HP further bolstered its green credentials earlier this week, committing itself to reducing its global energy use by 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2010 through the development of energy efficient products and the adoption of new operating practices.

The new target strengthens HP's existing environmental strategy, which it announced late last year in conjunction with the World Wildlife Federation. Under the plan the company said it would enhance the energy efficiency of its products and operations, source more energy from renewable sources, support energy efficiency metrics for IT kit, force suppliers to adopt best practices and report on its progress based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

However, besides these initiatives the plan included just one verifiable target in the form of a commitment to cut CO2 emissions by 15 percent by 2010.

Now the vendor has gone one better and also committed itself to reducing energy use – a move that means it can no longer meet its CO2 reduction target by simply sourcing renewable energy and doing nothing to curb energy use.

Critics have argued that such an approach in countries with a shortage of renewable energy has little short term impact on overall carbon emissions as any firm buying green energy is simply stopping others from using it and having little overall impact on the amount of renewable energy that is available.

However, HP also said it would continue to expand the proportion of energy it buys from renewable sources and having purchased 11m kWh last year plans to buy 50m kWh in 2007.

"Sustainability should span the entire business, from product reuse and recycling, to a socially and environmentally responsible supply chain, to energy efficiency in products and internal operations," said Pat Tiernan, vice president of Corporate, Social and Environmental Responsibility at HP. "It's the whole package."

With IT manufacturing a highly energy intensive process meeting its 20 percent target will not be easy for HP. But the company will be hoping that the investments it will have to make in its facilities will deliver a return in the form of both reduced electricity bills and enhanced competitiveness in large corporate and public sector accounts that are increasingly using IT manufacturers' environmental records as a factor in purchasing decisions.

Given this context the move is also likely to crank up pressure on rival IT manufacturers to unveil their own verifiable green targets or risk seeing their competitiveness in the largest accounts compromised.

Posted by James Murray on March 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Forgive the deliberately provocative headline, because no, I am not about to expound on the vices and virtues of Cuba's socialist revolution. Political science never was my strongest suit and I haven't got the next decade spare.

No, the headline refers to the topic the recently ill Cuban leader chose as the subject for his return to the international arena – biofuels.

In an article today for the communist party's official paper, Granma, Fidel Castro claimed that the rush towards biofuels would condemn more than three million people in the developing world to "premature death by hunger and thirst" as farm land previously used to grow food is handed over to crops for turning into bio-fuels.

According to press agency reports, the article argued that not only would people go hungry as a result of soaring demand for biofuels, but that offering developing world countries subsidies to produce ethanol would drive greater deforestation and accelerate climate change.

He added that the US government's target of using 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels by 2017 would have "sinister" consequences, claiming that the estimate of 3 million deaths was if anything "very cautious".

In the past year biofuels have become an increasingly popular mechanism for reducing carbon emissions amongst western governments. US President George Bush recently visited Brazil to secure co-operation on the development of more biofuel to meet his new alternative fuel targets, while on the other side of the Atlantic the European Union and the UK have also set targets to increase the proportion of fuel that comes from biofuels.

Many will dismiss Castro's article as yet more anti-US posturing, but it is just the latest episode in a growing backlash against biofuels.

Earlier this week, leading UK environmentalist George Monbiot called for a five year moratorium on biofuels, claiming that not only had increased demand led to an increased risk of food shortages in several countries and a doubling of the price of maize in the last year but that the environmental credentials of the fuel were also subject to serious doubt.

Citing a report from Dutch Consultancy Delft Hydraulics, Monbiot claimed that where forests are cleared for palm oil biodiesel plantations - as is increasingly the case in countries such as Indonesia – the release of CO2 from burning the trees and peat results in 33 tonnes of CO2 emissions per tonne of palm oil, or ten times more than that emitted from petroleum.

A lobby group called Biofuelwatch has launched a campaign calling on the EU to abandon its biofuel targets and rethink its alternative fuel strategy.

Advocates of biofuels meanwhile argue that reliance on maize and palm oil and other crops to generate fuel will be short lived because a second generation of more efficient bio fuels based on straw or grass or wood will be developed. But, as Monbiot argues, there is no set timeline for their emergence and numerous technical difficulties to still be overcome in their development.

Where these concerns leave businesses who have been led to believe that using biofuels to power their transport fleets is a positive, cost effective and environmentally sustainable step is unclear, particularly when western governments appear committed to supporting the growing biofuel industry and Gordon Brown only last week extended the tax rebate for biofuels until 2010.

A cynic would argue governments have backed a strategy that allows us to continue to use our vehicles while simultaneously letting the automotive and fuel industries get away with not investing as heavily in genuinely clean technologies. With these powerful lobby groups satisfied it has then either failed to think through or completely ignored the environmental and humanitarian implications of using agricultural land to power cars rather than feed people.

In contrast, supporters of biofuels will accuse the environmentalists and the old political fire brand Castro of scaremongering and attempting to scupper an embryonic green industry that does not fit their luddite agenda.

As with so many environmental debates the problem for the biofuel end user is one of who to believe.

However, regardless of who is in the right environmentally responsible firms considering using biofuels for their fleet really need to be aware of these concerns and should urgently seek independent guidance on how environmentally friendly biofuels actually are.

The last thing a firm wanting to bolster its green credentials needs is to inadvertently move to a fuel that could be ten times more polluting than petroleum and if there is any risk that this could be the case then it needs to be assessed.

In the meantime, it is worth reminding any firm with a green transport policy that the best way to cut emissions, regardless of whether you use petroleum or biofuels, is to limit journeys wherever possible.

Posted by James Murray on March 29, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

The fixation with the development of potentially ground breaking low carbon technologies has understandably become a central feature of the climate change debate, but according to a major new report from management consultancy McKinsey the clean tech rush is in danger of obscuring the effectiveness of many existing technologies that could provide a far more cost effective means of tackling global warming.

The new study - entitled A Cost Curve for Greenhouse Gas Reduction – provides a comprehensive assessment of the potential cost of reducing carbon emissions across a wide range of different sectors and stabilising the atmosphere at 450 parts of greenhouse gases per million (ppm) by 2030 – a level scientists estimate will result in a global temperature increase of 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The report finds that 70 percent of possible greenhouse gas emissions abatements that could be achieved at a cost of less than €40 a tonne would not depend on any major technical advancements. It claims that such "low tech" emission reduction measures "either involve very little technology (for example, those in forestry or agriculture) or rely primarily on mature technologies, such as nuclear power, small-scale hydropower, and energy efficient lighting". It adds that: "The point is not that technological R&D has no importance but rather that low tech abatement is important in a 2030 perspective."

The study also includes a cost curve graph assessing the different abatement measures currently under consideration and concludes that "low tech" measures such as better building insulation, avoiding deforestation, and more energy efficient lighting, heating, electrical appliances and vehicles, are far more cost effective than the headline grabbing renewable energy projects promoted by many western governments.

For instance, the curve shows that while it would cost close to €40 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions saved to retrofit carbon capture systems to coal fired power stations, installing building insulation would have no net cost and actually boost the global economy by over €150 for each tonne of emissions saved.

The report argues that to stabilise at 450ppm the global economy would have to exploit all the available abatement potential that costs up to €40 per tonne, including carbon capture and sequestration technologies. But McKinsey analysts have claimed that the focus of climate change policy on the energy sector is disproportionate and that many zero cost measures are being largely ignored.

For example, the study claims that improving the energy efficiency of buildings and vehicles would have a zero or negative net lifecycle cost  and could account for a quarter of the total abatement potential that could be achieved at a cost of €40 per tonne or less.

Meanwhile, of those carbon emission reduction measures that would have some net cost 35 percent come from the forestry sector, 28 percent from manufacturing, and only 25 percent from the power sector. A further six percent each could be accounted for with changes to agriculture and transport.

Encouragingly, the report concludes that if the global economy was able to exploit all the carbon emission reduction measures that it estimates would cost less than €40 per tonne then the cost to the global economy in 2030 of stabilising at 450ppm would be around €500bn, or just 0.6 percent of global GDP.

As the report points out this is considerably less than the 3.3 percent of global GDP accounted for by the insurance industry – a relevant comparison given some environmentalists regard reducing emissions as a form of insurance against future disaster.

What is staggering about the report is not the scale of the changes to the global economy required if we are to curb global warming – anyone with any interest in the economics of climate change already knows that a) the changes required will be massive and b) they are surprisingly affordable in the grand scheme of things – but the fact that so many climate change initiatives from both governments and businesses are eschewing the most cost effective initiatives in favour of more complex and costly measures.

When something as simple as building insulation can deliver a significant reduction in carbon emissions at no net cost it is hard to comprehend why governments are not ploughing a huge swathe of their budgets earmarked for climate change initiatives into ensuring the whole building stock is properly insulated.

It is surely human nature when faced with a daunting task to look for the easy wins first, but when it comes to climate change too often the opposite seems to be the case with much of the political, media and business focus drawn to expensive and in many cases theoretical solutions to the problem. As many other reports, including a study last year from McKinsey, have observed energy efficiency has become the ugly duckling of the green business movement - often ignored in favour of headline grabbing new technologies.

But with the task of developing a low carbon economy becoming ever more daunting and concerns over the cost of reducing carbon emissions only set to grow it is now more urgent than ever that business and political leaders begin to prioritise their climate change initiatives and start focusing on the energy efficiency projects that will deliver results quickest.

Ensuring building stock is properly insulated, car fleets are more efficient and the forestry industry is genuinely sustainable may not be as exciting as building wind farms and developing the next generation of solar panels. But it is these relatively simple measures that over the next five years must surely provide the foundation of any successful global climate change strategy.

Once that is done then maybe the political momentum and public support will be in place to deliver the expensive new technologies that must necessarily represent the second phase of any transition towards a low carbon economy.

Posted by James Murray on March 29, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Environmentally responsible businesses will already be aware that from July almost all of their electrical equipment has to be disposed of in line with the government's new waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) directive.

But far fewer will have realised that rather than representing another regulatory headache, green disposal of certain electrical goods can also help raise money for either your company or its favourite charity.

Under a scheme operated by mobile phone disposal specialist Fonebak and supported by leading mobile manufacturers, operators and retailers such as Vodafone, Orange, O2, Dixons, PC World and Virgin, firms can dispose of their unwanted mobile phones and attachments through a WEEE-compliant channel and get cash in return.

Firms signing up to the scheme receive either free post bags to send unwanted mobiles to Fonebak's recycling facilities, or securely-sealed plastic boxes which they can fill with 40 to 50 phones ahead of collection.

According to Sarah Band of Fonebak the company then "sorts the phones, tests them, recycles the materials from those that don't work and refurbishes those that are working, and remarkets them in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa".

This approach not only provides affordable mobile phones to developing world economies, but also generates revenue from the sale of both refurbished phones and the components and precious metals harvested from recycled handsets. "Plastics in phones are melted down and used in saucepans, traffic cones and buckets," she explained. "While Gold, copper and the like is taken out and sold on commodity markets."

Band estimates that as a result firms can receive an average of £5 for each handset they dispose of through the scheme.

Under Vodafone's take back scheme, which is operated by Fonebak, corporate customers returning their mobiles for recycling will receive a form allowing them to donate the money raised from resale to the National Autistic Society through Vodafone's own scheme, give the money to a charity of their own choice, or have the extra cash paid back into their Vodafone account.

Kate Muncaster, Fonebak co-ordinator at Vodafone, said that most firms do indeed donate the money to charity, while public sector customers tend to get the money paid back to them as they are using public funds.

She added that the company already has 29 of its top 50 customers signed up to the scheme and is seeing growing interest in the initiative from its corporate accounts.

"There is a perceived value in mobile phones and an estimated 90 million handsets are in home or office landfill where people think I'll keep it in a drawer just in case," she said. "This scheme is about helping them realise there is a real value in those devices, either for charities or themselves, and then making it easy for them to release that value."

Of course, with each mobile phone battery estimated to contain enough cadmium to pollute 600,000 litres of water - that's enough to fill a third of an Olympic swimming pool – everybody should already be disposing of mobiles in an environmentally friendly fashion. But for those firms that have been a bit slack in their mobile recycling policies a financial incentive could be just what is required to help them get their house in order.

Posted by James Murray on March 28, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The last time GBN posted on plans to force farmers to reduce the amount of methane emitted by their flatulent cattle it prompted some pretty, erm, agricultural responses.

An "L. Wall" suggested that government proposals to tax farting cattle were an example of the UK's "totalitarian sensibilities"; "Fryman" interrupted a rant about the evil of socialist politics and the hoax that is climate change to suggest that the UK government is a "joke" and that we need a "statesman like Churchill once again"; while "Dee" observed that "I think almost every one in the UK must be bonkers," before asking: "How can you stop a cow from Fartin'?"

Well, according to reports in The Guardian, a team of German scientists reckon they have found the answer to that particular question in the form of a plant-based pill that they claim can limit bovine wind and slash the agricultural sector's methane emissions.

The fist-sized pill, known as a bolus, traps some of the energy from the methane produced by the cow's digestion, limiting the amount of the greenhouse gas that is burped back out. The methane can then be used to produce glucose, which should improve the cow's health and result in more milk.

Winfried Drochner, professor of animal nutrition at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, told The Guardian that combining the pill with a special diet and strict feeding times could dramatically reduce methane emissions from cows, which currently account for four percent of all greenhouse gases.

"Our aim is to increase the wellbeing of the cow, to reduce the greenhouse gases produced and to increase agricultural production all at once," he said. "It is an effective way of fighting global warming."

So maybe forcing farmers to address the ill-wind blowing from their herds is not so crazy after all.

Posted by James Murray on March 27, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

While most firms' climate change policies centre on tackling the problem by reducing their carbon footprint, it would be a foolish operation that is not also assessing how to cope with the greater frequency of adverse weather conditions that scientists believe is now inevitable.

To help with this task 21 European countries last week joined forces to launch a unified weather alert system designed to provide businesses and individuals with access to weather warnings right across Europe.

Called Meteoalarm the new site provides icon- and colour-based maps and information on the risk of severe weather and is available in 17 languages.

The Network of European Meteorological Services (Eumetnet), which is running the site, said that the thresholds for the warning levels would differ from region to region "because for instance intense snowfall in the Alpine region causes less disruption and damage then in Lisbon".

It added that with extreme weather likely to occur more frequently, "increasing danger to life and damage to property" in the process, the new site would provide a valuable resource that would help businesses prepare for how severe weather could affect their operations.

The new service also highlights the growing need for firms to ensure they have solid business continuity plans in place for coping with the damage to property and workforce disruption caused by extreme weather events.

Posted by James Murray on March 27, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

As highlighted last week, finding any sort of corporate green energy tariff is currently proving a major challenge for many firms, but according to some experts finding a good green tariff is even harder still.

Not only is there a huge shortfall of renewable energy but there is also a growing concern that some green energy tariffs are not having the environmental benefits customers may expect.

According to Dale Vince, founder of green energy specialist Ecotricity, the main problem with existing green tariffs lies in the difference between old and new green energy. He argues that many green tariffs rely on old renewable energy sources and that firms that buy green energy from these existing renewable sources - some of which are 50 years old - are having no net impact on UK carbon emissions.

Vince argues that new renewable energy sources provide the only truly green energy, as it is they that result in a net reduction in overall carbon emissions. He claims Ecotricity seeks to address this problem by reinvesting more per customer than rivals in building new wind farms.

Larger rivals counter that they too are committed to building new capacity and that Ecotricity can only spend more per customer on these new sites as it is a relatively small company investing in smaller scale projects. 

"For the major energy suppliers it comes down to the capacity of the country to support renewable energy capabilities," explains Simon Wallwork, SME energy products manager at British Gas Business. "[Ecotricity] can [invest more per customer] because it is a niche player working on smaller projects. The major players simply don't have the ability [to invest the same level per person] because there are issues with the overall capacity, but we are investing a lot more in total."

Other experts are concerned about what types of energy sources are being used to fulfill suppliers' green tariffs. A wide range of so called low carbon energy sources are exempt from the climate change levy and as such have been tied into many suppliers green tariff schemes. But while energy sources such as biomass are far cleaner than traditional fossil fuel-based power stations some critics claim they still produce some carbon emissions.

"One of the problems with green tariffs is that there are a lot of definitions of renewables," says Juliet Davenport, chief executive of Good Energy. "Energy from waste for example is often deemed reneweable, but you tend to be incinerating plastics which are made from oil so is it truly renewable? Customers often don't get the distinction and will go to the supplier and say we want renewable energy but don't specify what type. That's fine if you just want the climate change levy exemption, but if you are doing it for CSR reasons then you need to ask what renewable energy you are actually getting."

Jim Butler, head of marketing strategy at EDF, said that the supplier had attempted to clarify where it is sourcing its energy from by offering genuinely renewable sources under a green tariff and Combined Heat and Power (CHP) sources under the label low carbon.

Some other suppliers have taken a similar approach and offer distinct green and low carbon tariffs, but there are no clear standards governing what can and cannot be included under the label green tariff and rumours abound that some customers are unwittingly signing up to green tariffs that they believe are zero carbon but in fact rely heavily on low carbon technologies.

The legal requirement for energy suppliers to keep track of which energy is climate change levy exempt means the situation for business customers is not as bad as that found in the consumer market, where a controversial recent National Consumer Council report claimed that some green tariffs are providing pretty negligible environmental benefits. But several commentators maintain that greater transparency is required and firms need to be made more aware of the green credentials of the energy they are buying.

Similarly there are also fears that some green tariffs are effectively slapping a premium on renewable energy that suppliers are legally forced to generate under the government's renewable obligations programme. "Some companies are offering green tariffs and they aren't doing anything beyond their current renewables obligations [of 5.5 percent of energy coming from renewable sources]," says Nigel Cornwall of energy market analysts Cornwall Energy Associates. "They are charging extra for something they are already obligated to deliver."

Ofgem did attempt to tackle these problems back in 2002 with a set of guidelines insisting that green tariffs should be fully transparent and rely on green energy that "goes beyond what is already required by law". However, these guidelines were entirely voluntary and have since lapsed.

A spokesman for Ofgem said that it was currently working on a new set of guidelines and considering whether or not to make these legally binding. But Cornwall is in no doubt that a formal certification scheme for green tariffs is urgently required. "Green tariffs are a sensitive area at the moment and there really should be someone accrediting them," he says.

In the meantime firms signed up to green tariffs are being advised to keep a close eye on their supplier and ask for proof of their energy's green credentials. "It is always prudent to verify your suppliers' claims down the line," recommends Davenport. "It is up to you as a customer to make sure you get reports at the end of the year and proof of where your energy has come from."

However, according to Wallwork not all customers are taking these basic precautions. "Demand is outstripping supply and some customers aren't looking at the tariffs closely enough," he observes. "Any supplier you talk to I'd advise finding out about how the product works. Just saying I want to buy green and signing up to the first tariff you see is not good enough."

Alongside all this confusion perhaps the biggest concern surrounding the stampede towards green energy is the fear that some large firms are misguidedly trying to use green tariffs as a silver bullet for all their environmental problems.

"What firms should be doing is putting their green tariff purchasing into the context of a broader sustainability agenda," says Butler. "The number one priority should be energy efficiency. The next step could be installing turbines or other renewable energy technology on site to reduce the amount you take from the grid. Then the third step should be to buy renewable energy, and even then to do it in a responsible manner, by setting reasonable targets for purchasing and not demanding all your energy from green sources."

Green energy tariffs may be the latest must-have for many environmantally conscious businesses, but despite their undoubted environmental benefits firms must be careful to remember the old truism that the greenest unit of energy is always the one saved.

Posted by James Murray on March 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Firms keen to buy energy from renewable sources are being turned away by major energy suppliers who do not have the capacity to meet soaring demand for green energy tariffs.

A Green Business News investigation has revealed that EDF, British Gas, npower, Scottish Power and Ecotricity are either sold out of renewable energy or close to being so as soaring demand for green tariffs outstrips supply. As a result several energy firms are now recommending that corporate customers only buy a small proportion of their energy from green sources.

Green tariffs have become increasingly popular as more firms look for simple ways of limiting their carbon footprint. In theory green tariffs provide an easy mechanism for a firm to slash its carbon emissions - allowing them to bolster their CSR efforts and avoid the government's Climate Change Levy tax by paying a small premium for electricity sourced from either renewable or low carbon sources.

However, with only around 5 percent of UK energy coming from renewable sources industry insiders are warning that finding a supplier able to provide large corporate customers with a renewable energy contract is now proving extremely difficult.

Jim Butler, head of marketing strategy at EDF, insists that demand is outstripping supply and green energy shortages are now common across the entire corporate energy market. "We're looking after existing customers and allowing them to renew their contracts," he says. "[But for new customers] we have low carbon energy available which is levy exempt, but not much green [renewable energy]."

This scenario is being repeated at npower, where a spokesman claims that while existing green tariff customers were fine, the company would "have to think very carefully" about its ability to fulfill demand before signing up new green tariff customers.

British Gas' business division has also been afflicted by shortages with Simon Wallwork, SME energy products manager at the company, admitting that it has "sold out" of green energy and is unable to service requests for green energy until more comes online or contracts expire.

Even specialist green energy supplier Ecotricity says it is struggling to meet demand from companies wanting all their energy to be sourced from renewable sources.  "We have recently had to turn away a big business customer because they wanted 100 percent green," says a spokeswoman for the company. "We do offer 100 percent green to business customers but only small ones - there simply isn't enough [green energy] to go round."

Meanwhile, at Scottish Power a spokesman admits the company is "reaching the end of our output" for business customers, before adding that it is still able to buy in green power on the energy market in the form of the government's renewables obligation certificates (ROCs) and that it has more renewable energy scheduled to come online soon.

Of all the big suppliers only Powergen and Scottish and Southern Energy claim to be currently facing no problems meeting demand for green energy from new corporate customers. However, a spokeswoman for Powergen adds that such green energy is "strictly subject to availability, so its availability does vary from time to time".

Some advocates of green energy tariffs insist this gap between supply and demand is good news as it is driving up prices and increasing the incentive for energy suppliers to build more wind farms and renewable energy sites. But others argue that this is a far too simplistic interpretation of the UK's green energy market.

"It is a widely held misconception that demand [for green energy] will push the price up and stimulate supply, but it just doesn't work like that," explains Butler. "The government's Renewables Obligation target is effectively a mechanism to subsidise the building of renewable energy sites. It means that if you are building a wind farm, for example, you get £40 per mwh back from the subsidy. Under green tariffs you get about £4 per mwh so the subsidy is ten times more valuable than the market price."

Butler argues that no extra wind farms are built because a company has paid for a green tariff, because there is no increase in the incentive for the power company to build more capacity. In fact, buying 100 percent green energy has negligible overall impact on the UK's carbon emissions and simply drives up prices leaving another company without any green energy, he claims.

Even if green tariff prices were pushed so high that they, rather than government subsidies, became the main driver for investment in renewable energy, experts agree that it would still have little impact as most power companies are already seeing many of their existing investments in new wind farms held up at the local planning level.

To help manage this shortfall in supply EDF is recommending customers keen to buy green energy set themselves "sensible" purchasing targets, ideally in line with the government's target to source ten percent of its energy from renewables. "If you try to buy more than is available you are simply robbing Peter to pay Paul and having no net effect on the UK's carbon emissions," argues Butler.

It is a recommendation echoed by Juliet Davenport, chief executive of green energy specialist Good Energy, who also claims firms should take a more conservative approach to sourcing renewable power. "In the business market you can't afford to be too prescriptive about what you want," she advises. "Because demand is greater than supply you may not always be able to get a green tariff at a price you can afford and in that case it may be worth sourcing green energy for just a couple of sites a year from renewable sites or just buying a proportion of your energy from renewables, then, as the supply comes on line, you can increase your use of green tariffs."

You can catch the second part of our investigation on what to watch out for once you have found a green tariff next week.

Posted by James Murray on March 23, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

As anticipated, Gordon Brown's eleventh and surely final budget simply tinkered round the edges of the government's environmental strategy offering little of real substance in the way of green incentives or penalties for a business community increasingly keen to make the transition to sustainable business models.

Though there was an expansion in tax credits for firms investing in environmental equipment, a small increase in green taxes, and more money for environmentally-sustainable projects in the developing world, it was all of an order of magnitude that is unlikely to have a dramatic impact on businesses' environmental strategies or consumers' behaviour in the near future.

Experts agreed that the budget represented an "opportunity missed" arguing it offered little for firms committed to environmental action. Echoing the sentiments of many business leaders, John Manning of PwC said "it was disappointing not to hear more from the Chancellor about the long-term environmental strategy," adding that instead we got "only a series of small tinkerings to the tax system".

Those firms looking for guidance, support and incentives for their green business projects were left largely disappointed. As Chris Gabriel of IT services firm Logicalis observed: "It is clearly up to us, as business leaders, to implement the necessary changes ourselves [but] a little encouragement - in the form of tax incentives, grants and hand-holding for those feeling understandably daunted by the enormity of the problem – could have gone a long way."

In fact, while the Chancellor's income tax reforms were famously deemed "fiscally neutral" his environmental strategy appeared to lean more towards the stick than the carrot.

As widely touted road tax on the most polluting cars soared to £300 this year with a further rise to £400 scheduled for next year, while the levy on Band B cars was reduced from £50 to just £35 a year.

Brown deserves plaudits for introducing the progressive band-based system in the first place, but it is hard to imagine the £400 levy discouraging many people buying high end cars that cost over £40,000. Patrick King of accountancy firm MacIntyre Hudson said that the move may have some impact on the resale value of gas-guzzling cars, but predicted it would do little to stop people buying them in the first place. "Instead of an effective, behaviour changing 'green' tax, this is a carefully calculated move to raise more revenue without unduly upsetting the majority of the electorate," he said.

Arguably the two most effective green taxes at changing behaviour – fuel duty and the climate change levy (CCL) for businesses – only received increases in line with inflation, prompting renewed criticism that Brown is unwilling to take the tough decisions required to help the UK meet its carbon emission reduction targets.

"Despite Gordon Brown's 'polluter pays' principle, the Budget's inflation-only increase in the Climate Change Levy (CCL) on businesses will fall short of enabling the UK to meet its target of reducing carbon emissions by 60 per cent before 2050," argued David Elwen, director at IT consultancy DMW. "Considering the CCL was introduced to encourage businesses to reduce their contribution to carbon emissions, it is surprising that there is a lack of hard hitting action to encourage businesses to adopt green policies in the budget."

Green tax hikes on landfill and aggregates, however, will exceed inflation with the cost of sending waste to landfill to climb by £8 a year to 2011 and tax on aggregates to climb from £1.60 to £1.95 a tonne. But Frank Sangster of KPMG was unconvinced that such changes would really change businesses' behaviour and stimulate them to limit waste and use more recycled building material.

Taken as whole, these measures increase the proportion of green taxes from 7.3 percent of the total tax burden to around 7.5 percent. It is hardly a revolutionary move for a government that has just proposed setting itself legally binding targets to reduce carbon emissions, particularly when green taxes accounted for nearly 10 percent of the total back in 1999.

However, if the changes to green taxes are miniscule any increases in green incentives, subsidies and grants are equally minute.

The most significant change for businesses was Brown's promise of a "new environmental tax credit worth £40 million a year to business" and a pledge that "advice support and incentives available from Business Links and the Regional Development Agencies to small businesses for environmental improvement, innovation and energy audits will rise from this year's £140 million to, in the coming year, £240 million".

Like the new £50m fund to protect African rainforests, the £800m Environmental Transformation Fund for international development efforts, the news the UK is to build a full scale carbon capture pilot project, the commissioning of a report on innovations in green cars, the increase in money for pensioners insulating their homes, and the extra £6m in grants for domestic renewable energy installations designed to address the funding shortfall at the DTI, these new incentives are to be welcomed. But experts agree that every one of these measures is on a scale that is insufficient to genuinely accelerate our progress towards a low carbon economy.

Looking at the small print some tax experts are also unconvinced about the impact the extra £40m in environmental tax credits will have.

The new scheme is basically an extension of the Enhanced Capital Allowances (ECA) scheme that allows firms to claim back tax based on investments in energy and water efficient plant such as air conditioners or heating systems. Under this scheme firms could only claim back tax if they were making any profits, meaning that loss making firms missed out on the incentive to invest in energy efficient plant.

According a Treasury spokesman the new scheme, starting in 2008, will rectify this and ensure the ECA is also available in a payable version for loss making firms at a rate of 24 percent - meaning that "if you invest £100 in approved equipment you get £24 back". Whether firms making a loss are likely to be embarking on green investment programmes is a moot point.

There was also a promise that there would be a review into the effectiveness of the ECA, which has been roundly criticised for taking too long to get new products qualified as energy efficient, being difficult to claim and poorly publicised. However, given how long such consultation exercises take and how many criticisms there have been of the scheme it is unlikely to be improved any time soon.

Moreover, Patrick King of MacIntyre Hudson is fearful that changes elsewhere in the budget to capital allowances may have undermined the ECA's effectiveness still further. Under new plans small firms will be able to claim 110 percent tax relief for new capital investment up to £50,000. However, as King explains, you could previously only get 100 percent relief on energy efficient investments and as a result of the changes small businesses now have no extra incentive to go for the greener option when looking at any piece of plant costing less than £50,000. "They are more likely to go for the cheapest option," he warned.

So is it time to finally out the prime-minister-in-waiting as the environment's worst enemy? A man who can deliver plenty of green rhetoric but balks at the prospect of real action?

Not just yet. He has certainly done far less than he could, but there are also hints that a more positive environmental regulatory and tax framework is beginning to take shape.

Brown's confirmation that he is pushing for a European-wide reduction in the rate of VAT on energy saving and environmentally friendly products in the home from 17.5 per cent to 5 per cent is a clear sign that he understands he must make it easier for people to buy green technologies.

He could, of course, have reduced the rate to 15 percent yesterday without having to gain the support of his EU counterparts and he could have increased the rate on the most inefficient products, effectively forcing them out of the marketplace without having to resort to bans. But it is a major step in the right direction and a sign the chancellor hasn't completely lost sight of the idea that green perks can work.

Also it is hard to judge anything the government does on the edges of its environmental strategy until we see precisely what it plans for the next incarnation of the European emissions trading scheme.

When and if he makes it to Number 10 this is likely to be one of the first issues in Brown's in-box. If he sticks to his guns and develops an economy-wide, fiercely-policed trading scheme then he may well deliver the price on carbon emissions that many economists argue is the best mechanism for driving green investments.

It'll be a major surprise if he manages to pull it off without the scheme being watered down, but if Brown does succeed in implementing such a trading mechanism then his previous failure to provide a strong framework for environmental action may well be forgotten.

Posted by James Murray on March 22, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft has today attempted to counter criticism that its new Windows operating system represents a power-hungry "environmental disaster" with the launch of new research that suggests the system's new power management functionality could slash the energy demands of PCs and notebooks.

The study from PC Pro Labs compared the energy usage of Windows Vista and Windows XP based on "real world" workplace usage patterns and found that systems running Vista would use up to £46 less energy over the course of a year. It claimed that this is equivalent to a saving in CO2 emissions of 45 tonnes for a business running 200 PCs.

The savings were calculated based on a survey of 800 visitors to PC Pro's website which found that users' PCs typically spend 40 percent of the time undertaking "light tasks", a further 30 percent sitting idle, and 30 percent doing medium or very intensive tasks such as photo editing or encoding. The survey also found that almost a third of users leave their PC on overnight and a quarter leave it on over the weekend.

The research applied these circumstances to three HP desktops - HP Compaq dc7700: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU; HP dx5150: AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU; and HP Compaq D530S: Intel 2.8GHz Pentium 4 CPU - running Vista and XP and found that Vista's default sleep mode, which automatically sends a PC to sleep if it is inactive for 60 minutes, could save firms up to £46 per PC per year compared to Windows XP.

It also concluded that Vista's ability to return from sleep mode in two to three seconds, compared to around five seconds for XP, meant this resulted in no real disruption for users and that new group policy functionality meant administrators could relatively easily change power management settings to save up to £50 per year per PC.

Contrary to many critics' expectations the study also found that when the new Aero user interface was activated it had a negligible impact on power consumption, compared to running Vista with it deactivated.

So is Vista really Microsoft's "most energy efficient operating system to date"? Has the company been picked on by environmentalists keen to find a high profile target for their anti-IT campaigns? Well, yes and no.

The key conclusion from the report is that Vista is far more energy efficient than XP based on the assumption that OEM's, third party software, or employees using XP don't intervene and turn their machine off or apply sensible stand-by settings.

If the study had compared Vista with a well-managed XP estate where energy efficiency policies are enforced and everyone turns off their PC when it is not in use then the new operating system's victory would have been far less clear cut.

But leaving aside the statistical problems with PC Pro's online survey of website visitors, we all know such workplaces are rare and in an environment where people steadfastly refuse to embrace energy efficiency best practices Vista's default sleep mode and group policy functionality should indeed ensure it is more energy efficient than XP.

As Paul Stoddart, product manager at Microsoft, observed: "Changing user behaviour is far harder than changing technology, so if you have a technology that takes away the expectation that users have to turn off their PC at the end of the day that will lead to significant [energy] savings."

In short, getting staff to behave responsibly is still the cheapest and most effective way of enhancing PC's energy efficiency, but it is sadly easier said than done and Vista will provide a simple way of addressing the problem automatically.

However, even if Vista is more energy efficient than previous models this does nothing to address environmentalists' central concern that the operating systems' stiff hardware requirements will lead to a glut of perfectly workable PCs being thrown out.

Speaking at the launch of Vista earlier this year, Tony Roberts chief executive of Computer Aid International predicted that 10 million PCs could be discarded in the UK in the next two years as people upgrade to Vista compatible models. "If you imagine each of these 10 million machines contains lead and many other toxic chemicals then we really are storing up an environmental disaster," he said.

Similarly, Sian Berry of the Green Party argued that Vista posed an "offensive cost to the environment" adding that "future archaeologists will be able to identify a 'Vista Upgrade Layer' when they go through our landfill sites".

Beyond fears over e-waste there are also climate change concerns attached to this predicted mass hardware upgrade. According to the book Computers and the Environment by Ruediger Kuehr and Eric Williams a PC uses only 25 percent of its total power consumption when in use with the remaining three quarters used up in the manufacturing process. As a result it could be argued that any energy savings Vista delivers when it is in use are likely to be more than offset if the operating system is being deployed on a box fresh PC that has been bought to replace an older model that was working fine, barring its inability to support the demanding Vista OS.

Such a scenario is likely to be widespread according a recent survey from Softchoice which found that half of business PCs in North America would not be able to meet basic Vista requirements and that 97 percent could not meet the requirements for running the premium edition.

However, Microsoft dismisses fears over a glut of otherwise unnecessary upgrades as unfounded. "The idea that Vista is massively power hungry is just not true," said Stoddart. "This research used a PC that was three years old [the HP Compaq D530S] and a high percentage of PCs bought up to three years ago are Vista compatible… I dispute the idea that you need a new high end PC to run Vista."

Cynthia Crossley, director of Microsoft's Windows client business unit, added that most companies already had their upgrade patterns in place, implying that the emergence of Vista would not force them to get rid of machines they would otherwise have held on to.

It is clear from this latest research that Vista is greener than some environmentalists have claimed and that companies that deploy the technology and use the power management functionality correctly could save money and reduce carbon emissions. However, the energy savings enjoyed while the system is in use is just one part of the environmental jigsaw surrounding Vista and to suggest that it will not result in some unnecessary hardware upgrades is more than a little disingenuous.

The power management functionality is an admirable green feature, but when the minimum CPU requirements for XP were only 75 percent greater than the version it replaced, while the minimum requirements for Vista are a whopping 243 percent larger than they are for XP then Microsoft should be wary of suggesting that the environment was a top priority for Vista's developers.

Posted by James Murray on March 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (9)

The US government has been urged to increase support for research and development into carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies for coal-based power stations by a major new report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which argued that CCS represents the "critical enabling technology to help reduce CO2 emissions".

The study, entitled "The Future of Coal – Options for a Carbon Constrained World", argues that with coal proving one of the most cost effective sources of energy in both the developing and developed world it will prove easier to develop technologies for capturing the carbon dioxide released from burning coal than transition economies away from coal altogether.

It also argued that as the world's biggest user of energy the US has a duty to lead the development of the technology and that major policy changes are required if this is to happen.

"As the world's leading energy user and greenhouse gas emitter, the U.S. must take the lead in showing the world CCS can work," said Professor John Deutch, Institute Professor, Department of Chemistry at MIT and one of the co-chairs of the report. "Demonstration of technical, economic, and institutional features of CCS at commercial scale coal combustion and conversion plants will give policymakers and the public confidence that a practical carbon mitigation control option exists, will reduce cost of CCS should carbon emission controls be adopted, and will maintain the low-cost coal option in an environmentally acceptable manner."

Ernest J. Moniz, the other co-chair of the report and a Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems at MIT, said that there were many viable means of reducing the CO2 emissions from coal power stations, including "higher efficiency generation, perhaps through new materials; novel approaches to gasification, CO2 capture, and oxygen separation; and advanced system concepts, perhaps guided by a new generation of simulation tools". However, he warned that "an aggressive R&D effort" was needed that "will yield significant dividends down the road, and should be undertaken immediately to help meet this urgent scientific challenge."

The report concluded that government should underpin much of this R&D effort, arguing that "several integrated large-scale demonstrations with appropriate measurement, monitoring and verification are needed in the United States over the next decade with government support".

It also claims that a new regulatory regime is required for the sector as a matter of urgency and criticises the government's current Department of Energy R&D programme claiming that it "must provide for demonstration of CCS at scale; a wider range of technologies should be explored; and modeling and simulation of the comparative performance of integrated technology systems should be greatly enhanced".

In particular, it recommends that the current energy industry-focus on clean Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) systems is diversified, observing that "it is not appropriate to pick a single technology winner at this time, especially in light of the variability in coal type, access to sequestration sites, and other factors". The report recommends that the government should address this problem by providing assistance to several "first of a kind" coal utilisation demonstration plants.

Most controversially given the present US administration's historical stance on climate change legislation, the report argues that China and India can not be expected to invest in CCS systems until the US demonstrates their viability and claims that "a significant charge on carbon emissions is needed in the relatively near term to increase the economic attractiveness of new technologies that avoid carbon emissions and specifically to lead to large-scale CCS in the coming decades".

Writing at the Cleantech Blog, Richard T. Stuebi, Founder and President of NextWave Energy welcomed the report claiming that it was essential that a cleaner method of generating energy from coal is developed. Like it or not, coal is going to be a huge part of our energy future," he wrote. "We need to figure out how to use it in an environmentally-sustainable manner, and right now we're mainly paying lip-service to our intentions for clean-coal research."

Posted by James Murray on March 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Consumers wanting to buy energy efficient electronic household products are being "left in the dark" about the greenest models to purchase, according to a new study released yesterday by the National Consumer Council (NCC).

The report – entitled Information Blackout: why electronics consumers are in the dark – looked at 350 consumer electronic products, including TVs, DVDs, laptops and set top boxes, and found that just one had an energy label sticker on it.

The report also uncovered a lack of information in retail stores and revealed that staff could not answer basic questions about the energy efficiency of products and that help lines and websites were equally ill equipped for helping eco-conscious consumers.

"Today's consumers need to be able to compare goods, and labels are a useful information shortcut," said Larry Whitty, chair of the NCC. "You would not expect to buy a car without knowing how much petrol it consumes, yet shoppers buying a television, for example, will have little idea how energy efficient it really is."

The NCC is now calling for the A to G energy band labels used on white good such as washing machines and fridges to be extended to electrical products.

It also urged the government to slash VAT on greener products and insisted retailers should train staff and provide more information in store and on websites about which products are the most energy efficient.

The report came as Whitehall sources claimed Chancellor Gordon Brown was already in the process of lobbying his EU counterparts to cut VAT on the most energy efficient products to just five percent across the whole of Europe.

In a letter to Laszlo Kovacs, Europe's tax commissioner, Brown wrote that: "Incentives are needed to help address a number of failures in the market for [energy efficient] products. First, contrary to the 'polluter pays principle', the consumer who chooses a product designed to emit less pollution pays more. Second, there appears to be some short-sightedness in the market where many consumers choose an inefficient equivalent, despite the fact that in the long term the inefficient products costs more… Reducing the VAT on energy-efficient products would be an effective way of helping to tackle these market failures."

Posted by James Murray on March 20, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chancellor Gordon Brown will this week face the first real test of his eco-credentials since he decided he was going to try and out green rival David Cameron, when he delivers his latest and possibly final budget.

But what would constitute a genuinely environmentally responsible budget and what will green business leaders and environmental activists be looking for when the Chancellor reveals the contents of his red box on Wednesday?

First up let's deal with what should happen but won't.

Gordon Brown, like many politicians, is not intimately acquainted with the words "sorry, I was wrong on that one", so the chances of him rectifying the mess the Treasury has made of the increase Air Passenger Duty just six months after the move was announced are thinner than him closing his dispatch box address with a cheery rendition of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".

As the opposition parties have quite rightly pointed out the recent increase in air passenger duty will raise £1bn for the exchequer but have minimal impact on the number of people actually flying and provide no incentive for airlines to invest in greener aircraft.

The airlines have complained that the tax is a "blunt instrument" so Brown should call their bluff and deliver a genuine green tax in the form of a levy on aviation fuel. Of course, the chancellor is never going to adopt a tax mechanism that he ridiculed as a unilateral solution to an international problem when it was proposed last week by the Tories. But duty on aviation fuel remains the simplest mechanism of incentivising airlines to invest in greener engines - which is surely the point of a green tax – and while it may push some flights to the continent as airlines try to avoid the UK's tax it is a price worth paying.

The other green tax environmental activists would love to see is a return of the fuel duty escalator, which Brown binned after a motley crew of truckers and farmers decided to bring the country to its knees back in 2000.

With the motoring lobby also flexing its muscles recently over proposals for road pricing Brown is not going to alienate voters with a mechanism that increases tax on petrol above inflation. However, as environmentalists point out, if the government is serious about its soon to be legally binding target of reducing emissions by 60 percent by 2050 action is required now and higher taxes on fuel would again provide a simple incentive for people to reduce their travel.

Far more likely according to Whitehall sources is an increase in road tax for the most polluting vehicles.

Brown previously introduced a sliding scale for road tax based on cars' fuel efficiency, but with the most polluting band charged just £210 a year environmentalists have repeatedly argued that the levy is not sufficient to stop anyone buying such vehicles.

Friends of the Earth has called for the top rate to be increased almost ten fold to £2,000, and while they're at it they might as well ask for an end to all wars and free beer for everyone on a Thursday given they are talking to a man who hopes to be Prime Minister and has no intention of upsetting Mums on the school run too much.

However, Brown appears to have recognised the £210 charge for the piece of worthless gesture politics that it is and is preparing to almost double it to £400. This is still far less than the sum needed to actually stop people buying such cars - in fact as a proportion of the car's cost £400 a year on a vehicle worth £40,000 plus is actually less than £110 on an £8,000 car. However, the increase should send out an even clearer message that buying a gas guzzler is not in the national interest, and Brown could make the move more popular still if he ring fenced the extra money for green initiatives.

What is less clear is if Brown will endorse the other half of the Friends of the Earth road tax recommendation and remove road tax on more efficient cars. Such a move would upset no one and genuinely change behaviour, but according to Whitehall leaks drivers of the most efficient cars will have to content themselves with a reduction rather than a removal of excise duties.

In a further move designed to offset the stick approach of higher road taxes, Brown is also expected to announce plans to lobby EU finance ministers for a reduction in VAT on energy efficient products to five percent. He has apparently already written to some of his EU counterparts about the move and is said to be keen on incentives where possible, arguing that they will prove more effective than the Tories' plans to limit and tax aviation.

In terms of energy policy, reports today also claim Brown is to exempt from income tax any money households make from selling electricity back to the grid from carbon free sources such as solar panels and wind turbines. It is unclear if this exemption would be extended to businesses.

However, while such an exemption would provide a further financial incentive for people to invest in renewable energy it can hardly claim to be part of a coherent strategy for encouraging micro-generation. The government's fund for helping people with the cost of renewable energy sources is a well-documented "farce", with so little cash available people are having to phone up on the morning of the first day of each month to try and get the over-subscribed subsidy.

Helping people to make more money from solar panels is worthless if they don't have them in the first place because they are waiting to win the low carbon buildings programme subsidy lottery. If Brown is serious about encouraging investment in these technologies an increase to this popular fund is essential.

Furthermore, helping people to make more money selling power back to the grid is pointless if, as suggested by several reports, some of the energy companies are proving rather reluctant to buy the excess energy back. If you are to sell electricity to the grid most households will need a new contract with their supplier and a new electricity meter, both of which have apparently proved difficult to secure.

It is reasonable to assume that most households and businesses currently investing in solar panels and wind turbines are doing so for environmental as much as financial benefits – so perhaps the budget should focus on making it easier for them to afford and install the technology first, before then looking at ways to reward them financially.

For the business community, meanwhile, there is a green wishlist as long as your arm, most of which centres on subsidies and tax breaksthat the Chancellor is either unable or unwilling to deliver. However, there are some simple initiatives that could and should be undertaken.

Firstly the Enhanced Capital Allowances scheme, which promises tax breaks for energy efficient kit such as air conditioning and compact heat exchangers, desperately needs simplifying and publicising. There is no point having such a subsidy if large numbers of businesses are either unaware of it or find the application process too daunting.

Secondly and perhaps most importantly, where are the incentives for home working? The government is desperate to get people off the roads but has never had a clear incentive for those firms that reduce office space and get people working regularly from home. The closest it came was the Home Computing Initiative, which allowed staff to buy IT kit free of VAT, but the scheme was halted because some firms were apparently abusing the system and despite hints from the government that it would launch a replacement initiative nothing has happened.

The trend towards home and flexible working is already well under way, but the government could accelerate it with some well thought out perks, helping to increase productivity and take pressure off the creaking roads and public transport system in the process.

Some of these moves are now bound to appear in the budget while others have nbext to know chance of gaining the Chancellor's approval, but they would all help reduce carbon emissions while perhaps even stimulating economic growth in some areas.

However, with the Chancellor appearing as suspicious of green taxes and subsidies as he is apparently fond of all other revenue generating exercises, we are unlikely to see little more than tinkering round the edges for green businesses.

When it comes to judging Brown's green credentials we are likely to have to wait still further for developments in the oft-touted emissions trading scheme. Brown appears to be unconvinced by the personal carbon credit cards that DEFRA keeps talking about, but he is on record as wanting to expand the EU trading scheme to include far more organisations. A timetable for expansion is unlikely to be set out in the budget - it is an EU-wide scheme after all and Brown would probably love to keep his powder dry on this one until he has the keys to number 10.

But there should be progress soon as the government attempts to hit on a system that will reduce emissions but not alienate voters who according to recent polls are concerned about global warming but reluctant to pay for measures to tackle it.

Posted by James Murray on March 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Carbon Trust has today launched a new carbon reduction label designed to let consumers know the overall carbon footprint of products and demonstrate the producers' commitment to reduce it.

The scheme is to be trialled by Walkers, Boots, and drinks company Innocent and has secured support from a raft of major retailers including Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, the Co-operative Group and the British Retail Consortium.

Under the pilot scheme producers will apply the Carbon Trust's experimental methodology for measuring embodied carbon to their products and commit to reducing the figure over the next two years. Those that fail to cut emission levels could lose the right to use the label.

"Everything we do or buy has a carbon impact and it is clear that consumers and business want to take action to help tackle climate change," said Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust. "We believe this label, with its built-in commitment to reduce the product's carbon footprint, will act as a powerful bridge connecting carbon-conscious companies and their customers."

The first product to apply the new standards will be Walkers Cheese and Onion crisps - the company's best selling flavour – which will now have a new label informing customers that each pack resulted in 75 grams of carbon being emitted. Labels will also be added to Boots Organics shampoo and Innocent smoothies with the Carbon Trust hopeful more producers will soon sign up to the scheme.

The concept of embodied carbon has long-been controversial due to the huge complexity of measuring the carbon emissions associated with every stage of a product's lifecycle through development, manufacture, transport, sale and disposal.

As a result the Carbon Trust has attempted to head off criticism of its methodology by setting up a Technical Advisory Group including experts from government, business and science that will thoroughly review its methodology and engage with stakeholders on the effectiveness of the scheme.

The long term goal of the new scheme is to establish the methodology and labels as a national standard. "Establishing one standard, credible way of measuring a product's carbon content will empower consumers to make informed decisions as well as driving businesses to invest in lowering the carbon content of their products," said Delay.

Posted by James Murray on March 16, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is bamboo about to become the material of choice for environmentally-minded IT equipment designers?

Well, we've already had bamboo monitors, keyboards and mice, and now manufacturer Asus has announced it is to launch a bamboo laptop.

According to several reports the new Ecobook will be available from next year and while some may dismiss the biodegradable bamboo casing as little more than a publicity stunt many of the design innovations featured on the new model show how simple changes can make IT kit far more environmentally friendly.

All of the plastic used in the machine is reportedly going to be labeled and recycleable; paints, sprays and electro-plating have not been used on the components; and a modular design has been used so that the laptop can be easily taken apart and upgrades added.

The internal lining is made from biodegradable cardboard, while LED status lights have been fitted beneath a semi-transparent mouse trackpad, avoiding the need for extra external lenses.

Perhaps most intriguingly Asus has said that on the final model a button for adjusting the laptop's performance will glow red or green based on how much power the machine is using.

You can see photos of the new model over at CNet.

Posted by James Murray on March 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

UK businesses have broadly welcomed the draft version of the government's climate change bill with the CBI claiming it strikes the correct balance between "long-term clarity on policy direction and flexibility in its delivery".

However, opinion remains divided on the merits of the government's proposals for five year targets on carbon emission reductions as the Tories and Lib Dems continued to argue that annual targets are required if governments are to be kept properly accountable for reducing emissions.

Under the legislation, which represents the first of its kind anywhere in the world, the UK government will face legally binding targets to reduce carbon emissions by between 26 and 32 percent on 1990 levels by 2020 and by 60 percent by 2050.

An independent committee on climate change will be set up featuring experts from the world's of science, business, technology and economics, which will provide an annual progress report to parliament and advise the government on five year "carbon budgets" that will be set at least fifteen years in advance.

A government that fails to meet the targets or exceeds its five year carbon budget would be open to a judicial review and "be required to take remedial action by order of court".

Environment Secretary David Miliband said that the bill would provide "confidence and certainty" for businesses and individuals about environmental regulations and policies and the role they can play in combating climate change.

He also argued that the new law - which is currently subject to a consultation period and is expected to make it onto the statute book next year - will strengthen the UK's negotiating position when trying to convince developing countries to "develop in a low-carbon way that doesn't make the mistakes that we have made".

While the bill does confirm that a wide range of low carbon legislation and investment programmes is now inevitable, businesses looking for a guidance on exactly how the government will hit the new targets are likely to be disappointed.

However, it does include provisions for the government to effectively fast track new policies designed to tackle climate change, including new trading schemes for sectors not covered by the EU trading scheme. In effect this means the gap between new legislation being proposed and implemented should shorten leaving firms with less time to ensure they are compliant. As such adopting environmental best practices that exceed existing legislation becomes even more advisable.

The government has also published a strategy document alongside the draft bill, which highlights the areas most likely to see investment and legislation, such as solar wind and wave power, carbon capture, on site renewables and energy efficiency.

With opposition parties, environmentalists and businesses all supporting the new legislation in principle criticism has centred on the government's decision to opt for five year targets and annual reports rather than legally binding annual targets.

The government has argued that annual targets would prove impractical as varying weather and economic conditions would make it extremely difficult to hit the target every year. It claims there is a danger that such an approach would force governments to introduce knee jerk measures in a year that had a cold winter or risk spending much of the following year answering questions in court.

Businesses have welcomed the extra stability five year targets should bring with Richard Lambert, CBI Director-General, arguing that "regular reporting to Parliament will keep all players focused on action, without the impractical constraints that annual carbon targets would impose".

However, the Conservatives, Lib Dems and a raft of environmental groups argued that five year targets could give governments too much flexibility, raising the prospect of amendments to the draft bill being tabled.

Peter Ainsworth, Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, suggested that without annual targets set by an independent body there was a danger we could end up with a "system whereby targets are set ten years in advance, ignored up until year eight, and then are quietly dropped in year nine".

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems' Chris Huhne argued that with general elections tending to come every four years there was a real danger that the bill would set "Not in My Term of Office Targets", ensuring that a government that made poor progress towards meeting five year goals would simply hand a poisoned chalice to its successor.

Equally, potentially unpopular carbon reduction policies, such as higher taxes on aviation, could be delayed for electoral rather than environmental purposes, while ministers responsible for exceeding the five year carbon budget could have to wait up to six years after the implementation of an environmentally irresponsible policy for the judicial review that is meant to act as a deterrent for breaching the targets.

Huhne recommends "annual targets which could explicitly allow for economic conditions and the weather" would provide a "sensible" means of overcoming these problems.

In theory, he is correct but he neglects to mention how such flexible targets would be achieved. Would governments seriously be expected to revise targets each quarter based on how cold it was outside? Or should some form of magical algorithm be developed that automatically updates emission targets based on temperature, rainfall, unemployment levels, the rate of GDP growth and the size of the budget deficit?

Faced with these dilemmas the annual reports currently proposed are likely to take on massive importance.

The government is correct to argue that five year targets offer the best compromise between flexibility and stability, but the bill will only prove successful if the independent climate change committee and the annual reports it delivers are powerful enough to ensure that any government attempting to delay climate change initiatives until the tail end of a five year budget period is quickly detected and shamed into more responsible action.

Posted by James Murray on March 14, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Everyone knows that getting staff to turn off their PCs at the end of the day is easier said than done. But according to environmental charity Global Action Plan there is a left field strategy for promoting PC turn off that may just provide the answer to the long standing problem of always-on machines – and all employers have to do is buy some balloons.

The costs associated with always-on PCs are well known with research showing that leaving a PC on over night costs around £45 a year and results in over half a tonne of CO2 being emitted unnecessarily every twelve months. But despite these financial and environmental costs one recent survey still found that a third of office workers admit to leaving their PC on overnight. Even these figures are likely to be on the optimistic side given the tendency of people to exaggerate their green behaviour when talking to pollsters.

So with many firms committed to reducing their energy bills and their carbon footprint what can be done to tackle those who fail to spend the few extra minutes required at the end of the day to switch their PC and monitor off?

Turn off awareness campaigns have typically had mixed success with staff likely to pay attention to HR messages about the importance of turning off PCs for a few days before quickly falling back into their old habits.

Fines or other disciplinary procedures for those who refuse to follow company policies on turning off office equipment may prove more successful, but many firms shy away from such a dogmatic approach fearful of the damage it could do to employee relations.

Software packages capable of automatically turning off machines that are not in use provide a technological answer to the problem and also allow IT departments to turn back on machines if they need to carry out maintenance or patching work overnight. But they are an expensive solution to a problem that could be resolved at no extra cost if you could just change employee behaviour.

Which leads us to Global Action Plan's recommended turn off campaign strategy and those mystery balloons.

Director of Global Action Plan Trewin Restorick explains that the idea was developed alongside a major company the charity was working with on its environmental strategy. The company had a problem with people leaving on their PCs and monitors and struck on the idea of going round the office at lunchtime and attaching helium filled balloons with CO2 written on them to the desks of people who had left their monitors on.

No one was told what the balloons were meant to signify meaning that as people returned from lunch they started to discuss why there were now balloons dotted across the office.

Of course it didn't take long for the metaphor to sink in and with the balloons making a reappearance on the desks of those who failed to get the hint the next day, and the day after that, behaviour quickly began to change.

According to Restorick most of the office was soon turning off their machines when not in use, while the use of peer pressure to drive behavioural change meant there was little reversion to previous practices once the campaign was over.

It may not be the answer to every office's problems - Trestorick says that other companies have decided that branding energy profligate staff with balloons is a bit mean and have instead opted for a strategy that in contrast rewards those who turned off their machines with a morning croissant. But both approaches are certainly innovative and low cost solutions to a ubiquitous workplace problem.

I'd be keen to hear if you think such a strategy would work in your business or whether there are any other left field solutions to the problem of always-on PCs.

Posted by James Murray on March 13, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has been a sobering few weeks for the green business movement with a raft of reports revealing the gaping chasm that currently lies between the environmental rhetoric of business and, more pertinently, political leaders and the action they are actually taking.

Last week may have ended well for the government's climate change strategy with European leaders agreeing to new targets for reducing carbon emissions and building renewable energy capacity, but it started badly when an independent audit commissioned by the Channel 4 documentary Dispatches concluded that a combination of lax regulations, weak policing and optimistic government projections meant that the UK was set to fall well short of its target of reducing carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2020.

It was followed by a report from the government's own environmental watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission, which found that while the government has been happy to lecture businesses on the need for environmentally sustainable behaviour its own civil servants have largely failed to embrace green practices. The report revealed that many departments were guilty of not keeping the most simple environmental performance data and concluded that the government is unlikely to meet targets to reduce carbon emissions by 12.5 percent by 2010.

It was hard to argue with Commission Chairman Jonathon Porritt's conclusion that the government's performance was "simply not good enough".

Two further surveys from the Labour Research Department (LRD) and j2 Global Communications only added to the sense that green business models are very much the exception rather than the norm, revealing that a majority of workplaces do not have even basic green initiatives such as recycling or energy efficiency programmes in place.

What is particularly discouraging about these various reports is that with the exception of the Dispatches study they are assessing the adoption of relatively simple, low investment green measures.

The revelation from the LRD survey that only one in five organisations had comprehensive recycling schemes in place, while just 11 percent had an energy efficiency programme, is staggering given that you could probably claim to have such an initiative by simply drawing up a policy and giving someone responsibility for policing it.

You also have to ask why Whitehall is set to miss its carbon emission reduction targets when the civil service is meant to being streamlined over the next few years? Or how the level of waste the government produces is rising when relatively simple changes in procurment and recycling could reverse the trend? Furthermore, it is a disgrace that at the same time as ministers are trumpeting the government's environmental credentials some of their key departments are not even keeping records on the amount of waste they produce and the carbon emissions associated with civil servants' travel.

It is difficult not to look at these reports and conclude that if we can't make progress through the green business foothills of recycling programmes and PC turn off campaigns what chance do we have when we start to embark on the Himalayan task of major transformational projects?

The key question is why - given several years of political and business leaders claiming they regard environmental sustainability as criticially important - are so many organisations making such slow progress?

The answer lies in the fact that for many businesses and public sector organisations environmental considerations are simply not core to the business. Sure, they are growing in importance, but they are rarely a top priority.

In the private sector performance is measured first and foremost on profits and sales, while in the public sector efficiency and service quality continue to dominate managers' thinking. Environmental considerations, if they appear at all, are way down the list.

Even in areas where there is a clear business case for action, like improving energy efficiency, it is hard to make a case for investments when any savings account for such a small proportion of the overall budget. A multinational bank or a Whitehall department may be able to save millions through a properly run energy efficiency programme, but it is loose change compared to their multi-billion pound budgets.

There are echoes here of the problems found in that other great non-core corporate silo, the IT department.

For years executives have bemoaned the high proportion of IT projects that fail, while completely failing to address the fact that IT departments are frequently ostracised from the rest of the business, lack a presence on the board, and are treated as a cost centre rather than a means of driving efficiency. What's more, IT departments spend much of their time being told by management to deliver on set targets without executives necessarily understanding the initiatives and investments that are required to achieve those goals.

It is the exact same scenario experienced by many environmental or CSR managers, where they are instructed to deliver green initiatives but are frequently not given the senior management backing, corporate influence and financial resources to make them work.

So how do you tackle this problem of an essential part of the business being pushed to the managerial periphery - as has happened with IT departments for years and is clearly now happening with environmental initiatives in Whitehall and many other organisations?

The answer is leadership. Not in the lead by example sense of the word - although it would be nice if the European Commissioner would give up his SUV or Tony Blair would limit his jet setting - but in the managerial sense.

Just as the best IT departments tend to be found at businesses where the top execs treat them as a core component of the business, the companies with the most mature green initiatives are those where the board has explicitly decided that environmental initiatives are central to their operations.

Once the environment is deemed a top corporate priority all the management structures and incentive programmes should shift to reflect the new found importance of green initiatives. Projects that may not have made sense to execs from a purely financial perspective will begin to make sense if those execs know the board wants to see them and they will be rewarded accordingly.

Currently, this is a pretty rare occurrence. I recently attended a press conference at the Office of Government Commerce, where assorted civil servants unveiled the latest strategy for government procurement. The entire strategy was dominated by the concept of value for money, with value for the environment barely warranting a mention.

You could hardly blame the civil servants as their performance was clearly being gauged on their ability to find a bargain. They were in danger of getting fired if they procured products they could have got far cheaper somewhere else, but it is hard to imagine anyone getting fired for buying a product that polluted more than another.

Had the civil servants been told they were being measured equally on value for money and ability to deliver carbon savings the whole strategy would have looked very different.

Jonathon Porritt, chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, highlighted this discrepancy between the government's claim that it is committed to driving down carbon emissions and the priority given to emissions within Whitehall when he said the government "must ratchet up responsibility [for green initiatives] to the most senior level," adding that "it's time Permanent Secretaries were held accountable for meeting these targets".

He's absolutely right – no government targets on emissions are going to be met until senior managers with the ability to make wide-reaching decisions are held accountable for them.

The message from this week's various reports is stark: if organisations in both the public and private sector wish to undertake successful green initiatives they can not be treated as a nice little CSR add-on to the rest of the business. They have to be embedded into the business with incentives, management reporting lines and even disciplinary procedures worthy of their status as a top corporate priority.

Unless business and political leaders back up their green rhetoric with such changes to organisational structure we are doomed to read far more reports in the coming years detailing the failure of green initiatives. 

Posted by James Murray on March 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

So global warming is a hoax.

We know this because last night a high-profile documentary on Channel 4 titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle" told us so over 90 long minutes.

For those who didn't catch it, the programme gathered together what Channel 4 called an "impressive roll-call of experts" who claimed man-made global warming is a myth, "created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists, supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding, and propped up by compliant politicians and the media".

To support these claims it pointed to evidence that suggests increased levels of CO2 are the result rather than the cause of global warming; cited theories that argue increased sun activity is the primary factor driving higher temperatures; that the conventional wisdom fails to account for a period of global cooling last century; and claimed climate theories that challenge the conventional wisdom on manmade global warming are being silenced by a scientific community that unthinkingly dismisses them as the work of cranks in an attempt to protect budgets for their own studies.

It is a wonderful conspiracy story, told with panache and relying on just enough serious-sounding science and eminent-looking sources to make it all appear reassuringly plausible.

It is also, of course, mostly complete nonsense.

What the documentary omits to say is that it is widely accepted that temperature and CO2 levels are linked and that in prehistory temperatures would increase 800 years before levels of CO2 climbed. But as The Independent pointed out in a review of the documentary earlier this week "it is irrelevant to what is happening now, because for the first time ever enormous amounts of extra CO2 are being released".

Similarly theories that sun activity drives global warming are not new, and again what the programme fails to reveal is the fact that many studies that argue CO2 is the primary cause of climate change have also assessed the impact of the sun's activity and concluded it is too minimal to have had such a large effect. Clearly there are a handful of scientists who disagree and maintain the sun is the main cause, but a far greater number of studies insist this is simply not the case.

The programme also claims that the conventional climate science can not account for a 40 year period of global cooling that followed the Second World War. It argues that during this period of mass industrialisation CO2 levels rose and in complete contradiction to the expected result the temperature fell. What it omits to say is that, as explained over at Science Blogs, the conventional theory has accounted for this period of lower temperatures, claiming that it was largely caused by increased levels of sulphate aerosols.

Of course the programme makers and contributors can get round these glaring omissions by dismissing these rival studies are all part of the great global warming conspiracy, which aims to cripple the developing world and ensure that climate scientists can line their pockets.

But if these various dissenting voices are all being silenced and sidelined as part of this conspiracy how come they have a prime time documentary and global press coverage, including a piece this week in The Washington Times? If there is a massive conspiracy led by the establishment and the media how come leading opponents of man-made climate change such as Nigel Calder can still find a platform for their views in some of the world's most respected newspapers? It is hard to accept scientific debate is being stifled when these people are (quite rightly) completely free to publicly voice their concerns about the prevailing opinion.

It is far easier to believe that some scientists disagree on the causes of climate change - after all the whole practice of science is built around such disagreements. But how plausible is it that a large group of these scientists has become so desperate to win the argument, maintain their relatively small salaries, and destroy the industrialised world that they have set out to deliberately trick the finest political and business minds of their generation?

In short, it is possible to largely discredit this documentary without even mentioning the fact that the last time its maker, Martin Durkin, made a film for Channel 4 lambasting the environmental movement back in 1997 it resulted in his being slammed by the Independent Television Commission for misleading contributors and editing interviews to "distort" interviewees views. Channel 4 was ordered by the watchdog to issue a public apology, but proceeded to then commission Durkin to make several more highly controversial films on genetic engineering and the health benefits of breast implants.

Durkin is quoted as saying it took 10 years to get this latest film commissioned, looking at his track record of editorial sharp practices it is a miracle he got to make it at all.

In many ways it is a shame this film was made by such a blinkered polemicist, because despite all the omissions and irrational conspiracy theories it had an interesting story to tell. It raised the point that climate science is hugely complex and that there is not a complete consensus of opinion on its causes; it asked some pertinent questions about the extent to which we can be sure about any scientific theory, reminding us that only a few decades ago the primary climate concern was fear of global cooling; and it highlighted the vexed morality of asking developing countries not to use their fossil fuels.

The next time someone wants to make a documentary on global warming how's about commissioning a fully independent film maker who allows the scientists in Durkin's film to make their points and then talks to all those other climate scientists about their rival theories and why they think the deniers should be discredited. A full and open debate that lets the viewers decide which theories are most plausible based on the evidence and the strength of the argument – now that I would watch. 

In the mean time the key question for businesses looking at the debate is what to do about this apparent uncertainty. How should we react to partisan films such as the Great Global Warming Swindle, or an Inconvenient Truth for that matter? How should this on-going debate and lack of certainty impact environmental policies?

The answer, as we've discussed before on these pages, is to accept that there is some doubt surrounding the climate change debate and then develop business strategies based on the probability o