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Welcome to BeyondCarbon's BlogThe BeyondCarbon blog draws attention to key issues of business and environment. It is critical but not vindictive, polemical but not biased, and above all promotes sound science and strong evidence as the basis for decision making. If it has opinion it is this. Reductions in environmental impacts and the sustainable use of natural resources are absolutely necessary if we are to survive but we believe that change is only possible if it is driven by commercial profitability and economic growth.July 7, 2009Beyond Carbon – in print!As some of you may know, the writer of the Beyond Carbon blog is Richard Burge. Sustainable Business magazine now has a regular column from Richard and the first article has just appeared Follow; http://content.yudu.com/A18abp/SustainBusMagJun2009/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl= There is also a piece by him on ecosystem services, follow; http://content.yudu.com/A18aby/SustainBusSuppJun09/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl= June 28, 2009The figures just don’t get any betterThe latest figures from the UK Climate Change Predications team do not make for easy – or comfortable – reading. Of course, the science is difficult and shows a much larger range of possibilities than planners or investors would wish to deal with. But there you are – the atmosphere is extremely complex and we have just begun the process of understanding how it works and being able to forecast how it will behave in the future. But to the results themselves. Well, even with a medium increase in greenhouse gas emissions, those of us who are based and work in London are not going to have an easy future. By 2020 summer temperatures will almost certainly increase at least by 0.6 °C; the central likelihood being 1.5 °C. There will be an increase of 2 °C in the average daily maximum temperature. By 2050 summer temperatures will almost certainly increase at least by 1.2 °C; the central likelihood being 2.7 °C. There will be an increase of 2.7 °C in the average daily maximum temperature. Rainfall shows even more dramatic changes on a seasonal basis even if the overall rain in a year will not change. By 2020 overall annual rainfall with not change but winter rainfall will increase by an average of +6% and summer rainfall will decrease by an average of -6%. By 2050 overall annual rainfall with not change but winter rainfall will increase by an average of +15% and summer rainfall will decrease by an average of -18% Those who own or run offices are going to have to cope in the summer with staff arriving for work fractious after a hot journey and it will cost us at least 30% more to keep our buildings cool, even if energy prices remain static (which they will not). There may be some small comfort in the winter that our buildings will need less heating but we will now have fractious staff arriving soaking wet! So in terms of climate change preparedness what does this mean? Companies that occupy buildings will want a demonstration that efficiency measures will enable them to reduce energy bills. And they will want the design of buildings to reflect the reality of the climate – so the days of a rack for the odd umbrella and a few hooks for wet coats to quietly steam together are gone – we will need drying rooms. And we have not even begun to talk about the problems that will be caused by stormwater systems overwhelmed more frequently, air conditioning systems that overload, or power outages as the grid gives way to the extremes of weather for which it was not designed. I think we need to consider this a little more carefully – economic damage as a result of poor assessment and preparation for environmental risk is now real. May 29, 2009Climate change denial – or simply good science?For some reason or another, I see Lord Lawson quite a lot on tube station platforms and even at the airport. Once I tried to engage him in conversation but it quickly, in the politest of ways got nowhere. For those of you who do not know him, Lord Lawson – as Nigel Lawson then – was one of Margaret Thatcher’s longest serving Chancellors. He is now a consultant to a number of companies, including those in the oil industry, and he is the author of a polemical book which challenges the orthodox views on climate change and its causes. The book is worth a browse (but frankly borrow a copy from the library – there is better value for money in buying James Lovelock’s latest work). It claims to be backed by science. Indeed, it is. But it is only by the selective use of data and research that he comes to the conclusion that climate change is probably not occurring and even if it is, then it is not caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. I was trained as a scientist (a biologist as it happens) and I used to do research (on water buffalo behaviour in Sri Lanka – and very romantic it was too). We had it drummed into us that science was about challenging hypotheses; and research should be dominated by the search to disprove a theory. As Sir Karl Popper said, a theory is strengthened by the number of times you fail to disprove it, not by the number of times you can show it is true. Which is why Lord Lawson’s book is not worth buying – it seeks out evidence only that supports the view of the author. That may be how politics works but not science. It is certainly not a mistake his former boss would have made. But then she was a trained scientist – and she accepted the evidence for climate change in the mid 1980’s. But this is also the bad practice of many who believe and support climate change campaigns. They are as convinced of their own polemic as Lord Lawson is of his own. But worse, they have gone beyond debunking such views to demonising them. They have become intolerant of dissent and call such people climate change deniers. They are putting them in the same category as people who deny the Holocaust. Apart from the offensiveness of that that comparison, it is also wrong. The Holocaust was series of historic events of which there is absolute evidence it occurred. Human induced climate change is a good working theory that currently explains the phenomenon that we are witnessing, and seems to be robust when challenged by good science that tries to disprove it – and that is the limit of what can be said. The evidence is currently strong enough for us to plan our policies on the basis that it is true – but that is all. And scientist should continue to examine the data and conducts experiments on the basis that we are possibly wrong – that climate change is not happening – or that it is nothing to do with emissions caused by human beings. After all, even in this year when we celebrate the birth of Charles Darwin and the publication 50 years later of his seminal work on evolution through the process of natural selection, our laboratories and wildlife parks are full of scientists who in one way or the other are trying to disprove his life’s work. So far, his view has been robust and remains a good and strong working hypothesis for explaining how evolution proceeds. So let’s have no more of this climate change denial – sceptics yes, deniers, no. The world has always benefitted from sceptics – and we should constantly challenge accepted theories. That is what science does, and climate change should be no exception. May 4, 2009Carbon taxes have arrived with the milk – and business sleeps onSome amusing discussions this week – or they would be if the level of ignorance and naivety was not so alarming. The UK is proceeding with its first carbon tax and the government announced carbon emission reductions as part of the fiscal budget (keep reading, my American friends, this is the type of system that President Obama will be applying within the USA). A few of my business friends (not all of them – my closest friends have significant exposure to my “environment and economy” sermons) asked what all this Carbon Reduction Commitment was about. They had heard that it applied only to really big companies with massive electricity bills. Anyway, surely this was going to be abandoned because of the depth of the economic crisis. It never fails to amaze me how such powerful and intelligent individuals can be so appallingly out of touch with an international political impetus and be unable to add up the energy bill of their own companies. So this is what the carbon reduction commitment is all about. The CRC will be a mandatory emissions trading scheme, targeting emissions currently not included in the other Climate Change Agreements. This scheme will include, for example, supermarket chains, hotel chains, office-based corporations, government departments and large local authorities. The CRC will cover all organisations whose electricity consumption through half hourly meters is greater than 6,000MWh each year – equivalent to an annual electricity bill of ~£500k. All energy (other than transport fuels) will be covered, such as electricity, gas, fuel and oil. During the introductory phase, from April 2010, all allowances will be sold at a fixed price. From April 2013, allowances will be allocated through auctions with a diminishing number of credits available over time. At the end of each year, company performance, mainly based on absolute carbon reductions since the start of the scheme, will be summarised in league tables outlining the best and worse performers in terms of carbon emissions and reduction. In order to avoid creating an additional financial burden, the auction revenues generated through the initial sale of credits will be recycled back to participants, with companies receiving payments back from government in relation to their first year emissions, plus or minus a bonus or penalty dependent on their position in the league table. The scheme will be designed to be as simple as possible, including self certification of monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions, backed by an independent risk based audit regime. Effectively, this strengthens the incentive to improve energy and carbon management skills, particularly in relation to metering, reporting and reduction. It will also help to focus senior management attention on the issues – you’re telling me! (the piece of kit I like is Optimal Monitoring www.optimalmonitoring.com) And this is just the start. We are now committed to install smart meters (the basis of Obama’s smart grid system) over the next few years in every UK home and office, which will enable carbon reduction taxes to be applied to every business and household. Commercial premises are going to have to demonstrate their ability to contribute towards a company’s carbon reduction or else they will face depreciating rental value – simple. All companies need NOW to assess whether they are required to participate in the scheme or if they fall outside it. And then they need to develop a plan to make sure they pay the minimum or even get a bonus reward for being amongst the best. Send us an email – we can help. I have heard a couple of CEOs say that many of their commercial operations hare technically owned by off-shore companies so they can “get round it”. I am not sure that is how your shareholders or investors will see it as the company is targeted very publically by the Environment Agency and in these times is seen to be using legal nuances to evade a responsibility for a clear and represent danger. So the beans are ground, the water is boiling and the croissants are in the oven – all you have to do is open your nostrils! April 19, 2009Biofuels – confused or what?!The news about biofuels has always been somewhat contradictory. This week was not exception. In fact, I have just read one newsletter which has two articles side-by-side. One says that biofuels cause more greenhouse gas emissions than they save and should be banned; the other says that they were the key to sustainable energy use and without them we will never get on top of the climate change problem. Let me try to shed some light. These opinions are promoted by agencies or organisations that have particular views on life. Some hate biofuels because they are seen as a means by which governments can avoid the big truth – we are over using all our resources and we have to reduce consumption. Other adore biofuels because they cannot see how we can reduce growth (and consequent energy use) if we are not to condemn increasing numbers of people to desperate poverty. The tendency to have a view or opinion and then gather only evidence that supports your position is very human, but it is very unscientific. As a scientist, I was taught that it did not matter how many times you found evidence to support your theory – it is much more important to try to find evidence that disproves it. That is why science sets such a high value for accurate and transparent measurement. And that is why both opinions of biofuel are both true and false. It all depends upon what you measure. Carbon accounting is a new skill and it is understandable that we are learning as we go along. But, frankly, the principles are pretty simple and straightforward. You must measure the total amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted in the creation and use of any fuel, not the just the emissions created, say, when a motor is running. So when calculating the emissions from fossil fuels, the emissions caused by the drilling, refining and transporting of the fuel should be counted alongside those emitted from the car exhaust. When looking at biofuels, the emission caused by clearing forest, applying fertiliser (emits nitrogen oxides as gases which are 263 time more damaging than carbon dioxide), and refining the oils should be counted. Pretty obvious? Well, you will be surprised to learn that we do not yet have global standards for recording and reporting these measures. And the case for biofuels gets more complicated if we start to examine the benefits forgone by using land to grow the specialist crops. Supposing this land was originally forested, is the carbon sink potential of the lost forest more or less than the reduction in emissions from substituting the fossil fuel for the biofuel? What is the cost-benefit of removing agricultural land from food corps to non-food crops in order to satisfy the biofuel demand – does that not make the poor poorer, and make more people hungry? Indeed, the government of India has decided to bring 1 million hectares of land into biofuel production, but have banned the use of land that is used to produce food from being used to grow fuel crops (they plan to grow an extraordinary shrub called Jatropha that produces oil for biodiesel). But if we can send a rocket to the moon, surely we can work this out. It does require a calculating standard, and it does require a set of reporting formats. But there does not seem to be a will to do this. So we rely on companies being honest and transparent. You cannot rely on the former, but you easily test the latter! April 8, 2009A brief postcard for Mumbai – where I have seen optimism, determination and the emergence of a strong green agendaIn Mumbai, the summer has arrived early they say. The temperature rises to the high thirties every sunny day and the dust rises as well. But the energy of this city – up to 22 million people including its sprawling suburbs spreading out to the north of the old peninsular – continues to rise unabated. Everyone is working. Not a single shop is vacant – neither the up-market developments in downtown Mumbai nor the impoverished stall that line every main road. Building construction and refurbishment continues with barely a stutter. I have seen the new Canary Wharf and it is called the Banda-Kurla complex – larger, with offices just as grand – and already housing some of the biggest companies in the world as India takes over some of the “first” world’s commercial and financial dominance. The global recession is affecting India, but there is precious little evidence of it on the ground. Unlike the UK, it does not dominate the conversation of the business classes – indeed, they barley mention it. For this is a huge market. It is the largest middle class in the world and still growing; a population where the top 28% of people measured by IQ equals the entire population of the European Union. And it is this middle class that is driving a new awareness and new action about the environment. Like all middle classes they are concerned for their children and they want action. The country is famous for its civil action organisations and the environment dominates their agenda. They have a new Green Building Council that is established by the equivalent of the UK’s CBI. And that is why I am here – invited by a major project management company who see the green agenda as now being commercially viable and significant in its development. Mind you, in the maelstrom of Indian politics, it is as difficult to spot the environment as it is to spot any issue. It is election season here, and the newspapers are total confusion of political parties, promises, legal challenges, deals made and broken. The world’s largest democracy is hale and hearty! But the elephant in the room is poverty. It confronts you at every turn. From my hotel room I look down on a small shanty of “lean-tos” sheltering upwards of 10 families with one standpipe and one pit latrine. And it is this poverty that drives much of the pollution and environmental damage to India. Reducing poverty will in itself have a huge environmental benefit. Urban poverty is obscene; carrying with it crime and abuse as well as disease and social disadvantage. But it is the economic growth of Mumbai working alongside the civil society organisations that are the hope for the poor. The air of the city is dusty but despite the vehicles in almost permanent gridlock, pollution has dropped. All the three wheeled auto-rickshaws, the buses and an ever increasing proportion of cars and trucks are powered by LPG or compressed gas – a small improvement in greenhouse gas emissions but a huge leap forward in public health. Of course, Mumbai is not India. How can any city reflect the diversity of a nation as vast and extra-ordinary as this. But I will leave Mumbai tomorrow with a spring in my step. For all its imperfections and problems, if we have the spirit of Mumbai, the future looks good. March 27, 2009Cloud – a climate change for the way we workAt last, some good news from the world of IT that tends to be dominated by lost memory sticks, concern over surveillance, and broadband connections that seem to get slower and slower. Three phenomena seem to be occurring together that will – potentially – change our way of working, make computing power easier to and faster to use, and significantly reduce the climate change burden (6% of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by computers – more than aviation). They are fibre optics, cloud computing and the recession. Data centres until how have been concerned solely with the storage of information that you can tap into from anywhere. Partly a safeguard against loss of data from your own machine, they are also the bedrock of the bank cash points and internet shopping. But they do very little to cut down on the energy consumption of computing. The processing of the data is still done on individual machines. Indeed, for every unit of energy used in processing the data, anther unit is used in keeping the machine cool. So the emergence of high speed fibre optic cables has enabled data centres to be established in countries that have abundant geothermal or hydro-electrical power, and temperatures throughout the year where to cool the machines you simply open the door. The result? Massive reductions in carbon emissions using virtually free power. Whoever invests in data centres based in the UK or anywhere further south than Edinburgh really needs to worry about their due diligence. But we still take that data into the machines in our homes and offices that consume power in processing and cooling. I visited the new offices of law firm in the City of London a week or so ago who were very proudly displaying their environmental credentials having just re-equipped all their staff with desk top computers. But those days are disappearing with the advent of cloud computing. This promises that computers at work and home will be reduced to a screen keyboard and mouse connected by high speed cable to data centres that also do processing. No hassle with loading you own anti-virus software, no problems downloading new software only to find that your system unable to cope. All the software will be held and managed centrally. But why is this really interesting now? As we recover from recession (see, this is an optimistic blog!) we can really create radical change in the way we work that will also cut costs. Offices can become places where people meet. No longer will it be necessary for hordes of sad individual to commute into cities where their managers can theoretically keep an eye on the work. We can work in hub offices above local banks and shops. We will travel to work when we really need to meet colleague. It is not the world imagined by E M Forster in short story when everyone lived and worked in isolated pods – it is about working internationally and for big organisations but based in your local community. What joy! Of course there will be those who say this will threaten the security of information – either because data will be leaving a building or because data centres will be based in foreign countries. I spoke with a senior director of a major City company who was astonished that his office computer was backed up in Wisconsin virtually every half hour. And I have yet to meet anyone who would seriously suggest that the two countries who will benefit most form European cloud computing – Iceland and Norway – will be a threat to national security. Roll on computing nirvana – for the rest of you. After all, this is how Beyond Carbon has been working for years already. March 11, 2009Sea levels – teaching us reality and realismScientists are meeting throughout the year assembling the technical data that will be used, we hope, as the only basis for crafting the successor to the Kyoto Treaty by the end of the year. The news has not been good so far, and a significant announcement this week has followed that trend. Recent data suggest that anticipated rises in sea level over the coming 90 years (for those of us with grandchildren – that is within their average lifespan) have been under estimated. The rises look as if they will be significantly above 1.5 metres. This is enough to require the movement of 10% of the world population, two or three island nations will disappear completely, the most productive farm land in UK will be lost, and London will need a complete revision of its flood plans. Frankly, waterfront properties within the tidal reaches of that great river may have a very finite life for the ground floor, and we will retrofit mooring rings for gondoliers on the first floors. This news is a clear reminder of not only the perils of climate change but also of the need to prepare for its consequences. Planners, property developers have to face up to the fact that the climate will change. We will spend more time at the extremes of weather – more hot days, more cold days, and fewer mild. More days of really heavy rain, and long periods of drought. Land will flood permanently or seasonally on a far more frequent basis. Power supplies will be disrupted often. This is a big issue for all business but particularly for property developers. The commercial property they develop now will last into the final quarter of the century. Over 80% of the buildings that will be standing in 2050 have already been constructed. Not only should they be developing or refurbishing buildings that have significantly reduced impacts on climate change. They should be preparing buildings that can cope with the new climate – it is coming with absolute certainty. Failure to do so is simply poor investment, and at worst is a failure in fiduciary duty. Directors beware, this has gone beyond comfortable marketing exercises. It is now about business survival. |
