The Week in Green
It is one of the most encouraging truisms of the entire clean tech sector that the vast majority of the technologies required to deliver a low carbon economy are already in existence.
This week we've seen countless examples of the extent to which zero and low carbon technologies are not only technically feasible but already fully operational. From zero carbon homes to biofuel powered flights, electric cars to highly efficient solar cells many of the solutions to climate change are already up and running.
The big question - in fact the only question that matters in the wake of the news that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are at frightening high levels - is how quickly these technologies and thousands more like them can make the transition from technical feasibility to economic viability.
A few months back I caught up with Jan van Dokkum, chief executive of fuel cell specialist UTC Power, who underscored the scale of the challenge faced by those firms developing these clean technologies. He said that anyone visiting the company's offices could go out into the parking lot and go for a spin in a zero emissions fuel cell powered car that in terms of performance was easily the equal of pretty much anything on the road today. The only problem was that it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And, as he explained, in many ways it would be ridiculous to expect it to cost much less when you consider that the incumbent auto manufacturers are churning out millions of cars a year, while those pioneering fuel cell technologies are producing mere hundreds, or in some cases tens, of vehicles.
The problem for these firms is developing the economies of scale that will allow their technologies to become cost competitive, while simultaneously ousting incumbent competitors with established manufacturing operations and supply chains.
And yet, if they can build up the requisite economies of scale clean tech firms can find themselves in a position where the environmental, health and life time cost benefits of many green technologies means they will be able to grow surprisingly quickly.
Toyota, for example, announced this week that it has now sold a million Prius' worldwide and hopes to have annual sales of over a million within the next five years or so.
Meanwhile, Van Dokkum said this week that UTC is just a couple of years away from delivering a fuel cell powered bus that, when running costs are taken into account, will be cheaper than diesel alternatives. Similarly, Cisco this week unveiled the second generation of its video conferencing suite at a price point a massive 90 per cent below the first generation version.
Making that economies of scale breakthrough and attaining cost competitiveness will typically require vast investment, but as Toyota has proven if it can be achieved the rewards can be vaster still.
Right, I'm off to find a green gauntlet to throw at the feet of Boris Johnson.
Have a good weekend,
James
Posted by James Murray on May 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Why it's time for a darker world
Saturday morning and I find myself with a moderate sized hang over (family wedding, since you ask) standing in Gatwick Airport trying to work out how I get to the railway station.
I'm staring at a sign that reads "for arrivals follow the illuminated signs".
It's the word illuminated that's got my attention. I'd never noticed before, but as soon as you look you realise that all the yellow signs everywhere in the airport are backlit by what must be several thousand bulbs. Every last one of them is illuminated, even at ten in the morning on a bright sunny day.
One question: why?
What was so wrong with all the old signs? You know the ones: white background, black fonts, worked perfectly adequately for centuries.
I don't doubt BAA could trot out some kind of spurious business case for these signs. It would probably quote a research project somewhere that has shown that backlit yellow signs are the easiest to spot when you are hurrying to the gate - that the illumination makes it easier for the myopic amongst us to read the signs at a distance. They'd probably add that all the bulbs used are energy efficient.
But I'm not sure I buy it, particularly when you consider that airports, like shopping malls and most other public spaces, are typically hyper-illuminated forums, capable of giving you a headache regardless of what you were up to the night before.
I don't believe that prior to some bright spark deciding to illuminate many of the signs that we are bombarded by everyday we were all constantly wondering around getting lost and confused. Even if the most efficient bulbs available are used, the benefits of the illuminated signs are surely so marginal as to be outweighed by the environmental and financial cost of the energy they are using.
It is always difficult to advocate ditching a technology in favour of a simpler alternative. It is too easy for such a move to be accused of being regressive, even luddite, in its thinking.
Ask public spaces to ensure signs are only illuminated when it is dark and anti-environmentalists will inevitably try and lump you in with those killjoys who call for an end to Christmas lights or turn their nose up at any technological product that has the faintest whiff of frivolity.
And yet, as resource scarcity issues mount and pressure to cut energy use becomes more acute, perhaps it is time for more firms to ask if the technologies they use have been over-engineered. If the original, low tech version a product replaces could not continue to do the job just as effectively?
Technological progress is, of course, essential to the transition to a low carbon economy and new low carbon product need to be developed at a breakneck pace over the next two decades. But for every low carbon leap forward achieved by engineers and scientists, a new over-engineered technology emerges that threatens to negate some of the environmental gains achieved while delivering only a fractional, or in many cases non-existent, improvement on the product it aims to replace.
My personal recent favourite were the reports of a new installation in the changing rooms of a New Look store in Birmingham that uses a video camera and plasma screen TV to allow shoppers to tell what the clothes look like from behind. Because, apparently mirrors just aren't good enough anymore.
That, and the electronic post it notes that beep at you if you forget to do the things on your to do list.
It is not regressive to suggest that some technologies have reached a level of perfection, or at least satisfactory competence, whereby further "improvement" can not be justified in a resource strapped world. The sooner firms realise this, the easier they will find it to focus their attention on the genuinely sustainable technologies and business models that promise to reduce both their running costs and their carbon emissions.
Posted by James Murray on May 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Week in Green
So it looks like the £25 a day congestion charge for gas guzzlers will never see the light of day.
According to Mayor Boris' press office a final decision has not yet been made, but our blonde bombshell of a new mayor made the eradication of the new charge a manifesto commitment and considering he is on record as describing the proposed levy as "the most vicious fines [sic] of any civilisation yet known" he will be left looking even more stupid than usual if he does not scrap the proposed changes.
Attempts to characterise the new mayor as anti-green have always been overly-simplistic. In his inimitable style, Johnson once described himself as "a voortrekker of the Cameron movement", who breathes "the spirit of the solar-powered, bike-riding, glacier-friendly modernising tendency of which I am proud to be a part". He is also a famously keen cyclist and his manifesto included eye catching commitments to plant 10,000 trees across the capital and introduce a token-based scheme to promote recycling.
Furthermore, there is little doubt that mistakes were made by his predecessor in the development of the £25 a day charge. For example, the debate over whether or not the charge would actually cut emissions was never comprehensively won and there were valid concerns that the decision to exempt smaller cars from the charge would have undermined demand for genuine zero emission electric vehicles.
Furthermore, the arbitrary nature of the £25 charge, bearing as it does no relation to vehicle emission levels, meant it was far too easy to characterise the move as a classic example of the politics of envy, a relic from Mayor Ken's days as a Class Warrior designed solely to penalise the wealthy residents of Chelsea. The whole exercise would have been far easier to defend as a genuine environmental initiative if a sliding scale of charges had been introduced whereby cars with emissions of 120g per km pay £8, while those cars emitting double pay double.
And yet despite these flaws, it is hard to regard the decision to scrap the £25 a day charge as anything other than a retrograde step.
Imperfect it may have been, but what the new charge had in spades was symbolic value – and you can't overestimate the power of symbolism.
Combined with changes to road tax bands designed to make it more expensive to run high emission vehicles the new charge would have sent out a clear signal to consumers and businesses that gas guzzling cars are not in the social interest. Such signals would undoubtedly be ignored by many of those who voted for Boris, but the combination of higher costs and a nagging sense that they were somehow in the wrong would also serve to steer some towards more environmentally responsible choices.
Instead, one of the most powerful politicians in the UK is now poised to send out the contradictory signal that high emission vehicles are in fact fine and despite their disproportionate contribution to climate change they should not be penalised.
Moreover, just as the government's fudging of environmental targets, refusal to countenance hypothecated green taxes and failure to invest adequately in climate change adaptation has undermined the credibility of many of its green policies, the decision to effectively water down the congestion charge will overshadow any future environmental initiatives Boris comes up with.
It is not too late to hope for a u-turn, but something tells me that Boris, like his hero, is not for turning.
Right, I'm off to stock up on canned food and start work on a nuclear bunker in the back garden.
Have a good weekend,
James
Posted by James Murray on May 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Week in Green
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that has been doing the rounds through clean tech companies for several years and relates how Bill Clinton first gave his approval to the embryonic sector.
It was at a press conference for one of his many Clinton Foundation initiatives, where the former president was asked what he would do if he was 21 again and did not want to go into politics this time round.
He responded that clean tech would be the sector for him.
Now, you can say what you like about the former president and possible future first husband (indeed most people already have; personal favourite, The Simpsons episode where he is quoted as saying "Hell, I've done it with pigs ... real no-foolin' pigs") but he is no one's mug and it is hardly surprising that in recent years growing numbers of ambitious graduates, executives and entrepreneurs have reached a similar conclusion as the Comeback Kid.
And yet despite the surge in investor and media interest surrounding the clean technology and green business sector it is fast dawning on many experts that the influx of skilled staff entering the sector is failing to keep pace with what is required.
This week the government acknowledged this fact, albeit tacitly, with the publication of a new strategy document designed to help develop the skilled workforce required to meet growing national and international demand for "green collar workers".
The move was welcomed by business groups, but as the CBI's Matthew Farrow observed it could have already come too late for some sectors, which are already beginning to feel "the pinch" when looking for skilled "green" staff.
If you take just one topical example, in the form of the offshore wind sector, you can understand the scale of the problem. From a virtually standing start the government wants 33GW of offshore wind capacity installed within the next 20 years, but at the moment there does not seem to be much idea as to where the people are going to come from to do that installing.
Bottlenecks in the supply of raw materials have been rightly highlighted as a major problem for the sector - driving up costs and contributing to Shell's controversial decision this week to exit the flagship London Array project - but bottlenecks in the supply of skilled staff are likely to pose similar problems as the sector continues to expand.
Wherever you look across the clean tech sector these same concerns are being voiced. The eventual roll out of smart grid technologies, for example, will require considerable skilled man power, as will the installation of solar farms and the auditing and enforcement of many firms' emerging green supply chain policies. And all that is before you look at the real high end technical and scientific skills that will be required to accelerate the development of the cutting edge technologies required to genuinely decarbonise the economy.
The government can of course help in addressing these imminent shortages, as can the growing number of CSR and sustainability courses being offered by academic institutions. Moreover, the market will play a key role as competition, and consequently salaries, for green professionals begin to rise.
However, it is worth noting that the amount of time it takes for people to develop new skills means that the job market is notoriously inelastic and it now seems inevitable that many clean tech sectors will face serious skills shortages over the next decade or so as governments and businesses struggle to meet their various carbon targets.
It is hugely encouraging that the capital required to fund clean tech projects appears to be in pretty abundant supply at the moment (Shell's cold feet notwithstanding), but capital is worth nothing without people to turn it into something useful and unless business and political leaders are willing to act soon there is a serious danger that the transition to a low carbon economy could be seriously harmed by nothing more than an absence of personnel.
Right, I'm off to write an angry letter to a tabloid newspaper about their climate change coverage.
Have a good weekend,
James
Posted by James Murray on May 2, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Shell in Wonderland
It's time for a trip down the rabbit hole.
I had one of those conversations this morning with a very polite spokeswoman in the Shell press office that leaves you trying to decide whether it is the Valium or the scotch that you should reach for first.
I began the exchange by suggesting that the decision to pull out of the world's largest offshore wind project could perhaps be interpreted as an indication that the company's commitment to renewable energy had become somewhat equivocal. Alas, I was wrong.
Apparently the "strategic decision" to consider selling off the oil giant's stake in the London Array should not be seen as a sign that its commitment to alternative energy is on the slide. In fact, Shell remains a staunch supporter of renewables through investments in 11 wind energy projects in the US and Europe, as well as various biofuel, solar and hydrogen fuel cell projects.
Shell's proposed disposal of its stake in the Thames Array is simply down to an "ongoing review of projects and investment choices" that has resulted in it deciding to focus a bit more on the US as its preferred location for future wind energy investments, in part because of the incentives on offer there.
Which surely implies that the UK government has not been generous enough in its support for offshore wind?
Nope, wrong again (and I hope you are following this, because by this point the task of following this Boris Johnson-esque master class in circuitous logic was proving a bit disorienting). The spokeswoman insisted the government has been great and that it is not just the incentives that have attracted Shell to the US, it is just that it is better equipped over there to make a success of wind energy projects.
So the UK is less well equipped to deliver these wind energy projects?
Erm, wrong again. If you believe what Shell told The Guardian it still reckons the UK remains a great place to invest in wind, claiming that the government has developed a "positive" policy framework and that it is "hopeful" the London Array project "will proceed as planned". Well, not quite as planned obviously, but let's not sweat the small stuff.
It took Shell's partner on the project, E.ON, to cut through the Dr Seuss levels of surrealism and deliver a hefty dose of reality. Shell would not divulge what had prompted its "strategic decision", but Dr Paul Golby, chief executive of E.ON had no such qualms in revealing both how "disappointed" he was with Shell and how risky the project has now become.
"The current economics of the project are marginal at best," he explained. "With rising steel prices, bottlenecks in turbine supply and competition from the rest of the world all moving against us."
It is in the light of this information that it becomes clear what Shell means when it says it wants to focus on "capital discipline and efficiency", but why couldn't the oil giant come out and say that itself.
Personally, I don't have a problem with Shell ditching this project – it clearly reckons that with oil at $120 a barrel it can make more money elsewhere and that's its own prerogative (Although, I'd also hazard that when you are making £7.2bn a year and are under intense political and commercial pressure to diversify your energy mix towards renewable energy then the brand and experience benefits it would have gained from being involved in the world's largest offshore wind project would have far outweighed any short term economic hit it might have to take on the investment).
No, what really grates is the lack of transparency behind the decision. Had Shell come out and said we don't feel this project is economical when compared to drilling for tar in Canada or even investing in wind farms in the US then we could have had the debate that is so desperately needed about how to make projects such as the Thames Array compelling to investors.
We could have asked what needs to be done to tackle the supply chain and planning issues that have dogged the project from day one. We could have asked why when the government has recently increased the incentives for offshore wind it has still not proved sufficient to keep one of the project's main backers on board. And most importantly we could of asked how we can make renewable energy a more attractive investment proposition when compared to fossil fuels.
Instead, we are once again left with a fudged statement praising the "positive policy and support framework for offshore wind projects" in the UK, while at the same time the underlying structural and economic faults that have meant the UK has thus far failed to exploit the best wind profile in Europe remain in place.
The simple fact is that Shell and the government need to climb out of this particular rabbit hole and accept that the policy and support framework was obviously not positive enough and as a result a project that could provide clean energy to a quarter of London's homes is now at risk of serious delays and even outright failure.
Posted by James Murray on May 1, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
When it comes to bioplastics, there are no excuses for unintended consequences
You know that sinking feeling that you get when you realise you should of thought of something. Well, that was me on Saturday morning staring at the front page of The Guardian and John Vidal's excellent investigation into some of the adverse environmental implications of bioplastics.
It was the first three paragraphs that did it:
"The worldwide effort by supermarkets and industry to replace conventional oil-based plastic with eco-friendly "bioplastics" made from plants is causing environmental problems and consumer confusion, according to a Guardian study.
The substitutes can increase emissions of greenhouse gases on landfill sites, some need high temperatures to decompose and others cannot be recycled in Britain.
Many of the bioplastics are also contributing to the global food crisis by taking over large areas of land previously used to grow crops for human consumption."
It's all so blindingly obvious when someone spells it out for you isn't it?
The sinking feeling, which I imagine was shared by the marketing and sustainability departments of retailers up and down the UK, was prompted by the sense that I already knew on some level that there were environmental risks attached to these "bioplastics". What Vidal had done so effectively is make those risks plain.
Anyone with even a fleeting interest in environmental science knows that organic matter will release methane as it breaks down and is probably aware that methane is one of the most harmful greenhouse gases. Just as anyone who has any experience of the UK recycling sector, knows that recycling technologies tend to lag far behind the emergence of new types of waste.
Equally, it stands to reason that if biofuels are guilty of taking up land previously used for food crops and inadvertently contributes to deforestation, then any other product that similarly diverts food away from peoples' mouths and increases pressure on agricultural land will have similar effects.
What The Guardian's investigation has done is draw together these facts, and while the bioplastics sector can justifiably claim that it poses a relatively small problem compared to the burgeoning biofuels industry and that work is underway to enhance recycling capacity, the paper is entirely right to have raised these concerns.
The investigation also serves to highlight to corporate risk assessment and due diligence teams everywhere the extent to which many of the unintended consequences that arise from well intentioned green initiatives are in fact surprisingly obvious if you just take a detached look at the bigger picture.
It is always tempting when an exciting new green technology emerges to deploy it as quickly as possible. But as the problems experienced by biofuels and now bioplastics prove, such an approach could leave you repenting at leisure. It is a fact those scientists dallying with climate modifying technologies, algae based biofuels and various other clean technologies would be advised to remember.
In the long run, bioplastics may well prove a sustainable green alternative to conventional plastics, but in the meantime firms would be well advised to make sure they have considered the full environmental impact of using these types of polymers - or else they might just have to get used to that sinking feeling each time someone else points out that their green plastics might not be so green after all.
Posted by James Murray on April 29, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Help wanted…
For the second time in almost as many months I have managed to get myself blindsided by a talk radio host.
As you can imagine I am now feeling suitably sheepish, not least because this is up there with getting outwitted by a tea towel in terms of intellectual embarrassment, but also because the best definition of stupidity we've got is an inability to learn from one's mistakes.
Still, in my defence, it was Monday morning and when the researcher for BBC Three Counties Radio rung up to ask if I'd be available to talk about Tesco's plans to put carbon labels on some of its products I had no reason to be suspicious.
She said the show's host, Jonathan Vernon-Smith, wanted a view on how the scheme could work and whether consumers would see it as a case of the supermarket jumping on the green bandwagon, which all sounded fair enough (although, in retrospect the alarm bells should of sounded when she signed off with the words, "try to enjoy it").
What followed was straight out of the talk radio host handbook: leading questions, incredulous tone, refusal to accept any of the positives to be found in the scheme, all culminating in a rather long-winded rant.
I was asked why anyone really wants to see carbon data on products, why supermarkets are trying to make people feel guilty, and why Tesco wants to do something that is only going to confuse customers, "just like the traffic light fiasco" surrounding food labels (that'll be the fiasco of improved nutrition labelling that most supermarkets report has led to a decline in sales of the most unhealthy foods, then).
My attempts to defend the scheme - which is after all only a pilot and is on balance likely to prove beneficial - only served to prompt a slightly bizarre rant in which Vernon-Smith asked, I can only assume rhetorically, "who has the time to start checking the carbon count of products? Who really has the time? Not me that's for sure."
Well, erm, thanks for that.
Now, I know I've posted on this before - after I found myself trying to debate the case for curbing carbon emissions on LBC Radio with people who think global warming will be a good thing because they'll be able to grow oranges and lemons in their garden - but what are you supposed to do when faced with these types of questions and the environmental scepticism they embody.
Last time, I think I espoused ignoring them, on the grounds that the point of view of the questioner - climate change scepticism, wilful ignorance of the global warming threats, refusal to countenance new green technologies even where they bring huge benefits – is essentially based on a series of beliefs rather than facts and consequently it is almost impossible to change their mind.
But now I'm not so sure. Of course, it makes sense from a marketing and communications perspective for businesses to target the receptive audience offered by the new breed of green consumers. But at the same time green products will only go mainstream if the entrenched hostility towards green issues embodied by the talk radio hosts is challenged and defeated.
So how do you go about beating them at their own game? Where is the nuclear option that stop's the next "yeah, but" rejoinder dead in its tracks?
I'm pretty sure losing your temper and pointing out to the green cynics that they are just plain wrong is not the answer (although it is a tempting option), just as I would never advocate any sort of censorship to force such opinions from the media spotlight. So what do you do?
So far all I've come up with is to try and ensure you have facts at your disposal that counter the anti-environmental argument, to always focus on the positive benefits green products and services can deliver, and to try to explain that principles of risk mitigation mean that at the very least green measures represent a sensible precaution.
This all makes sense and is equally good advice for any firm putting together a green campaign as it is for individuals stuck talking to climate sceptics. But I'm sure you'll agree it isn't the most impressive rhetorical arsenal when you are faced with an adversary armed with the far more potent weapons of knee-jerk hostility and an only passing acquaintance with the concept of logic.
What all this is leading to is an unashamed plea for help. If you have any ideas on how best to engage with those who are convinced all green business activity is a case of hype, or conspiracy, or both, then please put the answer on the back of a postcard (or at the bottom in the comments box – it's greener).
It's either that or I'm going to have to get used to be outmanoeuvred by tea towels, which, as you can imagine, is a less than attractive prospect.
Posted by James Murray on April 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
The Week in Green
Amidst the frenzy of investment and product launches that characterises the clean tech sector it is sometimes easy to lose sight of exactly what is at stake.
This is entirely understandable given that unless you are a particularly virulent misanthrope it is far more exciting to write and talk about solar cell breakthroughs, pioneering clean tech business models, burgeoning green investment funds and plants with funny names that might just save the world, than it is to bang on about impending apocalypse.
Hell, it's even more appealing to talk about new green accountancy models than it is to have a cheerful chat about humanity's chances of making it to the end of the century.
Moreover, there is a strong strategic argument for playing down the scale of threat posed by climate change in order to guard against defeatism.
And yet at the same time many businesses' tendency to focus on the opportunities presented by the fight against climate change while paying scant regard to its accompanying risks is not only short sighted, it poses a severe threat to the long term health of their business.
Several weeks ago I gave a presentation at an event on green marketing in which I pointed out that few businesses will maximise their long term investments in India and China if the two economic titans end up pointing their nuclear war heads at each other in a stand off over water. It actually got a laugh, which I found a bit strange firstly because I was being entirely serious and secondly because, frankly, I'm no Peter Ustinov when it comes to the public speaking.
The sheer scale of the threat posed by climate change was hammered home again this week with a new report from defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute detailing how climate change will lead to a severe deterioration in global security. The more morally repugnant corners of the defence industry might be rubbing their hands together at the reports predictions of a century long conflict on a scale of the two World Wars, but the rest of us are more likely to be asking ourselves what can be done to avoid this catastrophic scenario.
Businesses need to be assessing these risks and constantly reminding themselves that climate change strategies must take a duel-pronged approach: simultaneously hoping for the best through investment in clean technologies, while planning for the worst through adaptation measures.
Even at a micro scale firms should be undertaking climate change risk assessments capable of identifying where their operations and sales are at most risk from disruption.
Sadly, as KPMG's recent report into climate change risks shows this is simply not happening with many of the world's largest industries simply refusing to face up to the environmental challenges they face.
It can be depressing to envisage a world akin to that in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and as such it is understandable why so many businesses, and governments for that matter (we're looking at you Mr Bush), are tempted to water down the scale of the threat. But it is only in undertaking a realistic assessment of possible threats that businesses and economies can build true resilience and begin to recognise new opportunities ahead of the competition.
Right, I'm off to try and weigh the carbon in an email.
Have a good weekend.
Cheers,
James
Posted by James Murray on April 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Why McCarthy's The Road is the most important environmental business book ever written
In one of those funny coincidences that occasionally beset you I have just managed to read two consecutive novels both dealing the ever so cheery topic of the apocalypse.
The first was Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma, his 1998 fantasy about a 17 year-old girl who slips into a coma in 1979 and wakes up years later to warn her friends of impending doom.
The apocalypse that follows sees the world succumb to a surreal pandemic where everyone simply falls asleep, never to wake up, until the only people left alive are the girl's boyfriend, small band of school friends, her teenage daughter who she gave birth to while in the coma, oh and the ghost of their dead classmate - bear with me here it really is a very fine read.
All the tropes familiar to anyone who has read a Coupland novel are present and correct: an appalled fascination with modernity and technology, an obsession with a group of young friends, a love of memorable one liners and a fiercely questioning agnosticism.
The apocalypse is ultimately a metaphorical one, highlighting the spiritual vacuum that afflicts the modern world - a world which the waking coma victim believes has gone dark.
However, while the end of the world may be fantastical in nature the scenes of the small group of friends coping in a city stripped of human presence offers a compelling reminder of the fragility of civilisation.
It is this concept that is taken to its chilling extreme in the second novel, Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
It tells the post apocalyptic story of a father and son travelling across a "cauterised terrain", "a cold illucid world" stripped of all life except for occasional lone travellers and terrifying bands of cannibalistic bandits.
The novel has already been hailed as a masterpiece by environmentalists, including George Monbiot who called it "the most important environmental book ever written" – he has a point.
What McCarthy's haunting, apparently post nuclear, landsape shows us is what will likely happen in the event of the biosphere collapsing. As Monbiot observes, "his thought experiment exposes the one terrible fact to which our technological hubris blinds us: our dependence on biological production remains absolute".
So why draw your attention to all this on a business blog?
Well, besides that fact that The Road is a genuine full blown masterpiece, the kind of which you want to tell everyone about, it also highlights the full scale of the climate change risks we all face and the fragility of the societies we have built.
The world The Road imagines is necessarily extreme, but the scientific consensus is convinced that milder versions of it are heading our way unless urgent action is taken.
It always seems heartless to point out that business suffers in regions devastated by starvation, drought or flooding given that people suffer far more. But it is also a useful way for stimulating action.
The Great Depression had its roots in the dust bowl and the collapse of the midwest's ecosystem and it is a precedent all firms should take to heart. None of the many companies currently investing in India want to see their money wasted in the event of the monsoon being disrupted and the country succumbing to drought. None of the firms ploughing cash into China will want to see a vicious fight for resources between China and Russia to its north, particularly when both have the ability to turn nuclear warheads on each other – in short, if the biosphere suffers, business suffers.
Countless UN and government reports, including a new study this week from defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute, have now warned that climate change and its associated natural disasters and migrations represent the greatest security threat the world faces, but still this message is not getting through to business leaders and policy makers.
Perhaps Mccarthy's The Road can succeed where the scientists have failed and make it plain what the collapse of the biosphere really means. And if it does then the book also contains a second message for our leaders in its representation of the father and son protagonist and their compelling hope, ingenuity, and burning desire to survive.
Posted by James Murray on April 24, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
In search of the missing piece in the renewables jigsaw
Anyone who spends any time around the green business movement will have become used to being asked one question more than any other.
In essence it boils down to, "What technology is going to save us?", although if your questioner is of a more mercenary bent it can also be phrased as "Where should I invest my money?"
Now if I knew the answer to this question I would not be sitting here and would instead be trying to decide whether it is a touch too ostentatious to have a fountain installed in my land that spouts actual money, while simultaneously mulling which Premiership football team to buy.
However, while the truism that there is no silver bullet and a myriad of green technologies will be required remains as valid as ever, I am increasingly convinced that one area could have a critical role to play in making renewable energy feasible on the scale that it is required – and what's more it is a field that until now has remained largely under the radar of both investors and the media.
It is the oh so glamorous field of electricity transmission.
The renewable energy challenge has never been one of potential capacity, and nor for that matter has it been one of cost - it has always been about transmission.
This was hammered home to me last week on a press trip to Iceland, a country that some geologists believe is sitting on top of enough geothermal energy to power the whole of the northern hemisphere.
The energy is cheap, relatively easy to access and emission free, the only problem is that it is being generated in a country that is a very, very long way from anywhere. If we could only transmit, or even transport the energy, in an efficient manner we would instantly have the answer to many of our energy and climate problems.
This self same transmission issue emerges as the biggest stumbling block wherever you find huge potential reserves of renewable energy.
Several studies a couple of years ago from the German Aerospace Centre and a group of researchers called the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation suggested that installing concentrated solar power systems over just 0.3 per cent of the deserts in the Middle East and North Africa would meet all the current and future energy needs of both the Middle East and the EU.
Or to put it another way a little over one per cent of the Sahara could power the entire planet.
Progress is being made to make such thermal power systems cost effective and storage systems are also being developed that advocates reckon could save the problem of the sun setting each night. All of which means that again the only fly in the ointment is getting the energy from the deserts to the population centres where it is needed.
Tidal and offshore wind power also face the same problem on a smaller scale with the lower energy yields involved being compensated by the fact that transmission over a few nautical miles to the mainland is considerably easier than transmitting power across the thousands of miles from Reykjavik to London.
The simple truth is that if we can solve the problem of long distance energy transmission we have the missing piece of the jigsaw that makes the development of a genuine renewable energy economy if not simple exactly then certainly much simpler.
Now I will freely admit that I did not pay enough attention in Physics classes to draw any conclusions on the chances of this missing piece ever being found, but there is growing numbers of engineers who reckon that improvements in long distance high voltage direct current (HVDC) power cables could hold the answer.
These DC cables are currently much more expensive than the AC cables that underpin our national grid, but they are falling in price and unlike AC cables the amount of energy lost does not increase with distance, meaning they could feasibly allow electricity to be efficiently transmitted over thousands of miles.
It is worth noting that there are some who would argue you will need to pretty much rewrite the laws of physics to make such long range transmissions possible. But then again, if they are right then the vision of global clean energy hubs providing cheap reliable renewable electricity could be become a reality.
In the meantime, any industry that requires plenty of energy but few employees would be worth considering the old idiom about Mohammed and the mountain.
With energy costs soaring and concern over carbon emissions mounting it will make increasing sense for those industries that can relocate operations to consider getting as close as physically possible to the green energy hubs that can provide them with clean, reliable, cheap and carbon tax free power.
It is a concept that the Icelandic government is buying into with its support for the aluminium smelting industry and its work with companies such as Data Islandia and Hitachi Data Systems to encourage firms to shift their power hungry data centres to the country. It is also a model the governments of North Africa and any other country with a potential abundance of green energy would also be wise to emulate.
Meanwhile, the rest of us should sit back and hope the laws of physics aren't as rigid as some people think and that long distance energy transmission can one day become a reality.
Posted by James Murray on April 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)
