greenfutures No.84 April 2012
Taste test
What will technology bring to the table?
Laps of luxury: when our treats sit with our values Land of milk and money: tackling dairy’s sacred cows Solar, cheaper: what happens when PV costs the same as the mains
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It used to be so simple. Being green meant loving the local, organic, human-scale stuff. You weren’t totally anti-tech of course – it’s hard to weave your own solar module – but when in doubt, natural was best. Sometimes, it seemed almost easier to define greens by what they were against: factory farming, ‘Frankenstein’ foods, conspicuous consumption of all kinds… It was a familiar, not to say comfortable, niche. But it’s one that’s been blown wide open. A new wave of thinkers and scientists are arguing that we need to embrace some starkly unnatural technologies if we are to survive, let alone prosper. In ‘Taste test’ [p20], Andrew Purvis unveils a future in which we feed the world on a diet of test tube burgers and print our own sushi. And in ‘Land of milk and money’ [p16], Huw Spanner dares to question the sacred, er, cow of traditional dairy farming – where Buttercup grazes contentedly on green pastures in the fresh spring air. Instead, the future might just stand in serried ranks of beasts confined all year round in vast ‘megadairies.’ Neither of these visions is inevitable – far from it. But if the mere idea is enough to put you off your supper, consider an all too likely future of soaring commodity prices, spiralling malnutrition, food riots, and, yes, runaway climate change. Sounds like typical green scare mongering? Well, as we go to press, the sober-suited OECD has delivered a stinging slap in the face to complacency, warning that we could be on track for a catastrophic 6°C of global warming by 2050, unless we make some uncharacteristically dramatic changes to business as usual. In this light, thinking out of the box – and the comfy niche – isn’t just courageous. It’s compulsory. Greens also used to have a soft spot for simple pleasures: for living according to Gandhi’s precept that “there is enough on earth for everyone’s needs – not everyone’s greed.” So what is Anna Simpson doing singing the praises of a life of luxury [‘How to spend it’, p28]? One intriguing answer is that, increasingly, the ‘luxury sector’ is embracing just those values once ascribed to environmentalists: hand crafted, made to last, sourced with care and with respect to the makers. And if you find all this a bit unsettling, you might take comfort from Roger East’s investigation into the rise and rise of solar power [‘Is solar the new normal?’, p30]. This may have been a touch eclipsed of late by wrangling over feed-in tariffs, and the highprofile collapse of a couple of major players. But, as East points out, none of this has slowed the dramatic fall in solar’s costs. We’re now at a point where, in some circumstances at least, the price of solar is now on a par with the grid as a whole. And that could unleash a growth in the market that puts even its recent surge in the shade. I’m writing these words on the morning of the spring equinox. Appropriately enough. Because, in almost any kind of future, it seems, the sun is up.
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Green Futures April 2012
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Contents 10
Number 84, April 2012
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Features
Briefings
Regulars
16 L and of milk and money Huw Spanner ruminates on some surprising possible futures for the world’s vast dairy industry.
The latest in green innovation, including:
4 The future in context Peter Madden learns to love a robot
46 Feedback Readers respond online and in print
24 A thousand words A surprise in the woods
20 T aste test Can technology feed the world? And if so, asks Andrew Purvis will we like the taste?
6 Robot wheels Transmission-free car folds into city lifet
48 Jonathon Porritt A cri de coeur for ‘co-operative capitalism’
28 H ow to spend it Sustainable luxury: a contradiction in terms? Anna Simpson splashes out.
5 Glow bug A light which runs off luminous bacteria
10 Striking gold with silver ink New technique could boost solar PV efficiency, cut costs 11 An app a day Mobile technology for sustainable health
8 Ocean power Marine-based heat exchange plants resurface
13 Sun trap A supercapacitor to catch the sun
9 Computer cure Broken circuits could fix themselves
15 Kenya’s head of steam Geothermal gets hot in Africa
30 I s solar the new normal? With PV prices hitting the holy grail of grid parity, Roger East heralds a new dawn of sun power.
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26 T he Green Futures interview: Martin Wright meets Ronan Dunne, CEO of Telefónica O2 35 Forum update Films from the future; launching Sustainable Business Model Group; and Sally Uren: scaling up by dumbing down
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Partner viewpoints 40 Time to adapt Planning for resilience in the face of climate change AMEC 41 Making waves Shift the system, make the change WWF-UK 42 Going platinum CEEQUAL rights: prizes spur progress Skanska 43 Paper round Breaking out of the ‘downcycling’ spiral Arjowiggins Graphic
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Peter Madden
Briefings
The future in context
Feeding fungi Students from Yale have discovered a mushroom that eats plastic In 2008, a group of Yale undergraduates went on a trip to the Amazon to study bioremediation – a natural waste disposal process, which mushrooms are
Coming to life How far will we go with robots?
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blogging about their experiences, using public data to orient themselves. Add to this ever cheaper computing, the increasing ability to join up different technological applications, and the fact that the military are investing so heavily in robotics, and we’re on a fast track to artificial intelligence. I don’t think we’ll see the point when robotic minds race past our own, and they come to rule over us (unless of course we elect them to do so…). But I do think that machines will be able to perform certain functions in certain ways, surpassing individual human capabilities. What are the sustainability implications of all this? Robots could certainly help us run the planet more efficiently – maybe whether we like it or not. They might help to plant trees, restore biodiversity, and clean up oil spills. They could respond quickly and effectively to humanitarian disasters. And they could develop creative solutions to our electronic cast-offs – like the cute waste-collecting robot in the Pixar animation, WALL-E. But they’ll certainly raise serious ethical questions. Surveillance versus privacy? Jobs versus efficiency? Manipulation versus freedom of choice? Let’s hope these new members of society can bring out our cooperative instincts, not our divisive tendencies.
Bio-light runs off luminous bacteria
Peter Madden is Chief Executive, Forum for the Future.
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for commercial roll out and need more research in laboratory settings.” Sam Harrington has an eye on the progress. He’s the Environmental Director at Ecovative Design, a start-up based in New York that offers a home-grown alternative to plastic-based packaging. The company harnesses mycelium, a fungal material which grows in the dark, with no watering, and no petrochemical inputs. For Harrington, breaking down industrial wastes – as well as avoiding them in the first place – could be a new business plan. “Fungi are often called a key part of nature’s recycling system, since they can break down tough compounds that no other organism can,” says Harrington. “Perhaps in the future we’ll be using this Amazonian discovery to turn waste plastic into more environmentally responsible materials.” – Giles Crosse
Glow bug
Photo: istockphoto / Thinkstock
Robots always loom large in science fiction stories, and it is clear that they will be playing a much larger part in our lives in 20 years. We’re likely to see swarms of self-directing machines, which mimic the behaviour of birds, fish and insects, used for practical tasks like constructing buildings, cleaning up pollution, or artificial pollination. ‘Immersive’ robots – ones that people inhabit with their minds – will allow us to be telepresent almost anywhere in the world, guiding our alias. A CEO could inspect a remote factory without having to take a long-haul flight, or a surgeon could perform a complex medical procedure without leaving home. Origami robots (with a nod to Transformers) will fold themselves into various shapes, morphing to fulfil different functions. Maybe we won’t have to buy so much new kit: we’ll just re-programme the constituent parts into something else. Our houses will probably have become robots that we live in, without us noticing. They’ll read our moods, pick up on behavioural cues and react accordingly. If we are stressed, they’ll pop on some soothing music and dim the lights. They’ll learn our habits and be able to predict them. They may even nudge us into healthier or greener behaviours. And it is this emotional interface with machines where I think we’ll see some of the biggest advances. Expect our machines to look sad if we get things wrong and happy when we get them right, Tamagotchi-style. And it won’t just be school kids that care about them. Some scientists (David Levy, for one) anticipate sex and marriage with robot companions. Personally, I find the likelihood that we will end up actually loving robots – choosing a malleable machine relationship over the rich complexities of a human one – profoundly dispiriting. We can already see seeds of this future today. Robot pets are becoming ever more sophisticated. Robotic pollinators are being trialled in case the decline of the bee population continues. Driverless cars are on our roads and can be licensed in Nevada. And online, pre-programmed personas known as chatbots and weavrs are making friends on social media and
particularly good at. They expected to find fungi that can break down plastics. What they didn’t expect to find was endophytes that can do the trick in anaerobic conditions – that is, without oxygen. The findings were published last year in the journal ‘Applied and Environmental Microbiology’. It’s good news, because that’s the prerequisite for dealing with landfill waste. Products use many different plastic types, making a meal of recycling processes. UK waste agency WRAP says 4.5 million tonnes of plastics are discarded each year. Now, the hope is that these fungi can be harnessed to break down complex plastics (in particular, the synthetic polymer polyester polyurethane) in landfill conditions. But it’s still early days. Professor Scott Strobel, who supervised the team says, “We are not yet prepared
Don’t burn the methane from that slurry: feed it to luminous bugs. They could repay their meal ticket by providing mood lighting in your kitchen. That’s the dreamlike scenario lit up by new thinking at Philips, where the R&D team is focusing on the possibilities of bioluminescence. Most commonly associated with fireflies, jellyfish and phosphorescent marine life, this natural process is peculiar to a select group of organisms endowed with a devilish molecule called luciferin. It reacts when oxidised by an enzyme known as luciferase, giving a low intensity and completely wireless light. It’s cool light, too, without all the waste heat you get with incandescence. Philips is showing a suitably whole systems approach with its ‘bio-light’ design concept. The process is put to work within a so-called ‘microbial kitchen’ setting where the bacteria are bred in situ – ever so much more manageable than going jellyfish-hunting whenever you need
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a light. According to Philips’ concept, a composting digester sitting under the sink turns food leftovers and toilet waste into methane. This is lunch for the bioluminescent bacteria, piped through a spaghetti-like system of silicon tubes to their home in an array of ‘light bulbs’, built into a wall-hanging frame. But don’t go looking for this in the shops any time soon. We’re right at the early stage when it comes to harnessing bioluminescence. And using it to light our living space might be barking up the wrong tree. It could be better suited to luminous strips on the edge of the stairs and in road markings, or even to add a touch of night-time magic to parks – a concept that won a Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction in 2011. Think, though, about the sensitive environments where these bugs might just be in their element – as living luminous biosensors inside our own bodies, perhaps, shedding light on our health. – Roger East
Alive with light
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Robot wheels
Ready and waiting
Starts small, folds up smaller
MIT rolls out its city car solution It may be tiny, but it’s driving a big vision. This electric vehicle from MIT is the first commercial stage of a new urban transport system. It’s designed to give city dwellers the freedom of individual transport, without the stress of tailbacks and endless searches for parking spaces. The car has been branded Hiriko – the Basque word for ‘urban’ – by the (Spanish) Basque investment group Denokinn, which has partnered MIT to take it to the road. icking off with a trial production of 20 cars and a pilot programme in Vitoria Gasteiz, near Bilbao, Denokinn plans to bring the car to cities around the world, targeting a vehicle price of €12,500 if sold to private individuals. Barcelona, Berlin and San Francisco have also signed up for trial runs. The smartest element of the car
Does your washing machine know when the wind blows? itself is the wheels. Each one combines an integrated electric motor, steering, suspension and braking, so they don’t require a drivetrain or transmission. This means the cars can fold up to park, stacking three to a standard space. And, as all four wheels can turn, they can spin on their axis like ballerinas – much more elegant than the neatest three-point turns. The whole car has a modular design that makes for easy upgrades, assembly and maintenance, according to Ryan Chin, a researcher at MIT. Smarter still is the mobile network which means these cars can communicate with each other and with smartphones – ideal for sharing schemes, along the lines of Paris’ Autolib [see GF80, p15]. The range is 100km, plenty for short city hops.
You may look for the sun before hanging your sheets out to dry, but few of us have an eye on the weather when we turn the washer on. But what if it knew to power up just as the wind picks up, and when overall demand for electricity is low? This is the vision for Samsung’s new WiFi-enabled washer, which won a 2012 EcoDesign award at the consumer electronics tradeshow CES in Las Vegas. It’s touted as ‘smart grid-ready’, by which Samsung means that it has the communications software in place to respond to signals from the grid, adapting its power consumption based on availability. Hot on its heels (or, let’s hope, cold) was a smart grid-ready refrigerator by LG. You can monitor the thermostat from your smartphone, and it comes with a touchscreen embedded in the door, so that you can jot down your shopping list or leave a message for your housemates.
But whatever the fate of the car, we’re likely to see more smart wheels on the road, integrated into other vehicles, such as light trucks. And the more applications, the cheaper they’ll be. – John Eischeid
Zero emissions – maximum speed
2011
Electric motor racing comes of age
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taking part. Would-be competitors can buy ready-made electric race bikes from Muench Racing of Germany and Mavizen in the UK. Meanwhile, some established racing car manufacturers are waking up to the possibilities of e-power. Lola Cars International, which has been building race cars for over 50 years, has teamed up with Drayson Racing to produce a batterypowered racer that they say will top 200mph. The Oxford-based firm is headed by Lord Drayson, former Minister of Science and Innovation, and has concentrated on greener
forms of motor sport, running a bioethanolfuelled car at the Le Mans 24 hour race in 2009 and 2010. The Lola-Drayson B12/69EV musters over 850 horsepower – that’s about eight times the power of a family car, and probably enough to make this the fastest electric race car in the world. “We aim to show that an all-electric race car can be as cool and exciting as a conventional petrol or diesel powered racing car – and a lot kinder to the environment”, says Lola’s Chief Executive Martin Birrane. – Peter Henshaw
Smarter than the grid
The first year in which power plants operating on solar, wind, and biomass energy attracted more investment than those powered by natural gas, oil and coal. Renewables won the race by $30 billion, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
New tyres spell the end to both punctures and pumps
Vroom vroom without the fumes
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of Samsung and LG could lead to greater efficiency, according to a white paper from the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. But until a common language is coined, it’s all talk. – John Eischeid
Reinventing the wheel
Photo: istockphoto / Thinkstock
Electric cars are still more associated with a gentle eco-friendly pootle around town than the tyre-burning thrill of Formula 1. But that could all change next year. FIA, the international motorsports governing body, is planning a ‘Formula E’, to kick off in 2013. This won’t see the gruelling two-hour plus sagas of the petrol-powered Grand Prix. Instead, races will consist of short 15-minute heats, recognising that battery technology doesn’t yet have the range of high octane petrol. But when it comes to speed, they can be more than a match for their gas-guzzling equivalents. Electric motors produce maximum power from very low speeds, so deliver good acceleration, with no need for gear changes. Given a big enough motor, there’s no reason why an electric racing car shouldn’t match the 200mph-plus speeds of a petrol-powered Formula One model. And of course, they offer the prospect of carbon-neutral motor racing. Electric racing first hit the headlines three years ago, when the famous Isle of Man TT races launched a category for zero emission bikes. There’s even been a movie made about it: ‘Charge’ (subtitled ‘Zero Emissions/ Maximum Speed’) was directed by Mark Neale and narrated by Ewan McGregor. It helped spawn electric motorcycle championships in Europe, the USA and Australia, with teams from China and India
Nifty appliances, or gamechangers? Potentially the latter, but what these appliances are waiting for is the smart grid itself. The efficiency gains such a system promises are currently held back by the lack of a standardised way of sharing information or a common language, across the industry. HTML is the lingua franca of the internet, but there’s nothing similar for the electrical grid and the appliances that plug into it. Fraser Winterbottom, Chief Operating Officer at the Energy Saving Trust, expects that “it will be increasingly important and valuable to make use of the data from smart appliances and their interaction with both the grid supply and householders” if we’re going to achieve the necessary carbon cuts. Peak electricity is a waste problem. It means that for much of the time we’re generating energy that we don’t use and transmitting it inefficiently. Opening the lines of communication between the likes
Until now, puncture-proof tyres have been the privilege of presidential convoys. But unless you were likely to come under fire, these weren’t worth the expense. Especially given that the system (a solid plastic tyre inside the rubber one) would only go so far after a puncture before it needed replacing… All this is about to change. A concept tyre, rolled out by Bridgestone at the Tokyo Motor Show, could mean you never have a flat again. It features a unique structure of thermoplastic resin strips stretching along the inner sides of the tyres, supporting the weight of the vehicle. The tyre doesn’t need to be inflated, so it’s essentially maintenance-free until it wears out. Other companies (Greentyre for one) already make puncture-proof tyres by creating tiny air bubbles in an otherwise solid rubber. However, these designs use much more material than a conventional tyre, and recycling is left to the owner.
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They also haven’t been scaled up for anything bigger than a bicycle. Bridgestone’s version is the first to be designed with cars in mind – albeit small ones. Each tyre is strong enough to support about 150kg, and they are currently being tested on small electric vehicles. The company claims this tyre eliminates the need for a spare – which means an even lighter load, cutting fuel costs and giving a bit more boot space (a bonus for tiny city cars). The expected lifetime of the tyre is still in question, but the design takes its full lifecycle into consideration, using materials that can be reshaped and reused. And this is perhaps the biggest bonus for the environment. Although it is possible to extend the lifetime of a conventional tyre by re-treading it, eventually it might end up as a fuel supplement in a cement kiln, releasing harmful VOCs. “As an industry we have made tremendous progress; the last
challenge is to improve recycling”, says Peter Taylor, Secretary General of Tyre Recovery Association UK. Bridgestone plans to develop the technology for commercial use, but has yet to announce a timeline and costs. – Mike Zimonyi
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Ocean power
Floating frontier
Marine-based heat exchange plants near viability as oil costs rise
Fukushima legacy adds boost to deep water wind’s race to viability
Two multinational engineering firms are going head-to-head to bring online the first scaled-up model of an ocean-based heat exchange system, known as OTEC, standing for ‘Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion’. Heat exchange is a tried and tested form of power generation on land, but a viable OTEC system would open up a major new potential source of energy. OTEC relies on a minimum temperature difference of 20°C between warm surface water and the much cooler water at depths below 1,000 metres. The warm water is flash-evaporated in a vacuum chamber
which drives a turbine. Modern OTEC systems create desalinated water as a by-product. The waste cool water, pumped from the nutrient-rich deep ocean, can be used in biotechnologies and aquaculture. A major advantage to OTEC over other renewables is its potential to generate a large constant base load energy supply. OTEC has been around since the 1970s, when the US military and Lockheed Martin first flirted with the technology in response to the decade’s oil price spikes. As oil stabilised, OTEC went out of favour, but with the cost of energy as it is now, it could once again become a viable
Hawaii: for a cool dip in warm waters
competitor in the global energy market. The two engineering companies, DCNS Group and Lockheed Martin, are both seeking investment for respective 10MW plants, to be constructed in 2015. Lockheed Martin are working with Makai Ocean Engineering to build a 10MW plant off the coast of Hawaii, with plans to scale up to 100MW by 2020, if it proves successful. France’s DCNS Group is planning a 10MW facility off the coast of Martinique, which could also come onstream in 2015. The major engineering challenge for a large OTEC plant is the construction of a 1km long tube with an unusually wide diameter of 10m, which must survive for decades or more in the harsh conditions of the ocean. Whilst the fuel of OTEC is free, the capital costs of such a facility could total $1billion. But both companies remain optimistic. “We believe OTEC is poised to become a leader in reliable, secure and clean energy generation, because it provides base load power which is scalable to hundreds of megawatts”, said Dan Heller, Vice President of Lockheed Martin New Ventures. – Phil Harper
The tantalising prospect of deep water wind farms, using vast, floating turbines, is coming closer to reality. Until now, commercial offshore farms have all featured ‘bottom-mounted’ turbines in depths below 50 metres. This has allowed the UK, with its shallow coastal waters, to install 538 offshore turbines totalling 1,708MW – equal to the rest of the world combined. But the rewards of deep water wind power could be far more substantial. It could harvest clean energy from previously untapped areas, capturing the stronger, more consistent winds which blow miles offshore. And it has other environmental plus points too. Floating turbines avoid the risk of damaging fragile seabed ecosystems. And thanks to their location out of sight of land, they avoid being shot down by the ‘visual impact’ campaigns which have done so much to stymie the growth of onshore wind power in the UK. Seattle-based Principle Power’s WindFloat foundation could achieve all these benefits. In November 2011, a 2MW turbine was connected to a WindFloat platform in Portugal, then towed 350km to its final Atlantic location. Already
connected to Portugal’s grid by an undersea cable, it will remain there for two years of testing. WindFloat’s performance will be closely compared to that of Statoil’s floating Hywind, installed off the Norwegian coast in 2009 with a 2.3MW turbine. Statoil secured the steel cylinder filled with water and rock ballast in position with the help of three mooring lines. WindFloat is stabilised by three submerged water ballast columns. The turbine is fixed above one column with relatively little water ballast, and balanced by two much ‘heavier’ ones, forming a triangle with the main column. It was the first offshore turbine deployed without any heavy lifting equipment at sea, promising crucial cost savings. Principle Power has not disclosed likely commercial costs of WindFloat, but reports suggest the initial project cost under US$30 million, compared to US$75 million for Hywind. The latter generated 15MWh of electricity in under two years, providing a target for WindFloat. In a fresh twist which is rich with resonance for energy politics, Japan is poised to start work on a floating wind farm off Fukushima, using reconstruction
A new design brings wave energy to the shore
Research team invents automatic fix for broken circuits
Watch the waves, and you are seeing ocean energy at work. Extracting it is no easy job, though. Now, renewable energy supplier Ecotricity is backing the simplest wave energy device so far. As simple as a bicycle pump, in fact, which is what inspired the designer, British engineer Alvin Smith. The newly proven system, dubbed Searaser, keeps power generation onshore – with the waterborne action confined to a pump. One end of the device is fixed by a submerged buoy tethered to the seabed. The other, which moves a piston, rises and falls with the motion of a second buoy on the surface. The two together pressurise sea water, piping it ashore. The pressure is enough to drive a turbine, or to pump water uphill for storage and later release. After small-scale demonstrations by Dartmouth Wave Energy, Ecotricity are backing a full-scale prototype. This will
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cost “a few hundred thousand pounds”, according to the company’s founder Dale Vince, and should be ready to deploy by the end of the year. A year’s testing will follow to check flow rates, water volumes and pressures. If all the numbers are good, the company will move to a larger demonstration power plant, with onshore turbines. It will be designed to deliver under 30MW, to maximise benefits from the Government’s Renewables Obligation scheme. However, Vince believes the potential is much higher. He wants to add wave generation to the company’s wind and solar installations. He believes Searaser is “the one that will make the breakthrough”. He adds: “It is so wonderfully simple; it won’t be difficult to optimise the engineering.” Ecotricity hopes to have 200 Searasers around Britain’s shores within five years, and to
export the technology worldwide. Searaser is one of the first experiments in transferring wave energy to shore before converting it to electricity to be approaching commercial use. Other candidates for this new market include the CETO system by Carnegie Wave Energy in Australia, and the Oyster device being tested in Orkney by Aquamarine Power. – Jon Turney
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Photo: Principle Power; Stockbyte / Thinkstock
Computer cure
Photo: Digital Vision / Thinkstock
Wave watch
However good we get at recycling them, there could be a much smarter solution when appliances stop working: self-healing electronics. Researchers at the University of Illiniois think it could cut down hugely on the waste – and frustration – of all those bits of kit that fail just because a connection has broken on a printed circuit. The breakthrough was pioneered by a research team led by Nancy Sottos, a professor specialising in autonomous materials at the University of Illinois. Chemists and aerospace engineers worked alongside materials scientists on a series of experiments on self-repairing polymers, batteries, and then electronic devices. Their innovation was to embed a line of tiny microcapsules along the length of each line in each circuit. The kind of stress or bump that’s all too prone to break the circuit would simultaneously break the
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budget funds allocated following 2011’s earthquake and tsunami. Its initial capacity of 12MW could be extended to 1GW by 2020. “We’ve heard very encouraging signals about the Japanese floating turbine market”, said Nick Medic, RenewableUK’s head of offshore wind. “If a major industrial power [like this] enters the market, we’re likely to see a big cost reduction.” – Robin Yapp
microcapsule at the same point, releasing a little stream of liquid metal that would flow into the crack and heal it. No need even to trace the fault, let alone dismantle the device to get at an inaccessible circuit and see if there’s any way to fix it. Sotto’s team found in their tests that nine out of ten cracked circuits were successfully fixed, restoring 99% of their connectivity, within a matter of microseconds. Could this spell the end of dud batteries and failed computer chips? How much of a price premium would you pay for a device endowed with such self-healing powers? Only time, and the market, will tell whether this technology will end up confined to ‘high end’ applications like spacecraft, where repair costs are astronomic. But those with a throw-away attitude to broken electronics have been put on notice: things don’t have to be that way. – Roger East
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Silver ink researchers strike gold
An app a day
New technique could boost solar PV efficiency, cut costs
Mobile technology for sustainable health
Researchers at the University of Illinois have claimed advances in silver ink technology that can potentially both cut the costs of solar photovoltaics, and increase their efficiency by about 1%. This is a significant jump, considering it comes from just one small piece of
the solar panel puzzle. And what, you may be wondering, is silver ink? It’s a conductive material that’s used to print high-performance electrical circuits on flexible substrates. Among the many applications: batteries, displays, wearable electronic clothing and, yes, solar panels. The team led by Professor Jennifer Lewis has developed a silver ink that, unlike prior versions, has no particles in its initial solution form. This is important because particles can clog nozzles and limit how small the patterned features can be. Now nozzles as small as 100 nanometers can be used, yielding printed features that are only 5 microns wide. The result: much finer line widths and, because silver blocks light, significantly more efficient conversion of solar energy to electricity. Younan Xia, a Georgia Tech professor
Our health is closely linked to the wellbeing of the natural resources we draw on day-to-day: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat… It’s no big surprise, then, that lifestyle choices that are good for the environment are often good for our health, too. Commuting by bike or on foot will cut carbon, local air pollution and your waistline. Access to vibrant green space will help keep stress levels under check. Now, mobile technology is offering a fast track to sustainable health. Dedicated apps are proving popular, with over 44 million downloads in 2012 alone. Here are five of our favourites.
and leading authority in this area, calls the Lewis team’s approach “novel”. He notes that the new silver ink also goes through a necessary hardening process, called annealing, at a relatively low temperature, thereby reducing costs and making possible the use of less expensive substrates. Both Xia and Lewis see the new technology as a significant advance, but something less than a breakthrough. “For conductive ink, people are looking to migrate from silver to less expensive metals like copper and nickel. Now that will be a breakthrough”, says Lewis. Meanwhile though, a “significant number” of corporations, including major chemical and display companies, have contacted the research team about licensing the technology. The new silver ink is breakthrough enough for them, apparently. – Carl Frankel
Social media prompts a clean energy shift
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commitment to work with its current utility providers to increase the proportion of clean energy in their mix. It gave no timeline for the switch – but has since hired Bill Weihl, who pioneered Google’s investment in green energy [see GF77, p6]. The energy demands of our virtual lives are massive. All those profiles, pictures and pokes have to be stored
2) S tats of the Union offers information on the health of the US, state by state. You can compare key factors, from access to primary care, to death rates, to green space and pollution. By joining the dots between the quality of the local environment, and the population’s wellbeing, it could drive authorities to treat the causes of public health concerns – not just the symptoms. 3) T he Urban Green Line app connects people and communities in London to green spaces by encouraging outdoor activities, from sport to guerrilla gardening. There’s no shortage of research showing the mental and physical value of time spent enjoying natural surroundings – especially with other people [see GF79, p41]. This interactive app lets you tag green spaces and what you do there, creating communities online and outdoors.
Status update somewhere. According to the Greenpeace report, ‘Make IT Green’, the electricity demand of the world’s data centres and the telecommunications network is 623 billion kWh, or 2% of global use – more than India, Germany or Canada. As demand for digital storage grows, let’s hope social media can spark a green energy revolution. – John Eischeid
air pollution reading by measuring airborne particulate matter. It works by noting the location and time, and then comparing the intensity of the image with an established model of sky luminance. This personal environmental monitoring tool means people can make informed decisions about where they go – particularly useful for anyone with respiratory issues. 5) A lmost 90% of the world’s population lives within range of a mobile phone transmitter – and now they will be in range of expert healthcare, too. Developed at MIT, Sana provides a platform that connects patients and rural health workers to medical experts, providing access to high-quality healthcare for those in isolated and developing regions. - Jasmine Kubski
Tagged for relaxation
4) T ake a picture of the sky and Visibility will give you an immediate local
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Photos: Comstock / Thinkstock; Lifestize / Thinkstock
Facebook gets cooler
Photo: iStockphoto / Thinkstock
Facebook is making the switch to more renewable energy sources. The change comes after Greenpeace’s ‘Unfriend Coal’ campaign, a two-year push to get the social media giant to use less electricity from fossil fuels. The campaign broke the world record for the most comments posted on a single Facebook page in 24 hours, with over 80,000 on 13 April 2011 – largely in protest against the company’s 28MW coalpowered data centre, opened that month in Primeville, Oregan. By the end of the year, Facebook had responded with plans for another data centre, three times the size – but with a difference. Situated by the Lule River in Sweden, this centre – due to open in 2014 – will run primarily on hydroelectric power, with diesel generator back-up. It will consume 120MW, about 2.8% of the total hydro-electric power generated in the region. The site, in the Arctic Circle, has another strategic advantage: the cold climate, which will minimise the need for energy to cool the servers. In a joint statement with Greenpeace, Facebook also announced a new goal “to power all our operations with clean and renewable energy”, including a specific
1) G aming once meant hours on computers and couches. Not anymore, and Nexercise is one app to get you moving. Every time you exercise it tracks your progress and awards you points. These can be traded for real prizes, such as sports accessories and energy bars. Co-founder Greg Coleman believes the rewards can incentivise more sustainable lifestyle choices – walking or cycling to work, for instance, instead of travelling by car.
“Women’s strength, women’s industry, women’s wisdom are humankind’s greatest untapped resource. The challenge is to show how this resource can be effectively tapped in ways that benefit us all.” Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of UN Women, and former President of Chile
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Green Futures April 2012
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Daylight saving
Sun trap
Roof panels deliver cool light solution along with PV power
A panel to catch the sun and keep it too
Is it a skylight, or a solar panel? A Californian outfit called Enfocus has come up with something to combine the merits of both – but bring in far more usable light than an ordinary skylight. Better still, especially in California, it’ll keep out all that nasty solar heat gain too. The engineering company’s patented Diamond-Power panels have impressed the guys at Google so much, that they’re putting in a prototype version at one of their Silicon Valley offices. Each 45-kilo unit consists essentially of a rectangle of aluminium and glass, about 1.5 square metres in size, holding a series of lenses that can track the sun. These concentrate the light that falls on them by a factor of 400, and throw 80% of it onto an array of high efficiency gallium arsenic photovoltaic cells. The other 20% provides a cool stream of natural light into the building, illuminating it so attractively that nobody would feel the need to switch artificial lights on at the same time. Each panel should have an average power
output of 288 watts, and Enfocus reckons they’ll yield around 720 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. The big plus, though, is getting nearly 1,500kWh worth of natural light too – without converting it to electricity and back again, and suffering the associated efficiency losses in both directions. The sales pitch suggests offices could make savings of as much as 50% on electricity during daylight hours, with a payback on outlay within about five years. The pilot project at Google will be key in determining whether this combined technology (to give both natural light and electricity) is in fact more cost-effective than the alternative: solar on the roof, and a skylight. Unlike the kind of PV panels that you retrofit to an existing roof, Enfocus’s current design has to be integrated at the building stage – part of a trend that has architects thinking about energy generation from the first drafts [see GF79, p8]. So far, its plan is to concentrate on commercial
If we are going to continue harvesting more of our energy from renewable sources such as solar, storage is the next big challenge. Promising candidates include supercapacitors, which are popping up in all sorts of everyday applications – from flashlights to road signs. These devices have a lifetime of up to 20 years, whereas batteries only last a few years. Going a step further, researchers in India have developed a prototype that combines photovoltaic (PV) generation and a supercapacitor in one. Following exposure to the sun for four hours, the Amrita Smart solar tile can charge laptops and mobile phones in two hours, and store the energy for seven days – although the aim is to extend this capacity to 30 days. “This should be thought of as the first product in its generation”, says Dr Shantikumar Nair, Director of the Amrita Center for Nanoscience and Molecular Medicine in Kochi, “with future devices
customers who want to illuminate cool offices, rather than householders looking to bring daylight into dingy corridors. But with ever more people seeing solar as an attractive element in the home energy mix, you could imagine this technology being a big hit there too – a medley of “power to the people” and “let the sunshine in”. – Roger East Let the sunshine in
becoming thinner, even flexible, and with improved storage capacity.” Nair sees “tremendous opportunity for such technology”. He explains: “There is a need for off-grid electricity, which PV can provide, but also for storing this energy for use when required. Having one device that does all this is better than separate constituents like the panel and the battery.” Professor Yury Gogotsi at Drexel Nanotechnology Institute, Philadelphia, agrees that combining solar energy generation and storage is a good idea (albeit not a new one): “In applications where space is restricted it is desirable to have a generation and storage device in one rather than, say, a panel and a separate battery.” There are challenges. Such as “getting sufficient energy density without making the device too bulky”, says Gogotsi, who has worked on thin film carbon supercapacitors for integration with solar cells and other devices at Drexel
Lick of light?
Battery farm
A new paint could herald the return of ‘thermoelectricity’
China sets up renewable energy storage on record scale
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Brain the size of a planet, battery the size of a building – both sound like figures of speech, but the second at least is solid reality. It’s up and running at a combined solar power and wind farm near you. Near you, that is, if you live in Zhangbei, in China’s Hebei province. It’s currently, by a distance, the biggest battery in the world. Or, strictly speaking, thousands of batteries linked up in series to provide a total power storage capacity of 36MWh, for an installed
Photos: Dan Brownsword / Corbis
“This weekend, dear, shall we clean out the basement or go solar?” This scenario may soon be a real possibility, using a back-to-the-future approach called thermoelectric paint. Despite their many benefits, solar photovoltaic panels are not a do-it-yourself delight. Installing them is complex and typically requires someone certified to do it. They’re expensive too, and with payback times of 10 years or more, they require a real commitment. Now imagine a home energy system that, like solar PVs, harnessed the sun’s power – but was something you could
of the spectrum, they can potentially beat solar photovoltaics on price and performance – even with inferior efficiency. Professor Charles Stafford, a theoretical physicist at the University of Arizona, recently published a paper arguing that thermoelectric paint could provide an affordable, consumer-friendly path to solar energy usage. “Our calculations show that quantum effects should lead to very large thermoelectric voltages in these materials. And if the materials are cheap enough, we don’t need to worry that much about efficiency”, he says. He has identified a type of polymer called polyphenyl ethers that might do the trick. How far down the road toward commercialisation are we? Not very. “I’m a theoretical physicist”, Stafford points out. Still, while noting that “the devil is in the details”, he does not “foresee anything that will block it. With the right push, thermoelectric paint could be on the market five years from now.” Which means we could all soon be up on the rooftops, rolling out solar. – Carl Frankel
Photo: iStockphoto / Thinkstock
Paint your roof with power
easily do yourself. This is the promise of thermoelectricity. Thermoelectric materials have a cold side and a warm side. The warm side releases charge, which flows to the cold side, at which point you have a separation of positive and negative charge and, hey presto, electricity! In the 1950s, solar pioneer Maria Yelkes used thermoelectric materials to generate a very modest flow of electricity. But the cost of the material and the inefficiency of the process made silicon solar panels considerably more cost effective. Solar thermoelectric landed in the technology junk heap, and remained there for decades. Recently, researchers began investigating if thermoelectric materials might offer a way around a fundamental constraint on solar PV development. Because PVs can make use of only a relatively narrow range of the light spectrum, their efficiency is limited: the best commercial models currently available have a maximum of around 20%. Since thermoelectric materials have the potential to make use of a much broader range
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capacity of 100MW wind power and 40MW solar PV. With a smart grid connection to boot, that’s enough to play a valuable role in buffering the intermittence of both renewable sources. Whether it’s good value in itself, with an estimated $500 million price tag, is not quite the point. What China is really doing here is grabbing pole position in the race to make truly coherent energy solutions. It’s showing the way in combining renewable generation,
Nanotechnology Institute, Philadelphia. “And there’s the need to protect against overheating.” But, he adds, “the bottom line is Amrita’s prototype is a step in the right direction”. – Sara Ver-Bruggen Store up sunshine for a rainy day
power storage, and smart peak power supply and demand management – on an unprecedented scale. Nor is it any accident that it’s put together, in partnership with the State Grid Corporation, by China’s solar PV panel cum electric vehicle company, BYD. The batteries themselves are basically the same lithium-ion phosphate type that it designs for cars. And the Zhangbei installation takes over the ‘world’s largest’ title from AES Corporation’s 32MW system, also using car-type batteries, unveiled at the Laurel Mountain wind farm in West Virginia in 2011. Think of both, in fact, as just massive versions of what you might do yourself, with your own electric car in the garage wired up to your PV panels on the roof. That, of course, would be a key link in the future vision where millions of ‘prosumers’ trade power in and out of a vast distributed ‘energy internet’ [see GF83, p26]. Whereas, here, it’s being used in the service of a more centralised, grid-based ‘generate, store and supply’ model. What’s fascinating is how the roads to both futures are advancing together. – Roger East
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Greening Gaza
Kenya’s head of steam
Eco schools programme brings much-needed sustainable development to Palestine
For the geothermal power industry, the best natural steam is found nice and close to the Earth’s surface. Which helps explain the current buzz around hot prospects in East Africa’s Rift Valley: a giant trench stretching 6,000 km from the Red Sea to Mozambique, where two tectonic plates are slowly drifting apart. The potential for geothermal in this region is massive – estimated to exceed 15,000MW, according to a report backed by the UN University Geothermal Training Programme. Among those starting to see it as a big part of their energy future is Kenya, which has just leapfrogged into the list of the world’s top ten geothermal power producers. Kenya plans to treble its output in the next five years, on the
Palestine’s Gaza Strip will soon have as many as 20 ‘eco schools’, with light and power supplied by solar and geothermal sources. Designed by Italian green architect Mario Cucinella, the schools will also harvest rain and recycle greywater to minimise reliance on the area’s scarce water supplies. They will incorporate traditional Islamic features such as mashrabiya screens for shading and ventilation. At US$2 million per building, the schools don’t come cheap, but this is reportedly par for the course in Gaza, in part due to the high costs resulting from Israel’s economic isolation of the Strip. The first will be built in Khan Younis, in the south of the Strip, with funding from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development. Construction is expected to begin later this year once the Israeli authorities have approved the importation of required materials. A more comprehensive eco-schools plan, including the adoption of green guidelines for retrofitting and construction, will be developed once the pilot is complete.
Geothermal could give East Africa a major power resource
The scheme emerged out of a partnership between the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA – which supports Palestinian refugees) and Cucinella’s architecture firm, which is providing its services on a pro bono basis. According to Ugo Bot, senior external relations and projects manager for UNWRA, “We share the belief that environmentally friendly technologies and the green economy can represent the path toward sustainable development in Gaza and beyond.” Such an approach is particularly relevant for Palestine, says Khaled Sabawi, founder of local green energy company MENA Geothermal. The territory’s energy prices “are among the most expensive in
the region” he says, “and our population growth rates are 3.9% in Gaza and 2.9% in the West Bank. At this rate, by 2050, our population density will exceed that of Bangladesh. Fifty to sixty percent of our population is under 25. These people need to be schooled and housed.” The occupation has had a stifling effect on the economy, he says, leaving it heavily dependent on donor programmes – many of which are far from sustainable. “They look to the cheapest solution and have high energy and environmental costs.” By contrast, says Sabawi, “this programme will support energy independence and help a generation of young people become more energy-aware.” – Carl Frankel
Geothermal power top ten United States.............................. 3086 Philippines.................................. 1904 Indonesia ................................... 1197 Mexico ....................................... 958 Italy............................................. 843 New Zealand.............................. 628 Iceland........................................ 575 Japan.......................................... 536 El Salvador................................. 204 Kenya......................................... 167 Source: Geothermal Energy Association
Fridge-free food
way to achieving an installed capacity of 5,000MW by 2030. This drive towards a reliable and affordable source of electricity is an integral part of the Government’s ambition to become a mid-income economy in the next 20 years, as set out in its ‘Vision 2030’ development plan. The big hurdle is the high cost of exploration and drilling. The Kenyan Government accepts that it will have to cover some of the initial costs, and has set up the state-owned Geothermal Development Company (GDC), which aims to attract further capital by opening up opportunities for private sector participation. The UN’s Global Environment Fund is putting $18 million into a regional support network known as the African Rift Geothermal Development Facility, providing technical assistance to Uganda, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Tanzania – as well as Kenya – and helping them create a clear regulatory framework for the industry. It will be a high risk business, but well-connected UK startup Cluff Geothermal is one company that’s convinced it’s worthwhile. “The resource, by all indications, is fantastic”, says Managing Director George Percy, “and we certainly believe that in time East Africa really could become a global leader in geothermal output.” With Kenya’s economy growing rapidly, Percy says, the country’s Government is spearheading a drive to attract serious investment in an energy source that’s theoretically capable
Rift Valley: bursting with potential
of meeting all the country’s requirements many times over. The heat that drives this technology is there, underground, all round the globe. It’s low carbon (though not quite zero, with some subterranean greenhouse gases coming up in the steam). And it won’t run out any time soon. If you know a good place to tap into it, and you’ve got the capital, then a geothermal power station may well be a cost-effective proposition. The Philippines and Iceland get as much as 30% of their power from it, but California currently leads the world, with the world’s largest geothermal steam turbine plant at The Geysers. More than 20 other countries, on every continent, generate some electricity this way. – Roger East
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Well preserved
and their materials are designed to slow the rate of decomposition through temperature, light and humidity control. Vegetables like peppers and tomatoes last longer in moderate temperatures and high humidity, whereas many root vegetables can be stored for months in damp sand. Ryou’s use of water, sandboxes, beeswax, rice and wood provide natural and energy free ways of creating a microclimate suitable to various food types. She also uses combination storage techniques: for example, apples
emit ethylene as they ripen, which speeds up ripening of other fruit – but also prevents potatoes and onions from sprouting. The units help demonstrate that effective technology doesn’t have to mean high technology; it can simply mean acknowledging natural systems and working within those parameters. Sometimes innovation means making old wisdom new again, and reincarnating techniques from the past to provide relevant solutions for the future. – Jasmine Kubski
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“It’s not naïve to ask ourselves what is the value of our time; and what is the quality of our experience in that time? When you begin to ask these questions you discover that time itself […] is a very slippery commodity.” Photo: Nigel Hicks / Corbis
As much as we fill them with food, fridges are the hungriest white goods appliances in the home – at least when it comes to energy consumption. Switched on 24 hours a day, fridges and freezers are costing UK households £1.5 billion worth of electricity every year, even with significant improvements in efficiency. So it begs the question: do we really need to keep so much food so cold in the first place? Korean designer Jihyun Ryou has created a series of simple storage solutions aimed at keeping a range of food fresh, without using power to cool it. Fruit and vegetables, for example, continue absorbing oxygen in the air and releasing carbon dioxide, water vapour and heat as they ripen and decompose. So, Ryou’s units
Photo: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency & Mario Cucinella Architects
Traditional and modern techniques combine to keep food fresh and energy use down
Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development at Surrey University, discussing the benefits of a 21-hour week at the nef conference, ‘About Time’
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Green Futures April 2012
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Land of milk and money
start with the sums. According to a 2011 report in Farmers Guardian, the price paid for milk ‘at the farm gate’ has fallen by 28% in real terms since 1994 (when the Milk Marketing Board was abolished). The struggle merely to break even meant that few farms could invest in their future. Worse than that, almost half of the dairy farmers in England and Wales simply gave up. Two years ago, The Daily Telegraph reported: “Such is their despair that one [dairy farmer] a week commits suicide.” Julia Hawley grazes a herd of 60 near Melton Mowbray, and is also a member of the Dairy2020 Steering Group. To her mind, the retailers have a lot to answer for. “In the long term,” Hawley says, “[their] behaviour in forcing down prices has been irresponsible.” Lack of consumer awareness is also the problem, says Huw Bowles, Chief Operating Officer of the organic dairy co-op OMSCo. While British shoppers may jump at four-pints-for-a-pound promotions, they are mostly unaware of the cost cheap milk imposes on farmers, their cows and the countryside. Today, the EU’s impending abolition of quotas (introduced in the 1980s to prevent ‘milk lakes’ and ‘butter mountains’) may only increase the downward pressure on prices – as will the huge boom in production for export in some parts of South America. Meanwhile, the industry is under growing pressure to reduce its impact on the environment – and rightly so. The most obvious issue is greenhouse gases. Globally, dairy production accounts for some 2.7% of humankind’s carbon footprint. Extracting and processing milk are energy-intensive, but even in the industrialised world only one fifth of the industry’s emissions is CO2. Half of them come from the prodigious quantities of methane generated in cows’ stomachs and the rest from the nitrous oxide
Can the dairy industry rise to the challenge of sustainable growth? Huw Spanner ruminates.
Photo: iStockphoto / Thinkstock
but how sustainable?
thinking together to deliver economic and social sustainability, in addition to the environmental gains already in progress, through the Dairy Roadmap”. In the same year that Nocton hit the scrap heap, Dairy2020 managed to get the biggest players in the sector round a table to look for the best way forward [see box, ‘Shifting the dairy system’]. “It’s the first time all the issues – environmental, economic and social – have been looked at on the same page”, says Ivana Gazibara, who is leading the project at Forum for the Future. “To have the whole supply chain engaged and collaborating on the full range of sustainability issues is a great step forward.” There’ll be commercial benefits, too. Paice believes that Dairy2020 “could enable every operator from farm onwards to know how to ‘future proof’ themselves” – and he wants to see this happen. So, what are the challenges, in a nutshell? Let’s
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Dairy2020 aims to help organisations and individuals throughout the whole of the UK dairy sector find creative solutions to shared challenges. It’s exploring everything from new investment models to help farmers invest in sustainability and enjoy its returns, through to ways of engaging more effectively with the end consumer about the nutritional benefits of milk. Over the course of five workshops, some 40 organisations across the dairy supply chain – from industry representatives and policy makers to manufacturers and retailers to farmers – agreed on a set of principles to make the sector both responsible and resilient. Among them were Arla, Asda, DairyCo, Dairy UK, Danone, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), First Milk, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), Sainsbury’s and Volac. The challenges that UK dairy faces on the road to sustainability are too difficult for any organisation to tackle alone. That’s why Forum for the Future is working with a range of players from across the system on the most important issues, such as biodiversity, animal welfare and the importance of investing in innovation. Our impact will be greater if we can harness all their energy and innovations towards the same goal, through shared principles and action plans. This ‘systems innovation’ approach is at the heart of Forum for the Future’s ambitious new strategy. Sally Uren is Deputy Chief Executive, Forum for the Future.
Dairy production accounts for just under 3% of our global carbon footprint
Milking it: is economics driving dairy down a high-tech path?
Photo: Hemera / Thinkstock
Green and pleasant –
Is there anything that speaks more clearly of pastoral peace than a field of cows contentedly chewing the cud on daisy-speckled swathes of green? It’s an image many in the dairy sector like to promote – but how often is it an accurate one? Last year, the proposal to open an 8,100-cow ‘megadairy’ in Nocton, Lincolnshire provoked fears of ‘factory farming’ and ‘battery conditions’, and a petition raised by the pressure group 38 Degrees attracted over 80,000 signatures. The ‘flagship for the next generation of the UK dairy industry’– as described by its champions – eventually withdrew its planning application. But did all hope for the future of the industry disappear with it, as some contend? Not for Jim Paice, Minister of State for Agriculture and Food. He’s enthusiastic about Dairy2020 – a collaborative project managed by Forum for the Future – which, he says, “is bringing the industry’s
Shifting the dairy system
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lower carbon footprint.” Money talks, he adds, and as the cost of energy, mains water, bought-in feeds and fertiliser grows, farmers will focus on how to eke them out. Proposed reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy, recognising the need to feed a growing population and reduce environmental impact, are also likely to increase the flow of funds towards efficiency measures. Investment is crucial, so it must be good news that farm-gate prices are likely to go up. The rising world commodity price for skimmed milk powder has put a floor in the British market, and increasingly British farmers are forming co-ops on the Continental model to beef up their bargaining power. Now, Huw Bowles explains, they can say: ‘If you’re not going to pay us more for our milk, we’ll turn it into powder and sell it to China or India.’ For their part, the big supermarkets are now offering more realistic prices (though as yet, say producers, only for liquid milk). Tesco, whose offices were once picketed by angry dairy farmers, now pays enough to allow its suppliers not just to stay in business but to invest in better plant and better cows. Indeed, many retailers, concerned to be seen as socially responsible, now pay their suppliers a premium for milk that meets higher environmental and welfare standards. Waitrose buys its ‘essential’ range milk from a pool of 65 UK farmers, working with them to improve biodiversity and animal welfare, and paying them a premium. “This is great for us and great for our farmers”, explains Agriculture Manager Duncan Sinclair, “as it allows them to invest in their businesses.” When Compassion in World Farming launched its Good Dairy Awards last year, the winners included
Milk of kindness? In the future, when economic conditions improve, and as public perceptions change, we may see greater demand for free-range, and even fair-trade, dairy products. A pilot venture is bringing slaughter-free milk to the market, with the guarantee that no cow, calf or bull is ever killed as part of its production. The brand, Ahimsa, is inspired in part by Eastern principles of non-violence, compassion and respect for cows. The milk is expensive, at £2.40-a-litre delivered to doorsteps, and available from pick-up points in London and towards Luton. Another new brand, Cow Nation, promises long lives for a small herd grazing pastures and marshland in Suffolk. Its milk is on sale from Selfridges and online retailers at a similar price. But these will only ever be niche products. British milk is likely to become an increasingly polarised industry, perhaps following the example of Denmark, where some 20% of milk consumed is organic, but almost all of the rest is from zero-grazed cows.
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The challenge is to come up with a single global standard that the Unilevers of this world can buy into
Huw Spanner is a freelance writer and editor. Additional material by Anna Simpson.
Tech to the rescue
Photo: iStockphoto / Thinkstock
they can produce huge volumes of milk reliably and cheaply; because they allow both more efficient control of feed and waste; and because they can pay more careful attention to cows’ physical needs, not least by having a vet on the staff. The key is precise management – and small-scale dairy farmer Hawley finds this quite uncontroversial: “When I go to even a 1,000-cow farm”, she says, “I think: ‘This is big!’ – and yet there’s no reason why cows should not flourish on farms even of 10–15,000, as long as that attention to detail is there.” So, what can we look forward to? Is the industrialised ‘zero-grazing’ model – pioneered in the US and already being adopted in China – the shape of things to come? Is it Nocton or nothing…? In fact, the UK’s varied geography calls for – and rewards – a variety of approaches. “Every farm is different”, Richard Davis points out. “My neighbour just across the road farms on very heavy clay land whereas I run down to the river on gravel land. He grazes his cows a lot more than I do because his grass doesn’t burn up in the summer like mine.” An important new report from DairyCo, based on detailed analysis of 330 British farms, concludes that while intensive dairy farms can be profitable, the traditional ‘extensive’ system of putting cows out to pasture can be even more so. Likewise, both can lose money hand over fist: it all depends on how well they are run. Recent research suggests that the most profitable operations may make as much as 30p more per litre of milk than those making the biggest losses. Efficiency is the key, and the good news is that the economic, environmental and ethical pressures are all pushing in the same direction on this front. “The more efficient farmers”, says Huw Bowles, “are also the more profitable ones, and tend to have a
Photo: Hemera / Thinkstock
While intensive farms can be profitable, the traditional ‘extensive’ system can be more so
released by their manure and by other fertilisers spread on the fields that feed them. Dairy farming also places heavy demands on the earth’s resources. In 2010, a UNESCO report estimated that, on global average, it takes a thousand litres of water to produce a single litre of milk. It also noted that, in many countries – Britain not least – cows consume huge quantities of crops grown on land that might otherwise feed people. The UK’s dependence on imported vegetable protein – partly used to feed the herds – is one potential concern for the future. Another is biodiversity, as farmers struggle to extract enough forage from their own land. It’s no wonder there have been calls for a reduction in the consumption of dairy products – from the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission in 2007, and more recently from the UN Environment Programme. But there’s also plenty of demand for them, from health professionals who value its strengthening nutrients – calcium, protein and vitamins – as well as food-lovers and manufacturers. Given the pressures, it’s understandable that farmers are keen to maximise the yield from their cows. But for badly managed animals, this can be at the expense of their health. Richard Davis, who sits on the Dairy2020 Steering Group, is a Bedfordshire farmer whose 100-strong herd produces a million litres a year: “Metabolically”, he says, “a high-yield cow is on a knife-edge. If anything goes wrong when you’re asking so much of her, she’s in real trouble.” Infertility and calf-mortality rates are high, mastitis is common and a good quarter of the country’s cows are lame. Proponents of so-called ‘megadairies’, where a thousand or more cows spend virtually all their lives indoors, contend that they win on all three counts: economic, environmental and ethical. How? Because
not only the usual suspects – Yeo Valley, Ben & Jerry’s, Green & Blacks – but also Asda, which had made a commitment that cows must have access to pasture, for example, and male calves would not be shot at birth or exported. As Dairy2020 prepares to launch its vision on April 16, along with a set of guiding principles and draft actions for the industry, there is a sense that things are looking up. “I certainly feel more optimistic now than two or three years ago”, says dairy farmer Julia Hawley. “Increasing numbers of farmers are interested in their environmental impact. The processors, too, are very focused on water and energy efficiency and there is pressure coming down through the supply chain to reduce GHGs.” At WWF-UK, commodities expert Richard Perkins feels the dairy industry is taking responsibility for its emissions. The challenge now, he argues, “is to come up with a single global standard – covering GHGs, diffuse pollution and biodiversity, as well as how the cows are – that the Unilevers of this world, who have their own public commitment to sustainable production, can buy into”. Ivana Gazibara agrees: “Now, there needs to be a formal mechanism to take these good intentions forward. It needs to be accountable to all the industry stakeholders – whether that’s farmers and processors, or civil society and animal welfare groups. And there needs to be a mechanism for monitoring progress, and reporting on it transparently, with regular check-ins to see what’s still to be done.”
Raising cows for their milk is an ancient practice, but it can always be refined by advances in technology. For example, sensors in a collar worn by the cow or a pressure pad beneath her feet in the milking parlour can detect the first signs of lameness, long before a human could, so that it can be dealt with before it becomes acute. The Technology Strategy Board is providing funding for a £1.4 million project to develop a smart collar in a joint project involving The University of Strathclyde, Morrisons, the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) and Embedded Technology Solutions – a Strathclyde spin-out company which is developing the product, among others. The collar uses the same sensor as used in Wii gaming to monitor the cow’s movement and balance, and can send a health report to the farmers via a mobile signal. In the future, farmers could receive texts alerting them to any to distress in the dairy. Good news for Daisy, but what about her offspring? Increasingly now, farmers are buying sexed semen, to reduce the number of unwanted male calves. The mapping of the bovine genome, completed in 2004, is allowing breeders to select for traits that suit their system of farming or that are generally desirable, from high butterfat content, to resistance to disease, to efficient digestion that produces less methane and more milk. And what about the cows’ own diets? Research into additives to cattle feed that might reduce belching – including linseed and garlic – has yet to achieve much, but new varieties of forage crops hold promise. Aberystwyth University is working to improve strains of sugar-rich rye grasses and highprotein red clover to help cows produce more milk per hectare of feed.
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Taste test
Before the end of the year, if Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University gets his way, the world’s first test-tube burger will be flamegrilled by Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck in Bray and served to a celebrity guest. Meals at this restaurant don’t come cheap, but this one will be the climax of a €250,000 research project – and a milestone in Post’s quest to find new ways of feeding the world, without destroying the planet. His petri-dish patty will be made from a mixture of fat and cow muscle grown from stem cells in a culture of foetal calf serum (that’s blood plasma without the clotting agents) – a technology trialled in February. It may sound less appetising than a Big Mac – but it
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could bring huge environmental benefits. Producing beef this way results in a 96% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to rearing animals, and uses 45% of the energy, 1% of the land and 4% of the water associated with conventional beef production. Meanwhile, at Cornell University in New York, PhD candidate Jeffrey Lipton has developed a 3D food printer that lays down liquid versions of foods, dot by dot and layer by layer, to build up edible meals. “So far we have printed everything from chocolate, cheese and hummus to scallops, turkey and celery”, he says. At present, the technology uses liquid or melted versions of conventionally produced ingredients, but the aim is to create a range of ‘food inks’ made from
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Photo: REUTERS / Francois Lenoir
The hunt is on for new ways to meet our growing appetite. Andrew Purvis scans the menu.
hydrocolloids – substances that form gels with water. Homaru Cantu, a chef who has used the printer to make sushi, thinks this could have big implications for sustainability, not least because there would be no prepping of fresh ingredients, and therefore no food waste. “Imagine”, he says, “being able to grow, cook or prepare foods without the negative industrial impact – from fertilisers to packaging. The production chain for food would nearly be eliminated.” It’s a brave new world of scientific endeavour, but are these technologies sustainable? Will they deliver food that is better for us, produced at lower cost to the environment, and distributed more efficiently or traded more equitably? As Western-style diets become
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more popular in growing economies, can they help us meet demand without further depleting our resources? And on a practical note, can they be scaled up in an affordable way – enough to make a real difference? “Technologically, it will be possible to replace all conventional meat production with cultured meat”, says Hanna Tuomisto, the Oxford University researcher who analysed the environmental benefits of Post’s method. “However, there are political, funding and regulatory issues. Livestock farmers don’t like it because it threatens their jobs, but we’re not going to get rid of all conventional production overnight. Global demand for meat is rising all the time, so this cultured meat might help satisfy only that additional demand.”
It will be possible to replace all meat production with cultured meat
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However, it is the tried and tested methods of plant genetics and husbandry, practised over centuries, which have paid most dividends for the environment. At the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), trait identification work and ‘pre-breeding’ (incorporating those traits into new breeding materials) have produced a wheat variety that flowers earlier in the year. This means grain takes root when there is moisture around – a boon in drier, warmer climates, and potentially in Britain, too, where drought could spell disaster for farmers this summer. Trials conducted with the John Innes Centre in Norwich have shown the benefits. “They are significant”, says Ros Lloyd of NIAB, “delivering yield increases of up to 33% in southern Europe” – with a corresponding decrease in GHG emissions per tonne. Since the 1960s, wheat yields have risen from 1,400kg to 6,000kg per hectare, even without GM. “It’s very important,” Lloyd says, “that we improve awareness among policy-makers, researchers, agri-food businesses and consumers of the enormous benefits on offer from harnessing [through innovative breeding programmes] the genetic potential of plants.” Certainly, no innovative approach to the future of our food will reach any scale without successful campaigns to engage everyone from policy-makers to consumers. For Dan Crossley, an expert on sustainable food systems at Forum for the Future, the risk is that some technologies erode the value of food and make people even more disconnected from their dinner. “We
Drawbacks include uncertainty over safety and public opposition
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Dr Lipton’s food printer could also go global; he believes it will become as commonplace in kitchens as the food mixer. Kathy Groves, a consultant microscopist at Leatherhead Food Research in Surrey, can see the appeal. “It would save us an awful lot of hassle in product innovation, manufacture and troubleshooting”, she says. “It’s efficient, and you get a consistent product – but food is nicely variable, that’s the point, so I’m not sure it will take off.” In her view, the advance most relevant to sustainable development is nanotechnology – using tiny particles, less than a billionth of a metre across, to engineer everything from packaging and agrochemicals to health foods. In Germany, the R&D firm Aquanova has developed a nano-based carrier system, called NovaSOL, for introducing nutrients into foods and drinks in a way that makes them more absorbable. Chemical company BASF is doing the same with lycopene from tomatoes, known to combat cancer. In Australia, ‘micro-encapsulation’ – surrounding tiny particles or droplets with a coating – has been used to mask the taste and odour of tuna fish oil added to the ‘UP’ bread range sold by brand Tip Top, boosting omega-3 intake. But where nanotechnology has the biggest potential, Groves reckons, isn’t in nutritional benefits, but in ‘smart’ packaging that promises to cut food waste. The packaging changes colour when food deteriorates, taking the guesswork out of shelf life. Smarter still is a label with an invisible X printed in a nano-silver compound. “When food, especially meat, starts to deteriorate due to microbial activity, hydrogen sulphide is released”, says Dr Qasim Chaudhry, Principal Research Scientist at the Food and Environment Research Agency. “This reacts with
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silver and the X becomes visible.” The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimates that 800,000 tonnes of food, worth £2 billion, is thrown away in Britain each year in the mistaken belief that it has gone off. Smart labelling could prevent that. Equally promising are nano-formulated pesticides and fertilisers which could, paradoxically, reduce pollution. Nano-sized particles have a much larger surface area, per weight equivalent, than conventional materials, making then more reactive. “You need less, and a smaller amount [of agrochemical] can cover a much larger area”, Chaudhry says. Similarly, nano-sized additives in animal feed could improve the absorption of mineral supplements such as copper and zinc, meaning less would be excreted to pollute land and water. One drawback is uncertainty over safety. “Relatively little is known about the way nanomaterials behave when ingested as food”, says Dr Sandy Lawrie, Head of Novel Foods at the Food Standards Agency. “Nano-forms of a given substance may behave differently to other, larger forms of the same thing.” Before products could be marketed in the EU, they would have to undergo a thorough safety assessment on a case-by-case basis – though materials in packaging, which do not migrate into food, would be treated more leniently. Another drawback is the likelihood of public opposition, as with genetic modification (GM). Research carried out by the Food Standards Agency in 2010-11 showed that people are more accepting of nano-foods with a clear health benefit than they are of applications such as improving texture or flavour, which they see as trivial.
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We shouldn’t underestimate the power of vibrant food cultures
Andrew Purvis likes his steak medium rare and writes about food for The Daily Telegraph and National Geographic Traveller.
Try these at home
Photo: Lifesize / thinkstock
Will they print out as pretty as this?
shouldn’t underestimate the power of vibrant food cultures”, he says. “I’m very open to the idea that some of our ingredients might come from Petri dishes or printers in the future, but I’d shy away from believing these sorts of technologies will solve our global food crisis on their own. That’s why I’d like to see technology used to reconnect people with what they eat.” This is exactly what Ed Dowding has set out to do with Sustaination – a web and smartphone platform that puts producers in touch with local buyers. To his mind, “If lots of change is necessary, the one thing everyone is going to need is information.” Dowding’s idea is to build up a network of growers, distributors and community centres based on a local hub model. “We have a browsable map”, he explains, “so you can see not only who a business trades with, but who [their] connections trade with as well.” The efficiency gains will be impressive, with more food going where it’s wanted, and less waste all along the supply chain. Add open sourcing (so that people can share their top finds), live status updates (‘I’m cropping 20kg of peppers this week, at £1 a kilo’) and fair market prices – based on data, not guesswork – and it’s a potent tool for getting fresh, locally grown food on the shelf and the table. Which may well be one of the most appetising items on our future menu.
Anyone who’s failed to keep a basil plant alive by a kitchen window will know the challenges of indoor gardening. Urban homes just don’t seem well suited to growing food, but two low-tech, yet innovative, ideas aim to solve that problem. Windowfarms, which raised $250,000 on Kickstarter, is a hydroponic system you can install at home. Plants are stacked vertically by windows in recycled plastic bottles, while a pump circulates nutrients directly to their roots, which are suspended in clay. The system is automated, and so your basil faces much better odds of becoming pesto. Windowfarms kits are available to buy from $99, but plans to help you build your own are also freely available. That’s because Windowfarms is also an experiment in open-source research and development. Dubbed ‘R&D-I-Y’, the Windowfarms design evolves through versions, which feature contributions from a community of more than 28,000 globally. Much like software, this crowd-sourced approach rapidly increases the rate at which the design improves through innovation and testing. The community itself is self-organising, and encourages testing of others’ ideas. As Britta Riley, Founder of Windowfarms, says in her talk to the TEDx Manhattan conference: “In our culture, it is better to be a tester who supports someone else’s idea than it is to be just the idea guy.” That said, being ‘the idea guys’ hasn’t gone badly for former UC Berkley students Alex Velez and Nikhil Arora, who developed a way to grow (edible) mushrooms from waste coffee grounds. Their business, Back to the Roots, collects waste from coffee shops and then sells kits to grow these mushrooms at home. Each $20 kit can produce up to one and a half pounds of gourmet mushrooms. The secondary waste created by producing these kits – a mix of coffee grounds and mushroom roots – has value of its own, as Velez and Arora discovered when they tried to give away their increasing piles of it on Craigslist. On quizzing recipients on their need for this ‘waste’, Back to the Roots discovered it could be used as a high-quality soil enhancer, so they now sell that, too. One source of ‘waste’ has become two valuable products. – Michael Ashcroft
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Photos: xxxxx
Photos: xxxxx
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System shock From flocking birds to schooling fish, artist and photographer Thomas Jackson is inspired by self-organising systems in nature. The manufactured world is also made up of systems: production cycles, distribution chains, markets... How we organise these systems is perhaps the most important question we face. How much do we understand about them? How do they relate to the natural cycles on which we depend? These brightly coloured plastic cups hovering in the woods are meant to surprise us, but they might also prompt a more creative approach to change. Photo: Thomas Jackson thomasjacksonphotography.com
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“We will know the customer better than they know themselves” Martin Wright talks to Ronan Dunne, CEO of Telefónica O2. Ask Ronan Dunne about the future, and he conjures up a world where his company knows your every need and desire – and then helps deliver them in the most sustainable way possible. I can’t quite decide whether this is a benign image of corporate as concierge – a helpful, ever present butler – or something altogether more Big and Brothery. As a vision of corporate sustainability, though, it sure beats endless tedious talk about CSR and carbon targets. But more of that later. Dunne in person is chatty, unguarded – curious about sustainability without, it seems, wishing to appear obsessed by it. There’s none of that “When I was a child I used to notice the butterflies and think how incredibly fragile they looked, and I suppose that made me aware of nature’s fragility…” None of the whimsical spiel that I’ve heard from some business leaders, in other words – even though, with his soft Irish lilt, he could just about get away with it. Instead, he repeatedly cites his background as a finance officer. An accountant by training, he rose through the ranks of various corporates before ending up at BT, and so at O2, following its demerger from the UK’s former state-owned telecoms giant. And he admits that sustainability “hardly crossed the radar” until a few years ago. “I was aware of the debate, but there seemed to be a fair amount of intellectual masturbation going on, as opposed to real hard-edged business rationality.” So what changed? “I ran into some business people who said, simply, ‘there’s an opportunity here.’” And his inner CFO woke up and smelt the money. “I thought, if we can save costs by saving resources, and find a way to engage our customers, our employees… well, that makes sense in any business model.”
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Cue an array of targets on waste reduction, phone recycling, carbon cuts, etc. And some soulsearching about how best to engage customers. In this context, O2 has something of an advantage over many other less ‘visible’ companies: almost everyone owns a mobile. But they also swap it for a new one with bewildering speed. This is an industry hooked on neophilia. Its whole business model, pretty much, is predicated on a scary degree of churn. Just how sustainable is that? “We have to put our hands up to that one”, says Dunne. “If people want to change [their phones] more often than they should, we’re not going to stay in business by telling them they shouldn’t.” Making sure they recycle the old one helps, of course. That’s now common practice among all providers, but Dunne admits that when they first investigated just what happened to all the phones handed in, “whether they were being properly re-used, or just dumped, basically, we got some very uncomfortable answers. So we decided to audit the recycling market exactly as we do the supply chain”. They ended up with a partner, Redeem, who ensures that wherever possible phones are ‘repurposed’ for African and Asian markets, and where that’s not feasible, that “all the metals are extracted and dealt with properly”. But this only takes you so far, he admits. “If you are going to change your phone regularly, what are the bits you don’t have to change? Can we take the charger from the old one? Can we take the battery from the old one? It’s all about [minimising] redundancy.” He’s pleased O2 helped lead the drive for a universal phone charger, although frustrated that it’s taking ages to come to market. “I would have hoped that by this stage no new mobile was being sold with a charger in the box. You should get one with your first phone that lasts a lifetime. I wish I could have knocked heads together more, and said, ‘Just do it!’.” “As a sector,” he adds, “we’re slow when we have good ideas.” This isn’t just down to cautious corporation syndrome: the sacred cow of competition often plonks itself on the line. “When we as an industry try to get everyone in the room to agree, the project stops. Why? Because everyone brings their competitive agenda to the table. Even if I just sit down with someone from Vodafone or wherever to talk about a joint approach, there’s a very good chance someone else will stand up and say: ‘Oi, you can’t do that, it’s a cartel!’. We’ve got to find a way for people to be trailblazers and say: ‘Provided the model is open, and everyone can jump on board, it’s fine.’” One area where O2 are undeniably trailblazing is their commitment to give every phone they sell its own ‘eco rating’, under a scheme devised with Forum for the Future [see GF78, p37]. Research shows that around 4% of customers make this a key criterion in choosing one product over another (or at least, that’s what they say when asked). Dunne’s proud of the initiative and thinks that, in positioning terms, it produced “some good early wins”. But he’s also realistic: “In truth, is a customer really going to choose Product B over iconic Product A because of an eco rating?” He’s more enthusiastic over O2’s potential to help decarbonise the wider economy, citing the ‘Smart 2020’ report, which showed that ICT could enable
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dramatic emissions cuts – and cost savings, too. “Take health. We’re doing trials with the NHS where patients with long-term conditions can be monitored remotely. It’s the medical equivalent of tele-presence.” Not only does it save the health service money (nearly half of its work involves such conditions) but it also makes life sweeter for the patient, avoiding endless tiresome hospital visits. It doesn’t stop there. Dunne reels off a host of other examples of cost- and carbon-crunching wheezes which O2 is exploring: super-smart metering, to the point where domestic appliances are talking to each other to curb unnecessary power consumption; remote control of household electricity (“so if you can’t remember if you switched the lights off, you can check an app which will do it for you”); fine tuning truck drivers’ techniques to curb fuel consumption. He’s a big fan of collaborative consumption and peer-to-peer trading – to which, of course, ICT is key. He even paints a picture of O2 as champion of the corner shops in their fight to survive against the retail Goliaths. Thanks to canny software, they can fine-tune their yield management, reach out to communities via direct advertising, and even take part in ‘swap and barter’ networks to cut waste and save money. “What was once only available to big enterprise [via expensive mainframe computers] can now be in the hands of just about everyone on smartphones and tablets.” “When the internet took off, everyone thought the markets had all gone global, that there were no boundaries. But what we are seeing now is consumption becoming more personal, more local. Starbucks can do a national advertising campaign, but with O2 priority moments (which highlight exclusive offers to O2 subscribers nearby), your [independent] café owner can compete directly with Starbucks on his high street because he can do a locally targeted one.” And for the trusting customer happy to share their inner lives with O2, the possibilities don’t end there. “Say you’re stuck in traffic on the M4; you were due at Heathrow to be on the 5.25. I know that, so I’ll book you on the next available flight and I can get in touch with BA and get a refund because the airline will know that there’s no way you can get there, so they can resell it. I offer you the products and services that I know you truly value on the best available deal, because I know as much about your consumption patterns as you do, and probably more. So we will be the curator of our customer’s best experiences because we know them even better than they know themselves.” Which is where it all starts to sound somewhat Big Brothery. But Dunne is confident that this needn’t be a cause for concern. The key, he says, is “transparent value exchange”. And that means? “It means I know that you know this information about me, but I also know that you are going to use it for our mutual benefit and there’s going to be some sort of ‘gain-share’ between us.” Long term, he argues, this should enable people to make better choices, and greener ones, too. “We want our customers to trust us to be their mediator – their concierge, if you like.” That’s the business model of the coming decades, he concludes. “All the companies who survive will be knowledge companies. So that’s what we will be.”
Smartphones can help local cafes compete with Starbucks
Martin Wright is Editor in Chief, Green Futures.
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How to spend it
The big spenders have a new-found love of stories
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“Luxury should be synonymous with sustainability”, says James Lawson of the international market research firm Ledbury, which specialises in the spending habits of high net worth individuals. It’s a radical statement. Much of what we associate with luxury – indulgence, extravagance, sheer look-at-me bling – is the antithesis of responsibility. ‘Isn’t that the whole point?’ you might ask. We seek out treats to help us escape the many ‘shoulds’ of daily life. How unpleasant, then, if their exquisite façade turns on us and asks us to remember our values… But is luxury necessarily a guilty pleasure? No, says Lawson – or at least, not any more. Increasingly, he explains, “the main reason that people buy luxury is the story behind the product and the brand. Maybe 20 years ago when you bought your diamond ring you didn’t care. Now, you want to hear where it came from and understand the artisanship. There’s a shift from the desire to tell the world ‘I have more’, to a more discerning message: ‘I know more’.” Lawson’s insights are based on interviews with those who know – Gaetano Cavalieri, President of the World Jewellery Confederation, for one, who confirms that the luxury market is increasingly driven by trust and legitimacy. Uche Okonkwo, Executive Director of the consultancy Luxe Corp (which counts Gucci and Christian Dior among its clients), also agrees. She expects the internet and digital communications to play a significant role in changing the expectations of luxury shoppers. Indeed, if consumers at the top are developing a real interest in their purchases – from how they are sourced and the materials used, to the craft and culture of those who make them – luxury brands could become a real force for change. The global industry for luxury goods is estimated to be worth $200-220 billion a year – a value all too rarely reflected in the social and environmental costs. You needn’t dig far past the gold and diamonds to find horror stories of displaced communities and contaminated drinking water… Now, start-ups with better stories to tell are stealing a trick at the 1.618 Sustainable Luxury Fair – a major annual event in Paris, which screens all would-be exhibitors, and invites only the leading examples of responsible practice to shine. Among them is honestby, the creation of Belgian designer Bruno Pieters, who used to work for Hugo Boss. This online luxury fashion retailer has made transparency its USP. If you’d like to know more about a beautiful charcoal cotton jersey (the one
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with the hand-woven harris tweed sleeve) before you reach for your credit card, honestby will tell you where the cotton came from, whether it’s organic and vegan, where it was grown, how much was used, how it was dyed, who spun it, who cut it, and how much they were paid. Any more questions, just ask. If knowing more is the future of luxury consumption, then this is the avant garde. Sustainable sourcing is popping up in more mainstream salons, too. “There are two major luxury fashion events in Florence and Milan”, says Livia Piermattei, who advises high-end brands as Managing Partner at the change consultancy Methodos. “This year, for the first time, they each featured ‘Green Box’ – an initiative dedicated to sustainability.” Of course, Paris and Milan are no longer the heart of the luxury world, as new markets expand across Asia and the Middle East. China is set to be the world’s largest luxury consumer market in the next 3-6 years – and a similar trend has been spotted there. Back in 2007, Angelica Cheung, Editor of Vogue China, was already reporting “growing sales of luxury goods that do not flaunt their logos” in the WWF report Deeper Luxury. She referred to “a new class of Chinese consumers ready to spend money on quality and style without showing it on their sleeves”. So the big spenders have a new-found love of stories. But lots of great buys now have tales to tell, from fairly traded foods to recycled rubber shoes. Why should the luxury market have the edge as sustainability’s natural ally? I put the question to Barbara Coignet, Founder of the 1.618 Sustainable Luxury Fair. For her, “It’s about the emotional charge of something that is going to last: its quality, the time it has taken to make, the know-how of those who made it…” ‘What is going to last’ is the essence of sustainability, and it’s a recurrent theme amongst luxury brands. “You never actually own a Patek Philippe”, reads the slogan for a high-end Swiss watch maker. “You merely look after it for the next generation…” Cringe if you like, but this is quite an offer. It recognises our immense capacity to invest objects with memories and hopes, and make them a sign of our experiences and the people we have loved. But, the slogan suggests, the real value here is not about hanging onto the past through possessions: it’s about building a future that you already care about. We shouldn’t underestimate the comfort material goods can offer. The Chinese contemporary artist Song Dong recognises this in his installation ‘Waste
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Photo: Page iStockphoto / Thinkstock
Can our treats be the epitome of our values? Anna Simpson splashes out.
Not’, in which he displays over 10,000 possessions (including more than 20 watches) – the entire content of his mother’s apartment. “Saving familiar items from the past”, he says, “helped a whole generation to cope with the social and political turmoil [of Mao’s Cultural Revolution].” Still, hoarding cheap belongings is not the way forward for sustainable consumption. Indeed, the most exciting trends are towards shared ownership, with quality goods flowing back and forth between peers and around communities, meeting needs as they arise [see GF82, p43]. But how does the world of luxury tie in with this shift? Isn’t it all about possession – of a rather exclusive sort? Not for Orsola de Castro, the founder of fashion label From Somewhere, which makes clothes out of recycled offcuts of luxury materials. “My ambition”, she says, “is that we will stop looking at luxury as something that belongs to just a few, and understand that the greatest meaning of the term ‘luxury’ is not just having it but, equally, giving it.” Think of classy swishing soirées, first launched by sustainable communications company Futerra. There, sucking on strawberries and sipping champagne, you swap your silk scarfs for someone else’s high heels. You could say these trendy parties are all part of a shift in how we think about luxury. Discerning or not, what the luxury consumer wants isn’t so much Ali Baba’s cave as the sense of starring in a magical tale. In Coignet’s words, “it’s a moment, an encounter, a discovery...” It’s a promising trend, from a sustainability point of view. It means conspicuous consumption no longer has to be centre stage. So, what will luxury brands actually offer in the future? How will they package up quality and timelessness? Can they create rich experiences, without compromising natural resources? And how will they make them feel unique – that rare treat to tempt a purse from a pocket?
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Luxury Considered, a report by Ledbury Research and the diamond company De Beers, marks out personalisation as a major trend for the future. Iconic designs are replaced by the tailor’s craft: whether it’s a coat stitched to fit your hips or a holiday shaped to suit both your passion for Renaissance art and your desire for a detox. Increasingly, luxury hotels invite their guests to indulge their muscles and minds in spas – which can be more or less energy and water intensive depending on the facilities and design. This is exactly what Hong Kong-based hotel group Shangri-La (a name to evoke serenity, inspired by the legendary land in James Hilton’s 1930s novel Lost Horizon) is planning for its London flagship. The hotel will take up the top 18 storeys of the capital’s much anticipated skyscraper The Shard, and the entire top floor will be a spa. Its branding draws on the Chinese notion of ‘Chi’ – “the universal life force that governs wellbeing and personal vitality” – and personalised service will be de rigueur. As you swan about in soft white robes, you can pick your treatment oils to suit your ‘personal element’… How sustainable the spa, and the hotel itself, will be remains to be seen. The Shangri-La Group is just beginning to address some of the issues, such as food sourcing (its restaurants no longer serve shark fin soup). But it is serving up ‘ways to help you feel good’ as a luxury – and this is a trend to watch. As the market moves from superficial shimmer towards inner peace, a big question rears its head. Is luxury really reserved for the rich, or is it something we can all find if we look for it? Is it as simple as quality time with the people we care about? Or a breath of really fresh air? Sadly, for many, these treats are rare indeed. Has the time come to recognise their true value?
The luxury of time: more valuable than the chicest watch?
Research marks out personalisation as a major future trend
Anna Simpson is Managing Editor, Green Futures.
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Is solar the new normal?
into the bankruptcy courts. But the longer-term ‘industry learning rate’, driven by improved production technologies and economies of scale, is for costs to fall by 18% for every doubling of production capacity. That doubling has happened twice over since 2009 – and, with investment pouring in [see box, ‘An enduring sun’], there’s no sign of a slowdown. The eventual advent of new techniques, such as flexible thin film and spray-on solar, may see further dramatic price falls. For years, of course, small scale off-grid solar has been a success in developing countries, providing a cheaper and healthier alternative to kerosene for home lighting, for example – witness the many solar winners of the celebrated Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy [see GF77, p28 and GF82, p32]. It’s increasingly competing directly with diesel generators, too. But it is unsubsidised grid parity that has huge symbolic status as a tipping point. Solar power’s detractors have long loved to deride its dependence on government incentives. But this conveniently ignores the reality that energy subsidies around the world remain hugely skewed towards the fossils [see box, ‘Skewed subsidy’]. Of course, state support has been vital in nurturing the nascent solar sector, with particularly striking success in Germany. One way to give early adopters a worthwhile rate of return on the ‘capital cost versus value of output’ equation was to set a deliberately high FiT for solar power sold to the grid. But good policy allows support rates for new installations to decline progressively as their capital costs come down (it’s called ‘degression’). Ideally, as Jeremy Leggett of UK firm Solar Century put it, this promotes “a smooth glide path to solar parity”. The success of the incentives then allows their abolition. The UK Government’s recent clumsy and abrupt slashing of FiTs payments may
PV’s ‘levelised’ costs It’s easy to establish how much each watt from the grid is costing you in cash terms (today, if not tomorrow): you just look at your bill. But working out what solar might save you? That requires some sums. In essence, you’ll slowly recoup your initial capital outlay, watt by watt, according to how much electricity your system generates. This depends on its conversion efficiency, and the ‘solarisation rate’ – that’s how many rays it will receive in your latitude, climate and location. The figure you end up with, for costs divided by watts, is known in the trade as your levelised cost of energy (LCOE). It may sound arcane, but this is exactly the same calculation that a generating company does for any new power station – which is, after all, what your solar panels are. To do the sums properly, says US solar enthusiast Jay Tyson, you need to factor in things like maintenance and costs of financing, and specify an expected lifetime of the system. He calculates that a 10kW rooftop PV system installed in New Jersey in 2011 can already just beat grid parity, based on these main values: • Unsubsidised capital cost: $50,000 up front, including installation, plus at least $7,000 to replace the inverter after 12 years • Useful life of system: 25 years • Ongoing maintenance: just “$25 for my time and water spent on the annual hose-down during pollen season, and $450 for an electrician’s visit once every six years for something oddball, like replacing wiring that got chewed on by critters” • Inflation: 3% per year (used as the ‘discount rate’, which values future costs and benefits less than immediate ones) • Tax treatment: neutral, no increased taxes on the value of the house • End-of-life costs: recycling value equal to removal cost • Panel performance: on a well-oriented unshaded roof, 12,000kWh in year 1 (when panels are new), declining at 1% per year • Grid electricity retail prices: $0.19 per kWh in 2011, rising by 5% per year
Above: Hawaii, where the sun earns its keep Right: Nottingham’s new look
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Why buy all your watts from the electric company, when it works out cheaper to generate some of your own? This so-called ‘grid parity’ may already be within reach of the odd wellsited wind turbine, but the biggest (and, to many, the most surprising) gamechanger on the horizon is costeffective solar power. Of course, shelling out for solar today is still a major capital investment – enough to put many people off, even with the sweetener of feed-in tariffs (FiTs) or other subsidies. But once you take into account all the savings you will make by not buying mains electricity, a compelling little calculation known as the ‘levelised cost’ equation [see panel], it’s a very different story. Crunch those numbers, and it soon becomes apparent that solar is, in a surprisingly large number of places, poised to compete directly, unsubsidised, with the grid. Hawaii has already got there. The island’s sunny climate is near ideal for solar power, while its inflated power prices make it easier for PV to compete. OK, so Hawaii’s a special case. But David Crane,
Green Futures April 2012
the CEO of US electric utility major NRG, insists that “in the next three to five years you’ll be able to get power cheaper from the roof of your house than from the grid”. A map published recently on the internet says this ‘retail grid parity’ could be a reality even sooner for many Americans. John Farrell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who created the map, says Crane’s prediction should hold true for solar, unsubsidised, in San Diego as soon as 2013, with other cities on both seaboards following in a few years. Much of southern Europe could be hitting parity around then too, according to a new report from the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA). It claims subsidy-free solar will be cost-competitive in Italy in 2013, and in Spain and southern France the following year. The most startling new factor is how cheap PV panels are getting. In 2011 alone, the average price fell by half. That, admittedly, was an exceptional year: one which saw fiercely competitive Chinese producers with huge new factories vying for market share – and sending some higher-cost US and German operators
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Photo: E.ON
As the cost of photovoltaic panels drops to the tipping point, says Roger East, the holy grail of ‘grid parity’ is within our grasp. So, how will this reshape the world of power?
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Despite all the headlines about subsidy fiascos and firms going bust, says Michael Liebreich, Chief Executive at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), solar had “a far better year than the press coverage would lead one to believe”. In fact, 2011 was the year it became the largest sector in the (expanding) renewables field – with stock market sage Warren Buffett among those buying a piece of the action. • T otal clean energy investment, 2011: $260 billion (+5%) • Of which solar: $136.6 billion (+36%) • Total investment in distributed renewables (mainly rooftop PV): $73.8 billion Source: BNEF preliminary annual figures for 2011
Skewed subsidy
faster than comparable-sized nuclear plants. And it’s notable that the Chinese, keen to build on their PV production strength, are putting money on them (with the added reassurance that China has rich resources of the ‘rare earth’ elements tellurium and indium, on which thin-film PV modules currently rely). On top of a huge expansion of rooftop installations, they’re planning a string of gigawatt-scale solar farms, in Datong City near Beijing, as well as in remoter Tibetan and Mongolian regions. That’s solar on a nuclear scale. The implications are profound. Countries with precious few cards in today’s geopolitical games could find their hands transformed by their solar potential. Energy security will start to be mapped in new ways, and unexpected places will emerge as powerhouses of energy-hungry new industries. Solar desalination, ‘green’ hydrogen production, the relocation of manufacturing and a host of other possibilities will start opening up. A whole raft of technological changes, too, will be spurred by the incorporation of more solar power in the energy mix. Daytime-only PV power might run the aircon and drip-charge the electric car, but intermittency is an issue both individuals and grid managers will need to master. So, make a better battery and the world will beat a path to your door. Other complementary technologies will be at a premium too. At home, you’ll want much smarter power management. Not only to tap into your PV while it’s peaking, but so your fridge and your other appliances know when grid power is most plentiful, minute by minute, and use it then. You’ll want to save money by doing that, so not just smart metering but smart time-related charging becomes a must.
Photo: iStockphoto / Thinkstock
• $ 66 billion: subsidies for renewable energy, 2010 (IEA estimate) • $409 billion: direct subsidies to fossil fuel consumption, 2010, mainly to hold down prices in developing countries and transition economies (IEA estimate) • $45 billion (possibly as much as $75 billion): indirect support to fossil fuel industries in OECD countries, through 250 different mechanisms such as tax credits, government underwriting of corporate risk and favourable access to land and infrastructure (OECD estimate)
have knocked the industry off balance in the short term, but the logic should still hold good over a longer period. As with any disruptive technology, however, nothing is cast in stone. Some insist that recent panel price crashes will prove short-lived. Others predict that rising interest rates will choke off householders’ ability to afford the capital outlay on PV. Still others warn, sensibly enough, that shortages of roof space or suitable land must be a constraint at some point. Perhaps the biggest unknown on grid parity is the future price of fossil fuels. Some pundits (waving the ‘abundance of shale gas’ card) even claim those may go down, not up. This, though, seems an improbable punt – especially since taking climate change seriously “must eventually mean putting a higher price on carbon emissions”, says Forum for the Future energy expert Iain Watt. What’s more likely is that renewable sources will increasingly out-compete new fossil fuel power stations, not only for distributed generation but even for providing wholesale power for the grid. We’re actually seeing this happen with onshore wind. BNEF’s sums show that some turbines are already competitive grid power sources without subsidy, and that this should be more generally true by 2016. And, astonishingly, solar PV is fast becoming so cheap that ‘utility-scale’ solar farms will be able to do the same. By 2014, says the EPIA, this should be the case in Italy, with other southern European countries following suit. And PV might even overtake concentrated solar power [see GF83, p12] as the preferred option for Saharan countries keen to harvest their vast solar resource. It helps that solar farms can be set up ten times
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Sophisticated grid management, meanwhile, must help balance a more complex mix of intermittent and base load generation. The grid system itself – indeed, the landscape – will start to look different. Handled badly, solar farm siting could spark planning battles that put our wind turbine controversies in the shade. Conversely, the supposed need for more huge fossil fuel and nuclear power stations assumes that you meet electricity demand by centralised generation, fanning out to the eventual consumer through a network of high-tension lines and substations. It’s time to change that assumption. Rooftop solar helps challenge that whole model not just in the geographic sense but in the relationship between ‘suppliers’ and ‘users’ – between producers and consumers. Iain Watt looks forward eagerly to seeing the big suppliers’ centralised “we sell, you buy” assumptions challenged by new models of entrepreneurship and community power. Step forward, then, the new ‘prosumer’ – that’s anyone with a PV panel, a turbine or any other device that produces any power (the fuel cell car in the garage, perhaps). Step forward, in fact, legions of ‘prosumers’, with the collective bargaining clout to demand equitable deals, whether selling or buying. Grid parity, in retrospect, will look less like an objective and more like a staging post on the road to cheap and ubiquitous PV – one of the keys to the “third industrial revolution” vision of Jeremy Rifkin [see GF83, p26], with “lateral power” flowing across an “energy internet” to and from “millions and millions of players”. Roger East is a freelance writer and editor, specialising in sustainable development.
Countries with precious few cards in today’s geopolitical games could find their hands transformed by solar potential
Left: Germany’s generous FiTs have seen roofs sprout panels across the country Below: Sunny San Diego: solar’s poised to hit grid parity as soon as 2013
Photo: iStockphoto / Thinkstock
An enduring sun
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Delivering the Green Economy
How will technology help us live meaningful lives in 2025? Will we have virtual PAs to help us keep track of meetings in the cloud? Will a community’s water use be tracked and optimised, down to every last drop? Will we leave the lippy behind for augmented reality facial enhancements? These are just some suggestions to come out of FutureScapes – a collaboration between Sony, Forum for the Future, and a wide range of thinkers, inventors, artists, designers and entrepreneurs. They are exploring the potential of technology and entertainment to enable sustainable lifestyles, come 2025. It’s not about predicting the future: it’s about getting better at imagining the possibilities. How could innovations in ICT bring us closer to each other, and to the natural world? Can new software help us find creative solutions that streamline our day-to-day? The Futurescapes team has carried out an extensive interview programme, backed up with desk research, to come up with four scenarios imagining what life might be like in 2025. Each one has been made into a short film, presented through the eyes of a woman in 13 years’ time, who talks about how her life has evolved, and what she thinks the future will bring‌ So, what are the options? What does her life look like in a world shaped by rapid innovation, against the background of diminishing resources? Or in a world where ownership is seen as cumbersome, and sharing
(virtual and material) resources is the defining ethos? Sony wants to use the scenarios to talk to people in a new way about their future. The films bring an emotional dimension to forecasting, helping people imagine how their own lives might change, and prompting them to ask how they might live in more sustainable and fulfilling ways. With the scenarios as a launch pad, FutureScapes has stimulated a wave of intellectual, scientific, social and artistic responses – from a creative brainstorm with some of Europe’s leading sustainability thinkers, to innovation workshops drawing on experts in R&D, architecture, design and ecology. The project has also been tapping social media for the inspiration of the masses. Drawing on this pool of ideas, FutureScapes will soon be sharing a selection of concepts for sustainable living in 2025. Esther Maughan Mclachlan is General Manager, Sustainability, Marketing Communications Europe, at Sony. The whole purpose of FutureScapes is to share ideas and gather opinion widely. Join in by watching the films and sharing your thoughts at: www.sony.co.uk/futurescapes Follow us @better_futures or use #futurescapes.
3/12/12 5:37 PM
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Tomorrow’s leaders
SallyUren
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.
Gregor MacLennan Class of: 2000 – 01 Currently: Peru Program Coordinator, Amazon Watch Why I chose the MProf I’d studied anthropology for my undergraduate degree, and was interested in working on issues around conservation and development. I was starting to hear about sustainable development, and liked that it balanced the human and the environmental challenges. Then I saw the course advertised, and it seemed the perfect fit.
What I learnt Through the placements in different industries and sectors, Forum really set me up for the work I do now: whether it’s working with communities, talking with shareholders and investment firms, or probing a CEO about a company’s impacts. It has helped me to understand the different perspectives people have, and how to reach out to them in the most effective way. Career to date After the Masters, I went with a friend to Peru to visit a community I’d worked with previously. We discovered that the whole place had been overrun by illegal loggers, so we got involved in trying to help the community out. I founded a small, non-profit organisation doing grassroots campaigning and stayed for seven years. After that, I moved to San Francisco to work for Amazon Watch, which challenges corporations and banks over destructive oil drilling and infrastructure projects that threaten the survival of indigenous peoples.
What I plan to do next I’m increasingly interested in participatory mapping, and how we can use maps and other visualisation techniques to tell stories and share perspectives. In Peru, I helped communities draw maps of where they lived which show that the rainforest isn’t just an expanse of green, but a place brimming with history, hunting, burial grounds and medicinal plants. It’s a way of demonstrating to companies that they can’t just come in and destroy an area for oil. I’m pretty excited by the possibilities at Amazon Watch for exploring those techniques more.
Dumb down to scale up? Earlier this month I chaired a panel discussion, asking just what it will take to move sustainability from the margins to the mainstream. It’s an important question. While sustainability has been on the corporate agenda for several years now, it’s far from the norm. The mainstream investor asking questions about sustainability cuts a lonely figure, for one... Meanwhile, resources dwindle and social inequalities grow. The panel wasn’t short of ideas to take us from a few impressive pioneers to a mass movement. We could seduce sovereign wealth funds into reworking their mysterious machinations. Or harness the power of public procurement, making green a requirement, not an add-on. Or we could address (once more) the need to make the business case for sustainability (why is that still so hard…?). Yes, I thought, we’re on to something here – practical tips for taking sustainability from the niche to the heart of things! But, alas, the conversation, now with the audience involved, quickly threw up
Advice for future leaders You mustn’t feel like you have to influence the largest number of people possible – just focus on what you enjoy, and what feels right, and do that. Gregor MacLennan was in conversation with Katie Shaw. Find out more about the work of Amazon Watch: amazonwatch.org
why none of these strategies might actually do the trick. Suddenly, things got very confused and a bit stuck. I’d like to think that this turn of events wasn’t entirely down to my chairing prowess, but more because sustainability is complex, and there are no easy answers. However, what really struck me was that sustainability practitioners, as a group, tend to overcomplicate things. Yes, we do. So – gasp, horror – perhaps to scale up, we need to dumb down a little? There are possibly three simple ways of taking pioneering practice and helping it flourish in the mainstream: 1. Create new partnerships. This is how the Marine Stewardship Council has moved from a very shaky start to certifying or pre-certifying 10% of the global fish harvest. In a way you could argue this isn’t mainstream at all, but in the UK, many retailers stock 100% MSC-certified fish. 2. Co-opt the big guys. From sovereign wealth funds, to Chinese overseas investment funds, to entire government policy frameworks… It’s only by engaging with the current power bases that significant change will be sustained. 3. Communicate the concepts. Help society and business visualise the change you’re trying to create. Take the London 2012 Games, which promises to be the most sustainable Olympics ever. It’s an incredibly ambitious target, given that these global challenges are likely to be the last thing on the minds of the millions swarming through the gates. But if they travel sustainably, are provided with locally sourced food, and prompted to use the recycling facilities, sustainability will hopefully become real. There you have it: my three Cs. They are by no means the only routes to scaling up – but they are probably a good start. Sally Uren is Deputy Chief Executive at Forum for the Future. @sallyuren
You can bet it’s Fairtrade
Big and green
Step change
Meet the Sustainable Business Models Group.
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Green Futures April 2012
They still need to make the business case for sustainability to key decision-makers on the inside. And they’re also battling against external barriers to change, from regulation to consumer attitudes. If these leaders are going to overcome the barriers, they’ll need to work together. That’s why we have formed the Sustainable Business Models Group. M&S, O2, Kingfisher, B&Q, TUI Travel, Unilever and Bupa have joined up to find practical ways to change how they do business. They’re asking how they can boost their commercial success by delivering social value within environmental limits. Where to start? With a long hard look at disruptive innovation for sustainability. By
which we mean: “An offer to customers which creates a new market and/or significantly changes an existing market in a way that creates superior sustainability outcomes.” Take Cafedirect, set up by four development NGOs and a producer cooperative. It changed a market by making ‘Fairtrade’ synonymous with ‘quality’, so that it became normal for UK consumers to buy ‘ethical’ hot drinks. Its competitors have pretty much all launched hot beverages labelled Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance or organic. – Zoe Le Grand and David Bent Contact: z.legrand@forumforthefuture.org
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The city of Bristol in England’s south-west is gearing up to celebrate innovation and sustainability with a nine day festival in June. The line-up includes talks from the popular Australian professor Clive Hamilton, campaigner Tony Juniper, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, and Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project. “We have a packed exciting programme of inspirational art, culture, music, film and comedy lined up”, says BIG Green Week curator Paul Rainger of Forum for the Future. “As well as top speakers, there’ll be Bristol’s biggest market, an electric bicycle extravaganza, and the Festival of Nature – Europe’s largest free natural history festival.”
Photo: Photodisc / Thinkstock
Most businesses are beginning to realise that they need to make changes to meet the combined challenges of resource depletion, climate change and population growth. But all too often, these changes are slow and incremental. We’re tweaking ‘business as usual’ to make it more carbon-efficient and slightly less wasteful. Given the scale of the challenge, we need to be bolder still. It’s time to probe the very way that a business is constructed. We need innovation, not just at a product level, but at a structural level: in the business model itself. Even Forum for the Future’s most pioneering partners are finding this tough.
Bristol gets the bunting out.
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New to the Forum Network Since the last issue of Green Futures, HSH Group, Kimberly-Clark, Ogilvy Earth, Recyclebank, TalkTalk Group and Veja have joined Forum for the Future as Members.
Forum for the Future has teamed up with the Bristol Green Capital Partnership to stage the festival. Supporters include Good Energy, Wessex Water and Bristol City Council. “BIG Green Week is shaping up to be a must attend festival for anyone with an interest in the environment”, says Council leader, Barbara Janke. The festival’s Green Pass, priced at £10, offers advanced booking, up to 20% off tickets, and discounts at a range of local cafes, restaurants, and hotels during BIG Green Week. www.biggreenweek.com
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Want to know how your company can perform better, become more energy efficient and save money?
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Ella’s Kitchen Alison Lindley, alison@ellaskitchen.co.uk Energy Saving Trust 020 7227 0398 www.energysavingtrust.org.uk The Environment Agency Brian Francis, brian.francis@environment-agency.gov.uk
Leeds City Council www.leeds.gov.uk/ London Borough of Croydon Bob Fiddik, Bob.Fiddik@croydon.gov.uk Lloyd’s Register www.lr.org Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) James Simpson, 020 7811 3315
Finlays Michael Pennant-Jones, 020 7802 3239
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Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227802435 FirstGroup plc Terri Vogt, 07748118343 Food and Drink Federation Nicki Hunt, 020 7420 7132 Friends Life Sandra Latner, 08452 683135 GallifordTry Infrastructure Guy Wilson, Guy.Wilson@gallifordtry.co.uk Gearbulk www.gearbulk.com/ GSH Group Lee Price, 01782 200 497 www.gshgroup.com Heineken UK Richard Heathcote, 01432 345277 Hewlett-Packard Nancy Keith Kelly The Highways Agency Dean Kerwick-Chrisp, Dean.KerwickChrisp@highways.gsi.gov.uk www.highways.gov.uk/ HSH Group Natalie Chan, www.hshgroup.com IGD Dr James Northen, 01923 851919
Maersk Line www.maersk.com/ Mars Drinks www.marsdrinks.co.uk National Grid Mike Elmer, mike.elmer@uk.ngrid.com O2 plc Simon Davis, simon.davis@O2.com Ogilvy Earth Kathleen Enright, 020 7309 1226 kathleen.enright@ogilvy.com Panasonic UK Ltd Simon Eves, 01344 853325 PepsiCo UK & Ireland Andrew Slight, Andrew.Slight@pepsico.com Powys County Council Heather Delonnette, 01597 826165 Pret A Manger ltd Nicki Fisher, 020 7827 8888 Pureprint Group Richard Owers, 01825 768811 Quintain Estates and Development Plc Louise Ellison, 020 7478 3430 lellison@quintain.co.uk
IBM John Rushton, John.Rushton@uk.ibm.com
RAC Foundation Elizabeth Box, Elizabeth.Box@RACFoundation.org www.racfoundation.org
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Rail Safety and Standards Board Shamit Gaiger, 020 3142 5380
Innovia Films Lucy Cowton, 01697 342281
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InterfaceFLOR Europe Ltd Ramon Arratia, 020 7490 3960 Interserve Constuction Ltd Chris Williams, chris.williams@interserve.com Jaguar Land Rover Fran Leedham, fleedham@jaguarlandrover.com
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Kyocera Mita UK Ltd Tracey Rawling- Church Tracey.Rawling.Church@KyoceraMita.co.uk
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Green Futures April 2012
39
The UK starts planning for resilience in the face of climate change.
Without systems thinking, green innovation can only go so far, says Dax Lovegrove.
Building resilience against threats like flooding is a long-term investment
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What will higher temperatures, rising sea levels and more extreme weather mean for the UK in years to come? It’s a severe forecast, and if infrastructure and industries are going to stand up to it, they’ll have to be prepared. Now, the Government is looking to work with businesses, civil society and local governments on a new National Adaptation Programme, set to launch in 2013. This impetus for action comes in response to the most comprehensive report to date on how the planet’s stress levels will affect lives in the UK. The Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA), funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the devolved administrations, explores the implications across 11 sectors, including agriculture, the built environment, business, energy and transport. The assessment has undergone extensive peer review, to give a realist – rather than fatalist – sense of what’s to come. “This is the first time we are looking at the whole of the UK, and at all these sectors, at the same time”, says Claire Barnett, climate change lead at AMEC UK’s environmental arm, which contributed to the report. “The point of this study was not to undertake significant volumes of new research but to bring existing evidence into one package.” So, what is the UK up against? According to the report, the number of days with a maximum daily temperature exceeding 26°C could rise from an average of 18 per year in London today to between 30 and 1202 by the 2080s, increasing the risk of buildings overheating. High summer temperatures will also put severe strain on the rail network, with the number of track bucklings projected to rise from 50 per year to
Green Futures April 2012
between 130 and 240, over the same timescale. Then there’s the water problem. Today, 30,000 hectares (ha) of high-quality horticultural and arable land are at risk of flooding at least once every three years, but this may rise to 130,000ha by the 2080s. Drought is another cause for concern. Between 27 and 59 million people in the UK could be living in areas affected by water deficits, come 2050. Time indeed to start planning. As Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman argues, the “economy cannot grow if there are repeated power failures, or goods cannot be transported because roads are flooded and railways have buckled, or if intense rainfall or high temperatures disrupt Wi-Fi signals”. It’s not yet clear what exactly the National Adaptation Programme will offer in resource terms, but its aims are to provide leadership through information and advice, address any barriers to change, and encourage action and partnerships among stakeholders. Already, though, Defra is pumping £2.17 billion into measures against flooding and coastal erosion, and offering guidance to local authorities on how to tackle issues such as road surface maintenance. Meanwhile, Network Rail is focusing on drainage and embankment stability to minimise disruption from floods. Perhaps the greatest challenge of all will be joining up approaches across regions and sectors. “Risks are not found in isolation”, says Barnett. “This represents an opportunity to collaborate.” And here, she says, is the great value of the CCRA: it means that evidence gathered by one sector can now be shared with the others. A joined-up response should also strengthen local economies. As Peter Lipman, Director of Projects and Innovation of Sustrans, argues, “Making sure we can all access what we need, locally, will mean we are less vulnerable to transport disruption caused by increasingly volatile weather.” Of course, being prepared for the future means investing now. James Drinkwater, Policy Officer at The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), hopes the report will convince planners to take long-term risks into account: “The RIBA has long advocated design strategies to adapt to future climate changes. However, many of those commissioning new build or retrofit still do not fully understand the case for adaptation. As the CCRA notes, building resilience against potential threats like flooding is a long-term investment.” As climate change turns from theory to fact, the weather is no longer merely the nation’s favourite talking-point. It’s the new order. – Jessica Furseth AMEC is a Forum for the Future Partner. amec.com/ukenvironnment
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Photo: Tom Ackerman, Starbucks
Making waves
Photo: iStockphoto / Thinkstock
Time to adapt
Green innovation is gaining momentum, but will it fundamentally shift business towards resilience, or it will it stay in the hothouse? For it to take off in any meaningful way, it has to sit well with other changes in the market. When new threats emerge, the reality for established businesses can be ‘Innovate or die!’. Take the digital camera revolution. Some companies, such as Fujifilm, moved with the times and sought out new opportunities, from digital cameras for a consumer market to computer software for photofinishing and medical imaging. Kodak, on the other hand, was overtaken by events and eventually filed for bankruptcy. Already in 2012, a number of events have marked growing interest in this field. The World Environment Centre and nearly a dozen multinational companies set up the Innovations in Environmental Sustainability Council. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ran an event on ecoinnovation; Israel hosted its ‘Innovation in Greentech’ conference, and the Detroit Motor Show had its largest selection yet of ‘greener’ vehicles. But will this energy translate into any lasting rewards? What sets innovation for a resilient future apart from mere creative flair? And what might get in the way? The OECD helpfully sets out some internal and external barriers to innovation at scale. There are traditional mindsets to start with: ‘better the devil you know’... There’s a reluctance to engage with sustainability, and sometimes a dearth of inspiring examples that can be replicated. The list goes on: siloes within firms; the need for investment… What’s the way around these challenges? Back to the question of context. Even the most heightened awareness of the immediate market won’t give an accurate picture of what’s to come. Innovators have to be systems thinkers. Whether their core business is transport, energy or food, they have to ask what really needs to change. Without this systemic approach, innovations will only provide incremental change – or, worse, support bad things being done better. What really needs to change is everything from technologies and infrastructures to policies and behaviour – an agenda too daunting for any company to face alone. But what if we join up the dots? What do you get if you cross, say, the shipping world with the coffee companies? In Tukwila, Washington, sea containers at the end of their life as cargo are reused by Starbucks for their drive-through café (right). There’s much to gain from innovation in partnership. Take a closer look at shipping. Maersk, Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics and others are harnessing solar, wind and wave energy to power cargo ships with increasing amounts of renewables. But while many optimise how they transport goods,
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few are asking driving questions about what they transport. The risk is that we get better at moving high-carbon goods, instead of coupling efficient transport with incentives to ship low-carbon goods. In a nice display of leadership, Nissan recently chartered a partially solar-powered cargo ship to transport its electric vehicles (EVs) – keeping their embedded carbon emissions down. Nissan and other progressive car/infrastructure providers, such as Better Place, are also paying more attention to the changes in mindset that are needed to increase the desirability of EVs – possibly through more creative marketing campaigns in partnership with others. Such players might also link up with other forms of low-carbon modes of transport, increasing their pull for the more carbon-conscious traveller. For Professor Fred Steward at the University of Westminster, partnerships between businesses and regional players such as mayors, city planners and utilities are increasingly important. In Munich, for example, Mobility for Tomorrow (aka ‘mo’) offers a point scheme whereby registered customers can earn discounts on low-carbon vehicle rentals when they use public transport. The concept was co-developed by design firm Lunar, the University of Wuppertal and the environmental non-profit Green City. The firms that create shared value by connecting with others around them are the ones to watch. They will be riding the waves of their innovations, while others watch the ripples from the shore.
Firms that create shared value by connecting with others are the ones to watch
Dax Lovegrove is Head of Business and Industry at WWF-UK. WWF-UK is a Forum for the Future Partner. www.wwf.org.uk
Green Futures April 2012
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For contractors and developers, trophy cabinets are a way to change the world.
Close the loop to raise the bar on recycling.
More private developers are adopting optional award schemes
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Sustainability in construction is a moving target. Projects must meet rigorous performance measures to win the highest ratings – and the awards do more than just shine on the shelf. They can really help drive up standards. In the UK, planning approval can depend on a building achieving a specified rating under BREEAM, a home-grown scheme to assess sustainability and offer a benchmark beyond regulation. But Skanska prefers to measure itself against the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) ratings, developed by the US Green Building Council and better recognised among international companies. And a string of platinum (top) LEED ratings, for buildings and refits across Europe and the Americas, testify to its success. Tangible business benefits ground this glory in the world of commerce. As David Mason, a senior sustainability manager at Skanska explains, trophies send powerful signals to clients that different units within the company are able and determined to deliver the green goods. One iconic project was the refit of Skanska’s US headquarters on the 32nd floor of the Empire State building in New York. The work cut energy use by 50% – a big step towards recouping costs in as little as five years. Landlord Anthony Malkin, the epitome of the profit-driven property magnate, now shows this to prospective tenants as a shining example. Skanska has since built on this experience in the UK. Rather than move out of its Woking offices when the lease ran out at Hollywood House, the company worked out a memorandum of understanding with its landlord Prupim, covering a major green revamp and refurbishment. The target of a LEED platinum rating was set – and met – despite the higher costs involved. The result? A vastly improved working environment, with carbon emissions and potable water use cut to 48% below UK requirements, and energy use down by 34%. Significantly, the project also left a legacy: Skanska helped Prupim develop a ‘green lease’ concept, to incentivise other office tenants to reap the benefits of a high-spec refit. Another assessment scheme out to lick new developments into shape is CEEQUAL (‘civil
Green Futures April 2012
engineering environmental quality’) – promoted by the Institution of Civil Engineers, and recognised in the Government’s Strategy for Sustainable Construction. The scheme has progressively expanded its remit to drive standards in everything from energy use and waste management to biodiversity and relations with the local community. Nigel Sagar, a sustainability expert on Skanska’s civil engineering side, has been heavily involved with setting CEEQUAL’s ratings for road, rail, water management and other infrastructure-related projects. A distinctive feature of this assessment, he says, is that it doesn’t just look at how a project’s outputs tick the boxes. Rather, it’s concerned with the quality of all the processes involved, from project definition and design through to implementation. It’s an entirely optional scheme at present, rather than compliance-driven, but more private sector developers – such as Anglian Water, Siemens Transport Systems and The Co-operative Group – are adopting it. Skanska is using it to assess major projects such as upgrading the M25 motorway that orbits London and infrastructure for the 2012 Games. Sagar has helped to develop the scheme for international use, with quite radical variations in local weightings. Water conservation, for instance, gets higher priority in the Middle East than in Sweden (where two road projects by Skanska have just won the first ever platinum ratings under the International Projects rubric). But what’s in it for Skanska? Not only does the scheme help to benchmark the company’s own drive to become more sustainable, says Sagar: it is also stimulates awareness in the construction industry of what’s achievable, and establishes Skanska as a leader. It’s proving a pull for clients too, which are increasingly receptive to both the intrinsic merits and the reputational benefits: “It’s the best way of assuring public sector clients that they’re matching up to a governmental green agenda. Private sector clients, such as National Grid, have also been enthusiastic.” – Roger East Skanska is a Forum for the Future Partner. www.skanska.com
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Paper round
Photo: Digital Vision / Thinkstock
Going platinum
“What goes around, comes around.” I’m sure my granny said that, before Justin Timberlake. Not, in her case, to rebuke a lost lover, but a simple statement of how things were. Recycling was a way of life, and all the leftovers came round again, in one form or another. Usually the whole loop was clearly visible, as she fashioned new bobble-hats from the wool of old jumpers. Now fast-forward 50 years, from that scene of homespun virtue to the technological sophistication and international scale of recycling in 2012. Paper and cardboard is a relative success story, with collection rates in Europe approaching two thirds of total usage. Which is just as well. Using recycled pulp in a paper mill not only saves trees, keeps methane out of landfill and cuts incinerator emissions; it can also cut energy and water use by as much as half compared with virgin fibre. But not all is rosy. A lot of the used ‘wood-free’ graphics-grade paper put out for collection in offices actually has a disappointing destiny, with much of it recycled ‘downstream’ into tissue, cardboard or newspaper. This wasn’t always the case. The UK used to have three paper mills with the right technology to produce graphic paper from waste of the same grade. But at the time, there wasn’t enough demand to make the process profitable, and the mills were closed, leaving just six in Europe. Now, a scheme called The Full Cycle, launched last September in the UK, aims to turn that around. Environment Manager Matthew Botfield at paper merchant Antalis McNaughton led on the scheme’s development. For him, it “seemed a logical next step to find a way to recover used graphic paper and recycle it back to its original standard”. Especially given that graphics-grade represents some 40% of all the paper used in Europe. The solution has two key elements. One is a specialised de-inking technology, developed at the Greenfield plant 100km north-east of Paris, by Antalis’ sister company, paper makers Arjowiggins Graphic. The other is a closed loop service, which makes a positive virtue of selling back to clients top quality graphics grade paper made from the waste
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paper the subscribed businesses supply. Companies can sign up to this scheme for free, enhancing their environmental kudos with an environmental declaration to say that their paper was recycled via The Full Cycle paper scheme. The recovered waste paper is tracked via a materials traceability system quite similar to the well-known FSC Chain of Custody System. Waste paper is collected, shredded if necessary, then bundled off to Greenfield for de-inking and remanufacture. This mill specialises in making bright white recycled graphics-grade paper. To complete the full cycle, the mill delivers the paper back to the client. “The cycle just works perfectly” for Arjowiggins Graphic too, says Corporate Affairs Manager Shannan Hodgson. “[Outside of the scheme] a lot of the recovered fibre (waste paper) is exported to China and Asia”, she explains. “However, with the Full Cycle Scheme the benefit will be to local markets.” And the advantages don’t end with improved supply chain security. Up to half a million tonnes of waste paper are diverted from landfill or incineration, and the cycle also makes sense of transport arrangements: “Arjowiggins Graphic delivery trucks make 1,500 trips a year [from northern France] to the UK, and a return journey loaded with used paper for recycling means they don’t run back empty to the mill each time – a big saving in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.” Boosted by recognition at last autumn’s European Paper Recycling Awards, The Full Cycle paper scheme has high hopes. Can the reputational benefits it offers win over enough clients, both large and small, to make a major difference in this trickiest area of paper recycling? While Full Cycle is growing in the UK, the launch of parallel arrangements in continental Europe will seek to enlarge the virtuous circle – ensuring more of the paper that comes around, goes around. – Roger East
A lot of high-grade paper is recycled downstream into tissue or cardboard
Arjowiggins Graphic is a Forum for the Future Partner. www.recycled-papers.co.uk
Green Futures April 2012
43
International Conference on Sustainable Business and Consumption
November 27-28, 2012 World Conference Center Bonn, Germany
Green Economy – from intention to action Concrete business approaches – five months after RIO+20 we are: Designing economic models the Green Economy needs Focusing on sustainable value chains such as water, food, textiles, paper and wood Discussing how companies and financial institutions can act as agents for change Broadening our understanding of natural resource efficiency, the role of technical innovations and lifestyles. Be inspired at SusCon 2012 – with an outstanding lineup of world renowned speakers such as Prof. Dr. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Vandana Shiva or Helmy Abouleish – this is a chance to network for change.
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Feedback No.83 Jan uary 2012
Fair play? Fair play?
What are the odds sustainable gambling? Whaton are the od ds on su stainable
gambling? Meet Paul Polman, Mee the man who wants to reinvent consumption t Paul Polm an, the sea It’s 2032: print some and drink It’senergy man who 2032: prin t som Jeremy Rifkin: imagine the internet, only e for energy wants to Jeremy Rifkin: ima energy and drink the reinvent consumptio gine the inte n sea rnet, only for energy
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Print out? As a manufacturing technology, 3D printing [‘Next generation DIY’, GF83, p6] certainly offers flexibility in terms of form, but this is not the be-all and end-all of making useful, practical, reliable things. Where the technique falls down very badly (fatally?) is in the range of available materials and in ways of controlling and tailoring their properties. Material properties of components parts are crucial – for all but the very simplest of objects. I have a hard time believing that any but the least-stressed of metal components can be built-up by sequential deposition, and still retain all
the right characteristics. Take a look at the metallurgical requirements of a spring, a bracket, a machine screw or even a ‘simple’ pivot, for example. At the very high end, great things are doubtless possible – incorporating in-situ alloy-mixing heads and localised heat treatment capabilities (such as sintering, hardening, annealing and tempering). But machines which can do all this will be very expensive, and will require a wide range of feedstocks, as well as considerable operational expertise and significant maintenance. Just as importantly, the embodied energy of the finished product is not obviously going to be less than that of the factory-produced and distributed version, or even of the ‘traditional’ small-scale or home workshop-made version. Thermal processing of small objects is inherently inefficient, and the production of feedstock powders and granules probably takes more energy than plate, bar, roll or coil. I can see the appeal, but I’d caution that it is far greater for people who’ve never actually worked in a true manufacturing environment. And the real appeal seems to be essentially that it de-skills the production of moderately complex, reasonably well-finished articles. Personally, I’m all in favour of increasing our materials skills, not trying to get by without them. – Simon Rack
Bag reinvented
PV power lifts airship hopes Canadian company proposes hybrid dirigibles with solar electric motors
Slow path to the sun
New concepts keep coming out to boost faith in the future of airships. The latest sees Canadian company Solar Ship touting a proposed new range with electric motors, and a wing surface covered with solar photovoltaic arrays to charge their batteries.
It follows the US military’s investment in low-carbon fuel-efficient hybrids, designed to combine the advantages of airship buoyancy and conventional aircraft propulsion [see ‘Heirs to the air?’, GF81, p5]. The Solar Ships are, in a sense, hybrids as well. While they are helium-filled, they use an aerodynamic wing shape to provide more than half their lift. Solar Ship says there are big advantages in making them heavier rather than lighter than air. They don’t have to be so bulky to fly, they won’t need mooring to stop them floating away while you are loading, and they’ll cope better with wind. The company is proposing a range of three sizes. The little Caracal, intended for reconnaissance and getting into remote
Compostable carrier goes to market
places, should cope with a 750kg payload, land on a 50-100 metre airstrip, and cover 2,500km at up to 120kph. The Chui will be three times as big and go twice as far, while the Nanuq is intended as a large freight carrier that can shift 30 tonnes with an intercontinental range. Solar Ship’s pitch is a powerful combination, offering transport without fossil fuels, roads or runways. So far, though, showing off the reality of solar flight is still the preserve of pioneer planes such as Solar Impulse [see ‘Sun plane conquers the night’, GF78, p10]. Solar Ship has built a working prototype of its revolutionary ‘dirigible blimp’ – but, for the moment, it needs an internal combustion engine to fly. – Roger East
Plastic bags get such a bad rap that you begin to wonder if they’re just the sustainability scapegoat, or if they actually deserve it. But with between 500 billion and a trillion consumed worldwide every year (around 100 per person), it’s fair to say that they do. Local initiatives to ban them (from Modbury in Devon, to San Francisco) are all very well, but behaviour is a slowmoving bus… So the commercial development of an affordable, compostable replacement is good news. Start-up Cyclewood Solutions has licensed a technology developed by the University of Minnesota for a bag made from lignin. This is one of the most abundant polymers on the planet, naturally occurring in wood and plant stems. Millions of tonnes
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do quite the same job: they may release carbon and methane as they decompose, and can’t be thrown onto the compost heap as a useful resource. The new business was awarded a $10,000 prize in the Austin Technology Incubator regional Cleantech Open, which aims to recognise big business ideas that tackle “urgent energy, environmental and economic challenges”. – Nick Huber
Virgin converts steel mill emissions into ethanol for aviation fuel
Green Futures April 2012
Photos: iStockphoto / thinkstock; Virgin Atlantic
“It’s a radical notion that has at its heart a bracing vision of people as creators, not consumers. No more marching in lockstep to buy stuff at Wal-Mart!” Instead they’ll be asking, ‘Can I Makerbot it…?’ Next up? Researches are taking homeprinting to scale with building fabrication. The California Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies hopes to 3D-print a custom-designed house, in no more than a day. – Carl Frankel
Photos: Hemera / thinkstock; David Neff
domestic gods are dipping towards affordability, with the Thing-o-Matic from US-based startup Makerbot on the market for $1,299. It’ll print anything from a chess set to a model Gothic cathedral, with all the detail of its intricate interior. The Thing-oMatic uses thin threads of plastic as its raw material, including polylactic acid: a compostable, corn-based polymer. The material is heated and then deposited in neat rows, according to instructions from a template on a USB cable or memory card. Almost any product can now be scanned and transformed into a template using free opensource software from Meshlab. The environmental implications are considerable. Today’s consumer economy is premised on mass remote manufacturing. In terms of energy and resource consumption, the efficiencies of scale rarely justify the waste it generates. Then there’s the fuel required to ship the products across the world, and the packaging to make sure they arrive on the shelf in one piece, and the marketing to persuade the consumer that, yes, they really did need a fancy new cheese grater – or, even worse, a set of two… According to CEO and co-founder Bre Pettis, Makerbot has a “profoundly subversise” mission: to democratise the manufacture of goods.
Time to bring it back to earth
Steel gas takes to the sky
Will 3D printers see the end of consumerism?
There are disruptive technologies, and then there are insanely disruptive technologies. Without much fanfare, one of the latter is coming down the road, and it could be as transformative as, oh, the personal computer. The technology is 3D printing, which is exactly what it sounds like. Imagine your standard printer placing one layer of material on top of another, according to a strict template, leaving you with complete objects – mouse traps, shower curtains, whatever you were just about to add to that endless list… It’s an idea that has sparked scientists’ imagination since 1986, when Charles Hull patented the first apparatus for ‘stereolithography’ (his name for it). Today, it’s almost a case of, ‘you name it: they’ve printed it’. MIT has designed a ready meal printer for waste-free gastronomy, giving you the perfect balance of taste, texture and aesthetics every time; the Forgacslab, University of Missouri, has printed human cells layer upon layer to give the first artificial vein [see ‘Body builder’, GF76, p7]; and German company EOS printed the body of a violin from an industrial polymer that looks (and, more crucially, sounds) like good old wood. Now, 3D printing is set to take manufacturing out of the factory and into your living room. Price levels for these
of it are discarded each year as a waste byproduct of the food and paper industries. “By using a waste stream, we can offer retailers a product that is comparable in price to conventional plastic products”, says Nhiem Cao, President and CEO of Cyclewood. The Xylobag, he claims, biodegrades in 150 days, following exposure to bacteria or fungus. It costs $0.015/bag, only slightly more than the average cost to a retailer of a standard bag made from polyethylene ($0.012). Ramani Narayan, professor in chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University, says Cyclewood will face competition from other biodegradable bags already on the market. But these competitors don’t
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Within three years, Virgin Atlantic could be powering some of its aircraft with a new type of low-carbon biofuel derived from waste gases from steel mills. The airline has announced a tie-up with the industrial bio-commodities technology provider LanzaTech to produce the new fuel in India, a country which is one of the world’s largest steel producers. The new ethanol-based resource is claimed to have half the carbon footprint of traditional fossil fuel. A demonstration flight should take place within 18 months, with Virgin’s flights from Delhi and Shanghai to London Heathrow using the biofuel by 2014. The LanzaTech process captures gases – specifically carbon monoxide (CO) – which would otherwise have been emitted directly into the atmosphere. Then, it converts them into ethanol-based fuel. The CO is dispersed into liquid and consumed by microbes before being recovered from the fermentation broth. Further technology developed by the Stockholm-based company Swedish Biofuels will then convert the ethanol into viable jet fuel. Virgin Atlantic believes that the project will take it well beyond its pledge to reduce carbon dioxide per passenger kilometre by 30% by 2020. Virgin’s President, Richard Branson, explained: “This partnership is
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aimed at producing a next-generation, low-carbon aviation fuel which is a major step towards radically reducing our carbon footprint. We are excited about the savings that this technology could help us achieve.” There are several attractive features for the airline. First, the price of the fuel will be similar to the kerosene currently used to power aircraft, making it a commercially
You’re right that if 3D printing does move out of the margins and into the mainstream, it will surely be a transformative technology. But rather than the end of consumerism, it could be the ultimate in consumerism. As the article implies, you could have literally anything printed in the home. It would be like Amazon.com on speed. The 3D printer would be a gateway to instant gratification. I’d have thought that this was as likely an outcome as the end to passive consumerism and the advent of a ‘producer economy’ – admittedly a more tempting prospect. I’m really not as sure as you seem to be about the sustainability credentials. I don’t completely buy the idea that the economies of scale that manufacturing industries have built up over decades are less efficient at a system level than devolving that production to the consumer. What about increases in domestic waste (badly printed stuff, stuff you decide you don’t want after all) and hikes in local energy use? The distribution of the raw material? Socially and economically there are issues around devolving manufacture – what about all those Chinese jobs so vital for development? And where does the raw material come from? If it is corn-based polymers then we’re looking at yet another demand on finite amounts of productive land, on top of energy and food crops. It’s difficult in the end to assess the impact of something as fundamental (and embryonic) as this. If 3-D printing becomes mainstream, say 15 or 20 years down the line, it will be part of a whole system shift to devolved networks, microgen, local food production and the like: the triumph of the bit over the atom and the culmination of the ICT revolution. We have to think about that system as a whole and how we can ensure it can support a sustainable world. – James Goodman
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[For more on sustainable luxury, see ‘How to spend it’, p28]
Wireless car charge
Luxury gap
With reference to ‘Wireless motoring pads closer’ [GF83, p5], this is a brilliant use of a technology that could really make electric vehicles more popular. The more popular they are, the more demand goes up and price goes down. Here in the US, I think the perfect place to locate charging stations would be shopping mall parking lots. You can leave your car charging while you go shopping. Or, in crowded downtown cores, in parking garages. – Maria Andrea
Sally Uren raises an important issue [GF83, p37]. Highlighting the ‘experiences’ side of luxury consumption is particularly apt. Low impact services are of course possible – imagine spas warmed by district heating, powered by renewable
With London traffic as it is, you could simply put a few in regular jam spots and EVs could charge on the go! – Martyn
viable proposition for the airline. Second, because it is made from an industrial waste stream, the new fuel has none of the land use concerns associated with biofuels derived from agricultural products. And finally, it is also hugely scalable, with the world’s steel mills capable of producing some 15 billion gallons a year – not much less than the total consumed by US airlines. – Andrew Collier Made of aluminium – flies on steel?
energy and equipped with responsibly sourced products. Interestingly, many luxury food brands are organic and/or fairtrade. I know of a luggage brand that is making sure its supply chain features ethical and sustainable sourcing, even though they don’t crow about it (yet). These firms are responding to a number of market pressures – the current demand for sustainable goods, forecast future demand, and of course the increasing costs of producing goods unsustainably in the face of rising commodity prices… Not everyone who buys such products will use them responsibly, of course. The Lexus driver may drive a more fuel efficient car than their neighbour, but do more miles, carpool less often, and pay less attention to driving habits that influence fuel economy – just because they can afford to do so… Persuading luxury goods consumers to be less wasteful could have a tremendous impact on emissions from consumption, arguably much more than trying to reduce the impact of the brands they buy. Of course, all firms should be working to be more sustainable, but in terms of ‘where the money is’, the big impacts on durables will come from behaviour. – Julia Lawrence
a greenfutures Special Edition
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a greenfutu res Speci al Edition
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Retro and Fit Retro and Fit
working with local councils, civil society organisations and delivery partners, are best placed to provide the solutions needed. – Nigel Farren, Energise Barnet
Taking energy efficiency in buildings to scale
Taking en er in building gy efficiency s to scale
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Retro behaviour I very much enjoyed reading your special edition ‘Retro and Fit’ [January 2012], which had a great range of articles and insights. But in presenting the physical and financial challenge of retrofitting buildings, the need to change behaviours and address what does or does not ‘chime’ with people is being neglected. Behaviour can impact on whether energy is saved – or not – by a factor of anything from 25%-50%. Some valuable work on this has been undertaken in Greater Manchester through the Low Carbon Economic Area Board and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities. [See http:// manchesterismyplanet.com/behaviouralchange] The key point is that there needs to be an integrated approach, dealing with the building’s fabric first, linked to behaviour change programmes, with renewables following on where appropriate. There is some ground breaking work being carried out within and outside the social housing sector which would, I think, be of interest to your readership. – Peter Smith, Chief Executive, St Vincent’s Housing Association
It will take a lot more than nudges to achieve significant behaviour change. In ‘We won’t get another chance’ [‘Retro and Fit’, p10] you identify as barriers lack of trust, fear of disruption to home life and the fact that some people simply aren’t bothered. Community initiatives like Energise Barnet,
Attenborough as wind champion? After seeing Anna Simpson’s interview with David Attenborough at the launch of the Glyndebourne wind turbine [www.greenfutures.org.uk/articles/davidattenborough-wind-turbines-and-arts], I wonder if he would consider doing a TV programme on the benefits of wind power. I am surrounded by ‘NIMBYs’ who can’t see past their own backyard: three windfarms have been turned down here in Argyll due to the very vocal anti-lobby. Many people are in favour but we need a ‘voice’ – who better than David Attenborough? – Fiona Wyllie
Terms and conditions In response to David Sloan Wilson’s comments on the ‘science of cooperation’ [www.greenfutures.org.uk/articles/ back-basics-with-social-theory], we have to consider whether a civilised society has to be inegalitarian, that is, essentially competitive. Or, can we evolve a cooperative form of civilisation that is free of the stresses and awful dangers associated with inequality? To do this, we need to rethink how we use terms like ‘democracy’, ‘equality’, ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’, ‘social justice’ and ‘morality’. There’s nothing wrong, for example, with encouraging competition, as long as it is not allowed to override the equally important concept of cooperation. And nothing wrong with the term ‘socialism’, as long as it is clear it does not necessarily imply state control at the expense of individualism and freedom. Similarly, we must be careful not to conflate ‘equality’ with the concept of ‘equal opportunity’, as it often is. Clear thinking and honesty are the answers to the dreadful dangers confronted by modern man in a world of widening inequality, environmental danger and potentially apocalyptic war. – Reckless
12/13/11 11:44 AM
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Green Futures April 2012
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JonathonPorritt
Competition does not mean destroying everything that stands in your way. It means ‘striving together’
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No one can accuse Forum for the Future of lacking ambition in its strategy to help transform three of the big systems on which we depend: food, energy and finance. But when you dig down into the sort of things that need to be transformed, you realise something even more daunting. That the global economy – the MEGA system of which these three big systems are just a part – runs on software that could have been purpose built to make sustainability a totally unrealisable goal! By software, I mean the dominant economic theories and big political ideas that have ruled the roost for the last few decades. I summarise them as follows: minimally regulated free markets, driven by competition and increased productivity in order to maximise both economic growth and short-term profits. Or, as some would put it rather more pointedly: “neo-liberal capitalism at its most aggressive”. It’s pretty clear that this software package is not delivering what we need. For Occupy and other radical campaigners, the solution is obvious: ditch it in its entirety, and replace it with a new operating system, free of any of corrupt baggage. For the all-or-nothing ideologues of contemporary capitalism, it’s equally simple: the software is basically sound – it just needs a bit of fine-tuning. For everyone else, repelled by both extremes, there are a variety of ‘optimising’ strategies, of a more or less radical persuasion. And that of course is where Forum for the Future finds itself: radical optimisation for a truly sustainable global economy. Heavy stuff, but how often do we try and get our heads around the deep origins of today’s converging sustainability crises – and not just the multiple symptoms? Not enough. And this came to me loud and clear at an intriguing event co-hosted by The Co-operative Group and Forum for the Future, called The Co-operative Opportunity: how to reboot a sustainable economy [see the Special Edition, Shared Future]. Our focus there was less on capitalism itself than on the practicalities of ensuring food security for all, the energy systems we depend on, and the role of cooperatives in a green economy. One of our speakers was David Sloan Wilson, an eminent evolutionary biologist from the State University of New York. He has spent much of his life trying to shed light on the conundrum of altruism: why is it that people (and, indeed, many creatures) do things to
Green Futures April 2012
help others, often at an apparent cost to themselves? In straightforward ‘selfish gene’ terms, this altruistic behaviour may put at risk an individual’s chance of passing on their genetic material to their offspring. I wonder how many of the 650 people listening attentively to this man realised they were in the presence of an out-and-out revolutionary. His game plan is nothing less than to demonstrate that natural selection (the cornerstone of Darwinian theory) is just as important at the group level as it is at the level of the individual. And that’s why human beings have evolved into such a profoundly social and cooperative species. So what makes that such a revolutionary thought? Go back to the ‘software’ of contemporary capitalism: its big ideas and economic orthodoxies. None is more orthodox than the common understanding of competition: that individuals, companies and states can only thrive by ‘winning’ at everyone else’s expense. You can track that particular creed all the way back to Charles Darwin’s colleagues in the 19th century. They systematically ‘spun’ the great man’s work with very catchy metaphors: ‘the survival of the fittest’, ‘nature red in tooth and claw’, and so on. Not actually what he’d written, but ever so useful for the politicians of the day to justify their own ‘red in tooth and claw’ economic policies. Metaphors are a critical part of contemporary capitalism’s software. They don’t just act as a mirror of dominant beliefs, they also shape them. As the philosopher Mary Midgley wrote in New Scientist: “Our imagery is never just surface paint, it expresses, advertises and strengthens our preferred interpretations. It also usually carries unconscious bias from the age we live in – and this can be tricky to ditch, no matter how faulty.” Darwin himself wrote eloquently of the importance of cooperative behaviour among different species, and there’s now a vast body of academic work which demonstrates that cooperation has been at least as important to the evolutionary success of humankind as competition – if not more so. But you’d never know such a body of work exists from the way politicians and their pet economists prattle on about the ‘overarching imperative’ of devil-take-the-hindmost competition. Faulty software – based in this instance on a faulty understanding of the word itself. Competition comes from the Latin ‘competare’, which does not mean destroying everything and everyone that stands in your way. It means ‘to strive together’. Which is precisely the basis on which economic policy needs to be designed if we are to meet the sustainability challenges of today. It’s the essence of what one might describe as ‘cooperative capitalism’. Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. www.jonathonporritt.com
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Be inspired Ashden Conference Royal Geographical Society, London 29 May 2012
In a morning session chaired by Jonathan Porritt, hear from finalists from the UK, France and Belgium who are leading the way when it comes to cutting carbon emissions from our buildings, travelling more sustainably and educating the next generation about intelligent energy use. The afternoon brings together finalists from India, Africa and South East Asia who are providing sustainable energy to those who need it most. In this, the UN year of Sustainable Energy for All, we are delighted that we will be joined by Richenda Van Leeuwen Senior
Director, Energy and Climate Energy Access Initiative at the UN. Both sessions will include video and presentations from each finalist plus Q&As. The day will include plenty of opportunities to network with the finalists themselves and with others from both the private and public sectors working in the fields of sustainable energy and development. Come to just the morning, the afternoon or the whole day. To find out more and to book visit www.ashden.org