Forum For The Future - News Feed

The Conservatives’ Climate Campaign

Peter Madden — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:03:04 +0100

Earlier this week, I found myself, in the sweltering heat, on the roof terrace of a swanky Soho club. A specially curated modern art exhibition adorned the walls. Around me the conversation buzzed excitedly as celebrities rubbed shoulders with shadow cabinet members.

The reason for this glossy affair? It was the launch of the Conservatives’ Climate Campaign.

I was intrigued for a number of reasons. There was a sense of youth, energy, and excitement that had a strong echo of the mid-1990s when new Labour was becoming newly-fashionable. This felt like the place people wanted to be.

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor spoke. The campaign promised “bold and transformational policies to allow Britain to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050” and “a big NO to any new coal-fired power station that does not have carbon capture and storage from day one”.

Business turned out in force, too. Indeed the launch booklet was full of ads from sponsor companies, such as Asda. Sponsored policy-documents are a rather depressing sign of the times, but at least, I reflected, the Conservatives are being up-front and transparent about the fact that business is paying.

Change is certainly afoot. A decade ago, I just can’t imagine the Conservatives launching such an initiative. Now they feel edgier than the government on the climate change agenda. The raffle – there always has to be a raffle at a Tory do – was to fund their campaign against a third runway at Heathrow!

We have yet to see how deep climate concern runs in the Conservatives, or the detail of their policy prescriptions. But as I sipped my glass of wine on that warm summer evening, I did get a strong sense of tectonic plates shifting.

Talk is cheap

James Taplin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:38:20 +0100

In the beginning was the word, and it was chattered from the treetops, chanted in the darkness of smoky caves, sung across the plains and dripped poisonously into ears. It was a stentorian bark across the battlefield, a sensual whisper in the moonlight, and a gasp of new life . . .

And then Mr Watson was summoned for his chat, and everything changed. It’s not that all those things above no longer happened, it’s rather that with the coming of the telephone they happened more, plus louder, faster and, crucially, further than ever before.

Words and communication are what our society is built upon and, generally, the better you are at communicating, the more successful you are. Equally, this human need to talk continues to drive innovation, generating huge sums of money or prestige for those who find ways to make it cheaper, better, and more convenient.

It’s little wonder, therefore, that the mobile phone has rapidly gone from being a heavy ostentatious symbol of decadence for people with sports cars, into the third essential item that no-one leaves home without – Keys? Wallet? Phone? (and even that hierarchy is being eroded).

And the service providers have been there guiding and nurturing us throughout. They let us throw our voices down their networks, and have introduced us to new ways of communicating by text and picture (transforming the ways we think, and our language in the process).

But, as lovely as they are, none of this has happened for free (especially over really long distances), and since the word is too powerful to be constrained by the barrier of cost, it’s inevitable that it should have eventually found a cheaper outlet – currently the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Skype was the first to take the VoIP concept and turn it into something truly useful and usable. It is now used by millions of users around the world to speak (and videoconference) easily and cheaply via the internet.

This trend is set to continue with Google Voice which allows users to link their many work/home/personal numbers together under one Google Voice number, and do all manner of ‘cool things’ with it (like seamless switching of calls mid-conversation, for example from landline to mobile so you can take your office conversation out to lunch, or from one mobile to another if the first battery is about to die). Most worryingly for the networks, however, is that calls to and from the Google Voice number are also likely to be free.

So, given that service providers are frequently little more than data pipes for transporting the word, and given that we're seeing the rapid development of virtually free pipes (soon to be made more ubiquitous in the UK with the government's aspirations of broadband for all, funded by the new tax), what role is there left for them?

3 has been the first to respond to the VoIP threat by embracing it. After all, “if you can't beat 'em . . .” It is currently the only network to offer free Skype calls from its handsets, meaning customers can use their phones without paying 3 anything at all (even on pay-as-you-go phones for which you theoretically never need to buy a top-up). Others, like O2, are transforming themselves into a lifestyle choice and offering services beyond basic communications – witness its drive to create the O2 experience (spearheaded by the O2 arena), and the launch of the new family organiser, the joggler.

Interesting news from Vodafone and T-mobile, on the other hand, is that they are looking at femtocells – home wireless points that connect a user’s mobile phone with their broadband network. These not only provide the homeowner with flawless mobile connectivity at home (without the need for the network to provide costly main masts), but their integration with home broadband must surely mean that a VoIP offering is also on the way.

So what next? The word will out, by whatever means necessary, and whilst it’s too simple to say that they need to diversify or die, the networks do need to innovate and become more responsive to the needs of their users (something which, historically, hasn’t always unduly troubled them).

One thing is clear, as time goes on, speech really will be freer than ever before.

Help us design sustainable capital markets

Alice Chapple — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:04:00 +0100

It’s less than a year since our entire financial system was on the verge of meltdown, yet I’m constantly amazed by how many in business and government seem prepared to ignore the fundamental flaws the crisis exposed.

We hear today that the British Banking Association is urging regulators not to tighten the rules on holding cash and capital for the time being, because this will impact on recovery.

And we are told that the remuneration package agreed for Stephen Hester, the CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland is acceptable because it is based on the 'long-term' performance of the bank over the next three years.

These events provide dismal confirmation that little has been learned from the financial crisis and that the focus for most of our business leaders and for government is on getting back to 'business as usual' as quickly as possible.

No-one wants the painful recession to be prolonged. We all recognise the need to get RBS onto a strong footing so the bank can provide funding to businesses and we, as taxpayers, can start to get repaid.

But I find it mind-boggling that powerful people can assume that we can simply revert to the old models of unsustainable growth funded by ever-increasing credit and incentivised by inappropriate remuneration.

Forum for the Future's new publication, Rethinking Capital, challenges this assumption. Building on themes from Jonathon Porritt's booklet, Living within our Means, it outlines the key areas where the finance sector needs to focus its attention in order to avoid 'the ultimate recession'.

In our view, it is simply inappropriate to put the finance sector back together without embedding some really fundamental changes. The financial crisis showed how shaky the foundations of the finance sector are - in valuation of assets, assessment of risk, investing in a sustainable future. We have to rethink these foundations urgently before we can rebuild.

So we’re calling on people with an interest in the finance sector, whether within or outside it, to help us design practical steps that can bring about capital markets that deliver what society actually needs. We outline our ideas for action in Rethinking Capital, and we hope that this will help create dialogue around the changes required. We know from the financial crisis that the capital markets tend to be misaligned with the public interest. Now is the moment to rethink them.

Teaching China’s future business leaders about sustainability

David Bent — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:51:07 +0100

Last week I spoke to 30 future Chinese business decision-makers about leadership in uncertain times. I came away impressed with their curiosity and desire to address issues like poverty and climate change.

I had been told that the group didn't like to interact so when we had a break halfway through the session I expected to be alone. Not a bit of it: they wanted to engage me further in the issues. What they didn't like was group discussions.

They were engaged, attentive, informed and curious. Some were even willing to talk how an absence of democracy will hamper China's development in the medium term. But all were rightly adamant that China did need to develop, which means the already-rich nations need to make room, both political and environmental.

The group has been selected as future leaders by CICPA, the leading Chinese accounting institute, and is in the UK for a month to accelerate their development. The ICAEW, Europe's largest accounting institute, has organised events every day on issues vital to their jobs, like corporate governance and audit standards.

This year I was asked to do a session on 'leadership in uncertain times' as a way of getting sustainability into their curriculum without calling it sustainability. Of course we do this sort of thing all the time, bringing together senior people with a common interest in developing leadership for sustainability through learning, reflection and, crucially, practical innovation.

They wanted a three hour - three hour! - talk in a wood-paneled room, deep in the Victorian gothic of Chartered Accountant's Hall. The messages were driven by a central proposition: that the business context after the recession will be driven by the challenges of sustainable development - 'living within our means' financially, environmentally and socially.

Presumably their curiosity and engagement were the reasons why they had been selected to come on this learning trip. If they apply those qualities to what I said then I’m hopeful they will help make a difference in China.

Cutting carbon with smart finance

Will Dawson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:29:17 +0100

Smart, efficient finance has huge potential to help public sector organisations cut their carbon footprint cost-effectively, so it’s surprising it’s so little used at a time when budgets are under pressure.

We’ve set out to help councils and other public bodies meet their carbon targets for less money, and today we publish Smarter finance: how to get more carbon savings for your cash. This report shows how smarter ways of raising and using finance – like revolving funds and services companies – can make money go further, saving both carbon and cash.

We’ve gathered rare examples of pioneering initiatives from as far afield as Lithuania – where groups of tenants club together to fund energy efficiency measures – and we now know what is special and worth repeating.

For instance, Kirklees’ Re-Charge scheme loans householders money to install low-carbon technologies in their property, such as solar panels to heat water. It is successful because there are no interest charges and the money does not have to be repaid until the property is sold. The council only has to subsidise the interest on the loans and this costs around three times less per home than using a grant scheme.

In parts of Milton Keynes developers pay a levy into a fund to offset the carbon emissions from the use of new properties. The money is spent on local schemes such as insulating older homes which are much less energy efficient. It works because it is cheaper to save carbon in older homes than make new homes carbon neutral and it raises capital from the developers.

Perhaps most famous of all is Woking Borough Council and its service company, Thameswey Energy Ltd. Thameswey installs combined heat and power plants which supply heating and electricity to households, businesses and council buildings in the centre of Woking. It used just £38,000 of council funds to borrow £1 million from private investors. The story has been widely celebrated, yet there are few other councils establishing service companies.

Rather than wondering why Thameswey isn’t being copied elsewhere, we wanted to identify the replicable ingredients which allowed Woking to take this bold step in the first place. The answer is of value to all public sector organisations – it’s because the council leaders and executives actively supported innovation.

The most important lesson from Woking isn’t the technicalities of establishing a private CHP network, it’s that top-level leadership, which encourages staff to be inventive and take risks, can lead to exceptional, progressive solutions. Of course, thorough research, risk management and feasibility analysis are important too, but this release from the bureaucratic leash is a vital and, until now, overlooked success factor for smarter finance and cost-effective carbon savings.

We have used many more practical insights like these to develop ten success factors for getting smarter with finance, and a staged process for developing new initiatives which we'll use to work with public sector organisations as part of our Climate Finance project.

I’ve seen first-hand, whilst working in the European Commission, how creativity can be stifled by hierarchy and procedures. So when we launched Climate Finance at the Corporation of London earlier this year, I was delighted to see that UK public servants have such free-flowing enthusiasm, passion and creativity. After barely an hour of our ‘fantasy finance’ game we had developed new financial models to save carbon. These included a new service company which supplied water, heat and electricity to the NHS and invested in energy savings and generation across its estate, and a trading scheme for waste. The winner was a community-run social enterprise which generated energy locally and used the profits to provide insulation to households.

Many who joined us that day said that having a broad range of expertise in the groups was the catalyst to the success. This is why we are offering interested public sector organisations the opportunity to work with our advisory group to help them create schemes like this for real.

The public sector faces the prospect of a cash-starved decade, yet carbon reduction targets will stiffen. This recession is the opportunity to move from grant to pay-as-you-save schemes which generate returns. This sort of smarter finance is our solution and this report is a practical guide to making it happen.

In the future, public income will be as important as expenditure when it comes to funding carbon savings. “Cash out – cash in”, is the new way to save carbon.

Sustainability success stories

Jonathon Porritt — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:16:35 +0100

The Met Office publishes its detailed projections for the impacts of climate change on the UK today – in unprecedented geographical detail. It’s not going to be pleasant reading.

So I’ve been cheering myself up by reminding myself, all over again, of the power of positive thinking. Just a week ago, the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy held their annual bash at the Royal Geographical Society, with the Prince of Wales handing out the Awards and giving a stirring speech.

For me, this event is one of the highlights of the annual calendar – it’s just incredibly uplifting to hear cutting-edge success stories going on around the world from the people who are actually making it all happen.

In the context of climate change in the UK, I just want to highlight two of the 2009 winners. First is Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council – one of the unsung heroes of local government who have been doing their 'sustainability bit' for the last 20 years (and are one of the pioneers in Forum for the Future’s i-team project helping local authorities develop innovative solutions to tackling climate change).

Their current home insulation initiative has really made people sit up and listen, as it has succeeded in achieving real scale – where so many of the current measures are just picking around at the edges. Here’s what the Award citation said:

“In 2007, Kirklees Council committed £10 million to providing free loft and cavity-wall insulation for every home in the borough where it can be used. The scheme targets one council ward at a time, using the local Councillor and local advertising, then individual home visits by assessors. By May 2009, 66,000 out of the 172,000 households in the borough had been assessed, 54,000 referred for surveys, 26,000 surveys had been completed, and 21,000 had insulation installed. This avoids an estimated 18,000 tonnes a year of CO2. 140 jobs have been created by the scheme.”

In my view, every local authority in the country is going to have to introduce schemes along those lines over the next couple of years. That’s the consequence of the ambitious targets that have now been adopted through the Climate Change Act.

But, for many, 'seeing is still believing', and there are lots of people who are not yet persuaded that doing full-on home insulation actually makes much difference. And that’s where the Sustainable Energy Academy comes in – by persuading those who’ve already done it to demonstrate how they did it, to those who’d like to do it.

“The Sustainable Energy Academy has set up a network of homes, mostly built before 1919, whose owners have installed measures to reduce carbon emissions by 60% or more. Measures include roof, cavity-wall, solid-wall and under-floor insulation; triple-glazed windows; draughtproofing; heat-recovery ventilation; solar and biomass heating; efficient lighting; and solar electric supply. The SEA provides training and support to enable owners to open their homes to the public, providing real demonstrations of how to achieve significant carbon savings. To date, 25 homes belong to the network, and over 36,000 people have visited them. SEA wants to increase the network to 200 homes across the UK so that people can easily visit one.”

Forum for the Future is also working to pioneer practical methods to cut the carbon footprint of our existing housing stock. You can read more about it here.

Contacts
Kirklees Council: Phil Webber
Sustainable Energy Academy: John Doggart

By the way, the International Awards are equally, if not more inspiring. Check it all out on the Ashden Awards website.

Fighting for fish

Sara Parkin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:45:13 +0100

To Islington Vue Cinema last week to the premier of End of the Line, a film that pulls not even the most gruesome punch to show how fish are being 'mined' to extinction. Dubbed The Inconvenient Truth About Fish by The Economist magazine, the film chronicles the plundering of fish stocks around the world.

Trawlers scrape the sea bed into a desert and use whizzy technololgy to literally 'herd' fish into nets. The waste is shocking and the stupidity of grinding up fish to feed other fish in farms jawdropping. As is the (sometimes criminal) complicity of governments, the food industry, restaurants, and indiscriminating you and me. The EU, for example, is buying fishing rights for its trawlers from desperately poor and hungry countries, like Angola.

Despite all that, I found the film, like the book by former Daily Telegraph journalist Charles Clover on which it is based, full of hope. The stars are just so beautiful - in death as well as in life - and there is so much we can do to change what is happening - starting today.

By fishing at about half the pace we do now (with lines, more locally, and without waste,) we could make a huge difference. So, whether you eat fish or not, see the film, get the nifty guide to what fish to avoid and start quizzing fishmongers and waiters at every opportunity. Join the larger campaign to prod politicians into regulating the fishing industry sensibly, and lobby to secure the marine reserves that will give fish stocks the time to recover.

UK distribution and campaign details can be found here.

Read Forum's report Fishing for Good.

Financing the rainforests

Alice Chapple — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:40:57 +0100

Today Forum for the Future is publishing a report which we hope will help governments and business to take urgent action to save the rainforests.

The Forest Investment Review was commissioned by the UK government, and sets out to shape thinking in the run-up to the UN’s conference on climate change in Copenhagen and beyond.

Protecting the world’s forests is a crucial part of the fight against global warming - deforestation and forest degradation account for around 18% of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

But the fact is that all over the world deforestation is driven by people’s need to make a living, whether it’s clearing land for subsistence farming or for intensive agriculture. So we have to find ways to reward people for looking after what is a vital global resource.

We’ve looked at how to finance the conservation of forests and generate sustainable economic development for the communities which depend on them. And we’ve looked at how government spending can unlock private investment to achieve funding on the scale we need.

The Forest Investment Review was commissioned by the UK's Department of International Development (DFID) and Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), which are heavily engaged in climate change discussions with other governments ahead of Copenhagen. The report will help inform government policy-makers, in both developed countries and in the developing forest nations.

It’s the work of a team of experts in finance and forests, brought together by the Forum to assess the different areas in which private sector finance can be mobilised. They’ve each contributed a chapter focussing on a different aspect of the issue, for example what might encourage big institutional investors like pension funds to invest in forests.

We’re publishing each chapter as a separate paper on our website and we plan to make them available as a full report in a few weeks' time.

Image: STILLFX

Nuclear comes clean

Jonathon Porritt — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:54:22 +0100

The Cheltenham Science Festival is now in full swing, and on Wednesday I went along to listen to Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century. Great talk.

However, we didn’t get the full value of Jeremy’s insights, as the festival organisers had stuck him on a panel with four other people, one each for nuclear, coal, wind and Energy from Waste industries. The last two did well (yes, there really is a good sustainability case for the kind of Energy from Waste technologies), but our friends from the coal and nuclear industries were just dreadful. They’d clearly been sent on media training courses, which produced a weird amalgam of the patronising, the banal and the downright dishonest.

But at least we know where we are these days. Not so long ago, the nuclear industry would disdainfully acknowledge that there was a role for renewables alongside nuclear. Not a big role, but at least something to add to the overall supply picture. In the last few months, however, they’ve decided to move into full battle mode, on a 'them or us' basis. As Jeremy puts it:

“Those reluctant to abandon the nuclear and fossil-fuel status-quo have been reacting to all this with a fresh candour. In March, both EDF and EON advised the UK Government to cut back on renewables in favour of nuclear. The energy giants declared efforts to get 35% renewables into the UK’s electricity mix – as the Government intends – to be not only unrealistic, but damaging to nuclear plans. They said additional carbon-generating plants would be needed because of the intermittency of renewables.”
I’m sorry, but this is truly pathetic. Little more a year ago, these nuclear zealots were telling the world (including any prospective investors who would listen) that any new nuclear in the UK would require zero public subsidies. Hardened anti-nuclear campaigners such as myself and Jeremy fell about laughing – not one kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity has ever gone onto the grid, anywhere in the world, over forty years, without some kind of public subsidy. So why does anybody suppose that it’s going to be any different this time round?

At least the big energy companies have now had the decency to come out and tell us at least part of the truth about their nuclear ambitions.

Fast-tracking sustainability into professions

Sara Parkin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:04:40 +0100

To the sunny terrace of the House of Commons for the launch of the Engineering Council’s Guidance on Sustainability the other week. The place was unnaturally quiet, and if a tumbril had rolled across the lobby carrying bodies of disgraced MPs I would not have been surprised.

Confirming that he was probably the only MP in the building (and ‘clean’ as far as his expenses were concerned) Brian Iddon gave the main speech of congratulations. As a member of the Industry, Universities and Science Committee and a founder member of the Environmental Audit Committee, Brian was genuinely enthusiastic about the new guidelines and congratulated the Engineering Council on its pioneering work on getting sustainability into the heart of engineering practice.

And indeed, while the story may lack the glamour of M&S’s Plan A, what the engineers are doing is hugely important because it will influence every sector of the economy. Since 2005 all engineers wishing to gain Chartered status in the UK have had to demonstrate 'sustainability competencies', a change to professional standards for registration which some of Forum’s young engineers helped to bring about. Percolating the implications to education and training through the many specialist engineering institutions and university departments is now well underway.

Some other professions have followed suit, notably accountancy. But others are lagging, citing institutions unaccustomed to rapid change. Not a viable excuse any more. Urgent transfusions of sustainability throughout the system are needed, and as almost everybody belongs to some professional or trade association, where better to fast-track sustainability literacy throughout the existing and future workforce? Not exciting, but essential. The Engineering Council has shown it can be done.

To read about Forum's Engineers for the 21st Century programme (E21C) - which is all about engaging the engineering profession in sustainability - click here.

Updated June 8th:

Several voices have joined in to support an Industry, Universities and Science Committee’s recommendation that the government should appoint Chief Engineering Advisors as they do Chief Scientific Advisors. I think it is a terrific idea. Getting down to the practicalities of implementing radical carbon reduction strategies will be greatly helped if some Clark Kents of the engineering world don super(wo)man kits and swoop about a bit. If you agree let the committee know on iuscomm@parliament.uk.

Image: Sara Parkin, Andrew Ramsay, Ken Fidler

Scanning the foothills of the future

Jemima Jewell — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:58:22 +0100

"A fantastic tool for people to lift their eyes from the daily doom and gloom, to the foothills of the future – where the view is breathtaking."

That’s how our recent vision for the West Midlands region was described by Dr Simon Slater, who commissioned the project as Director of Sustainable Development at Advantage West Midlands.

But what exactly is a vision, and why are we so keen on them here at Forum for the Future?

A vision can take many shapes and forms, but essentially describes what an organisation, product or place will look like in the long-term future if it achieves its goals. Even if the exact means of getting there is as yet undetermined, a vision sets out the essential features of success in an evocative, inspiring manner.

It may seem difficult to justify planning for the next 20 years when getting through the next quarter is at the front of everyone’s mind. But setting out a future vision is a productive exercise for a number of reasons. When talking about the long-term future, people are often willing to discuss important or sensitive issues more positively, focusing more on solutions than they otherwise might. Developing a vision can give members of an organisation a common sense of purpose.

It’s not always the case, however, that visions have to be agreed. In the ‘safe space’ that is the future, hopes, fears and ambitions can be discussed more openly, and without recrimination. People’s different underlying assumptions can be brought to light and talked over. Indeed, often the most useful part of having a vision is that it acts as a tool to stimulate debate.

One caveat. A vision cannot be a concrete, immovable thing. As Peter Drucker said: ‘If there is one thing we know about the future, it’s that it will be different’. There are few certainties facing organisations today – the last 12 months has surely taught us that. It’s therefore vital that any vision includes built-in flexibility to enable resilience in the face of a potentially turbulent world. Regular ‘horizon scanning’, looking out for hints of future change, is an important step to build into any long-term planning process.

Forum’s recent vision for the West Midlands region was commissioned by the Regional Development Agency Advantage West Midlands, and explores what the region might look like in 2020 if it is successfully travelling the path to a low-carbon economy. The people, businesses and places described in the vision demonstrate that decarbonising an economy, or a region, isn’t all about cutbacks and sacrifice. Becoming a low-carbon region can and should be a positive journey that genuinely improves quality of life, and works with, rather than against, other policy goals around health, productivity and innovation.

Dr Slater, now Executive Director at Sustainability West Midlands, says: “We will be using this tool to help stimulate debate, about what is possible now, and how to get there. We will challenge our leaders to look at this vision, improve on it, and ultimately use it to help make the birthplace of the industrial revolution a better place for its five million plus residents, forging a new identity based on our low-carbon industrial success”. The ball is rolling and the West Midlands’ Sustainable Housing Action Programme has already used the vision to inform the contribution it can make to reducing carbon emissions by retrofitting housing.

This is exactly what visions are for. If a vision lives and breathes, becomes a focal point for discussion, and is used to influence short-term decisions on investments, strategies and partnerships, then it can be an invaluable tool to help drive the transition to the sort of life we want – and need – in the future, making that ‘breathtaking’ view a reality.

Download the West Midlands vision here – and join the debate.

To find out more about Forum’s visioning work, please contact Jemima Jewell.

Image: Christopher Elwell, Athena's Pix

Asset managers begin to see climate change as business opportunity

David Bent — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:31:10 +0100

Mainstream asset managers - the people who decide how to invest pension funds and so on - are asking companies questions about climate change. This was the surprising fact I learnt at an event on climate change as business opportunity last week.

If you know your BEX from your IWEX from your NEMEX then you were probably at the SustainabilityLive! exhibition in Birmingham last week. The enormous hall in the NEC was given over to every variety of environmental technology business, covering Brownfield development (BEX), water and waste water (IWEX), energy management (NEMEX). The sheer number and variety of companies taking part was proof of the scale and scope of the environmental technology sector in the UK.

I was chairing a session in the Sustainable Business event on the business opportunity of climate change. One speaker was Adrian Wilkes, Chief Executive of the Environmental Technologies Commission. He showed how higher environmental regulation induces innovation and profitable businesses by contrasting the abject failures of the US car companies with the successes of their Japanese competitors. (A point we made about California in our publication with the ICAEW on Competitiveness and Sustainability.)

The other speaker was Stephanie Meier, the Head of research at EIRIS, the independent provider of investment research on sustainability issues. She had the surprising fact about fund managers. I had always been told that they weren't interested in sustainability, even the relatively hard and investment-critical facts about climate change. But no, they are increasingly asking 'what is the company's climate change strategy? How might a changed climate affect the business?'. At last! Apparently, the fund managers are looking to invest in the best-in-class performers, and the new sectors that will flourish as we move to a carbon-constrained world.

Other key points:

climate change opportunity for a business is specific to that business (see Leader Business Strategies for more on this).
there will be losers and winners. The losers will be incumbents who try to defend the status quo or are unable to change. The winners will be the businesses who really do innovate, and ones in emerging sectors. Obviously, we hope that the finalists of the recent FT Climate Change Challenge will all be winners.
the opportunities are really uncertain. and therefore really difficult for organisations to know what to do. That is why we created a set of scenarios to help organisations understand their risks and opportunities, and plan for them in a strategic way.

I left Sustainabilitylive! in good heart that there is a UK environmental technology field ready to take us to a sustainable future profitably, if only we can get the right systems in place to accelerate the change we need.

Sustainability - how to engage employees

Ben Kellard — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:09:54 +0100

How can you embed sustainability in a way that motivates employees? It’s a challenge for many leaders faced with the question of how to maintain the momentum of their sustainability strategy, especially in a recession.

The case for using sustainability to motivate employees is compelling. There’s a strong correlation between activities which come under the umbrella of corporate responsibility and employee satisfaction and engagement, according to the latest Sunday Times Best Companies survey.

And research from the Hay Group shows that highly engaged employees can improve business performance by up to 30 per cent and that fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their “disengaged” colleagues.

Many of our business partners have experienced this for themselves, and discovered that sustainability can be a powerful way of motivating and engaging employees by bringing new meaning to their work in a way that aligns with their personal values. This becomes even more important during the recession, when employees need to be as productive as possible, precisely at a time when many are feeling vulnerable and insecure in their jobs.

A good example of this is property company Gentoo, which launched ‘Gentoo Green’, an internal programme to engage employees in its sustainability vision and strategy. The programme was backed by the CEO and was supported by internal communications, champions, training, and opportunities for employees to get involved. This led to over 700 suggestions from employees about how to improve Gentoo’s sustainability performance, and it’s been estimated that the programme has already delivered half a million pounds in savings to the group in its first year.

Despite this strong business case, many organisations seem to struggle with how to engage employees with sustainability, perhaps not knowing where and how they should start.

I want to offer an approach that brings a sustainability strategy alive and delivers real results by integrating it into existing business processes. It has four components, based on what successful leaders have done in practice, and each reinforces and complements the others..

Direction: communicating why and how
Use existing communications methods such as the Intranet to convey a sense of direction:

why are you doing it? – provide a compelling sense of purpose and ambition; for example, through a vision.
how are you going to do it? – give employees clarity and confidence that the strategy and goals will achieve the vision or ambition.

Capability: what people need to know and be able to do
Identify and prioritise the skills and knowledge that your key staff groups will require to deliver the strategy:

·   leaders – need to own, drive and deliver the strategy
·   project teams – need to deliver specific parts of the strategy
·   all employees – the wider organisation not directly involved in specific projects needs a basic understanding of the strategy.

This could be delivered in a variety of ways ranging from e-learning packages and courses through to the sharing of best practice through networks.

Performance: individuals making sense of the strategy
Employees need to know what the strategy means for them and their role. The following ‘people processes’ in particular can help to achieve this:

·   performance objectives which identify what it means for individuals
·   feedback and recognition for improved performance
·   rewards which support sustainability performance improvements

For example at our partner John Laing, every single member of staff has to have at least one personal objective based on sustainability.

Involvement: owning and adapting the strategy
Creating advocates, or champions, are a powerful way of coordinating activities and motivating peers. Team meetings, Employee Forums and away days can also be used to discuss the strategy and explore what individuals and teams can do to deliver it.

In each of the four components, reviewing progress allows leaders to adapt the implementation of the strategy by building on what works and changing what doesn’t. This balances a top-down approach that sets the direction and parameters through the strategy, with a bottom-up approach that responds to employee suggestions and enthusiasm and allows flexibility to account for the departmental or regional context.

For more suggestions and examples of how to engage employees see page 2

For more information contact Ben Kellard

Could global brands save the world?

Sally Uren — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:03:59 +0100

Could global brands be the key to a sustainable, low-carbon world? Quite possibly.

Whilst it’s often all to easy to engage in a bit of big business bashing and dismiss corporate efforts on sustainability, the fact is that right now, major companies and their brands are in a better position to lead the charge towards a low-carbon world than any government.

This is particularly true in the UK, where levels of consumer trust in politicians is at an all-time low following a string of revelations that elected members of parliament have used taxpayer’s money to clean moats, mend tennis courts and buy nappies (amongst other random goods).

I’m not the only one who thinks global brands are becoming agents for transformational change. At a recent seminar the Forum held jointly with the marketing agency Dragon Rouge, which set out to examine the synergies between marketing and sustainability, Santiago Gowland, VP- Unilever Brand and Corporate Responsibility, said that by acting as a bridge between corporate strategy and consumer behaviour, global brands can deliver long lasting, positive change.

I completely agree with Santiago and would go even further, and argue that big brands and marketing could hold the key to a low-carbon, more sustainable world. This is because marketing drives product development, marketing drives consumer behaviour and marketing can make almost anything desirable.

Marketing creates consumer pull – we didn’t particularly ask for cameras in our mobile phones – but now we all have them. The mainstream consumer isn’t demanding (yet) a low carbon world. Can marketing create the consumer pull that saves the day?

As long ago as 2003, Forum for the Future was trying to engage the marketing community in the challenge and opportunity that is sustainable development. We had two notable successes in the shape of Unilever and Centrica, but on the whole we failed to engage marketing directors with our idea. (We called it Limited Edition, which in hindsight, may have been completely the wrong name).

Limited Edition remained very limited for three big reasons: back in 2003 the term ‘sustainable consumption’ had absolutely no traction and was seen as the anathema of economic growth; sustainability was seen as the opposite of desirable (and reserved solely for sandal-wearing deep greens – we were a long way from eco-chic); and finally, green purchasing was still the hunting ground of a few global green watchdogs.

But 2009 is a different story. We have carbon labels on everyday goods, we have seen the rise of the ‘make it easy for me to be green’ consumer, and we also know that there are hard limits to traditional business models that rely on unlimited access to resources, be these of the natural or credit variety.

This all means that right now we have an amazing opportunity to unleash marketing in the pursuit of sustainable consumption. The sustainable choice needs to be the easy choice, with sustainability credentials mainstreamed into everyday products and services.

In order to try and seize this opportunity, on June 16th we're launching the Sustainable Brand Leadership Group, a new initiative hosted by the Forum and developed by a group of marketing professionals. The idea is to convene a group of leading consumer-facing brands, who commission a team of planners to unearth the best practice on behaviour change, and develop propositions for sustainable lifestyles. Ultimately, our aim is to use the project as a platform for collaboration between the participating brands for innovation of new products and services for sustainable lifestyles.

I really believe that marketing could help redefine our notion of value and desirability. Value has to be more than price – among other things it should also be about product origin and efficiency of use. By making the old and slightly battered as desirable as the shiny and new, marketing could help move us away from our current throwaway culture.

Ultimately, marketing, through everyday brands that touch most of us, has a critical role in helping us consume more sustainably. In the short term, clever marketing could help embed the current recessionary, more sustainable behaviours. Marketing could help us love our leftovers and our allotments forever.

In the long term, by connecting the consumer with the sustainability and climate change agenda, marketing could drive the development of lower carbon goods and services, helping everyone consume differently, and hopefully, more sustainably.

So, all you marketing geniuses out there – are you ready?

MPs, mansions and mandates

Helen Clarkson — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:36:06 +0100

Bath plugs, mock-Tudor beams, dog food, light bulbs… have last week’s newspaper headlines reminded anyone else of the conveyor belt from the Generation Game?

It’s been a succession of ever more improbable items floating past leaving the impression of a multitude of things, but when the music stops you’re hazy on the details. In this particular game, though, what matters in the end isn’t the individual items, it’s the overall implication for politics and governance.

It’s easy to get caught up in the (fascinating and sordid) details of who spent how much on what, to be insulted by the sheer cheek of it all – first that MPs (and no, not all of them, but it does seem like many) claimed for things they weren’t entitled to, and secondly that they think paying it back somehow makes it all ok.

But it’s the bigger picture that matters.

First the bankers with their bonuses and their pensions, now the MPs with their hands in the expenses drawer - could the inequalities in our society be better illustrated than by an MP paying back a cheque of higher value than the mean UK annual salary?

Over the last six months it’s felt like we’ve never been further from having a “strong, healthy and just society”, one of the core objectives of the government’s sustainable development framework.

Underpinning those core objectives are the supporting principles: using sound science responsibly, achieving a sustainable economy and promoting good governance. Good governance is what’s at stake here.

With all the main parties implicated in the expenses scandal we should look beyond our current government and party politics, and question how we are governed and the implications that has for our society.

What this scandal has highlighted more than anything else is the huge disconnect between the elected and the electorate: it’s more than just that MPs have committed these errors, it’s that they don’t fully understand why the public is so shocked; that they appear to think paying it back makes it ok, and that the test they have failed is not “is this right or wrong?” but “how does this look?”

In this sense the expenses scandal is the tip of an iceberg, a visible sign of the loss of trust in MPs and our political system. Falling voter turnout is another clear indicator of disillusionment. Turnout in general elections ranged from between 72% to 83% in the post-war years until 1997, then fell to a low of 59% in 2001 and 61% in 2005.

This current scandal won’t be solved by holding a general election - because with all the parties implicated who do you vote for? - and there’s a real democratic concern about just how low the turnout can fall. Meanwhile, with the mainstream parties all tarnished, the spectre is looming of a big vote for the BNP in the European Parliament elections on 4 June.

Under ‘good governance’ in the sustainable development framework the government talks about “Actively promoting effective, participative systems of governance, in all levels of society”. This seems like a good starting point for a solution.

We need a radical overhaul of our democratic system to encourage voter participation and to make MPs more connected with their local community than just via their second home. Most importantly – we need to make people feel connected with those who govern them, and to make them feel that they have a stake in politics, and make them want to vote. There are countries in the world, which do this better than us, let’s learn from them.

Nothing is certain in politics, but you wouldn’t bet on Gordon Brown having a long political future from here. He’s still got time to get something right, though, and go down in history for achieving something, which creates lasting change. That’s much more than fiddling around with some rules on what expenses are allowable or not – it’s about radically overhauling the system, and reconnecting with the people who live in this country, not just wiping the egg off the faces of the people who currently run it.