s climb?” Smith and his partner Jimmy Doherty set up an enterprise in partnership with organic dried fruit company Fulwell Mill [see GF72, p34], to make energy bars with sustainably sourced ingredients and fully recyclable packaging. The ultimate goal is a product “where you could eat the whole thing” – wrapper and all. But, they complain, the packaging market is lagging behind. “We’ve been to loads of packaging conventions, but it’s not commercially viable to use most wrappers that come anywhere
close to sustainable. They’re just too expensive. There are a lot of oil companies behind the wrapping companies, and no one’s doing the development…” Fuel for Adventure is currently “moving towards” compostable wrappers with vegetablebased inks, and ploughing the takings from the 1.5 million bars it sells each year into further research and development. It hasn’t yet turned over a profit, with input costs far outstripping those of non-organic competitors. This is where schemes like the PEA Awards come in with a useful nudge. “The power of awards is pretty incredible in telling a consumer what you’re about and what you’re trying to do”, says Smith. Tony Juniper, environmentalist and Chair of the judging panel, agrees: “By highlighting some of the many inspiring initiatives that are underway across the UK, [the PEA Awards] will encourage many more people to get involved in bringing about the changes we so urgently need.” Anna Simpson is Deputy Editor, Green Futures. Pureprint Group is a Forum for the Future partner. www.pureprint.com
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Turning point To mark its half century, WWF asked 50 business leaders whether we’re on track to a one planet future. Dax Lovegrove reports.
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But our grandchildren won’t just sit on our knee and take our word for it. They’ll be on the web, browsing fascinating infographics and piecing the past together for themselves. For Louise Roper, Managing Director of cleaning products provider, Method, winning firms will be those that are both fearless in embracing environmentally sound practices, and bold enough to be honest about their imperfections. “Consumers will understand,” she says. With much greater transparency on the cards – whether companies like it or not – Roper believes that it will be increasingly difficult to get consumers to accept irresponsible products. Niall Dunne, formerly at Saatchi & Saatchi S, also thinks transparency could be the force behind a significant shift. For Dunne, it will break down the dividing lines between business, society and the environment. The vision that many of the leaders we interviewed share is of a dematerialised world economy: one that puts health and wellbeing before material production. Brands are a big part of that picture, according to Guy Hayward, Chief Executive of marketing communications agency JWT. “Smart brands will better understand consumers’ feelings and will fuse their relationship with them around sustainability.” He cites Nike as now providing not just sports shoes but also
a “sports experience”, through the delivery of popular events. Finally, the continued role of WWF and other NGOs comes through loud and clear from the likes of Kingfisher’s CEO, Ian Cheshire. “NGOs have been hugely helpful when they’ve got off the soapbox and collaborated with businesses to push them to raise their game.” Steve Holliday said he welcomes WWF’s support in helping National Grid grapple with the issues of today, “testing, pushing and advising the company to think very differently”. So what can WWF draw from all of these insights? We are all too aware of the daunting challenges ahead but, as business leaders grapple with the issues and accept that transformative change is a real necessity, it feels like we have reached a real turning point. WWF will be building on this momentum in the run up to Rio+20 so that this new thinking leads to transformative actions.
Sun shade By failing to support large-scale solar farms, the UK could miss out on a major opportunity for green growth, warns Dale Vince.
Dax Lovegrove is Head of Business and Industry at WWF-UK. For more thought leadership from this collection, go to www.wwf.org.uk/talkingheads. WWF-UK is a Forum for the Future partner. www.wwf.org.uk
Photos: Sartori / istock
“We still have very little understanding of how human activities impact on natural systems or how reliant society is on functioning ecosystems”, says Climate Change Capital’s Vice Chairman James Cameron. Such a fundamental knowledge gap may seem implausible given the current rate of information generated: as much every two days, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as from the dawn of civilization to 2003. But however little we know about our impacts, adds Cameron, what’s worse is the fact that our absolute dependence on ecosystems is rarely even acknowledged in political or business life. The comment was made on the occasion of WWF’s 50th anniversary, an opportunity we have taken to reflect on just how far we’ve come and – in the build up to the next Earth Summit, Rio+20 – what still needs to be done. The big question is whether society, business and our economy are moving closer to, or further away from a future where humans prosper within our ecological limits. Cameron was one of 50 business chiefs and thought leaders whose views we captured on film. A recurring theme highlighted by many is that we are still only scratching the surface of what’s required. We’re not being ambitious enough about change, warns veteran commentator John Elkington. He refers to the 2010 Accenture study, ‘A New Era of Sustainability’, in which the great majority of the business CEOs interviewed said they are embedding sustainability in their organisations. What they actually mean, Elkington suspects, is that they are running light touch corporate social responsibility programmes. But what we need, he argues, is “disruptive transformative change throughout our markets, our supply chains, our economies and our corporations”. So how can we generate that scale of change? Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, thinks it has to be personal. He doesn’t deny that the principal aim for his management team is to run a business and deliver investor returns. But, he says, the challenges ahead “have pricked our conscience”. The desire to be able to tell your grandchildren that your business took a lead on addressing global threats is a big driving force, he says – and much of the reason why environmental issues and climate change are taken very seriously within the company.
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It looked like a brave new world when Feed-in Tariffs were announced last April. For the first time, Britain had the opportunity to build large-scale groundmounted solar projects – something not uncommon in other parts of Europe. Right now we’re working on the UK’s very first sun park, a 1MW photovoltaic array [see artist’s impression, above] next to our 16MW wind park, Fen Farm in Lincolnshire. It should be up and running by May 2011. Ecotricity currently has 54MW of wind parks in operation, and plans for another 200MW. We’d like to build more sun parks, enough to achieve a 50/50 mix of wind and solar power ideally. These two sources of energy are highly complementary: for example, you get more of one in the winter, and more of the other in the summer. Fen Farm will be the UK’s first hybrid project, and we’re expecting to learn a lot from it. This is just the beginning. Or rather it was. Until the Government came along and said: “We don’t like the sound of solar farms. They’re going to hoover up all the money available from the Feed-in Tariffs (FiTs), and harm the market for household
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solar power.” Or words to that effect. It’s a misleading stance, because there isn’t a limited pot of money under FiT legislation. We’ve checked our understanding with energy regulator Ofgem and they agree: there is no pot, no limit, and therefore no way that one technology can succeed at the expense of another. There’s no sign, either, that large-scale projects have harmed the market for smaller installations. With 27,000 applications so far for domestic rooftop PV, the scheme seems to be going rather well. With the UK yet to build a solar farm on any significant scale, the Government’s hesitation seems premature. More importantly, in these times of serious financial constraints, the need to make progress towards green energy and carbon reduction targets is more pressing than ever – with opportunities for significant savings and long-term gain. It simply doesn’t make sense to choose to support domestic installations at the expense of large-scale arrays, when FiTs ensure that the latter are 30% cheaper. We get three for two if we spend our money on big solar rather than small: that’s three units of green electricity
for the price of two, and three units of carbon reduction for the price of two. The Government’s motivation is hard to fathom. The rules don’t allow one technology to adversely impact any other; domestic solar is booming anyway; and big solar offers far better value for money. So why spike it now? Perhaps it comes down to ideology: the fear that big solar might spoil the countryside or something. If there’s another reason, we need to be told, to enable an honest debate. The opportunities in large-scale solar are huge. Job creation is not the least of them: remember all the talk of new green jobs before the election? Germany’s solar sector now employs 133,000 people, and is worth €10 billion a year, with 17,000MW of installed capacity. The UK has a measly 75MW. And that’s how the Government seems to want it to stay. We’re building the UK’s very first sun park now. Might it be the last? Dale Vince is CEO of Ecotricity, which he founded in 1995. Ecotricity is a Forum for the Future partner. www.ecotricity.co.uk
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Feedback and confusing booking systems that don’t reconcile with each other. Examples such as these persuaded us that we needed to conduct our own rigorous audits to be sure that our money is achieving the intended carbon savings. 2) Insist on proper standards of business Our checklist includes: • Standards: offsets must meet either VCS (Voluntary Carbon Standard), CAR (Climate Action Registry) or GS (Gold Standard). • Registry: offsets must be in a registry where they can be validated, verified, and retired. • Vintage offsets must not be used more than one year in arrears. • Stick to the facts when it comes to scope.
Offsets not so positive? As an enthusiastic reader of Green Futures, I share your passion for the endless possibilities that sustainability brings. But I think in ‘Offset Positive’, you may have allowed your enthusiasm to override sensible precautions and good science. Let me first state that at [carpet and flooring company] InterfaceFLOR we are supporters of proper Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) offsets. We are heavy users too, having bought around two million tonnes since 2003. We have an interest in repairing the tarnished reputation of carbon offsets. But we believe that this cannot be achieved without clearly acknowledging what went wrong, why, and what needs to change. Here are some points to consider: 1) Beware of snake oil salesmen It wasn’t the environmental movement that tarnished the reputation of offsets. The offset industry brought the problem on itself. A young industry, seeing rapid growth in the last five years, was tempted into unhealthy ‘innovation’ in accounting and standards. Among the examples we’ve encountered from supposedly reputable providers have been offsets sold in 2005, but with the carbon savings purchased still not delivered today; offsets sold in 2004-06, which will only mature in 2017;
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We’re also concerned with the way in which some companies buying offsets choose to present them. Some define very narrow boundaries for the impact being offset, and then exaggerate the value of what they have purchased. In this context, the phrase ‘carbon neutral’ is almost universally misused. It is ridiculous for a public affairs or law firm, for example, to claim to be carbon neutral while lobbying on behalf of the coal industry. Similarly, it is all too easy for a car manufacturer to be carbon neutral based solely on its manufacturing energy footprint. The major carbon footprint of carmakers and many other companies is frequently embodied in the raw materials or related to the product use phase. Interface’s manufacturing carbon footprint represents less than 10% of a carpet tile’s full impact over the course of its life cycle. We calculate all the carbon emissions of our products from the extraction of raw materials, through their production, transportation, use and end of life. And then we purchase offsets equal to that full amount. Companies should start with full life cycle assessment (LCA) of their products. Carbon neutrality claims based on manufacturing alone should be viewed with scepticism. Reputable offset providers should not be complicit in supporting misleading claims. 3) Earn the right to offset Weak standards in the industry have led to artificially low prices for carbon. This can make
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it appear seemingly attractive compared with investment in energy efficiency or renewable generation – which also require much more work by the company to implement. At Interface our greenhouse emissions are down 44%, excluding the offsets we buy from third parties. We achieved this by reducing total energy consumption per unit of output by 43% since 1996, and replacing 60% of our non-renewable energy supply with renewables. Even now, we think we can go further, and we believe that offsets should account for no more than 10% of our carbon reduction strategy. 4) Avoid backdoor philanthropy
On which subject, I’m afraid I have no sympathy with his dismissal of such schemes as “backdoor philanthropy”. As we said in ‘Offset Positive’: “It’s worth reminding ourselves just why we’re concerned about carbon emissions in the first place. It’s not because we have some abstract obsession with atmospheric chemistry: rather, it’s because we fear the human consequences of climate change. These will be felt all the harder, and sooner, by [the poor of the developing world] who are in every sense on the front line of climate change. So when we invest in a rigorous, pro-poor offset scheme, we’re achieving two goals simultaneously. We are both fulfilling our responsibility to reduce our environmental impact – and improving the quality of life of those threatened by it.”
Great article, very well thought out. I think carbon offsets are a going to be a critical part of the economies of the future. It looks like there is hope for changing the way the developing world develops. Rick Schettino
It has taken more than ten years to achieve general acceptance that responsible business cannot be achieved by philanthropy alone. The correct focus is on how companies earn their profits. Most CEOs understand this. Now along come the offsetters, dangling free social benefits with each tonne of carbon purchased. The comms team love it, but is this really the way to tackle carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere – mixed in with community health and development? Interface is a supporter of carbon offsets, but only under the strictest criteria and as a last resort. We have the resources and expertise to be reasonably confident in what we are purchasing. Many of your readers may not be in our position… Ramon Arratia, Sustainability Director, InterfaceFLOR Martin Wright, Editor of ‘Offset Positive’, replies: I agree with much, but not all, of Ramon’s comments. It is true that some elements of the voluntary offset industry have, in the past, failed to act with anything like the necessary rigour. InterfaceFLOR deserves considerable credit for embarking on its own due diligence: such critical – even sceptical – scrutiny has undoubtedly helped prod the industry as a whole towards much more rigorous governance and standards. I certainly share his unease over the widespread, lazy and unscientific use of the phrase, ‘carbon neutral’! It is debatable whether carbon prices on the voluntary market are still “artificially low”. I am constantly surprised when I see at firsthand how relatively small investments, particularly in poverty alleviating projects in developing countries, can achieve impressive carbon reductions.
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back into the same resource base we rely on for our sustenance, without considering the negative consequences for the overall system. This system made sense when it emerged at the dawn of the industrial revolution because resources were plentiful and there were few people, but it is increasingly recognised as not being fit for purpose. Increasingly, it is accepted that we need to move to a ‘Borrow-UseReplenish’ economic model. In such a system, economic activity would seek to mimic the ‘closed loop’ systems of nature, where the waste from one process (or animal) is food for another. The real debate now is between those who recognise that we need to address the fundamental framework of how the economy works, and correctly allocate the true cost of consumption, versus those who want this generation to ‘party on’, leaving subsequent ones to take their chances. Even though those chances include empty oceans, barren soil and raging storms. Harold Forbes
FiT to be passé?
Trend spotting In ‘2011: five trends to watch’, you identify climate change and rising prices as key issues. It has become evident over the past few years that there has already been a paradigm shift in energy prices, and that the prospect for the next few years is for energy (and probably all other raw material) costs to continue to rise. At present, our industrial system operates what is essentially a ‘Take-Make-Waste’ economic system. We take resources from the Earth, use them to power our economy and convert them to goods and services for our use. Massive amounts of often toxic waste – including carbon emissions – are then dumped
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Green Futures regularly reports potential breakthroughs in solar photovoltaic technology. These articles encapsulate why I am so against the UK’s Feed-in Tariff (FiT). Effectively, it’s encouraging people to sign up to 25 years based on today’s technology. It’s less of an issue if you invest in your own PV, but if you sign a contract with an energy company today, you are effectively stuffed till 2036. Why is that a problem? Well, would you have signed a 25-year mobile phone contract that locked you into carrying around one of the famous ‘bricks’ of the 80s? Of course not – if you realised the speed of technological development in the field. So why would you want your home, office or school to have today’s equivalent, the PV brick, strapped to your roof for the next quarter century? It may look cool now but it will definitely affect (or blight in resale terms) those properties that are locked in. Consider also that current PVs operate at a maximum of 18% efficiency. Yet the next generations will double that… I am not dissing renewables: they are important and will have their place. But hindsight will show that FiTs have misled people. The emphasis should still be on reduction of energy use and increasing the energy performance of buildings. Renewables should be an investment much further down the chain. Sarah Daly
But does it really stack up? The embodied energy that goes into making lots of small devices such as these is considerable, so it would be interesting to know how many hours of operation one of these items needs to run for before it pays back for its own creation. If a single household used one of these, I guess that it would take about 20 years of operation to cover its own environmental cost, assuming that it actually worked for that long. Basing a system around a waste stream is also making some dangerous assumptions about food prices and the availability of waste. If food prices continue to rise globally, then waste arising will naturally drop. Rory Bergin
Landfill gas doubts Regarding ‘Landfill mines’ [GF79, p6], when I see that the waste is “combusted” it makes me a bit wary. How is gasification different from incineration? (I ask this honestly. I’m truly naïve to the process.) I like how you point out that it is said to be carbon negative, but I’m still a little less than excited when I hear about burning trash. Finding ways to burn trash to create energy can perhaps be one of the solutions, assuming it is done in a way that minimises emissions from combustion, but it’s not game changing, by any means. Bradley Short www.businessearth.com Editor’s note: It is the syngas produced from the waste which is combusted, not the waste itself, so this is not the same as waste incineration as commonly practiced.
Plug and go Plugs are simple, efficient and cost effective. Therefore, I think we should question the whole idea of supporting wireless recharging technology (see ‘Surface charge’, GF79, p15) that wastes more than 10% of the power supplied. We have a unique opportunity with the transition to electric vehicles to demand high efficiency from our transportation network. Kevin Sharpe
Wasted effort? “Scraping your plate straight into a domestic fuel conversion system”, thanks to E-Fuel’s standalone reactor, sounds exciting [‘Home brew’, GF79, p6].
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JonathonPorritt
“ �
If we’re serious about food security, we have to tackle population growth.
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People listen to the UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor – especially when his careful analysis reflects their own intuitive angst. So it’s not surprising that Sir John Beddington’s “perfect storm� hypothesis – that rising demand for energy, water and food will have a massively damaging effect on the global economy by 2030 – has had a huge impact. But setting the convergence point for his perfect storm way out there in 2030 never made much sense to me. The dramatic spike in oil and food prices in 2008 indicated a near-term emergency rather than a potential medium-term crisis. Three years on, prices are spiking again in ways that have got the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) twitching with barely concealed panic. In February, oil went back through the $100-a-barrel threshold. Grain prices (as well as other food commodities) soared to new highs. Two-thirds of China’s wheat-growing areas are seriously affected by drought – with a massive potential impact on this year’s harvest. When the FAO announced this news, it sent tremors through the governments of all those countries where bread remains the staple food. These include Egypt and other North African states, where rising food prices were one of the triggers for mass unrest. Not so much a perfect storm perhaps, but yet another curtain-raising gale. Which makes it a compellingly good moment for the UK’s Government Office for Science to launch its blockbuster report on The Future of Food and Farming. Its aim: “to identify the decisions that policymakers need to make today, and in the years ahead, to ensure that a global population rising to 9 billion or more can be fed sustainably and equitably�. In other words, it’s all about food security. And a very good job the report does too. It’s strong on food waste: if we can sort out the fact that anywhere between 30% and 50% of the food grown doesn’t get onto people’s plates, we’ll be much better placed to do the rest. And it’s strong on science and technology – although campaigners against genetic modification will be aggrieved that the report endorses the potential contribution that GM crops could make to delivering food security. Most creatively, it proposes that we should start thinking about “sustainable intensification� as the overarching policy driver. Most people today see ‘sustainable agriculture’ and ‘intensive agriculture’ (based on ever-increasing applications of fertilisers and pesticides)
Green Futures April 2011
as polar opposites. But in a world where very little new land is going to be available for food production, yields are going to have to be raised by increasing the efficiency with which inputs are used and by reducing negative environmental impacts. The case studies it provides of sustainable intensification in Africa are truly inspirational. But the report doesn’t get a clean bill of health. It’s very weak on the need to balance global supply chains with local self-reliance, embarrassingly naĂŻve about the dangers of concentration in the food industry (with fewer and fewer global operations calling the shots) – and it’s pathetic on meat. Having asserted that “the demand for the most resource-intensive types of food must be containedâ€?, its policy recommendations in this area could have been written by the most irresponsible of the world’s beef barons. All this is forgivable – and relatively small beer in comparison to the report’s considerable strengths. Unforgivable, by contrast, is its wilful failure to address population issues. Its authors will claim otherwise, given that the very first of its “Driver Reviewsâ€? is about population. But this is made up almost entirely of analysis (historical and current), with very little editorial comment – let alone policy recommendations. On that score, its authors clearly want to be seen as agnostic as to the impact of continuing population growth on food security – which is fairly startling in the year which will see human numbers rise above 7 billion. Ironically, the report eloquently emphasises the role that women will play in this brave new world of sustainable intensification. In Africa, and much of the developing world, women make up the largest share of the agricultural workforce. And they are far more vulnerable both to policy failure and to the impacts of accelerating climate change. The report’s principal recommendations in that regard are “the eradication of gender-based discrimination (such as land ownership and user rights) and steps to actively promote women’s statusâ€?. Fair enough. But what about a woman’s right to manage her fertility – including the timing, spacing and number of children? What about guaranteed access to a choice of contraception? What about a reliable source of improved reproductive healthcare? This is harsh criticism. But the report so skilfully joins up the other factors relating to food security, that to perpetuate the deception that there’s no relation between food security and continuing population growth speaks volumes about the degree to which this remains taboo territory. Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future, and author of Living Within Our Means. Jonathon’s blog is available as a podcast at: www.jonathonporritt.com Listen to Jonathon at: ipadio.com/phlogs/jonathonporritt
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