Gareth's Blog

Subscribe

Recent Posts

I'll be back!

Waitrose's bags of milk flop

Eyjafjallajoekull and all that

Sustainability in the Service Sector - video

Are you part of the problem...

Sustainability Model

Book Review: Confessions of a Radical Industrialis...

Ethical Questions

We're coming over all web 2.0...

Really Stupid Designs

Archives

June 2007

July 2007

August 2007

September 2007

October 2007

November 2007

December 2007

January 2008

February 2008

March 2008

April 2008

May 2008

June 2008

July 2008

August 2008

September 2008

October 2008

November 2008

December 2008

January 2009

February 2009

March 2009

April 2009

May 2009

June 2009

July 2009

August 2009

September 2009

October 2009

November 2009

December 2009

January 2010

February 2010

March 2010

April 2010

News & Views From the Front Line

Wednesday, 3 June 2009

Nudge, nudge!

OK, so I'm a 12 months behind the curve, but I've just finished last year's political must-read "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness" by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The central thesis of the book is that we humans like having choices rather than being told what to do, but paradoxically we're not that good at making the best choice for ourselves or society if the issue is complex. Thaler and Sunstein introduce the rather clunkily titled concept of "libertarian paternalism" which translates into plain English as "the choice is yours, but if I were you I'd pick that one", the second part of this being the 'nudge' of the title.

The book is long on examples and arguments and a little short on the 'how to' aspect, but I've gathered that the three main types of 'nudges' are:

1. The default choice is chosen carefully to be the 'best' one eg should we have to opt out of organ donation rather than opt in?

2. The 'best' choice is the easiest, cheapest or most obvious one eg lower car tax for less polluting vehicles.

3. Sufficient information is disclosed to help the chooser make a good choice (would the current MPs expenses scandal have happened if they all had been forced to disclose their expenses claims to the electorate?).

On some levels this may appear manipulative, but the authors make a strong argument that the alternatives are to either ban undesirable behaviour (the infamous 'nanny state'), or to abandon people to make suboptimal choices.

Chapter 12 of the book is entitled "Saving the Planet" and examples of eco-nudges include:

1. Cap-and-trade for industrial carbon emissions (not cutting emissions is going to cost you, but the choice of how to cut them is yours).

2. Information provision through disclosure, labelling or feedback eg the US Toxic Release Inventory, domestic smart meters, and cars that tell you if you're overdoing the accelerator.

3. Voluntary schemes and standards for industry (the authors use the US 'Green Light' label as an example).

I can think of many more cases where these have been, or could be applied. The EU's energy label (below) has been brilliantly effective in transforming the white goods market, raising the market of share of the most efficient A-rated models from 0 to 76% in a decade. It's easy to see why this nudge works - you can buy any washing machine you like, but as you're spending the money you might as well go for an A-rated machine rather than a D. Who wants a D? And, if no-one is buying Ds, why would anyone manufacture one? The market is transformed, but the only rule is that showrooms have to display the certificate.



Kerbside recycling shows how communities can nudge themselves - once a certain proportion of a street puts out their separated waste participation suddenly shoots up. In contrast, when UK councils started trying to reduce residual waste collections from weekly to fortnightly by dictat there was uproar in the media and some councils changed political control due to this issue alone. Maybe if councils had introduced it by saying "you can keep your weekly collections, but you have to opt in for this on an annual basis" the uproar would have been subdued and the laggards would have gradually caught up with the mainstream as those neighbours who went with the default option demonstrated that the system is OK. Actually, it strikes me that local authorities could benefit most from the 'nudge' approach - they tend to bear the brunt of media attacks on any change ("Town Hall Bullies/Loonies" etc) and this could deflect most of that initial ire and transform behaviour more gradually.

Having read Nudge, I'm not surprised it caused such a fuss in the political sphere and there is a huge opportunity to use it to transform environmental behaviour both within industry and consumers alike. Highly recommended reading.

Labels: behaviour change, eco-label, energy, nudge, sunstein, thaler

# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00  0 Comments

Monday, 6 April 2009

What planet is the energy industry on?

I've written a couple of posts recently about the retail and automotive industries seeing green as the way out of the recession, but the rather exceptional exception to this movement is the energy industry with BP, Shell and Centrica all divesting themselves of renewables interests in recent months.

What on earth are they thinking?

Obama has made major green energy pledges, the UK Government has a huge raft of low carbon legislation coming on board and the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen this year make the Kyoto protocol conferences look like a vicar's tea party. Even though the G20 meeting in London largely steered clear of climate change, it did get some of the less enthusiastic nations to agree to take part in Copenhagen.

Low carbon pledges mean investment in, and incentives for, low carbon technology. So why on earth is Big Oil going back to, erm, oil?

It has been said that when the transistor came along it was ignored by the then dominant vacuum tube (valve) industry and, as a result, none of those companies is still in business. Big Oil should take note - they could end up as the fossilised fuel industry.

Labels: barack obama, bp, copenhagen, energy, renewable energy, Shell

# posted by Gareth Kane : 14:11  0 Comments

Wednesday, 25 March 2009

EEF Report Shows Manufacturing Still Not Proactive on the Environment

Interesting report on the manufacturing sector published by EEF and Envirowise last summer, but being publicised now. Some notable conclusions:

- 90% of respondents were doing something to improve their environmental performance;
- waste and energy are the key issues;
- key drivers are legislation and EMS requirements, rather than competitive advantage;
- preferred method of waste reduction is recycling (80% of respondents) rather than minimisation (18% of respondents);
- 70% of respondents felt Government should provide them more funds to tackle these problems.

Despite the fact that 90% of respondents were acting, the rest of this is rather disappointing. The respondents saw the green agenda as one to react to rather than get proactive on. The lack of interest in minimising waste reflects a lack of awareness of cost saving opportunities, and the expectation that this is the taxpayer's problem to sort out shows a lack of ownership.

The proactive business should acknowledge their environmental impacts and tackle them head-on to improve competitive advantage through reduced costs, better PR and happier staff (see 10 Reasons... for more on this). Looks like we still have a long way to go before a proactive attitude is prevalent.

Labels: eef, energy, envirowise, recycling, waste

# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00  0 Comments

Thursday, 11 December 2008

Lord Smith on climate change and the CCC report

In this podcast from edie, Chris Smith, Environment Agency Chairman talks to the Environmental Industries Commission. Unlike the usual blandishments you get from the 'great and the good', there is some greath stuff in here, including a brief review of the Climate Change Committee's recent report detailing the ways the UK can meet a 80% cut in carbon emissions.

Speaking of the CCC report, I have only had a chance to quickly scan through the 500 plus pages of dense analysis, but I've copied the graphs showing proposed cuts below. What I find strange is the lack of contribution from industry given that so many of our industrial processes are incredibly energy inefficient. The report puts this down to limited 'low or no cost options', but given the costs of the massive decarbonisation of electricity generation required to fulfil this scenario, I believe that some of that money might be better spent driving down demand.

Labels: adair turner, climate change, energy, environment agency

# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:49  0 Comments

Wednesday, 10 December 2008

Five stupid questions I get asked about environmental consultancy

1. Why would a hard pressed business be bothered with the environment?

I reviewed 26 environmental health checks I carried out over the last two years for companies whose activities range from catering to pharmaceuticals. The average financial saving identified from waste minimisation, water conservation and energy efficiency measures was £175 000 per annum. Next question.

2. Would your clients reduce waste if it didn't save them money?

Frankly, I don't care. My job is to improve my clients' business performance by addressing their waste, energy, raw material and water issues either for direct economic/legislative benefit or to improve their environmental reputation. I don't expect them to start hugging trees or wearing sandals.

3. Are you not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

My priority as a consultant is to meet my clients' needs rather than save the planet, but from an environmental point of view, in my career I have diverted at least a half million tonnes of waste from landfill into further economic use. Energy/carbon-saving benefits have been delivered on a similar scale. And there are thousands of other environmental consultants out there…

4. Is this not just a fad?

No. Environmental legislation has been tightening since the Clean Air Acts of the 1950s. They said it was a fad in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s and this decade too. It ain't going away.

5. Should you really be profiting from the environment?

Why not? I'd rather make profit from preventing damage to the environment than causing it.

Labels: energy, environmental consultancy, rant, waste

# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:30  0 Comments

Wednesday, 19 November 2008

The Green Business Bible

It is here!

Labels: energy, environmental management, green business bible, waste

# posted by Gareth Kane : 12:37  0 Comments

As seen on TV...

I spent yesterday lunchtime shivering my extremities off and squinting into the sun on Blyth Quayside while being interviewed for BBC TV's Countryfile programme. The gist of the programme was the trade off between impacts of energy projects in local habitats vs the need to tackle global climate change. My argument was that it wasn't that simple - if climate change goes unchecked, the local habitats will suffer anyway.

The previous interviewee was Prof Ian Fells, a well known media figure, who had recently written a policy paper on UK energy supply, which he had been discussing. The most controversial statement in this document is its first statement "Security of energy supply must now be seen as taking priority over everything else, even climate change." Interestingly the rest of report demonstrates a low carbon energy scenario based on nuclear which could go a long way to tackle climate change - in other words security vs climate is a false choice. I suspect this sentence is designed to grab the headlines. 

Labels: energy, nuclear, terra infirma, wind turbines

# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:23  0 Comments

Wednesday, 24 September 2008

10 Questions For Any Business

1. How much does your waste cost?

2. No, how much does it really cost?

3. How much have your waste costs risen in the last year?

4. How much have your energy bills risen in the last year?

5. How much have your water costs risen in the last year?

6. How much does compliance with legislation cost you?

7. How much product do you have to sell just to cover your waste, energy, water and compliance costs?

8. Would you prefer to turn those costs into profit?

9. Do you have a plan to make this transformation?

10. Are your staff on board?

And a bonus one,

11. Have you heard of Lean, Mean & Green?

Labels: energy, environmental consultants, lean mean and green, waste, water

# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:26  0 Comments

Wednesday, 10 September 2008

10 Reasons Why You MUST Improve the Environmental Performance of Your Business

(even in a recession especially in a recession)

As promised, the second of our white papers is on line for free download. 10 Reasons Why You MUST Improve the Environmental Performance of Your Business does what it says on the tin - it explains why there is no better time to take action on waste, energy and water in your company.

Labels: energy, environmental management, terra infirma, waste, water

# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:00  0 Comments

Friday, 25 July 2008

Lies, damn lies, but where do they get those statistics?

I was at an event the other week where a keynote speaker put up a picture of an ancient Landrover and said "This is my car. I'm eco-friendly as the emissions from vehicle production are much higher than those in use, so keeping it on the road is the right thing to do!"

"Rubbish" thought I (or words to that effect). But I gave him the benefit of the doubt and looked up some published stats, and as you can see the use phase comes to 80% and the manufacture 18%.

Toyota Gasoline Vehicle CO2 Emissions:

Driving 72%
Fuel production 8%
Vehicle production 6%
Material production 12%
Others 2%

But everybody knows this - who on earth told him the opposite?

Another one...

In May's ENDS Report, a Rosi Fieldson is quoted as saying "The more technologies that are put into a home, the higher the embodied carbon [ie that required to produce materials, components and build the house] becomes. Currently embodied energy is 15% of energy used over the building's life time .... In a zero carbon home this would rise to 80-90%."

Well either Dr Fieldson has been misquoted or she needs to go back to primary school to sort out her maths. It's a percentage! If you cut one part of the pie, the percentage taken by the other must go up because the two parts must add up to 100!

Strictly speaking the embodied energy of a zero carbon home should be 100% of lifetime energy, because the usage (non-renewable) energy is 0%. But it doesn't tell you whether the amount of embodied energy goes up or down...

I think I'm going to go and lie down in a darkened room...

Labels: energy, fun, life cycle assessment, rant

# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:30  0 Comments

Thursday, 15 May 2008

Why environmental performance matters more, not less, in an economic downturn

Two things happened to me yesterday that made me think about this:

1. someone asked me if they thought the environmental sector would be hit by the so-called 'credit crunch' and associated economic downturn.

2. I filled up my diesel car's tank with fuel for the first time in two months and nearly passed on on the forecourt when I saw the cost.

It is fairly obvious that a good response to an economic downturn is to cut costs. If you have a 25% profit margin, then every £1 you save in your operations is worth £4 of sales.

The biggest cost in most businesses is staff. But if you cut staff you have to pay redundancies, you lose the investment you have made in training and development, and you hit the morale of those you retain. Plus, when things improve, you will have to rush around recruiting and training new staff which is both an additional cost and a delay which could cost you market share.

On the other hand, there are only ever benefits from reducing waste, energy costs, water costs, transport costs, raw material costs etc, etc. So if things are getting tight, why not divert some of that 'redundant' staff time into identifying and eradicating environmental costs? If you do it right, they should more than pay for themselves - and you will continue to see the benefits when sales pick up with the increased margin.

Labels: energy, raw materials, staff engagement, transport, waste

# posted by Gareth Kane : 05:18  0 Comments

Monday, 7 January 2008

Repeat after me: 'Energy' and 'Electricity' are different things...

One of the things that makes me mad is people who should know better mixing up 'energy' and 'electricity'. Of course electricity is a form of energy, but one that is very carbon intensive, but still doesn't contribute as many carbon emissions as gas and oil used for space heating and transport.

For example, in the Observer on Sunday, environment editor Juliette Jowit wrote:

"...'feed-in tariffs' which allow homeowners to sell spare electricity to the national grid to help repay their costs would ensure that people opted for the best technology, which also includes solar panels and ground source heat pumps."

OK, Juliette (adopts exasperated-teacher tone), a feed in tariff is a mechanism to allow householders to sell electricity to the grid. A ground source heat pump consumes electricity to produce heat. So it can't benefit from a feed in tariff. Have you ever tried heating an electrical wire? Would it light even the most efficient lightbulb? (flings chalk at cringing editor)

I'm jesting (of course), but this is really important when discussing the future of our energy supply. There's a large contingent who shout "We need nuclear!", but to effectively cut emissions this way, we would need to convert all our domestic/commercial heating and transport to run on electricity. Which would of course be extraordinarily expensive in terms of capital costs (new power stations, heaters, vehicles) and running costs.

Currently nuclear produces 20% of our electricity supply and those plants are due for replacement - to deliver say 33% of our total energy supply (as one prominent energy expert suggests), this would require a very large number of new nuclear power stations and we would have to find a very large amount of nuclear fuel which of course is finite like gas, oil and coal.

I didn't mean this to turn into an anti-nuclear rant, but we are risking basing this and other similarly important decisions on opinions that are flung about, deliberately or otherwise, without a true understanding of what we are talking about.

Labels: electricity, energy, heat

# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:02  1 Comments

Wednesday, 5 December 2007

Waste heat "will be zero carbon"

Another positive from the Local Government Association Climate Change conference. I asked the Audit Commission's carbon gurus about the use of heat from electricity generation and was told that it is almost certainly to be counted as zero carbon against Local Authority targets. In other words the carbon will be counted 100% against the electricity user rather than divvied up between the two.

This will provide a huge incentive for councils to use waste heat energy in social housing and municipal buildings when the new Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) reporting and the Carbon Reduction Commitment hit in 2009 and 2010 respectively. The CAA will also measure emissions from non-social housing and commercial properties.

Maybe we will see district heating rise again, rather than squandering this easy source of energy.

Labels: district heating, energy, local authorities

# posted by Gareth Kane : 06:41  0 Comments

Sunday, 10 June 2007

London 2012 - The Greenest Games Ever?

With all the furore over that logo, attention has been distracted from the business opportunities relating to the delivery of the 2012 Olympic Games. Well, if the Olympic Delivery Authority’s sustainable development commitments are anything to go by then it certainly will be a green games:

• Aiming to minimise the carbon emissions associated with the venues through a 50% reduction in carbon dioxide by 2013.
• 90% of demolition material to be reused or recycled and at least 20% of materials used to be recycled.
• 40% reduction in the demand for potable water in permanent venues and a 20% reduction target for residential development.
• Aspiring to transport 50% of construction materials, to the Park by water and rail.
• Protecting and enhancing the biodiversity and ecology of the venue locations.
• Maximising timber from sustainable sources with all timber used from known, legal sources, with clear supply chain evidence.

This sets a challenge for everyone looking for a slice of the action. And with £4bn of contracts going, these games will be the biggest single public procurement exercise in the world, ever.

In the bidding documentation, "the Environment" is listed as one of the five key criteria against which bids will be assessed, with particular reference to waste minimisation and energy use - and the criteria above will be expected to be read across into contracts as appropriate. Anybody wanting to bid will certainly need to get their environmental credentials in order.

Labels: climate change, design, energy, green procurement, olympics, waste

# posted by Gareth Kane : 15:52  0 Comments