Pay CRC PDQ. Is GHG your new USP?

CRC payments are due tomorrow – 31st July – which means the money must be cleared and in the government’s bank account by then.

Although it’s likely that the Chancellor will announce a consultation in September on replacing the CRC, it’s not over yet. The scheme could survive until the end of the first phase, which means that we’ll be reporting – and paying – right through to July 2014.

If the CRC is replaced, something will have to be done to replace the government’s £750m revenue from the sale of allowances.

There’s another consultation out since last week. DEFRA wants your opinion on the Greenhouse Gas Reporting draft regulations. Answers, please, by 17^th October.  At the moment the suggestion is that they will review reports by quoted companies in 2015 and consider widening the net in 2016 to include other large organisations. There is no suggestion of financial levies or penalties, but then, CRC was supposed to be financially neutral.

There is already controversy over the GHG Reporting proposals, particularly that no consistent method is required for measuring emissions. This and other concerns are raised in a recent Guardian blog. The idea of reporting is that shareholders and stakeholders will be made aware of the risks that the reporting companies face and presumably will encourage them to act responsibly. Doesn’t all this sound incredibly laid-back? Doesn’t it sound as though we’ve got all the time in the world?

So how is the government going to maintain or replace its CRC revenues? In the short term, while the scheme still exists, it could get the goose to lay as many golden eggs as possible by raising the price of carbon allowances. Watch out for the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement in October! Or maybe they’ll follow the example of the Australians, who are now taxing major CO_2e emissions from landfill at AU$23/tonne (£15.35). Or perhaps they’ll do both. But will it really make a difference?

Managing emissions is only one part of sustainability. I’ve just published a review of the issues called Sustainability Works. You can buy it for your Kindle here for only £1. Or if you’d like a free copy send me an email and I’ll let you have a link to the pdf version.

Something to read on holiday – and if you’re going on holiday have a good one!

 

 

Major investment in energy infrastructure - but is it enough?

OFGEM has announced a £22 billion upgrade to the nation's gas and electricity networks, but National Grid says it's not enough. There's no doubt that if we increase our use of electricity, in particular by using electric cars, we're going to need much more distribution capacity. Equally, as long as we remain committed to fossil fuels, gas is the cleanest. Hence the need to upgrade the gas pipelines as well. National Grid says that the amount authorised by OFGEM is not enough. OFGEM have done their sums differently and say that some work should be done more efficiently and that National Grid has over-estimated the cost of capital. Either way, the cost will find its way on to electricity bills - the consumer will pay in the end. Here's a comment from the Telegraph.

I see in the papers that shadowy City types have not just been manipulating LIBOR but have been playing with the oil price as well. We've been paying too much for petrol. Compensation? Fat chance! One thing we can be sure of: energy will go up. It's a finite resource and we still waste far too much of it.

GVis2012 – Sustainability in Construction

If you missed last week’s GVis2012 half-day conference in Leeds, here’s my take on it.

The event was challenging from two points of view. First of all, the programme packed a considerable amount of sustainability information into 3½ hours. Secondly it pushed the technical envelope with Twitterfeed, simultaneous webcast and speakers from across the world presenting via Skype. The session closed with four 20x20 presentations – 20 slides with a maximum of 20 seconds each, so there was no loss of pace there!

Plenary sessions were followed by four parallel breakout sessions. Delegates had to choose two of four, so these are my comments on the parts of the conference that I was able to take part in – as a non-expert in property issues.

The session was ably led by Paula Widdowson of CSR-i. She was able to start by bringing us up to date on the latest news for local sustainability – the government’s CITY DEAL announcement promising £1bn for improving east-west transport links, Leeds as a centre for pioneering the green economy and £50m of new money for environmental projects.

Our first speaker was Mel Starrs from PRP Environmental. She said that CSR is sometimes seen as a criticism whereas it should be a communication process. A means by which visions, ethics and beliefs are made explicit; making people accountable to specific commitments. In an ideal world sustainability consultants will make themselves redundant, although she admitted that that was some way off. Although the theme of the event was construction, there was a great deal of solid information for sustainability specialists in all fields in Mel’s presentation and throughout the programme. She quoted cases studies: Patagonia Outdoor Clothes and InterfaceFlor. She spoke about BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method but you knew that), and how productivity is better in green buildings with natural ventilation and natural light. Despite this only 6% of new buildings are BREEAM certified. There are leaders, however. Apparently the greenest tenants are the oil companies and banks. Well, nobody’s all bad. You can find Mel’s detailed summary of her presentation here: http://ow.ly/c541I

For the first breakout session I chose the Living Building Challenge, presented via Skype by Eden Bruckman in California. This was a challenge, not least because all the sessions took place in the same room and the sound from California was weak. Martin Brown controlled the presentation at the Leeds end. The Living Building Challenge goes a whole lot further than BREEAM or equivalent US standards and if the BREEAM uptake is relatively low what hope for something far more demanding? However if we don’t set high targets we’ll never achieve excellence. The objectives include net zero water use and net zero energy use – nothing more than current solar income. All materials must come from proven sustainable sources. It’s a whole philosophy. The aim is to establish “collaboratives” throughout the world. So far there are some 140 projects; the nearest to the UK is a project in Ireland.

My next roundtable session was on CSR and Competitive Advantage, led by Pedro Pablo Cardoso-Castro from Leeds Business School. We started by viewing Michael Porter’s keynote address to the 2012 Corporate Philanthropy Summit. Business is under pressure and facing greater challenges than ever, but in many cases CSR is a bolt-on with a finite budget and is not achieving solutions  to these problems. It is time for a totally integrated strategy (cf Bob Willard’s Stage 4). Business can deliver solutions, but business is business and not charity.

Some organisations have dropped the S from CSR, but Pedro gave examples of organisations where the social aspect has been fundamental to their strategy. ALFA Ceramica in Colombia needed to maintain employment in the face of falling domestic demand. As a company owned by Opus Dei, the commercial arm of the Catholic Church, they saw a duty to protect their employees. They created upmarket tiles and mosaics and exploited markets in Europe. They developed a system of traceability so that purchasers of unique designs could link them back to the family that made them. Corona, their major competitor, followed a similar policy but diversified into kitchens and bathrooms and concentrated on the US market. Corona provides its employees with training in social development and joins ALFA in the belief that strong business depends on strong society. (Come back Titus Salt!) This approach has been vindicated by the fact that both these organisations remained profitable during recession.

Mention was also made of Marshalls, a sustainability success story from here in Yorkshire, and of how they invest in their people in India, a country which provides much of their raw material.

Tamara Bergkamp of the Global Reporting Initiative gave a keynote speech from the Netherlands via Skype. She repeated the well-known wisdom: what you don’t measure you can’t manage and added that what you can’t manage you can’t change. She championed the business case for reporting and at that point my pen ran out, but you’ll find much more on the website.

I thought Pecha Kucha was an abandoned temple in South America but apparently it’s another name for 20x20 presentations.

First up was Faye Jenkins of Laing O’Rourke who explained the benefits of apprenticeships in the construction industry and the problems caused because school leavers have very little idea of the range of trades and opportunities available. Only eight slides, but a strong message.

I think Rick Hamilton, co2sense, has done this before. Twenty slides, not one up for more than 20 seconds. The trouble is that everything now went so fast that his presentation blurred into the ones by Martin Brown of Fairsnape and Eddie Murphy of Mott Macdonald. They mentioned the ecology of commerce, HIUT Denim, Agenda 21, Skanska, #GVisChat, #EndFossilFuelSubsidy, and told us that “CSR needs to shift from doing less bad”. I couldn’t absorb any more!

Thanks to all for a most stimulating afternoon.

We’re promised that the slides will be up on the website. In the meantime have a look at this.

Booklist

Several books were mentioned during the event. You might want to look them up if you haven’t already heard of them.

• Let My People Go Surfing -  Yvon Chouinard


• 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years


• The Ecology of Commerce, a declaration of sustainability


• Confessions of a Radical Industrialist


• Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

The next Tweetchat at #GVisChat will be at 20.00 on 26^th July.