Forum For The Future & Green Futures

The Conservatives’ Climate Campaign

Peter Madden — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:03:04 +0100

Earlier this week, I found myself, in the sweltering heat, on the roof terrace of a swanky Soho club. A specially curated modern art exhibition adorned the walls. Around me the conversation buzzed excitedly as celebrities rubbed shoulders with shadow cabinet members.

The reason for this glossy affair? It was the launch of the Conservatives’ Climate Campaign.

I was intrigued for a number of reasons. There was a sense of youth, energy, and excitement that had a strong echo of the mid-1990s when new Labour was becoming newly-fashionable. This felt like the place people wanted to be.

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor spoke. The campaign promised “bold and transformational policies to allow Britain to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050” and “a big NO to any new coal-fired power station that does not have carbon capture and storage from day one”.

Business turned out in force, too. Indeed the launch booklet was full of ads from sponsor companies, such as Asda. Sponsored policy-documents are a rather depressing sign of the times, but at least, I reflected, the Conservatives are being up-front and transparent about the fact that business is paying.

Change is certainly afoot. A decade ago, I just can’t imagine the Conservatives launching such an initiative. Now they feel edgier than the government on the climate change agenda. The raffle – there always has to be a raffle at a Tory do – was to fund their campaign against a third runway at Heathrow!

We have yet to see how deep climate concern runs in the Conservatives, or the detail of their policy prescriptions. But as I sipped my glass of wine on that warm summer evening, I did get a strong sense of tectonic plates shifting.

Hydrogen city car hits 300mpg and 30g/km CO2

GF assistant — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:42:38 +0100

‘Open source’, locally manufactured fuel cell car designed for sharing

With politicians and carmakers waxing lyrical about electric vehicles, the squat hydrogen fuel cell car with a top speed of 50mph introduced by start-up Riversimple in June is definitely bucking prevailing trends.

But what the Urban lacks in pzazz, it makes up in green credentials. Thanks to its super-light carbon composite body (just 350kg), fuel efficiency reaches an impressive 300mpg. It gives off no exhaust pipe emissions, and, says Riversimple, it’s also a ‘lower carbon’ car than the all-electric G-Wiz. The carbon emissions resulting from generating the electricity used to produce its hydrogen fuel work out, per kilometre, as half as much as those emitted in producing the power for the G-Wiz (30g/km as opposed to over 60g/km).

Riversimple’s lead engineer, former racing car driver Hugo Spowers, describes it as a first attempt at a “sustainable car” in the widest sense. That’s why Urban’s whole design and manufacturing process looks very different to your average car.

Firstly, it’s ‘open source’, which means design blueprints will be freely available for others to improve on. Secondly, the Urban won’t be sold outright, but leased to car sharing companies, local councils and individuals. ‘Sharing’ features, such as card-key door locks, are central to the design. And Spowers hopes to add a swappable dashboard so that different drivers can customise the same car with their own settings and driving stats. He reckons each car will have a 16-year life span, four times the average ‘leasing expectancy’.

Manufacturing will also be local and fairly small-scale. If Spowers is successful in finding the next $32 million in investment, he hopes to establish a site producing around 5,000 cars a year – possibly in Oxford.

Why hydrogen, you might ask. The fuel is not yet produced on a large scale without electricity from fossil fuels, nor is there existing infrastructure. “Hydrogen, in my opinion, is a massively better option [than electric batteries] for a city car,” responds Spowers. He explains that the Urban is not a fuel cell car in the same way as Honda’s Clarity FCX, which replaces a powerful internal combustion engine with a large (and expensive) fuel cell. Instead, it uses a small, 6kW fuel cell – perfectly adequate for the modest flow of power to the four wheelbased electric motors – and a bank of ultracapacitors, charged by a combination of the fuel cell and regenerative braking, to deliver brief bursts of high power for acceleration.

Spowers said Urban’s efficiency and range (200 miles compared with G-Wiz’s 75) mean drivers need refuel only once a week – so one hydrogen station could service scores of cars.

But will drivers be interested in sharing cars? Spowers thinks the idea of individually owned vehicles may be on its way out, especially if fun-to-drive cars like Urban can provide better city mobility. “We’re definitely taking the long view on this one,” he says. – April Streeter

Talk is cheap

James Taplin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:38:20 +0100

In the beginning was the word, and it was chattered from the treetops, chanted in the darkness of smoky caves, sung across the plains and dripped poisonously into ears. It was a stentorian bark across the battlefield, a sensual whisper in the moonlight, and a gasp of new life . . .

And then Mr Watson was summoned for his chat, and everything changed. It’s not that all those things above no longer happened, it’s rather that with the coming of the telephone they happened more, plus louder, faster and, crucially, further than ever before.

Words and communication are what our society is built upon and, generally, the better you are at communicating, the more successful you are. Equally, this human need to talk continues to drive innovation, generating huge sums of money or prestige for those who find ways to make it cheaper, better, and more convenient.

It’s little wonder, therefore, that the mobile phone has rapidly gone from being a heavy ostentatious symbol of decadence for people with sports cars, into the third essential item that no-one leaves home without – Keys? Wallet? Phone? (and even that hierarchy is being eroded).

And the service providers have been there guiding and nurturing us throughout. They let us throw our voices down their networks, and have introduced us to new ways of communicating by text and picture (transforming the ways we think, and our language in the process).

But, as lovely as they are, none of this has happened for free (especially over really long distances), and since the word is too powerful to be constrained by the barrier of cost, it’s inevitable that it should have eventually found a cheaper outlet – currently the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Skype was the first to take the VoIP concept and turn it into something truly useful and usable. It is now used by millions of users around the world to speak (and videoconference) easily and cheaply via the internet.

This trend is set to continue with Google Voice which allows users to link their many work/home/personal numbers together under one Google Voice number, and do all manner of ‘cool things’ with it (like seamless switching of calls mid-conversation, for example from landline to mobile so you can take your office conversation out to lunch, or from one mobile to another if the first battery is about to die). Most worryingly for the networks, however, is that calls to and from the Google Voice number are also likely to be free.

So, given that service providers are frequently little more than data pipes for transporting the word, and given that we're seeing the rapid development of virtually free pipes (soon to be made more ubiquitous in the UK with the government's aspirations of broadband for all, funded by the new tax), what role is there left for them?

3 has been the first to respond to the VoIP threat by embracing it. After all, “if you can't beat 'em . . .” It is currently the only network to offer free Skype calls from its handsets, meaning customers can use their phones without paying 3 anything at all (even on pay-as-you-go phones for which you theoretically never need to buy a top-up). Others, like O2, are transforming themselves into a lifestyle choice and offering services beyond basic communications – witness its drive to create the O2 experience (spearheaded by the O2 arena), and the launch of the new family organiser, the joggler.

Interesting news from Vodafone and T-mobile, on the other hand, is that they are looking at femtocells – home wireless points that connect a user’s mobile phone with their broadband network. These not only provide the homeowner with flawless mobile connectivity at home (without the need for the network to provide costly main masts), but their integration with home broadband must surely mean that a VoIP offering is also on the way.

So what next? The word will out, by whatever means necessary, and whilst it’s too simple to say that they need to diversify or die, the networks do need to innovate and become more responsive to the needs of their users (something which, historically, hasn’t always unduly troubled them).

One thing is clear, as time goes on, speech really will be freer than ever before.

Solar farm to transform Welsh city's skyline

GF assistant — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:05:52 +0100

Newport council outshines UK Government on solar power
Swimming pools, sports centres and schools are being eyed up as sites for a new ‘solar farm’. The Welsh city of Newport plans to pitch large-scale photovoltaic arrays on all public buildings, after a report found “great potential” on the rooftops. One sure target is the Velodrome, which will use power on-site from its 8,500-square-metre roof, while installations on other civic rooftops would feed sunshine back into the grid.

The plan, outlined in Newport Council’s Sustainable Development Proposal, takes its lead from the Moorland Park Community Centre, which won a 50% grant from the Low Carbon Building Programme to install a 2.75kWp system with 14 modules. The array was completed in June last year.

The initial report estimates that each 200W panel will generate 750kWh a year, to be sold back to the contracted supplier (currently EDF) at 10p a unit, generating £75 per year. This would pay back the cost of installation in less than 15 years, and then generate profit over the remaining ten years of the panel’s life.

Newport’s solar skyline is clearly ahead of the game, with the UK warranting only a D grade in a nation-by-nation report on PV progress. The report, by Green Cross International, found “no significant support for solar growth” in the UK – while France, Spain and the US all walked away with Cs, and no others matched A-grade Germany.

Germany currently has the highest capacity in Europe at over 5,000MWp, but Spain is catching up quickly with the fastest rate of improved capacity, according to the EurObservER barometer. The sunny kingdom added 2,600MWp to its PV total last year thanks to a feed-in tariff that proved profitable for large-scale plants. – Anna Simpson

Obama drives up fuel efficiency on cars

GF assistant — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:48:34 +0100

Robust new mileage standards for US auto industryFlanked by two unlikely allies – California’s Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson – President Obama has announced groundbreaking vehicle standards that will further cement the greening of the US car industry.

By regulating both miles per gallon and exhaust pollution, the new uniform federal standard links curbs on greenhouse gas emissions with fuel economy standards for the first time in US history.

Covering vehicle model years 2012 to 2016, the legislation will require car makers to achieve an average fuel economy for their fleets of 35.5mpg in 2016 (with 39mpg specified for cars and 30mpg for light trucks). It will replace the current CAFE – Corporate Average Fuel Economy – standard of 27.5mpg for cars and 24mpg for light trucks. According to White House calculations, the four-year programme should result in a saving of about 1.8 billion barrels in oil consumption, and a total reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 900 million tonnes – the equivalent to taking 3.7 million cars off the road.

The new single standard will replace existing federal and state laws governing both fuel standards and greenhouse gas emissions. Initiating a national vehicle emissions standard also brings to a close the increasingly bitter battle between California and the US vehicle industry over the state’s efforts to impose its own legally binding greenhouse-gas emissions standard. Seventeen other states had said they would follow California’s lead if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted its request for a waiver enabling the state government to act unilaterally. While the EPA has not yet ruled on the waiver request, Obama’s national approach supersedes their decision.

The new standard may be modest in comparison with Europe, but it represents a huge step forward in the US, where motor manufacturers and their lobbyists have successfully squashed previous efforts at improving mileage requirements.

At the White House announcement, industry leaders were enthusiastic. “It launches a new beginning,” said David McCurdy, President of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. “The President has succeeded in bringing three regulatory bodies, 15 states, a dozen automakers and many environmental groups to the table.” – Polly Ghazi

Help us design sustainable capital markets

Alice Chapple — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:04:00 +0100

It’s less than a year since our entire financial system was on the verge of meltdown, yet I’m constantly amazed by how many in business and government seem prepared to ignore the fundamental flaws the crisis exposed.

We hear today that the British Banking Association is urging regulators not to tighten the rules on holding cash and capital for the time being, because this will impact on recovery.

And we are told that the remuneration package agreed for Stephen Hester, the CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland is acceptable because it is based on the 'long-term' performance of the bank over the next three years.

These events provide dismal confirmation that little has been learned from the financial crisis and that the focus for most of our business leaders and for government is on getting back to 'business as usual' as quickly as possible.

No-one wants the painful recession to be prolonged. We all recognise the need to get RBS onto a strong footing so the bank can provide funding to businesses and we, as taxpayers, can start to get repaid.

But I find it mind-boggling that powerful people can assume that we can simply revert to the old models of unsustainable growth funded by ever-increasing credit and incentivised by inappropriate remuneration.

Forum for the Future's new publication, Rethinking Capital, challenges this assumption. Building on themes from Jonathon Porritt's booklet, Living within our Means, it outlines the key areas where the finance sector needs to focus its attention in order to avoid 'the ultimate recession'.

In our view, it is simply inappropriate to put the finance sector back together without embedding some really fundamental changes. The financial crisis showed how shaky the foundations of the finance sector are - in valuation of assets, assessment of risk, investing in a sustainable future. We have to rethink these foundations urgently before we can rebuild.

So we’re calling on people with an interest in the finance sector, whether within or outside it, to help us design practical steps that can bring about capital markets that deliver what society actually needs. We outline our ideas for action in Rethinking Capital, and we hope that this will help create dialogue around the changes required. We know from the financial crisis that the capital markets tend to be misaligned with the public interest. Now is the moment to rethink them.

Teaching China’s future business leaders about sustainability

David Bent — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:51:07 +0100

Last week I spoke to 30 future Chinese business decision-makers about leadership in uncertain times. I came away impressed with their curiosity and desire to address issues like poverty and climate change.

I had been told that the group didn't like to interact so when we had a break halfway through the session I expected to be alone. Not a bit of it: they wanted to engage me further in the issues. What they didn't like was group discussions.

They were engaged, attentive, informed and curious. Some were even willing to talk how an absence of democracy will hamper China's development in the medium term. But all were rightly adamant that China did need to develop, which means the already-rich nations need to make room, both political and environmental.

The group has been selected as future leaders by CICPA, the leading Chinese accounting institute, and is in the UK for a month to accelerate their development. The ICAEW, Europe's largest accounting institute, has organised events every day on issues vital to their jobs, like corporate governance and audit standards.

This year I was asked to do a session on 'leadership in uncertain times' as a way of getting sustainability into their curriculum without calling it sustainability. Of course we do this sort of thing all the time, bringing together senior people with a common interest in developing leadership for sustainability through learning, reflection and, crucially, practical innovation.

They wanted a three hour - three hour! - talk in a wood-paneled room, deep in the Victorian gothic of Chartered Accountant's Hall. The messages were driven by a central proposition: that the business context after the recession will be driven by the challenges of sustainable development - 'living within our means' financially, environmentally and socially.

Presumably their curiosity and engagement were the reasons why they had been selected to come on this learning trip. If they apply those qualities to what I said then I’m hopeful they will help make a difference in China.

Focusing minds: Guy Thompson on the challenge of sustainability

Katie Shaw — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:48:50 +0100

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

Guy Thompson

Class of: 1997-8

Currently: Executive Director External Affairs, Natural England

Why I chose the Mprof
I had a career in conservation, but at the back of my mind a voice was saying, “I’ve got a degree in politics, I want to see something of the bigger picture”. I’m not a great academic, but this programme brought in thought leaders who’d been there, done that, for us to plunder their intellectual capital. It took my career in a whole new direction.

Things my Masters taught me
It was a crash course in understanding the scale of the challenge. I’d had an idea of sustainable development as this all-encompassing magical fix. By the end of the programme I was in no doubt how far we were from realising the vision. But I also saw how much progressive-minded folk have permeated sectors you wouldn’t expect.

"Build your career around your own values rather than around your perception of what you should do"

Career to date
My dream job was Parliamentary Officer for the RSPB – and I got it. The Masters definitely gave me the edge. I then worked for Forum for the Future as a Policy Adviser, before going to Green Alliance as their Director, where I had the chance to engage with environmental NGOs and politicians at the highest level – even Tony Blair. When I was approached by Natural England to join their executive board, I threw my hat into the ring.

What I plan to do next
This is a time of reflection for me. I’m struck by how far we’ve come and how little we’ve travelled. Here we are at the fag end of New Labour, which has failed to grasp the nettle despite understanding the imperatives around climate change – so my optimism has faded. On the plus side, I’m encouraged that evidence for global warming is focusing minds and bringing bigger actors to the table.

Advice for future leaders
Build your career around your own values rather than around your perception of what you should do, because that’s what drives you and will give you the energy to lead others.

Interview by Anna Simpson.

First UK power plant captures carbon emissions

GF assistant — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:07:23 +0100

ScottishPower plant to trial 'clean coal' technology'The UK’s second biggest coal-fired power station made headlines in May as the first in the country to start capturing its carbon dioxide emissions. Or, more accurately, a tiny proportion of them. Yet the project at Longannet, the 40-year-old plant on the Firth of Forth, puts ScottishPower at the forefront of a technology widely seen as crucial for the future of coal – and the climate.

A ‘small-scale replica’ of a full-scale post-combustion carbon capture plant (nevertheless 40 feet long and weighing 30 tonnes) is now running for seven months, recovering CO2 from flue gases. The aim is to test the chemistry of how different amine solutions absorb the CO2, the amount of energy needed to heat the gas-saturated solution to drive off the CO2 and capture it, and how many times the amines can be recycled around this process. Operating on just 1MW of Longannet’s total net capacity of 2.3GW, the technology is processing 1,000 cubic metres of exhaust gas per hour.

While this is carbon capture, it is not quite the much-vaunted ‘carbon capture and storage’ (CCS), as there’s no long-term storage arrangement in place. But ScottishPower hopes to scale the plant up to 300MW and link it with potential North Sea storage sites, if it’s chosen next year for the Government’s commercial-scale CCS demonstration competition.

Since taking charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband has pinned a lot on the UK’s chances of getting CCS to work – both to keep coal (which still accounts for around a third of electricity delivered to the national grid) in the energy mix, and to develop a new green industry with massive export potential.

As well as the competition to deliver a post-combustion technology demo project by 2014 (focussing on the recovery of CO2 from flue gases), he is proposing a levy on electricity suppliers to fund up to three more, which might include pre-combustion methods of carbon capture.

Another suggestion is to set dates for making CCS compulsory – assuming it proves workable. New coal-fired power station projects (such as the two new 800MW units E.ON so controversially wants to build at Kingsnorth) would only be permitted if ‘carbon capture ready’ – ie they have the space to retrofit the equipment for capturing and transporting out the CO2, an identified site for its eventual storage, and a feasible route for getting there.

Miliband has also proposed that any new project must implement CCS on at least 300MW of its net power capacity from day one, and commit to full-scale retrofit of CCS within five years of the technology being technically and commercially viable. This will be a judgment for the Environment Agency, which it is expected to make by 2020 – though the Government accepts it will need to do something else if that day never comes.

Also on the cards is a proposal to set emissions performance standards to improve the efficiency of all (including existing) coal-fired power stations.

A consultation is now under way (until September) on these proposals, and their possible extension to existing coal-fired power stations. Critics, including Greenpeace, fear the outcome could be a fudge that gives coal a long-term future, while CCS remains just an uncertain promise.

A recent report by AEA Group, published alongside the Government’s consultation document, puts a figure of £2-£4 billion a year by 2030 on the Future Value Of Coal Carbon Abatement Technologies To UK Industry. A leading role in this sector could support 30,000-60,000 jobs, it says. That’s no mean prize – and the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway and others may all be chasing it too. – Roger East

Waste heat from computers to warm buildings

Katie Shaw — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:20:48 +0100

Telecommunications company aims to hook up London site to nearby homes and offices

Any laptop user will know that even the most casual of Twittering with a computer resting on your knees can get uncomfortably hot – so imagine the vast amount of heat that a massive IT data centre kicks out. Now telecommunications company Telehouse Europe is planning to capture that and pipe it to nearby homes and businesses.

When it opens in 2010, the nine-storey £80 million Telehouse West data centre in London’s Docklands will provide up to 9MW of ‘free heat’ – enough for water and space heating in about 450 local homes.

Telehouse intends to install a heat exchange unit to pump water, warmed by the data centre’s cooling systems, to the perimeter of the site, from where a developer can pipe it on to their own site and use a heat exchanger to warm or cool buildings.

Barratt Homes had shown an interest in using the resource in housing planned for the adjacent site, says Martyn Bishop of WSP UK, the engineering consultancy working with Telehouse on the project, but the development is on hold due to funding difficulties, so the hot water is still up for grabs.

Telehouse isn’t planning to charge for the hot water, but would expect a contribution to an appropriately sized heat exchanger on its own site. “They’re going to get free energy for life, so it’s not an insignificant offer,” he adds.

If the waste heat is used to the full, it should result in an overall annual saving of 1,110 tonnes of CO2 emissions. – Iain Aitch and Hannah Bullock

Cutting carbon with smart finance

Will Dawson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:29:17 +0100

Smart, efficient finance has huge potential to help public sector organisations cut their carbon footprint cost-effectively, so it’s surprising it’s so little used at a time when budgets are under pressure.

We’ve set out to help councils and other public bodies meet their carbon targets for less money, and today we publish Smarter finance: how to get more carbon savings for your cash. This report shows how smarter ways of raising and using finance – like revolving funds and services companies – can make money go further, saving both carbon and cash.

We’ve gathered rare examples of pioneering initiatives from as far afield as Lithuania – where groups of tenants club together to fund energy efficiency measures – and we now know what is special and worth repeating.

For instance, Kirklees’ Re-Charge scheme loans householders money to install low-carbon technologies in their property, such as solar panels to heat water. It is successful because there are no interest charges and the money does not have to be repaid until the property is sold. The council only has to subsidise the interest on the loans and this costs around three times less per home than using a grant scheme.

In parts of Milton Keynes developers pay a levy into a fund to offset the carbon emissions from the use of new properties. The money is spent on local schemes such as insulating older homes which are much less energy efficient. It works because it is cheaper to save carbon in older homes than make new homes carbon neutral and it raises capital from the developers.

Perhaps most famous of all is Woking Borough Council and its service company, Thameswey Energy Ltd. Thameswey installs combined heat and power plants which supply heating and electricity to households, businesses and council buildings in the centre of Woking. It used just £38,000 of council funds to borrow £1 million from private investors. The story has been widely celebrated, yet there are few other councils establishing service companies.

Rather than wondering why Thameswey isn’t being copied elsewhere, we wanted to identify the replicable ingredients which allowed Woking to take this bold step in the first place. The answer is of value to all public sector organisations – it’s because the council leaders and executives actively supported innovation.

The most important lesson from Woking isn’t the technicalities of establishing a private CHP network, it’s that top-level leadership, which encourages staff to be inventive and take risks, can lead to exceptional, progressive solutions. Of course, thorough research, risk management and feasibility analysis are important too, but this release from the bureaucratic leash is a vital and, until now, overlooked success factor for smarter finance and cost-effective carbon savings.

We have used many more practical insights like these to develop ten success factors for getting smarter with finance, and a staged process for developing new initiatives which we'll use to work with public sector organisations as part of our Climate Finance project.

I’ve seen first-hand, whilst working in the European Commission, how creativity can be stifled by hierarchy and procedures. So when we launched Climate Finance at the Corporation of London earlier this year, I was delighted to see that UK public servants have such free-flowing enthusiasm, passion and creativity. After barely an hour of our ‘fantasy finance’ game we had developed new financial models to save carbon. These included a new service company which supplied water, heat and electricity to the NHS and invested in energy savings and generation across its estate, and a trading scheme for waste. The winner was a community-run social enterprise which generated energy locally and used the profits to provide insulation to households.

Many who joined us that day said that having a broad range of expertise in the groups was the catalyst to the success. This is why we are offering interested public sector organisations the opportunity to work with our advisory group to help them create schemes like this for real.

The public sector faces the prospect of a cash-starved decade, yet carbon reduction targets will stiffen. This recession is the opportunity to move from grant to pay-as-you-save schemes which generate returns. This sort of smarter finance is our solution and this report is a practical guide to making it happen.

In the future, public income will be as important as expenditure when it comes to funding carbon savings. “Cash out – cash in”, is the new way to save carbon.

Sustainability success stories

Jonathon Porritt — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:16:35 +0100

The Met Office publishes its detailed projections for the impacts of climate change on the UK today – in unprecedented geographical detail. It’s not going to be pleasant reading.

So I’ve been cheering myself up by reminding myself, all over again, of the power of positive thinking. Just a week ago, the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy held their annual bash at the Royal Geographical Society, with the Prince of Wales handing out the Awards and giving a stirring speech.

For me, this event is one of the highlights of the annual calendar – it’s just incredibly uplifting to hear cutting-edge success stories going on around the world from the people who are actually making it all happen.

In the context of climate change in the UK, I just want to highlight two of the 2009 winners. First is Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council – one of the unsung heroes of local government who have been doing their 'sustainability bit' for the last 20 years (and are one of the pioneers in Forum for the Future’s i-team project helping local authorities develop innovative solutions to tackling climate change).

Their current home insulation initiative has really made people sit up and listen, as it has succeeded in achieving real scale – where so many of the current measures are just picking around at the edges. Here’s what the Award citation said:

“In 2007, Kirklees Council committed £10 million to providing free loft and cavity-wall insulation for every home in the borough where it can be used. The scheme targets one council ward at a time, using the local Councillor and local advertising, then individual home visits by assessors. By May 2009, 66,000 out of the 172,000 households in the borough had been assessed, 54,000 referred for surveys, 26,000 surveys had been completed, and 21,000 had insulation installed. This avoids an estimated 18,000 tonnes a year of CO2. 140 jobs have been created by the scheme.”

In my view, every local authority in the country is going to have to introduce schemes along those lines over the next couple of years. That’s the consequence of the ambitious targets that have now been adopted through the Climate Change Act.

But, for many, 'seeing is still believing', and there are lots of people who are not yet persuaded that doing full-on home insulation actually makes much difference. And that’s where the Sustainable Energy Academy comes in – by persuading those who’ve already done it to demonstrate how they did it, to those who’d like to do it.

“The Sustainable Energy Academy has set up a network of homes, mostly built before 1919, whose owners have installed measures to reduce carbon emissions by 60% or more. Measures include roof, cavity-wall, solid-wall and under-floor insulation; triple-glazed windows; draughtproofing; heat-recovery ventilation; solar and biomass heating; efficient lighting; and solar electric supply. The SEA provides training and support to enable owners to open their homes to the public, providing real demonstrations of how to achieve significant carbon savings. To date, 25 homes belong to the network, and over 36,000 people have visited them. SEA wants to increase the network to 200 homes across the UK so that people can easily visit one.”

Forum for the Future is also working to pioneer practical methods to cut the carbon footprint of our existing housing stock. You can read more about it here.

Contacts
Kirklees Council: Phil Webber
Sustainable Energy Academy: John Doggart

By the way, the International Awards are equally, if not more inspiring. Check it all out on the Ashden Awards website.

Fighting for fish

Sara Parkin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:45:13 +0100

To Islington Vue Cinema last week to the premier of End of the Line, a film that pulls not even the most gruesome punch to show how fish are being 'mined' to extinction. Dubbed The Inconvenient Truth About Fish by The Economist magazine, the film chronicles the plundering of fish stocks around the world.

Trawlers scrape the sea bed into a desert and use whizzy technololgy to literally 'herd' fish into nets. The waste is shocking and the stupidity of grinding up fish to feed other fish in farms jawdropping. As is the (sometimes criminal) complicity of governments, the food industry, restaurants, and indiscriminating you and me. The EU, for example, is buying fishing rights for its trawlers from desperately poor and hungry countries, like Angola.

Despite all that, I found the film, like the book by former Daily Telegraph journalist Charles Clover on which it is based, full of hope. The stars are just so beautiful - in death as well as in life - and there is so much we can do to change what is happening - starting today.

By fishing at about half the pace we do now (with lines, more locally, and without waste,) we could make a huge difference. So, whether you eat fish or not, see the film, get the nifty guide to what fish to avoid and start quizzing fishmongers and waiters at every opportunity. Join the larger campaign to prod politicians into regulating the fishing industry sensibly, and lobby to secure the marine reserves that will give fish stocks the time to recover.

UK distribution and campaign details can be found here.

Read Forum's report Fishing for Good.

Financing the rainforests

Alice Chapple — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:40:57 +0100

Today Forum for the Future is publishing a report which we hope will help governments and business to take urgent action to save the rainforests.

The Forest Investment Review was commissioned by the UK government, and sets out to shape thinking in the run-up to the UN’s conference on climate change in Copenhagen and beyond.

Protecting the world’s forests is a crucial part of the fight against global warming - deforestation and forest degradation account for around 18% of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

But the fact is that all over the world deforestation is driven by people’s need to make a living, whether it’s clearing land for subsistence farming or for intensive agriculture. So we have to find ways to reward people for looking after what is a vital global resource.

We’ve looked at how to finance the conservation of forests and generate sustainable economic development for the communities which depend on them. And we’ve looked at how government spending can unlock private investment to achieve funding on the scale we need.

The Forest Investment Review was commissioned by the UK's Department of International Development (DFID) and Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), which are heavily engaged in climate change discussions with other governments ahead of Copenhagen. The report will help inform government policy-makers, in both developed countries and in the developing forest nations.

It’s the work of a team of experts in finance and forests, brought together by the Forum to assess the different areas in which private sector finance can be mobilised. They’ve each contributed a chapter focussing on a different aspect of the issue, for example what might encourage big institutional investors like pension funds to invest in forests.

We’re publishing each chapter as a separate paper on our website and we plan to make them available as a full report in a few weeks' time.

Image: STILLFX

When floods become fun

Shelley Hannan — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:39:09 +0100

It’s time to reassess our difficult relationship with floods. Could we even consider them as a good thing?

Requiring householders to apply for permission before they pave over front gardens might sound like yet another finicky planning hurdle for home improvers. But the law, introduced last autumn, actually marked an important first step in reconnecting people with their local water environment.

Cumulative loss of garden area increases surface run-off and ultimately contributes to flooding in drains and watercourses, explains Bill Finlinson, Associate Director of environmental consultancy Entec UK. “I don’t think the average person has any idea about the implications, on the wider community, of what they are doing,” he says.

At the end of a decade of headline-grabbing flood events, our collective attitude to flood risk remains well behind the times. “We had a fairly flood-free period from the late 1940s until the end of the 1990s, and I think people rather forgot about flooding. During that time a lot of inappropriate development went on – and we’re paying for that now.” The challenge, he argues, is to open people’s minds to different ways of thinking about the subject.

Which is why Entec’s flood specialists recently got together to brainstorm the thorny issue, alongside ecologists, engineers and business strategists. The resulting discussions, which have been pulled together with news, opinion and resources in an open forum, make interesting reading. Ideas include not only how to work with floods to avoid the horror of ruined homes and infrastructure, but how to reconnect people, in a more positive way, with what is a natural phenomenon.

One contributor suggested designing public spaces with cascading pools or fountains that would operate only during times of excess water: “Flood alleviation becomes a treat, a transitory feature that is appreciated while it’s there.” Another points out that “Oxford’s development grew around the historic water meadows. When these flood and freeze in winter, people [would] go ice-skating… The flood was looked forward to.”

“Floods are a natural process,” reminds Finlinson. In essence, they are seasonal fluctuations in water flow that we should allow for. Floodplains are part of a river’s ‘living space’, providing important drainage areas and wildlife habitats.

He’s encouraged that an assumption against new building on flood plains was central to last year’s Pitt Review of the handling of the 2007 floods. The publication’s 92 proposals included closer ties between weather forecasters and flood emergency services, and an end to the humble sandbag.

There’s no sign yet of flood-powered fountains being built around the country, but new projects are at least taking the suggestions on board – and some even include ‘flooding’ and ‘fun’ (or leisure) in the same sentence.

For example, Entec is involved in a scheme in Cornwall to create green corridors on ex-mining land, which would absorb floodwater more effectively than pipes, and double up as nature areas and playing fields. “Most of the time, people would see these corridors as open spaces that they could use for leisure,” Finlinson says. If planners accept the surface water management proposal, drawn up in collaboration with the local authority, future developers would be bound by the scheme.

This mirrors plans for a 120-metre-wide ‘blue belt’ on the flood plain of the River Derwent in Derby, which will protect homes and businesses, and create access to the river. It has been put forward by the Environment Agency as a more sensible solution than simply replacing the river’s ageing flood defences.

Finlinson says there’s no doubt that attitudes towards flooding are changing. “Just five years ago, if you talked to many local authority planners you’d be told that drains were something the drainage department did. Now it’s much higher on their agenda.”

What needs to happen next, he says, is to engage with the public. He’d like to see neighbourhoods prepared for the worst – not just those that have suffered flooding in the past but places where this may be a future challenge. “You need to be honest with people,” Finlinson says. “You have to make them aware of the water courses where they live and the risks involved, and say: ‘Occasionally, there’ll be more water than these drains can take. But we can cope with this – this is manageable.’”

He stresses that the discourse must not revolve only around risks but opportunities too: “We need to think of flooding as something that society can live with – and that can even be a good thing.”
– Julian Rollins

Entec UK is a Forum for the Future partner.

What’s in the tea leaves?

Shelley Hannan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:42:20 +0100

Exports of tea and fresh flowers are key to Kenya’s economy – but can they ever be sustainable?

It’s 2023. Kenya’s population is headed for 60 million, with 100 people disputing each square kilometre of land. It’s not known when the next rain will fall, and exhausted soils mean meagre harvests.

This hard-hitting scenario is one of the tools that tea and flower multinational Finlays has used to plan for a sustainable future. It has committed to an ambitious set of goals to prepare for risks and to maximise opportunities over the next 15 years, by promoting environmental recovery and resilience, and becoming carbon neutral.

Finlays is one of the world’s largest tea-trading companies. It has been working in Kenya since the 1930s – taking advantage of the rainfall in Kericho, 2,000 metres above sea level in the Western Highlands – and now produces over 23 million kg of tea every year in Kenya alone, alongside 92 hectares of flower farms.

But if Finlays is to maintain this level of productivity in the future, it will have to face up to a series of challenges. Kenya is already experiencing water scarcity and struggling with social unrest caused by competition for resources and a growing number of ecological refugees. The Mau Forest used to be the country’s principal watershed, with flow throughout the year, but now there is only water when it rains, limiting the supply for irrigation and hydropower, not to mention drinking water.

“Our business model is particularly vulnerable,” admits Simon Large, Commercial Director of Finlays, “because of our extensive reliance on Kenyan resources – the people, land and water. The eco and social systems we work with are increasingly fragile.”

It was early in 2008, when social tensions escalated into a violent crisis, that Finlays commissioned Forum for the Future to help it develop a strategy with sustainability at its core.

The starting point was a set of compelling scenarios projecting the social, political and ecological challenges of today 15 years into the future. A ‘Walking the tightrope’ scenario envisaged a politically stable Kenya pursuing a free-market and enjoying high economic growth, but struggling to accommodate a mushrooming population with natural resources under ever-increasing strain. In another scenario, ‘Hanging on’, businesses were acting for short-term gain against a backdrop of tribal conflict.

“A company like Finlays can’t afford to underestimate the immediacy of climate change,” said James Goodman, Head of Futures at Forum for the Future, “but their commitment to sustainability was consistent throughout the company. We never felt that our advice was being taken less than seriously.”

Finlays has already begun its journey towards a net zero impact, minimising water waste and actively maintaining the health of the soil. They are also planning to strengthen relationships with the local community by creating more opportunities for employment and developing partnerships with smallholders. No one can foresee the company’s future, but, says Large, “sustainability is now an unchallenged part of it”. – Anna Simpson

Nuclear comes clean

Jonathon Porritt — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:54:22 +0100

The Cheltenham Science Festival is now in full swing, and on Wednesday I went along to listen to Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century. Great talk.

However, we didn’t get the full value of Jeremy’s insights, as the festival organisers had stuck him on a panel with four other people, one each for nuclear, coal, wind and Energy from Waste industries. The last two did well (yes, there really is a good sustainability case for the kind of Energy from Waste technologies), but our friends from the coal and nuclear industries were just dreadful. They’d clearly been sent on media training courses, which produced a weird amalgam of the patronising, the banal and the downright dishonest.

But at least we know where we are these days. Not so long ago, the nuclear industry would disdainfully acknowledge that there was a role for renewables alongside nuclear. Not a big role, but at least something to add to the overall supply picture. In the last few months, however, they’ve decided to move into full battle mode, on a 'them or us' basis. As Jeremy puts it:

“Those reluctant to abandon the nuclear and fossil-fuel status-quo have been reacting to all this with a fresh candour. In March, both EDF and EON advised the UK Government to cut back on renewables in favour of nuclear. The energy giants declared efforts to get 35% renewables into the UK’s electricity mix – as the Government intends – to be not only unrealistic, but damaging to nuclear plans. They said additional carbon-generating plants would be needed because of the intermittency of renewables.”
I’m sorry, but this is truly pathetic. Little more a year ago, these nuclear zealots were telling the world (including any prospective investors who would listen) that any new nuclear in the UK would require zero public subsidies. Hardened anti-nuclear campaigners such as myself and Jeremy fell about laughing – not one kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity has ever gone onto the grid, anywhere in the world, over forty years, without some kind of public subsidy. So why does anybody suppose that it’s going to be any different this time round?

At least the big energy companies have now had the decency to come out and tell us at least part of the truth about their nuclear ambitions.

Fast-tracking sustainability into professions

Sara Parkin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:04:40 +0100

To the sunny terrace of the House of Commons for the launch of the Engineering Council’s Guidance on Sustainability the other week. The place was unnaturally quiet, and if a tumbril had rolled across the lobby carrying bodies of disgraced MPs I would not have been surprised.

Confirming that he was probably the only MP in the building (and ‘clean’ as far as his expenses were concerned) Brian Iddon gave the main speech of congratulations. As a member of the Industry, Universities and Science Committee and a founder member of the Environmental Audit Committee, Brian was genuinely enthusiastic about the new guidelines and congratulated the Engineering Council on its pioneering work on getting sustainability into the heart of engineering practice.

And indeed, while the story may lack the glamour of M&S’s Plan A, what the engineers are doing is hugely important because it will influence every sector of the economy. Since 2005 all engineers wishing to gain Chartered status in the UK have had to demonstrate 'sustainability competencies', a change to professional standards for registration which some of Forum’s young engineers helped to bring about. Percolating the implications to education and training through the many specialist engineering institutions and university departments is now well underway.

Some other professions have followed suit, notably accountancy. But others are lagging, citing institutions unaccustomed to rapid change. Not a viable excuse any more. Urgent transfusions of sustainability throughout the system are needed, and as almost everybody belongs to some professional or trade association, where better to fast-track sustainability literacy throughout the existing and future workforce? Not exciting, but essential. The Engineering Council has shown it can be done.

To read about Forum's Engineers for the 21st Century programme (E21C) - which is all about engaging the engineering profession in sustainability - click here.

Updated June 8th:

Several voices have joined in to support an Industry, Universities and Science Committee’s recommendation that the government should appoint Chief Engineering Advisors as they do Chief Scientific Advisors. I think it is a terrific idea. Getting down to the practicalities of implementing radical carbon reduction strategies will be greatly helped if some Clark Kents of the engineering world don super(wo)man kits and swoop about a bit. If you agree let the committee know on iuscomm@parliament.uk.

Image: Sara Parkin, Andrew Ramsay, Ken Fidler

Scanning the foothills of the future

Jemima Jewell — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:58:22 +0100

"A fantastic tool for people to lift their eyes from the daily doom and gloom, to the foothills of the future – where the view is breathtaking."

That’s how our recent vision for the West Midlands region was described by Dr Simon Slater, who commissioned the project as Director of Sustainable Development at Advantage West Midlands.

But what exactly is a vision, and why are we so keen on them here at Forum for the Future?

A vision can take many shapes and forms, but essentially describes what an organisation, product or place will look like in the long-term future if it achieves its goals. Even if the exact means of getting there is as yet undetermined, a vision sets out the essential features of success in an evocative, inspiring manner.

It may seem difficult to justify planning for the next 20 years when getting through the next quarter is at the front of everyone’s mind. But setting out a future vision is a productive exercise for a number of reasons. When talking about the long-term future, people are often willing to discuss important or sensitive issues more positively, focusing more on solutions than they otherwise might. Developing a vision can give members of an organisation a common sense of purpose.

It’s not always the case, however, that visions have to be agreed. In the ‘safe space’ that is the future, hopes, fears and ambitions can be discussed more openly, and without recrimination. People’s different underlying assumptions can be brought to light and talked over. Indeed, often the most useful part of having a vision is that it acts as a tool to stimulate debate.

One caveat. A vision cannot be a concrete, immovable thing. As Peter Drucker said: ‘If there is one thing we know about the future, it’s that it will be different’. There are few certainties facing organisations today – the last 12 months has surely taught us that. It’s therefore vital that any vision includes built-in flexibility to enable resilience in the face of a potentially turbulent world. Regular ‘horizon scanning’, looking out for hints of future change, is an important step to build into any long-term planning process.

Forum’s recent vision for the West Midlands region was commissioned by the Regional Development Agency Advantage West Midlands, and explores what the region might look like in 2020 if it is successfully travelling the path to a low-carbon economy. The people, businesses and places described in the vision demonstrate that decarbonising an economy, or a region, isn’t all about cutbacks and sacrifice. Becoming a low-carbon region can and should be a positive journey that genuinely improves quality of life, and works with, rather than against, other policy goals around health, productivity and innovation.

Dr Slater, now Executive Director at Sustainability West Midlands, says: “We will be using this tool to help stimulate debate, about what is possible now, and how to get there. We will challenge our leaders to look at this vision, improve on it, and ultimately use it to help make the birthplace of the industrial revolution a better place for its five million plus residents, forging a new identity based on our low-carbon industrial success”. The ball is rolling and the West Midlands’ Sustainable Housing Action Programme has already used the vision to inform the contribution it can make to reducing carbon emissions by retrofitting housing.

This is exactly what visions are for. If a vision lives and breathes, becomes a focal point for discussion, and is used to influence short-term decisions on investments, strategies and partnerships, then it can be an invaluable tool to help drive the transition to the sort of life we want – and need – in the future, making that ‘breathtaking’ view a reality.

Download the West Midlands vision here – and join the debate.

To find out more about Forum’s visioning work, please contact Jemima Jewell.

Image: Christopher Elwell, Athena's Pix

Have we tipped the scales for sustainable fish?

Shelley Hannan — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:01:37 +0100

As the Marine Stewardship Council marks its tenth anniversary, have efforts to transform fishing practices from 'boat to plate' finally reached a tipping point into sustainability?

CEO Rupert Howes certainly thinks so. “We’ve reached a tipping point in our efforts to meet the world’s ‘biggest challenge after climate change’,” he says, gearing up for a year of worldwide events, including a Global Sustainability Seafood Lunch.

At the root of the MSC was a beguilingly simple idea: to use the market to reward best fishing practices. The approach was to define a standard for the sustainable management of the world’s fisheries and reward those fisheries that met that standard – for example, by sticking to scientifically agreed limits and reducing ‘bycatch’ (everything that gets fished up alongside what you are specifically trying to catch). Then it would encourage consumers to buy their products, identifiable by the MSC’s logo: ‘the fish with the tick’.

The first fisheries entered MSC assessment in 1999. In the early days, however, few in the industry or the NGOs gave much credence to the proposition of addressing unsustainable fishing practices via a market-based programme. Nor did they believe that the MSC, an independent organisation spawned from a collaboration between WWF, the world’s largest conservation organisation, and industry giant Unilever, would have the muscle to drive it forward.

So what went right? Warming to his ‘tipping point’ theme, Howes tells how sticking to the vision has paid off. In the past three years, he says, “both the number of fisheries in the MSC programme and the number of labelled products have quadrupled”. We’re not just talking tiny niche markets, either, we’re talking 8% to 9% of the global wild edible seafood harvest – that’s over five million tonnes of certified sustainable seafood each year.

The MSC works ‘from boat to plate’ engaging fisheries, processors, retailers and, increasingly, foodservice and restaurants. With more supplies of MSC-certified seafood available, the organisation is now stepping up efforts to raise consumer awareness – hence the worldwide Global Sustainability Seafood Lunch this September [see right].

So far, says Howes, the MSC has attracted a lot of what are generally viewed as the best managed fisheries in the world. Not that it has been plain sailing for all of them to qualify. The South Georgia Patagonian toothfish (a.k.a. Chilean sea bass) fishery, for instance, only won certification after investing in measures ranging from adding observers on boats and banning transhipment of catch from boat to boat, to closing the fishery for part of the year, and weighting their long lines to prevent seabird bycatch.

Now that the MSC is becoming increasingly accepted as a way of ensuring sustainable fishing, Howes is looking forward to casting its net wider, raising awareness with more fisheries – including those in developing countries – and improving their ability to meet MSC standards. Perhaps, too, there will be help from national governments. The Dutch, he notes, have put forward u1 million to fund MSC certification, with the retail sector firmly on board.

As the momentum grows, Howes is excited about what could be achieved in the next ten years. “If we could get 20% of global fisheries in the programme, that could change the terms of trade in seafood forever – where sustainability is at the heart of buyers’ decisions around the world, and can’t be ignored.” – Chris Alden

Ten-year tick list

Fisheries in the MSC programme: 41, producing more than five million tonnes
Under assessment: more than 100 fisheries
At ‘pre-assessment’ stage (still confidential): about 45 more
Number of labelled products: around 2,300
Market spread: 42 countries
Examples in UK market: Birds Eye Omega 3 Fish Fingers, Young’s Smoked Alaska Salmon, Pret a Manger’s MSC Really Wild Salmon sandwich, Sainsbury’s Kids’ Fish Pie

Marine Stewardship Council is a Forum for the Future partner.