No more Business as Usual!

Hear the podcast at http://www.anthony-day.com/sustainable-futures-show/

This is Anthony Day, speaker, writer, conference chair and author of this, the Sustainable Futures Show.  If you like the show please tell your friends. If you don't like it please tell me at mail@Anthony-Day.com. Oh, and you can tell me if you do like it too.

This week, two reports. One from the Royal Institute for International Affairs, one from the Carbon Trust. Also, the latest update of Jeremy Leggett's The Winning of the Carbon War is out. You can download that free of charge from his website which is jeremyleggett.net. You really ought to read it. I did offer to record it as a podcast for him but he says it's in hand and he's talking to some people at the BBC. So, er, watch this space. That solar-powered plane, Solar Impulse 2, has landed safely in Hawaii after the longest solo flight ever. The next stages cross the United States and the Atlantic Ocean, and then back to the start point in Abu Dhabi.

Making the headlines this week has been the Greek economic situation. We won't say anything at all about that. And the UK chancellor’s budget. There's a few things there we’ll comment on - so let's start with that.

The Chancellor has maintained his freeze on fuel duty. Some would say this is a missed opportunity, because while oil prices are relatively low he could surely have slipped in an odd penny or two. The main difference for motorists is the change to vehicle excise duty, or car tax as some call it. These changes are for new cars registered from 1st April 2017 and the assumption is that cars registered before that date will be taxed at their current rate for the rest of their lives. Under the new rules only zero-emissions cars will avoid tax. All others will pay an amount on first registration depending on emissions levels and then pay a standard rate of £140 per year. This means that there’s now no real incentive to buy a low emissions car, as after the first year the annual tax is the same. There is a surcharge if the car costs over £40,000, bringing it up to £450 a year, but that’s less than the current top rate band of £505! Not very green!

The government will remove the Climate Change Levy exemption for renewably sourced electricity from 1 August 2015. Another short-notice policy change affecting the renewables industry. The purpose of the Climate Change Levy is to make it more expensive to generate electricity from unsustainable and polluting fuels. It is logical that renewable energy which avoids such fuels should not bear the levy. The Chancellor doesn’t think so. The change will have significant implications for the renewables industry but a negligible effect on tax revenues. But then, the Chancellor favours fracking above all else. He reiterated that he would establish a sovereign wealth fund from the proceeds of fracking. I remain convinced that you’ll find it next to the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.

And so to these reports I mentioned.

“Titans or Titanics? Understanding the business response to climate change and resource scarcity.” That’s the title of a recent report from the Carbon Trust.

The report seeks to understand and explain how large businesses are responding to climate change and resource scarcity and makes a number of key findings. The most concerning is that the action of businesses on environmental sustainability today is significantly short of what is required to address the serious challenges of climate change and resource scarcity. The Trust goes on to say that there is common consensus around what will be required by businesses to address climate change and resource scarcity. They report that 70% of global business leaders surveyed are confident that action taken by consumers, governments, and investors will force the change to an environmentally sustainable future. (This sounds a bit like complacency to me - “We’re just waiting for the market to send us a signal. In the meantime, business as usual!”)  According to the report businesses recognise that climate change and resource scarcity will require them to make changes. Most executives see risks, even more see opportunities. Half of them expect to make fundamental changes and most of those are confident that they will be able to make the changes when the time comes. 99% believe they are at least average on environmental sustainability and half of them see themselves as leaders. 

The report warns that despite this, businesses are living in two realities: although they recognise and accept there will be risks and opportunities that will impact company value, they continue to focus on the short term. Despite a recognition of the likely need to change, businesses lack a clear vision of how this transition will be achieved beyond the business planning horizon.

They also say that there is a failure of governance from corporate boards, who need to better address uncertainty around the future risks and opportunities from environmental sustainability. There is also a lack of available frameworks or tools to help boards and senior executives to effectively assess and quantify value at stake. The report includes a useful checklist. We’ll look at that in more detail in a future episode.

Within the report they go on to talk about how adaptation - dealing with the consequences of climate change - will be so much more expensive than mitigation: taking action to prevent climate change getting worse. By 2050 business as usual and adaptation could cost from 5 - 20% of global GDP per annum, whereas mitigation could cost as little as 1%. Reminds me of Lord Stern’s 2006 report where he said much the same, except that the longer we delayed mitigation the more costly it would become. The report quotes Lord Stern and many other experts. It talks about the growth in population and about the pressures not from the absolute growth but from the growth in the middle classes. It talks about a shortage of fresh water and about resource scarcity. These are not new insights, but it’s depressing that the report paints a picture of a business community that is unprepared, if not unconcerned. Who are these businesses, when almost every major corporate from Unilever and Marks & Spencer to IKEA and HBOS is bragging about its green credentials? Are they islands in a sea of indifference? I asked the Carbon Trust about their research. They said: “Insights are based on six months of in-depth interviews with a range of experts from business, finance, government, academia, and civil society. The Carbon Trust also commissioned independent market research interviews with 229 board-level executive decision-makers across five regions: the UK, South Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the USA.” Looks like a pretty impressive sample. Looks like we still have a lot to do to get the message out!

This week the Royal Institute of International Affairs published Oil and Gas Mismatches: Finance, Investment and Climate Policy. The emphasis is on investment prospects for oil and gas. That might not sound very interesting to climate change watchers, but the odds are that some of your pension is invested in oil and gas, so listen up!

According to the report, oil and gas investment is affected by price volatility, the changing financial environment and climate change policy. The outlook for the oil price is uncertain and has been since Saudi Arabia abandoned the role of price stabiliser last year and the price collapsed. It remains around $65/barrel, just over half of where it was this time last year. Best estimates are that it will be much the same in 12 months, but the underlying feeling seems to be that it’s anybody’s guess. There is therefore a mismatch between the oil companies’ development plans and viability, as they were mostly drawn up on the assumption of the higher oil price. This has implications not only for oil companies like BP and their shareholders who rely on dividends, but also for the national oil companies who rely on earnings to balance their national budgets.

In a time of quantitative easing yields are low, but as this ends yields will rise and the yields expected from oil companies will also rise, putting them further under pressure.

The report looks in detail at Climate Change policies, which it sees more or less as a wild card. The issue will be the outcome of COP 21, the international climate change conference in Paris in December. Will the 195 countries decide to take strong action or weak? If the decision is weak, to do not very much or at least to delay taking any serious decisions for the time being, then oil production and demand can remain much as business as usual. (With all the consequences highlighted by the Carbon Trust). If the decision is strong, then there are all sorts of implications. First, it is likely that governments will take action by taxing the use of fossil fuels one way or another. This will drive a wedge between the price paid by the consumer and the price obtained by the producer. Where regulation is strong, investment that could have been made in an environment with weak regulation will not be viable. Indeed, strong regulation implies stranded assets, oil and gas reserves which cannot be used and therefore have no value, as regulation cuts demand. In the interim, until the outcome of COP 21 is known, significant oil and gas reserves remain in limbo. Their value is uncertain and investing in them would be highly risky. If the outcome turns out to be high regulation there will be consequences for other industries as well: power stations, manufacturers of gas-guzzling vehicles and buildings that do not effectively conserve energy, for example. 

Undoubtedly there are interest groups, albeit with a short term view, that will be lobbying hard for business as usual. We have to hope that the legislators who meet in December will be fully informed.

The report closes with the warning that the age of cheap oil production may not yet be over, but the age of cheap oil use almost certainly is.

I always like to end on a cheerful note. I’ll try and think of one for next time. This is Anthony Day, the Sustainability Coach, and that was the latest episode of the Sustainable Futures Show. Now I’m sure it’s in your diary, but don’t forget that the Sustainable Best Practice Exchange takes place in Harrogate on 5th November. We’re inviting a minister to brave the journey from London and join us in the Northern Powerhouse. I hope you can come too. Details soon!

Fracking - the saga continues

Will fracking be David Cameron's Poll Tax?

But first, here’s a date for your diary. Thursday 5th November 2015 at the Harrogate International Showground will see the Sustainable Best Practice in Business Conference: ESOS and energy, supply chain and skills. We’re inviting the minister from DECC, Amber Rudd; the CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman; Lord Redesdale from the Institute of Energy Managers and other industry representatives. It will be an opportunity to learn from experts and to network and share best practice with your peers. Registration opens shortly. More details soon.

This last week was a busy week and events developed almost faster than I could keep up. Fracking is once more in the news, there’s a report that soil erosion in East Anglia could seriously affect our food production, electricity could be cheaper but dirtier, what’s going on in Battersea Park?, it’s getting hot in the Tube and I talk to Daniel White from Global Energy Systems on why you need a heat pump. Well, perhaps not today, but the word is that this weather won’t last, in spite of global warming.

Last week I reported that the application for test drilling and test fracking at Roseacre Wood was refused by Lancashire county council. This week, against the advice of planners and legal experts, the council also refused the application for Little Plumpton. I expect there was dancing in the streets. This looks like a very high risk strategy because councillors were warned that they were very unlikely to win on appeal and the council would have to pay all the legal costs. On the other hand, an appeal will be a landmark case. It will meet the government head-on on one of its flagship policies. There was a debate in parliament this week and it revealed all sorts of things which I'm sure the government would like to keep quiet, but which will almost certainly come out if the case goes to court. I’ve been reading Hansard, the official Parliamentary record, and here are some of the things that I found in the record of last Tuesday’s debate.

Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con) in North Yorkshire opened the debate and commented that France, Germany, New York state and others had all banned fracking. He then spoke about “Shale Gas: Rural Economy Impacts” a report from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and told us that it had 63 redactions within 13 pages. That means that 63 items had been blacked out or censored, including of a whole section on the impact on house prices. The Government’s position that “There is a strong public interest in withholding the information” did not go down well with his constituents.

Then, a day after this debate, the government was required to publish the DEFRA report in its uncensored form. It includes admissions such as:

• people living near fracking sites could see their house prices fall by up to seven per cent.
• a UK shale gas boom could lead to an increase in global greenhouse gas emissions. 
• waste fluids leaking from fracking operations in the US have resulted in environmental damage.
• properties could incur additional insurance premiums if they are within a five mile radius of fracking operations.
• the report includes "early, often vague, assumptions which are not supported by appropriate evidence”.

No wonder they wanted to keep all that quiet!

 Kevin Hollinrake had other concerns as well. He said he would like to see a clearer, more robust and independent monitoring regime for the regulations.

“The operator commissions and pays for the services of the well examiner… This might be someone employed by the well operator’s organisation.” 

He quoted evidence provided to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee stating that  "the weakest point of the regulatory process concerns the Environment Agency”, which appears to have “insufficient in-house expertise.”

He also told us that fracking company Third Energy, had stated that it might drill 950 wells in less than a third of his constituency, which would require hundreds of thousands of lorry movements, all in one of the country’s most beautiful counties, with an economy heavily dependent on agriculture and tourism.

Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab) was concerned about projected production figures from DECC as they were based on the maximum output from any well ever achieved in the US. He thought this was an unrealistic baseline. He said that 10,000 to 18,000 wells would be needed nationally to replace the gas which we currently import from Qatar. These would not be scattered all over the country but would be concentrated in Lancs and the Weald in the southeast. They would have a life of about 20 years, but would need re-drilling every 7 years or so. New pipelines would have to be built across the country or lorries would have to collect the gas. This is in addition to the thousands of lorry journeys needed to deliver the fracking fluids. After 20 years the sites would be abandoned. He suggested that AD, converting agricultural waste to gas, should be considered as an alternative. This process could continue as long as farmers were in business, not just for 20 years.

Farmers in South Ribble are particularly concerned about fracking. Seema Kennedy MP said any pollution of groundwater could contaminate their crops and destroy their business. The Ribble Valley is one of the most fertile parts of the country and produces a major part of the nation’s salad crop.

The debate continued, with concerns raised about the regulations, the disposal of used fracking liquids and the effects on house prices and on public health. Two MPs were firmly in favour of fracking, two were cautious, most were opposed.

Andrea Leadsom The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, responded to the debate emphasising the need for energy security and stating that “We are likely to continue relying on gas to provide much of our heat, as well as to generate electricity into the 2030s…Flexible electricity generation, such as that fuelled by gas, is also needed to help balance the electricity grid as our policies bring forward relatively inflexible and intermittent low-carbon generation.”

She talked about the benefits of a successful shale gas industry, not just in energy security, but in direct benefits to jobs, growth and community investment. And she promised a sovereign wealth fund - with the industry’s commitment to putting £100,000 per exploration well to local communities and then a minimum of 1% of any subsequent production revenues. Local councils would retain 100% of the business rates that they collect from productive shale gas developments.

“Ernst and Young, she said, has estimated that a thriving shale industry could mean 64,500 jobs nationally or over 100 jobs per year at a typical site. The value of the supply chain for the industry has been estimated at £33 billion between 2016 and 2032. This is an incredible opportunity. We are at a pre-beginning phase, but there is a huge amount to play for. British engineering is at the forefront of the world and we have the opportunity to showcase that further by developing for ourselves a safe and environmentally sound shale gas industry.”

What do I think?

It’s still a fossil fuel. It still has a carbon footprint. We have a commitment to reduce the nation’s carbon footprint. 

When he heard that the applications had been rejected the chief executive of Cuadrilla repeated the point that sourcing gas locally was far more secure than buying it from Qatar or Russia. True, and there’s no doubt that we have an energy problem as our power stations age and the margin between supply and winter demand gets tighter and tighter. But gas is not the only answer, and we don’t yet know that it is an answer. That’s why they are carrying out test drilling. On the other hand we already know that solar panels and wind turbines and anaerobic digesters all work. Yes, they are intermittent, (not the digesters), but the old complaint that electricity cannot be stored is increasingly untrue. Tesla recently announced new domestic battery packs: technology is advancing rapidly. And there are other technologies apart from batteries that can store energy. To anyone who says we haven’t got time I would simply say that even if everything goes strictly to plan, it will be at least five years before fracking starts producing gas commercially. And it will be a very, very long time before we have 10,000 wells in production. But what about demand? We waste vast amounts of energy. Managing demand is essential. Bring back the Green Deal - or at least something like it that actually works. (That will create jobs, too!)

And why do I call fracking David Cameron’s Poll Tax? Well the poll-tax was brought in by Margaret Thatcher against the advice of her ministers and against strong opposition in the country which led to riots. The poll-tax was repealed and replaced with the council tax and it was the beginning of the end for Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of Great Britain. The majority of MPs who opposed fracking in this debate were from David Cameron’s own Conservative Party. He is going to find implementing this policy extremely difficult. Almost as hard as the Third Runway at Heathrow. But that’s another story.

Meanwhile, in other news this week, Moody’s published a report suggesting that electricity is likely to get cheaper as we increase our capacity to import it from the continent. Their electricity is cheaper because at least in Germany their lower carbon taxes encourage them to generate more electricity from coal. Cheaper, but dirtier.

The Committee on Climate Change warns that agricultural land, particularly in East Anglia, could become unviable within a generation unless something is done. We’ll have to add still more to the 40% of food that we already import, with consequences for food security and food prices. East Anglia grows acres of wheat and farmers have removed trees and grubbed up hedges to make fields ever larger and to give ploughs and combine harvesters long straight runs. Britain has lost 84% of its fertile topsoil since 1850, and these changes in land management are accelerating the problem. Without trees as windbreaks the wind is blowing the soil away. As climate change reduces rainfall and warms the soil it crumbles to dust and the problem only gets worse. When rain does come, and increasingly it comes in violent storms, it washes the soil away. It’s time to take action and recognise that topsoil is another vital non-renewable resource that is rapidly running out.

What has been going on in Battersea Park? Last weekend saw the final race in the international Formula E series that started in Beijing last September and saw meetings in Buenos Aires, Miami, Monte Carlo, Berlin and Moscow before the final in London. Yes, it’s Formula 1, but not as we know it! For example, when the drivers make for the pits it’s not to change the tyres, or top up the washer bottle but to pick up a completely new car - with a fully charged battery. My petrolhead friends say it’s not the same. It’s not as fast and it doesn’t make that roar as the cars go past. I’m sure J Clarkson hates it as much as he hates my Toyota Prius. Nevertheless, names like Trulli, Prost and Yamamoto; Renault, Audi and Virgin are taking it seriously. Formula 1 has always been seen as an essential testbed for new automotive technologies. Welcome to the future.

Wednesday 1st July was the hottest July day on record, at 36.7℃. It got up to 35℃ in the London Tube as well. I remember reading somewhere that waste heat is a problem for the network in normal times, with heat from passengers, from the trains, the lights, the escalators and all the other plant. What could they do with it? Maybe they need a heat pump! It so happens that this week I was talking to Daniel White from Global Energy Systems.

Go to www.susbiz.biz to listen to this blog as a podcast and hear the interview with Daniel.

I'm Anthony Day, The Sustainability Coach, dedicated to spreading the word about sustainability, about better ways of doing things so we can all, in all countries, enjoy a comfortable lifestyle in spite of the challenges from rising population, climate change, energy shortages and all the other sustainability issues. 

Let’s get out there and find opportunities!

Climate Change is bad for your health - official

I’m talking about fracking - of course, about wind - again, about suing the government and about waiting for trains.  But first of all - it’s official. Medical opinion states that climate change is bad for you!

The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, this week published its second review on climate change. There’s a short video on thelancet.com which is worth a look. Review authors Helen Wang and Richard Horton state that the risks from climate change are not only serious but potentially catastrophic. Loss of life can be directly caused by extreme weather, such as floods and heatwaves. Indirect causes are poor water quality, air pollution and ecological change. Global warming leads to sea-level rise, which in turn causes mass migrations, pressure on resources and can lead to conflict. As heatwaves become more common, more people are affected. Those over 65 are more vulnerable, and population statistics show a disproportionate number of older people concentrated in areas likely to experience extreme temperatures.

The report, like the G7 ministers and Pope, calls for fossil fuels to be phased out. 80% of the world’s energy currently comes from fossil fuels and emissions cause poor air quality which in turn causes heart attacks and lung disease, as well as long-term effects on health. For the authors it’s not all bad news. They see that responding to climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century. The level of understanding of the importance of climate change varies widely across the world, with some of the poorest  understanding in some of the most developed countries. The science is clear, the technological solutions are available. It is now entirely  a matter of political commitment. The report urges medical  professionals to go out and spread the word.

Incidentally there’s a heatwave currently affecting Pakistan, where temperatures of 45C and more are proving fatal. The situation is made worse by water shortages and because many people are fasting for Ramadan. There’s a serious drought in Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean as well.

Talking of political commitment, I noted last week that the government was cutting subsidies to on-shore wind by withdrawing the Renewables Obligation scheme from April 2016, a year earlier than originally promised. Minister Amber Rudd told Parliament this week that as a result some 250 schemes were unlikely to go ahead. She also hinted that Contract for Difference, a key factor in determining project viability, could also be withdrawn. Once again investors have been encouraged to develop long-term infrastructure projects, only to have the rules changed at short notice. The Scottish government is particularly annoyed by this as around 70% of the projects likely to be affected are located in Scotland. Fergus Ewing, the Scottish Energy Minister, has invited Ms Rudd for talks in Scotland. The local industry fears that the changes could cost it as much as £3bn. It will be interesting to see if the minister accepts the invitation, and even more interesting to hear what she has to say.

Fracking is in the news again. Cuadrilla has applied for planning permission for test drilling followed by test fracking in Lancashire. There are two sites involved: Little Plumpton  and Roseacre Wood. The council has been advised by its planning officers to approve the application, but there is much local opposition. The council rejected the Roseacre Wood scheme on the grounds that there would be an unacceptable increase of heavy vehicle traffic in the area. 

The decision on Little Plumpton was deferred until Monday 29th to allow councillors to take legal advice. This advice has now been published, and warned that if councillors refused the application it was unlikely that they would win on appeal, and if they lost the council would have to bear the legal costs. It seems highly likely that the Little Plumpton application will be approved, even though many councillors oppose it and so do many residents.

As I’ve mentioned before, the government have promised local residents the last word on any applications for wind turbines while making sure that local residents have no say at all in applications for fracking. The greenest government ever! Well perhaps it doesn’t have to be any more, now that it hasn’t got the LibDems looking over its shoulder.

Citizens in the Netherlands have called their government to account and claimed that more must be done to tackle climate change. 886 private citizens went to court to demand urgent action - and they won. The Netherlands are on the way to a 17% reduction in GHG emissions  from 1990 levels by 2020, but that’s not good enough for the litigants. They persuaded the judge to rule:“The State also has to ensure that the Dutch emissions in the year 2020 will be at least 25 percent lower than those in 1990." Of course the government will appeal. It’s also not clear how the government could be held to the judgement. If they fail to comply would they get fined? What good would that do? At least the case demonstrates that there are concerned citizens across the world, and the case is robust enough to be held up in law.

Not a good week for transport, especially electric transport. The British government announced yesterday that they were “pausing” two major rail electrification schemes for lack of funds. The Great Western electrification is now expected to cost three times the original estimate and other schemes are also over budget. This means that the electrification of the Midland main line and the link from Leeds to Manchester are postponed indefinitely. So much for the powerhouse of the north! Leeds and Manchester are 45 miles apart. Most trains take 56 minutes for the journey. Bits of it are quite fast, but for some reason the second part is usually at walking pace or less. The government has blamed Network Rail, now legally part of the civil service and therefore under the direct control of ministers. The chairman has been fired and senior executives won’t get bonuses. Cold comfort for the many passengers who won’t now get new trains!

The other bad news was an electric bus which burst into flames in York. The Optare Versa is a widely-used bus, available as a diesel, diesel-electric hybrid or, as in this case, pure electric. In electric form it has a range of 70-90 miles and York recently took delivery of a fleet of 12 to provide a shuttle service to the park and ride locations on the edge of the city. No-one was hurt in the blaze, but the rear of the bus was severely damaged. A loud bang was heard, and popular headlines claimed that the engine blew up. More probably it was a fault in the lithium-ion batteries. Battery technology has moved so far that we don’t need trolley buses any more; buses can carry as much power as they need in batteries. This means that we are pushing battery technology to the limit. Do you remember Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, grounded a few years ago because of fires in the lithium-ion batteries? York’s remaining 11 electric buses are back in service today after full safety checks. They won’t let one mishap prejudice the future of clean transport. (Although if you look at the pictures of the smoke, that burning bus must have had one hell of a carbon footprint!)

That’s nearly it for this week. But not quite! Don’t forget that the next instalment of “The Winning of the Carbon War” will be out on 1st July. It’s free. Find it at jeremyleggett.net  I told you that I made a presentation to the Professional Speaking Association in London. . It will be out on Video shortly, both the full 30-minute version and edited highlights, which will probably come down to 2 minutes.

Either way, there will be another episode of the Sustainable Futures Show next week. Listen at http://www.anthony-day.com/sustainable-futures-show/ , and if you have any comments ideas or suggestions get in touch via mail@anthony-day.com.

The Great and the Good

This week I’m talking about the great and the good and what they have to say about climate change. I joined the mass lobby of Parliament on Wednesday to find out what my MP had to say about it. There’s a changing environmental policy in the wind, although we didn’t know that for sure until Thursday. On Thursday I was at the Energy Exchange in London talking about community energy. On Saturday 13th June I spoke to the Professional Speaking Association in London about sustainable futures and how to be here when you’re really somewhere else. And then there was that hippo coming down the High Street....

Last week the world leaders at the G7 conference (the great) made their pronouncements about phasing out fossil fuels. This week the Pope (the good)  issued his encyclical on taking care of the planet. This in spite of Lord Monckton  recently telling him: ”it is not the business of the church to pronounce on science.”

An encyclical is a letter of guidance to all catholics, seen as very important because they are not issued very often. The pope made it clear that he wanted to address this one to all the people of the world. He didn’t mention carbon pricing, but he was very specific about many things. He said that climate change was a risk to the world and particularly to poorer nations. He said it was caused by the use of fossil fuels, that these should be phased out and that renewable energy should be developed. He condemned the throwaway culture and said he wanted to contribute to December’s international conference in Paris on climate change, COP21.

Unsurprisingly there was a wide range of reactions. Greenpeace has been strangely silent, but Friends of the Earth’s head of campaigns Andrew Pendleton said:

“The Pope has shown impressive and inspiring leadership where many elected leaders have failed. He is both a friend of the earth and of the millions of people in poorer, vulnerable nations whose lives are already being shattered by extreme weather.”

Republican presidential hopeful and Catholic Jeb Bush said “I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope,” Another Republican senator from Texas said: "I don't want to be disrespectful, but I don't consider him an expert on environmental issues.” Of course that’s an easy argument. It’s one that arch-denialist Lord Lawson has used against economist Lord Stern. Very few of us are experts. It's up to us to seek out experts and determine whether their opinions are credible and well-founded. After all, the senator from Texas must have got his information on climate change from somewhere, and presumably he is not personally an expert.

On Wednesday there was a mass lobby of MPs at Westminster to find out where they stood on climate change. I went down with others from York and while I was waiting for our MP to come out and meet us I wandered round and asked people why they had decided to come. You'll have to listen to the podcast to find out what they said. http://www.anthony-day.com/sustainable-futures-show/ One of them was an artist.

Our MP for York Central, Rachael Maskell, came out and spent half an hour talking to us. I didn't vote for her but I was quite impressed that she was well briefed and enthusiastic. She said she saw climate change as the priority because it is fundamental to everything else that we want to achieve. She's a very new backbench opposition MP so what she can achieve is limited. However she promised to keep in touch and offered to put down Parliamentary questions and enter in debates, so I'm sure we will certainly keep her to that.

The big news on Thursday morning was that new onshore wind farms would be excluded from the Renewables Obligation subsidy scheme from 1 April 2016, a year earlier than expected. Roger Harrabin, environment analyst at the BBC said: “The Conservatives promised in their manifesto to hold down bills and increase renewable energy, but onshore wind is the cheapest readily-available form of clean energy in the UK. That's why some experts have described their decision to kill the onshore wind programme as bizarre and irrational.”

New minister Amber Rudd told business leaders that it was time to shift subsidies from onshore wind to other technologies that needed them more. But she did not say what those technologies would be, and the government has not announced compensatory subsidies for other forms of energy. There was a lot of support for Amber Rudd when she took office as the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. However green her ideals she seems to be imprisoned by the party and bound to enforce the dogma laid out in the election manifesto. The problem is that yet again the government is changing course at short notice, and once again this will cause loss of confidence and loss of jobs in an industry which is key to a low carbon future. We have a skills shortage, but if industry loses the confidence to invest we’ll lose what skilled personnel we have to more far-sighted competitors like Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

On Thursday I was at the Energy Exchange in Westminster; in fact I chaired four expert panels. The event was organised by Enterprise Events and was principally designed for local authority officers. The twelve panellists were experts in their fields and covered Energy Leadership, Community Energy Projects, Lessons Learned from District Heating and Opportunities in energy generation, distribution and supply. I can’t do them all justice, so I won’t pick any one out. Suffice it to say that they came from as far away as Halifax and Plymouth, Coventry and Camden and all points in between. There were some pretty interesting people in the audience as well. It is very encouraging to find so many committed and highly professional specialists despite the constant denialism in the popular press and the government indecision already mentioned. If you want to save money on energy why not consider a community generation scheme - wind, hydro or solar? Your council can help, and may already be backing schemes in your area. One idea I loved was solar canopies for carparks. Well it’s obvious. All that space. And it keeps the cars cool as well!

On Saturday 13th I spoke to the London group of the Professional Speaking Association about Sustainable Futures. They asked me particularly to talk about environmentally responsible travel, because if you’re a professional speaker, particularly an international speaker, you’re constantly on the move. Environmentally responsible travel? That’s walking, isn’t it? Or cycling. Public transport has a small carbon footprint per passenger, but a car with only one person in it is many times worse. And don’t mention air travel! The point I made was that when the oil price goes back up air travel could become extremely expensive. (Will it go up? Yes, it’s artificially low at present; the Saudis are causing a glut. Yes, it’s running out. Why else did BP need Deepwater Horizon, why else is Shell preparing to drill in the Arctic against all opposition and why else is the UK government doing everything it can to force through fracking? And yes, if governments are really serious about controlling carbon emissions at COP21 in December they’ll have to introduce a realistic price for carbon and that will drive up the oil price as well.) If there’s no substitute for oil for aviation and fares go up then established international speakers will probably be OK. Event organisers will still book people they can rely on. They are less likely to gamble the fare on newcomers, so it could be more difficult to break into the market. But don’t rule out electric planes. Siemens and Airbus have already got experimental ones flying. A subject for another day, perhaps.

But what if you can’t get to the conference? Is telepresence the next big thing? Telepresence is creating a 3D holographic image of a person in real time and broadcasting it to a remote location - or several locations. Prince Charles recently addressed a conference in Abu Dhabi. He was there on stage. Only he wasn’t. He was thousands of miles away in Windsor Castle. It will involve energy, it will involve bandwidth, but I bet the carbon footprint is a lot less than a return flight. You can hear the whole speech on The Sustainable Futures Show - episode 26-06-2015 - http://www.anthony-day.com/sustainable-futures-show/ 

And finally, image of the week. Did you see that picture of the hippopotamus charging down the main street of Tbilisi? It would have been funny if it wasn’t tragic. Exceptional floods overwhelmed the city and washed out the zoo, releasing animals into the streets. I think the hippo was tranquillised, but lions and tiger were shot dead because they were terrorising people. Climate change has a lot to answer for!

That’s it for another week. I hope you have a good one. This is Anthony Day and this blog is brought to you completely free of charge and totally without advertising. If you like it  please tell your friends. If you don’t, please tell me. If you’re an expert and would like to be interviewed on the Sustainable Futures Show I’d love to hear from you. I’ve got several topics coming up, including electric cars and the prospects for success at COP21. Always open for your ideas. Send them to mail@anthony-day.com. 

No Hot Air

You can listen to this post as a podcast. Find The Sustainable Futures Show here: http://www.anthony-day.com/sustainable-futures-show/  

Somebody asked me the other day whether there’s really enough to say about sustainability to fill a weekly podcast. The truth is that there’s so much going on that most of it has to be left out. For example, this week is Paris Climate Week, incorporating the 2-day Business and Climate Summit. Earlier this month there was a Responsible Business Summit in Singapore, Morgan Stanley have issued a new report on sustainable investment, in New Zealand consumers are calling for greater transparency from suppliers and Apple is preserving forests. But why did I call this episode “No more hot air”? Two reasons. First, “Sustainable Energy without the hot air” published by David Mackay in 2009, is now more relevant than ever. I've mentioned it a couple of times and suggested you read it. In case you haven't had time I’ve rounded off this episode with a summary of the main points. The second reason for calling this episode “No more hot air” is that it’s time for action on CO2 and climate change, not talk. No more hot air.

First, a few sustainability stories which caught my eye.

Responsible Business

Sustainability strategies may be increasingly adopted by a growing number of companies worldwide, but communicating these efforts and engaging both internal and external stakeholders remain a challenge for many, especially if they want the stakeholders to come on board and be part of the efforts.

At the first Responsible Business Summit Asia held in Singapore this month, one of the issues discussed was the need to get a company’s sustainability efforts understood by its target audience – whether it is an internal or external stakeholder group. This is because a company’s ability to communicate its efforts and engage stakeholders could determine the success of its sustainability efforts.

“What we are trying to do now is to tell our story better,” said the head of corporate social responsibility at Chinese firm Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker.

“This way, we can grow our partnerships, work with more people and have an even bigger positive impact in the communities we operate in,” she said. “We can’t do it on our own.” A spokesman from Diageo, the world’s largest producer of spirits, confirmed that good community relations were essential to sustainable business.

Business and Climate Change

Meanwhile, in advance of the Paris Business and Climate Summit this week,  Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, said governments must set clear CO2 targets to force low-carbon innovation. He said Unilever had faced business costs €300m-to-€400 million higher than normal due to extreme weather. He said "The reality is, if we don’t tackle climate change we won’t achieve economic growth.”. Polman called on other chief executives to join him to lobby governments on the issue. Clearly he has COP21 in view - that’s the United Nations Climate Summit taking place also in Paris, in December this year. One hundred and ninety-six countries will come together to agree an international policy on carbon emissions and climate change. Many believe that this could be the last opportunity to take action to prevent global temperatures rising by more than the critical 2℃. Unsurprisingly, companies relying on cheap energy from fossil fuels and the producers themselves of oil, gas and coal are firmly opposed to carbon controls and are lobbying strongly. On his side Paul Polman is supported by The B Team, a group which urges governments to bring greenhouse gas emissions to zero by the middle of the century. B Team members include Virgin’s Richard Branson and industrialist Ratan Tata.

Investors

What do investors think about sustainability? Bankers Morgan Stanley have established an Institute for Sustainable Investing. For the moment they find that sustainable investment is being held back by misperceptions of potential returns. In fact they make a strong business case for sustainable investment. Key resources such as water, clean air and soil are underpriced. Minerals and energy are increasingly scarce and at the same time demand for all these things is growing as population grows by a forecast 2 billion by 2050. More than that, the global middle class, with expectations of western consumption patterns - western diets, western travel, western consumer goods and so on -  is expected to accelerate demand by growing by 2.5 billion by 2030. “Sustainable Business is business, not philanthropy,” states Morgan Stanley. Well they would say that, wouldn’t they? Even so, if they can persuade investors to make a business of decarbonising the global economy that can’t be bad for humanity.

Apple's Trees

Apple are in the news for preserving forests. Are these forests of apple trees? No, these are the trees this high-tech firm needs to assure sustainable supplies of paper and packaging for all its products. Apple have announced a plan to work with the World Wildlife Fund to improve the management of 1m acres of forests in China. This follows their announcement last month to donate money to Conservation Fund to buy and protect 36,000 acres of forests from commercial development other than forestry product production in Maine and North Carolina. Did you listen to the Sustainable Futures Show episode on the Green Supply Chain? (20th February 2015) Apple is making the point that we are all dependent on all parts of our supply chain. Some elements might be quite remote and not obviously connected to the core business, but they are important nonetheless. Apple is not only securing its supply chain here but it’s showing itself to be an environmentally responsible business. Given the almost cult following that Apple has among millions of consumers world-wide, that message is immensely strong.

The Paris Business and Climate Summit ended yesterday. 200 days before COP21, the UN Paris Climate Conference, French president Francois Hollande called for a miracle in December. A miracle to achieve consensus among all 196 participating nations to agree on measures to control carbon emissions and keep the increase in global temperatures below 2℃. He called upon the business community for support, with carbon capture and storage, new clean technologies and enhanced energy efficiency. If it’s difficult to achieve consensus within one country it’s certainly a challenge to achieve consensus among 196 countries. Nevertheless he believes it can be done. However, Tony Hayward, chairman of Glencore, the world’s largest supplier of  power station coal clashed with representatives of the solar and wind turbine industries, indicating the sort of debates which are likely to rage between now and December and indeed will be crucial in reaching an agreement. Hayward’s point was that renewables could never provide alternatives to coal for the process industries of countries such as India. Kerry Adler of Skypower and José Manuel Entrecanales Domecq, chief executive of Spain’s Acciona group, a large wind power developer, disputed this. With advances in electricity storage there is no reason why renewables should not provide base load power. The debate continues.

Sustainable Energy - the book

And so to Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air. This book was written by David MacKay, Fellow of the Royal Society and Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Shortly after publication he was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. In the book he has analysed the energy consumption of the average UK citizen. This covers not just the energy we use for heating, lighting and transport, but the energy we use to provide the food we eat, to run our public services and defence forces, to manufacture and deliver all the goods we buy and to run all the equipment and gadgets that we own. Against this he looks at the potential output from the various renewables, ranging from solar panels and wind turbines to tides, waves and geothermal energy. Even though each section is meticulously researched and presented in detail, it’s written with the general reader in mind. The author uses clear examples, simple illustrations and approximations to make things easy to understand. At the same time his assumptions and data sources are listed in notes to each chapter. The conclusion is that the average Brit needs 125kWh each day to maintain our current standard of living. That’s not electricity, it’s power from oil to drive our cars, from gas to heat our homes, from coal to run our power stations and so on. Although the theoretical maximum output from renewables could come close to matching this, the practical reality comes nowhere near. We cannot cover every roof with solar panels, we cannot instal wind turbines on every spare piece of land, we cannot put barriers across every tidal estuary. What we can do will yield about 14% of what we need. 

And the rest? We eliminate fossil fuels from our transport fleet by converting all vehicles to electricity. We convert our central heating to electricity, not with electric radiators or storage heaters but with heat pumps. For every unit of electricity used by a heat pump it’s possible to extract around three units of heat from the air or the ground, depending on the type of pump. We exploit the renewables we have, to provide renewable electricity. In the short term at least, we use clean coal with carbon capture and storage and we use nuclear energy to provide additional electricity with no additional carbon emissions. The final piece of the jigsaw is imported electricity from distant solar farms in foreign deserts. Technically this is feasible; politically it could be problematic. Theoretically enough solar energy falls on only a small part of the Sahara Desert to power the whole of Europe and provide 125kWh of energy to everyone in North Africa as well. If the countries meeting in Paris this December are serious about cutting carbon emissions then they will have to consider ambitious solutions. No shortage of investment opportunities there!

That’s all for this week, but what do you think? How likely are we to get a sensible agreement in December? What do think of David Mackay’s suggestions? As I mentioned before, his book can be downloaded free of charge at withouthotair.com. 

I’m always keen to hear from you about this or any other sustainability issues. mail@anthony-day.com Let me know what you think, let me know what you’d like to hear more of, let me know if you’re an expert and you’d like to be interviewed for the Sustainable Futures Show. 

Revolution - a film by Rob Stewart

Watch the trailer here: http://ykr.be/hn62dkp6v 
This review also available on The Sustainable Futures Show (podcast)

What’s it all about?

This film will appeal to anyone who is concerned about the environment, sustainability or climate change. Anyone else could well tune out and switch off in the first few minutes.

What’s it all about? It’s a film about our relationship with sharks. No, wait, here’s Rob Stewart mugging to the camera home-movie style. It's a documentary about making a documentary about sharks. No, wrong again, we’re now talking about coral reefs, the acidification of the oceans and the threat to fish stocks. Now we’re looking at global forests, at the destruction of some 75% of the world’s forests and its effects on the production of oxygen. And finally - it’s about CO2 emissions, it’s about man-made climate change, it’s about mega-corporations, coal and particularly about Canadian tar sands.

There is so much information in this film. There’s some amazing photography, especially the underwater scenes. There are some pretty disturbing scenes. There are things everyone should know. I had no prior knowledge or expectations of this film and we could have done with some signposting. It would have helped if I’d seen the trailer beforehand. Why watch this film? What’s it going to tell us? Why is it important? How does it affect me? Without answers to some of these questions I’m afraid the general viewer will just switch off. There is no clear thread at the start. 

The later part of the film shows how concerned citizens took their message to COP15, the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and how the conference closed with no real result. We saw anti-coal protesters outside the White House in Washington. There was detailed coverage of the protests at COP16, the 2010 conference in Cancun, Mexico. Again, little was achieved and this time the protesters were expelled.

My main criticism of this film is that it lacks a strategy for action. The filmmakers suggest that if you don’t like what the government is doing on climate change you should elect another one. (We tried that in the UK last week and it didn’t work. Climate change and the environment were never discussed in the election campaign. Public awareness is the first challenge. People don’t know so people don’t care.)

This film reminded me of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. They both give an account of the threats and risks to our planet and to our life on earth, but they don’t say what we should do about it. “The Age of Stupid” was a similar film. “How could we have been so stupid as to get into this mess,?” it asked, but it didn't suggest any solutions. If you wait to the end of Al Gore’s film, as the credits roll you see little hints like, ”Drive a smaller car” or “Turn the heating down 1 degree”.

If you wait to the very, very end of Revolution, after all the credits - which are extensive - after the Canadian tax status statement, the very last line before fade to black  reads: “Open your eyes. Be brave. Fight for something.”

What? Fight for something? Is that it? If we don’t know what we’re fighting for we’re certainly not going to achieve anything.

The most memorable statement in the film for me came from Dr Patrick Moore (no, not the astronomer) A former Greenpeace activist and now an advocate of exploiting the Canadian Tar Sands. He said: “Tomorrow morning 300m vehicles in America need to start up to keep civilisation running. If they don’t get their oil from here, they’ll get it from somewhere else.” You can’t argue with that. At least, not in the short term.

The film criticises the negotiators at the Climate Conferences for all talk and no action. But we could criticise the activists and the filmmakers for all protest and no solutions. Ban coal, ban oil, but what then? And the Cancun conference was in 2010. Why nothing about the conferences which have taken place since? Why nothing about COP21, the next major UN Climate Change Conference coming up in Paris in December?

If you’re interested in the environment, in sustainability and climate change, you should see this film. It will remind you of the issues and probably add to your knowledge. If you’ve never taken an interest in these issues, you too should watch Revolution. It’s hard work to start with, but it provides a wealth of information. Make up your own mind as to what the action points should be. It’s not time for panic, but it’s no time complacency either.

Of course, you might turn round to me and say, “Right, if you’re so clever what course of action do you recommend?” And I could respond that I’m just the reviewer of the film; it’s not up to me. 

That’s  tempting, but it’s too easy, so here’s what I suggest.

We need to lobby governments to commit to clear targets for agreement in Paris in December. 

• A global fixed price for carbon, increasing year by year would be a start. 
• All those 300m vehicles, and all the others in the rest of the world, need to start up every day until we can create alternatives. Tax incentives must encourage rapid innovation in transport.
• We need to decarbonise electricity production by 2050, maybe earlier. This means that no-where in the world will we use fossil fuels to generate electricity. It’s a big ask, but many experts believe it’s possible. Make no mistake, to do this we will have to manage demand as well and eliminate waste so that demand can match supply.
• Governments must implement a public information programme so that people understand the reason for changes. This is probably the biggest challenge of all, because many politicians themselves do not understand the issues and quite a lot of them don’t want to believe the facts, for whatever reason.
• The international community must recognise that in the short term at least, poor countries and poorer people in developed countries will be hardest hit by the change from fossil fuels. Steps must be taken to protect them, for two reasons. One is that we have a moral duty to help those worse off than ourselves, and if you don’t buy that then if we neglect the poor there’s good chance that they will all rise up and destroy what we’re trying to do.
• Finally, it’s all very well to demonise mega-corporations, but given the vast proportion of the world’s assets that they control, it’s unlikely that we will achieve a low carbon world without their involvement. Governments must give them incentives to reinvent themselves, and penalise business as usual.

What do you think?

Vote, vote, vote for Sustainability!

Who will you vote for tomorrow, to give us a sustainable Britain? I've been looking at the manifestos to find out what's on offer. Go to the Sustainable Futures Show to hear more: 

http://www.anthony-day.com/sustainable-futures-show/ 

The Conservatives will seek full endangered species status for the polar bear, they will help you to insulate your home and will seek a strong global climate deal in Paris in December. Labour will do most of these things too, and they will freeze your domestic energy bills until 2017. The Lib Dems are almost greener than the Greens. They aim to fight climate change with five green laws listed on the front page of their manifesto. UKIP will abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change, repeal the Climate Change Act, rejuvenate the coal industry and keep our coal-fired power stations burning. The Greens are very green, closing all coal power stations by 2023 and abandoning growth in favour of a circular economy. The SNP doesn’t say much, except that it wants to keep Longannet coal-fired power station going as long as possible. It’s the oldest in the UK and one of the dirtiest sites in Europe.

Labour and the Tories avoid the f-word, but UKIP has no such scruples: “Time to get fracking!” Absolutely not, say the Greens and the SNP, but Conservatives, Labour and LibDems will all use it to create various wealth funds. They’re going to keep them next to the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow. 

Hear more at http://www.anthony-day.com/sustainable-futures-show/   then go out and vote early and vote often. If you’re in one of the 23 key marginals your vote might just make a difference!

Lucky for some!

Yes, it's Friday the 13th! Lucky for some, and lucky for you, you’ve found another episode of the sustainable futures show. You can listen to this as a podcast here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/sustainable-futures/id313473372?mt=2&uo=4

The objective of the sustainable futures show is to send the message that green business is good business. And I'm not just talking about business, we’re talking about the public sector, we’re talking about schools, we’re talking about hospitals, we’re talking about all sorts of organisations and even about what you’re doing at home.

This week I've had a very busy week in a sustainable sort of way. I've been to some fascinating presentations, I've met some very interesting people and I hope to be able to introduce them to you in future episodes. In this episode I'm going to talk about bio renewables, about the biggest manufacturer of frozen French fries in the world, about fracking and about sustainability in schools. And I'll also mention sustainability in business schools and the sustainable cities index, and the global divestment movement. What’s that? You’ll have to wait to find out!

First of all, Insider Media hosted a biorenewable breakfast this week. The panel consisted of Joe Ross, director of the bio renewables development centre, Ernst Kloosterman, managing director industrial biotech network Norway, Mark Chesworth, managing director, Vivergo Fuels, and Harold Vandenberg, director, critical processes limited. A bio economy strategy for the UK will be published later this month. This follows the report to the House of Lords science and technology select committee, published in March last year. This document starts with the arresting statistic that 300 million tons of waste per annum are generated in the UK. This is equivalent to 200,000,000 cars or slightly more than six times as many cars as we have in the UK. A large part of any bio renewable strategy is to minimise the amount of waste which goes to landfill. On the panel we had representatives of two organisations dedicated to knowledge transfer: one from the UK, one from Norway. We had Vivergo Fuels, which takes feed wheat and produces bio ethanol and animal feed. We had Critical Processes, an organisation developing techniques to extract usable material from previously un-recyclable waste, and then scaling these processes to industrial levels. Every member of the panel had a story to tell and I want to bring these to you in more detail in a future episode. But two messages came across strongly to me. First, we need engineers. There's a shortage in the UK of engineers, particularly process engineers and chemical engineers. Secondly, we need public awareness. The potential of the bio renewable sector is very difficult to explain, but the potential in terms of saving organisations money by saving costs of landfill and the potential of creating new materials to be fed back into the circular economy is enormous. After this week’s meeting at least the 100 or so people in the audience have a much better idea of what bio renewables are all about. Watch this space and I’ll bring you more!

Next I went to hear the corporate affairs director of McCain Foods talk about his organisation’s sustainable path. McCain is the biggest supplier of frozen French fries in the world. One in every three French fries is one of theirs. This is a major global corporation and it is committed to sustainability, because sustainable business is good business. McCain is a family company and it prides itself on family values. It has adopted ISO 14001, the environmental management system standard, across the group and is in the process of upgrading to the revised version of the standard recently issued. In the UK it works with 300 potato farmers, and with many more across the world. It helps its farmers develop best practice with techniques including water reduction, carbon footprint measurement and shared equipment helping growers to reduce their capital investment. It offers a guaranteed price for a quality product. At the factory there is emphasis on managing energy, water and transport. Moving 750,000 tonnes of potatoes on vehicles with a capacity of 27 tonnes means there are just under 30,000 vehicle movements per year. And presumably that’s just the raw materials. Careful management of logistics reduces road miles, reduces fuel use and reduces the transport carbon footprint. £16 million has been invested in renewable energy. Three 120 m turbines produce 70% of the energy required by the factory. An anaerobic digester produces methane which in turn produces another 10% of the electricity requirement. McCain sends less than 1% to landfill. Potato waste goes to animal feed, cooking oil to biofuel, surplus food to a food bank, recycled soil, compost and the digester residue go back to the land, and starch goes to the paper industry. The bio renewables panel would be proud! One message. We need to train more engineers. There’s a shortage of food engineers.

On to a presentation by Liam Herringshaw of Durham University on Fossils and Fracking. The F-word, (the second one) assured a packed house. This was a dispassionate account of the geology of shale and the process of fracking to extract oil and gas. We learnt about the vast quantities of water needed for the process, the fact that about half of it seeps away we know not where and that the rest needs specialised treatment. Apparently waste water from Quadrilla’s test site in Lancashire was passed through the local sewage farm, which was unable to stop the radioactivity being flushed away into the Manchester Ship Canal. Although the government is very much in favour of fracking, the British Geological Survey has severe reservations about how much of the reserves could actually be recovered. The audience included several people with clear and strong views, but the discussion which followed was well-informed and constructive. See refine.org.uk for more about the research on fracking and shale carried out jointly by Newcastle and Durham Universities. My own thought is that with oil hovering around $50/barrel, half what it was six months ago, it will be hard to make fracking economically viable. Quite apart from whether we can justify producing more fossil fuels. Whatever happens, we surely need more engineers!

Where are we going to get the engineers and technologists to carry us forward to a sustainable future? Only from our schools and universities. Next month I shall be speaking on sustainability in schools at the education show at the National exhibition Centre in Birmingham. I'll be talking about running schools as sustainable businesses, about engaging students with the idea of sustainability and environmental responsibility and about career opportunities in a sustainable world. I believe there are some in engineering.

This week I met Harriet Ennis who leads the environmental and sustainability initiatives at Bootham School in York. The school itself aims to be energy efficient through careful energy management and has also installed solar panels on new buildings. Bootham School is part of the eco-schools network. It will shortly receive its fourth green flag award, it has ambassador school status and will host part of the eco-schools roadshow in July. Many activities take place after school, but the ethos of environmental and social responsibility goes on all the time, coordinated by students appointed as eco-reps. Students are involved at all levels and gain experience of the difficulties of managing change. Activities range from offsetting the carbon footprint of school trips, through collecting waste, to the Dangerous Game, a computer-based attempt to solve the world’s problems with real-world consequences. For example, people who get it wrong get only a lettuce leaf and some rice for lunch. Thing I really liked was Terracycle. This is an organisation which takes low-level waste like biscuit wrappers, transforms them into useful products - great for the circular economy - and awards points which can be used to support third-world development projects. Look at terracycle.co.uk. In this world of scepticism and denial it is so encouraging to find an organisation taking issues seriously and encouraging students to do something about them. I expect some of them will become engineers.

And if not engineers, perhaps some of them will go to business school and become the leaders of the future. According to The Guardian this week sustainability is now a key selling point for business schools attracting students. Students used to consider sustainability in business irrelevant and would resent paying fees to learn about it. However the attitude seems to have changed, reflecting changed attitudes in boardrooms. This is good news after the mixed messages which came out of Davos. If you remember, Al Gore made a presentation on the threats from climate change, but at the same time the PwC global CEO survey excluded climate change altogether.

Also in the news, the sustainable cities index published a report. Frankfurt is now the world’s most sustainable city, with London coming second. It was interesting to see how different parts of the press presented this.”Frankfurt beats London to most sustainable city title” says The Guardian. “Only one city in the world is more sustainable than London” says The Telegraph.

And finally, what’s all this about the global divestment movement? We’ve heard how the Rockefeller Institute, certain universities, the Vatican and the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund are all selling their fossil fuel investments. The Global Divestment movement exists to encourage everyone to abandon fossil fuels. There’s no doubt that we have to do this if we’re going to stop catastrophic global warming. It’s not something we can do overnight, but we need to start making plans now. Which means we need to make governments start making plans and taking action, now. Today and tomorrow mass demonstrations are planned across the world. It will be interesting to see how much support they get and whether the press picks up on it. gofossilfree.org

That ends a quite busy week. Well, for podcasting anyway - I’ve still got a lot of other things to do. Have a great weekend, a sustainable weekend, and I’ll be back with you with another episode of the Sustainable Futures Show next Friday.