Subscribe
Recent Posts
Eyjafjallajoekull and all that
Sustainability in the Service Sector - video
Are you part of the problem...
Book Review: Confessions of a Radical Industrialis...
We're coming over all web 2.0...
Archives
News & Views From the Front Line
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Are you part of the problem...
...or part of the solution?I've been working with a number of clients recently who were focussing on how they could reduce their impact on the environment, that they hadn't fully grasped that they could be part of a much wider solution. One, a major engineering firm, had already realised that they could have a role designing parts of the low carbon economy, but as we explored a little further, we realised that they could have a role in climate change adaptation as well - not just one new market but two.
I come across this again and again, whether it's legal firms specialising in low carbon investments or training companies delivering "green collar skills", the range of companies that can be part of the new economy is vast. Is there room in that economy for you?
Labels: low carbon economy, opportunities
# posted by Gareth Kane : 12:51
0 Comments
Friday, 26 February 2010
The Opportunities Pyramid
I've developed the above model to communicate the levels of benefit that "going green" can deliver. Underpinning the whole thing is compliance - if you don't get this right then the whole thing can come tumbling down. One level above that is direct economic benefits - in particular cost cutting but also retaining value in assets and reducing the risk of non-compliance by providing a margin of error.If you raise you sights above this level then you are in a minority, but a very wise minority. The first set of benefits in this rarified atmosphere are internal but intangible - recruiting, retaining and motivating the best staff for the business. Above that is all the new business you will win through beating the competition - as we have seen, companies who focus too much on the cost level (ie expecting a good direct ROI) could miss out on this level of benefits. The business people who understand this will be at a considerable advantage over their less enlightened competitors.
And lastly, at the very top, for a minority of businesses there are some rather large new and emerging markets to exploit.
BTW, in Tuesday's webinar, Deborah was explaining the cost and staff levels and I covered the branding/differentiation and new markets.
Labels: benefits, costs, low carbon economy, markets
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
0 Comments
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Tuesday's Earthcast
The Earthcast went really well yesterday with an audience of over 120 from all around the world. Deborah Carlson of the Suzuki Foundation kicked off with the case for cost reduction and staff engagement. I followed that up by looking at new and emerging business opportunities in the low carbon economy. Good questions too - some really stretching my geographical knowledge!If you want to listen to the event again, click here.
Labels: low carbon economy, seminars, webinar
# posted by Gareth Kane : 10:25
0 Comments
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Reminder - Webinar tonight
Date: 23 Feb 2010
Time: 5pm GMT
To register click here.
Labels: climate change, low carbon economy, webinar
# posted by Gareth Kane : 06:27
0 Comments
Friday, 5 February 2010
USBCell Bunny Viral
Simon Daniel of Moixa Energy, an old college compatriot of mine, has invented these cool USB rechargeable batteries. Moixa's viral video gives you a flavour...
Labels: eco-product, fun, innovation, low carbon economy
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
0 Comments
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Throw out the doom, gloom and conspiracy theories!
So the Copenhagen juggernaut judders on, with daily starts and stops, waves of optimism and pessimism, and the CRU e-mail leak providing a nice counterpoint for the press (as an aside their reporting on this has been atrocious - the phrase "hide the decline" cannot possibly refer to the last couple of years' observed data as it was written in 1999 - doh! - and they have the cheek to criticise the quality of the CRU science...). The completely coincidental, erm, coincidence of the two have given the sceptics and deniers their moment in the sun.Most of the climate change scepticism bouncing about the media and the blogosphere at the minute seems to be predicated on the idea that it is some sort of a scam to raise taxes and curtail free trade. Leaving aside the preposterous implications of these loony conspiracy theories (thousands of scientists and politicians secretly building a world socialist government - most of them can barely manage a national government), the media has been obsessed with the "sacrifice" the world will have to make to "save the planet".
A report in New Scientist says a low carbon economy will have a minor effect on consumers, with the exception of air travel where there are no significant techno-fixes available as yet. I would go further - a high tech, low carbon future to me is an exciting one. One where the idea of sitting in a traffic jam on the way to an expensive gym after a day stuck in an air-conditioned strip-lit box would be ridiculed. I'm sitting writing this in my home office, looking out at the birds playing in the trees, having just taken a run up the valley where I live. No commuting, no air con, no strip lights, but with all the office technology I need - you can't beat it. But most of our "knowledge economy" is still acting as if its participants are making widgets, chained to their desks like 19th Century mill workers.
The UK's Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, hit the nail on the head when he said "If Martin Luther King had come along and said ‘I have a nightmare’ people would not have followed him”, but he needs to practice what he preaches - the Government's recent "climate nightmare" TV ads got rightly panned by both sides. Back in the 1980s the spread of information technology presented us with the vision of a bright new future. We now need to do the same for the Low Carbon Economy.
Labels: copenhagen, low carbon economy
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:06
0 Comments
Friday, 27 November 2009
Geek Central: Virtualisation
The economy is fast becoming digitised - photos, music, newspapers, movies, books, shopping, networking. This is a good thing from a dematerialisation point of view, but it is creating a vast world of energy intensive server farms. And, it turns out that each server spends the cast majority of its day idle, wasting energy on its own innards and cooling.
The big new thing is 'virtualisation' which maximises the use of each server, slashing the number of servers required and thus the amount of energy required to run the new economy. For those who want to know more, the clever young man in the video will explain...
Labels: digital, low carbon economy, servers, virtualisation
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
0 Comments
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Green jobs in a green economy?
There's an interesting article on Fast Company giving three estimations of the potential for new green jobs by 2020:- 2.7m in the EU according to Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC)
- 10m globally according to the Climate Group
- 30m globally according to the Global Climate Network (actually 40m new jobs but 10m lost 'brown' jobs)
So plenty of jobs, even if the estimations vary widely. The latter two depend on China going green big time, which it claims it will do but there is a lack of clarity over how this will happen in practice.
There has always been a lot of confusion and blether about how to create green jobs. People build centres of excellence (can you create a centre of excellence?) and green business parks (most of which fail, but that's another story), but there is only one thing which will make a difference.
Demand.
Renewable energy capacity in the UK surged 19% in 2008 and global renewables investment exceeded that in fossil fuels for the first time ever. Create that sort of demand and the supply and the jobs will follow. The rest, at best, will just facilitate change, not drive it.
Labels: investment, jobs, low carbon economy
# posted by Gareth Kane : 13:32
0 Comments
Friday, 17 July 2009
Green Wednesday?
And lo! It came to pass that the UK did publish a huge raft of low carbon strategies on one day in July. And as promised, here is my quick guide.1. Carbon Transition Plan
This is the over-arching document of the set. The overall emissions savings will come from:
- 54% - power and heavy industry - through the EU Emissions Trading Scheme
- 19% - transport
- 13% - homes and communities
- 9% - "workplaces and jobs"
- 4% - farming, land and waste
Much of what is in the plan is already known - the four Carbon Capture & Storage demos, more energy efficient housing, smart meters in all homes, but it is supplemented with help for "the vulnerable" - particularly elderly people so they don't bear the costs. One surprise, given the amount of debate on the topic, is that the Government is predicting the amount of nuclear energy in the mix will fall to 8% from its current 13%. Given that the overall pie is set to reduce, this is a significant drop indeed. The inclusion of farming is one aspect which is often ignored.
What is missing? The grid is apparently going to get bigger and smarter, but not regionalised. There is nothing about Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) or Combined Heat & Power (CHP). Offshored emissions from our consumption don't get a look in either - as usual there is a tight line drawn around the UK labelled "our responsibility: their responsibility". This issue will cause debate with developing nations in Copenhagen later this year as they bear much of the carbon burden of our lifestyles.
2. Renewable Energy Strategy
The Government is proposing that by 2020, renewables will represent:
- 30% of electricity generation
- 12% of heat
- 10% of transport
In terms of electricity, there will be a big investment in offshore wind, wave and tidal and sustainable bioenergy.
Feed-In Tariffs were the first thing I looked for and, hurrah, they're there. Except they've been re-named "renewable energy cash backs". While I can see that this might create a bit more public interest than the rather technocratic accepted term, especially the word 'cash', I don't like the term "cash-back". If you are selling renewable energy to the grid, then you're selling renewable energy to the grid, not receiving some sort of rebate. The name might discourage, say community interest companies or social enterprises who want to make some money. But whatever the name FITs will appear by next April and should stimulate the kind of boom in small scale regeneration seen in Germany.
There is a lot of discussion in the document of the Renewable Heat Initiative, but this appears to be a work in progress.
3. Low Carbon Transport Strategy
This one is rather woolly - the two main aspects are:
- low carbon technologies - more efficient vehicles, cleaner fuels, electric vehicle infrastructure and sustainable biofuels.
- better choices - low carbon public transport, more transport nodes, cycle racks at railway stations and 18 more cycle demonstration towns.
Aviation is one topic the green groups have been keeping a beady eye on and the strategy is rather vague here. The Government has said they don't want to see foreign holidays go back to the preserve of the middle classes, but they're being somewhat disingenuous as the big increase in air traffic has been the middle classes peppering their year with a series of city breaks. I always liked the idea floated by the Tories a few years ago that everyone would get one tax-free flight a year (the average Brit takes less than one flight in a year) and then there would be hefty taxes on further flights. This seemed a fair way forward, but it was hastily withdrawn under a barrage from the right-wing press (I suspect the measure would have hit journalists more than most).
Only a small part of the strategy involves 'no travel' options with a weasely statement that home working doesn't always have carbon benefits - it does according to the DfT's own research I read! Home working cuts out aircon, commuting and it encourages the use of local services.
In addition, I would like to have seen more statutory requirements to provide road space or alternatives to cyclists. What about making all footpaths in non 20/30mph zones dual use?
4. Low Carbon Industrial Strategy
This is probably the most dense of the four documents with a whole raft of bodies, quangos and existing schemes being utilised to encourage the low carbon supply chain. I've never been convinced the Government's approach has been correct on this one as it, as usual, revolves around competition for funding (previous R&D/Innovation funds have a 1/8 success rate which means the other 7/8 putting a huge amount of work into the application for no joy) and business advice which tends to follow a one-size fits all approach. I found it difficult to trace through all the finance options in this strategy and I guess most entrepreneurs would as well.
IMHO public sector business advice is almost an oxymoron. Yes, you can get the right people in to deliver it (and I do some), but they usually get caught up in red tape, rigid structures, byzantine rules and target chasing.
Basically green markets will follow demand. Governments can stimulate demand by public procurement, tax breaks for low carbon technologies and penalties for high carbon technologies. This will allow good ideas to penetrate the market (as opposed to those who some committee of quangocrats decides are most viable). Private sector investment will follow the market opportunities and the ideas to exploit them. There is some of all of this in the strategy, but again I found the options dense and difficult to evaluate for effectiveness, which tells its own story.
So, while there's nothing wrong with the intentions of this strategy, it should be sleeker, leaner and clearer and less dependent on public sector intervention.
Conclusions
I could be cynical and say there is very little new in these proposals - and I'd be right - most simply soup up current Government schemes to be bolder and faster in their delivery, or introduce well tried elements that the Government has been foot-dragging on for a very long time, like feed-in tariffs. But what is remarkable is the boldness, scope, ambition and coherence of the plan. Someone has been working very hard to bring all this together and they don't seem to have the caveats and wriggle room which have characterised such strategies for the last 10 years. So why the sudden boldness? Is this a Government on its way out saying "Well we're trailing so far behind in the polls we might as well go for it?" Or is climate change secretary Ed Miliband really a bold visionary, striding out across the low carbon landscape? Who knows?
The plans have generally gone down well with stakeholders, with the only dissent being the difference between the CBI ("more nuclear!") and the green groups ("no nuclear!"). The more reactionary press is trying to spin a "energy bill hike/green stealth tax" line on the fact that domestic energy bills may start rising in 2015 (before that, extra costs should be offset by energy efficiency savings), indulging in some cherry-picking/worse case scenario tactics, but after the shock-horror headlines, the strategies get fairly even-handed coverage.
So, overall, I would give these proposals an 'B+', not perfect, but a big leap forward from the 'C-' I would have given the Government before. To get an 'A' we would need to see more distributed energy, consideration of the UK's indirect carbon footprint overseas, clearer financial incentives and, just to make me happy, compulsory standards for cycle provision on highways.
Labels: feed-in tariff, government strategy, low carbon economy, renewable energy, transport
# posted by Gareth Kane : 06:45
1 Comments
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Low carbon strategies - but are they too little, too late?
The UK Government is launching a raft of strategies today: Low Carbon Transition Plan, a Renewable Energy Strategy and the Low Carbon Industrial Strategy. I'll be reviewing them and posting a summary later in the week.In the meantime, wind turbine manufacturer Vesta is closing its UK plant to concentrate production in China, Denmark and Germany (the latter two having feed-in legislation for renewable energy). The Government claims that the UK will have a booming low carbon sector look a bit flimsy if they're going to let this happen. Yesterday I interviewed Roy Stanley, Chairman of the Tanfield Group which owns the world's oldest electric vehicle manufacturer, Smith's (first model 1935, would you believe?). What struck me about our conversation was how a relatively modest increase in orders would drive down the supply chain costs very quickly and make the vehicles much more competitive on capital costs (they are cheaper on through life costs already). Tax breaks and public sector procurement could make this happen very quickly and create a snowball effect.
So, I'd like to see a bit less strategy and quite a lot more action. Tax breaks, public procurement and feed-in legislation would go a long way to creating sustainable markets for the low carbon industry and then we'd see a boom. We shall wait and see...
Labels: electric vehicles, feed-in tariff, low carbon economy, renewable energy
# posted by Gareth Kane : 05:56
0 Comments
Friday, 26 June 2009
Obama's big moment
Barack Obama is about to put his climate change bill to Congress (the news story in this month's Low Carbon Agenda was a little premature). It has been battered, swollen with compromises and slightly watered down, but given this is the home of Big Oil, big cars and big bellies we are talking about, it would be unreasonable to expect even the saintly Obama to execute a handbrake turn in this mother of all economic supertankers. A key moment, and one which will resonate around the world.Meanwhile the UK Government is working up a strategy for financing the shift to the low carbon economy for the Copenhagen conference later this year. Details are a bit sketchy so far, but it appears to be based on a form of contraction and convergence. Cynics may suggest that they need to focus on national leadership as well as making international noises. But overall, there is the impression of building momentum for a post-Kyoto settlement and one which will really deliver.
So, if dawn breaks on a brand new low carbon world, will you be ready for it?
Labels: barack obama, climate change, copenhagen, low carbon economy
# posted by Gareth Kane : 10:09
0 Comments
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Book Review: Blueprint for a Safer Planet by Nicholas Stern
Nicholas Stern's 2006 eponymous report has been credited with taking the climate change debate out of academic and green circles and into the 'real world' of economics (given what has happened to the world economy since, there is some irony in it being seen as more 'real' than the piece of rock we're all sat on). This book builds on that report to present a way forward to "a new era of progress and prosperity" as the tagline of the book would have it. It is clearly written for the benefit of those attending or sending delegations to the crucial Copenhagen COP15 conference later this year which will attempt to form a post-Kyoto international climate change agreement.Stern's main point is that climate change is market failure on a grand scale. By fixing the market - putting a realistic price on the value of carbon and providing an effective trading mechanism - the economy can decarbonise itself, protect forests and go some way to dealing with global inequalities. It is the first point which is most controversial. Stern argues that to discount future costs of climate change is unethical despite it being common practice for most forms of investment (discounting accounts for the fact that if I offered you £10 today or £11 next year, you'd probably take the tenner right now). This is a question I naively asked 10 years ago on an academic environmental economics forum. I sat back while several eminent contributors started slinging increasingly puerile insults at each other across the ether, and unsurprisingly Stern got quite a bit of stick for this aspect of his original report. Personally, I'm with him on this - if we're going to take the intergenerational equality aspect of sustainable development seriously, then we can't discount the negative impacts that later generations are going to face.
My only criticism of the book is its readability. The sentences are long and have multiple subclauses, the paragraphs are rarely enlivened by either bullet points or metaphors and there is a lack of recap or summary at key places to help the reader. The chapter on ethics and discounting is particularly poor on this front which is a shame as this is where the reader needs to concentrate most. While this may not be a problem for the two-brained bureaucrats it is aimed at, it turned what should have been a very informative read into a real chore. I've since read Vince Cable's excellent book on the current economic situation ("The Storm
") in a fraction of the time and retained much more of the content.So, overall, this is an exceedingly important contribution to tackling climate change and it should be on the reading list for everyone involved in COP15. It's just a shame it wasn't more accessible for the rest of us.
Labels: blueprint for a safer planet, books, climate change, low carbon economy, nicholas stern
# posted by Gareth Kane : 06:41
0 Comments
Friday, 28 November 2008
Brown ditches clean tech for home insulation
A couple of weeks ago, Gordon Brown was trailing a big investment in green tech as part of yesterday's pre-budget report, but it seems to have been quietly dropped in place of a boost in home insulation. There is a certain amount of logic in this in the current climate - an investment in clean tech may only deliver in economic and environmental terms several years into the future whereas the insulation scheme, if done properly, will deliver economic and environmental benefits to the lower income sections of the community with a much quicker return on investment.Barak Obama has made a similar promise on clean tech investment - it will be very interesting to see how this good intention manifests itself when the rubber hits the road next year.
Labels: gordon brown, low carbon economy, news
# posted by Gareth Kane : 11:50
0 Comments
Friday, 29 February 2008
Clean Energy Investment Booms
New Energy Finance is reporting that "Clean" energy investment almost hit $150bn last year - up 60% on the year before.Their press release states:
Among the key factors pushing this numbers sharply upwards in 2007 were government policies around the world to promote renewable power and cleaner fuels, oil prices approaching $100-a barrel and rising corporate and investor awareness of the opportunities in clean energy.
One of the themes of 2007 was geographic diversification. Western Europe and North America continued to enjoy sharp increases... but the momentum spread out to include other developed economic regions such as Eastern Europe and Australia.
Even more significant was the pick-up in activity in emerging economies, with China moving strongly ahead with projects in wind, biomass and energy efficiency, Brazil seeing huge investment interest in its sugar based ethanol sector, and Africa starting to see renewable energy and efficiency as partial answers to its power shortages.
Interesting stuff. Obviously the Low Carbon Economy is still in its infancy, but if investment continues to rise at this scale, markets will stabilise and the uptake of renewables and energy efficient technologies will start to become the norm, rather than the exception.
Labels: energy efficiency, investment, low carbon economy, renewable energy
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:36
0 Comments
A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
