Springboard for action

It is often said that Britain is excellent at coming up with new ideas and inventions, but much less good at translating them into businesses or products.

Ron Oxburgh sees how today’s rapid and profound changes on the energy scene can present a wealth of opportunities for the ingenious entrepreneur.

In order to tackle climate change, we have to change our thinking about energy, and reduce the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that we release into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel. The problem is that for more than a hundred years the developed countries have been evolving against a background of low fossil fuel prices – this means that for most of us, and for most of industry, fuel efficiency and fuel economy have had a pretty low priority. Regardless of climate change, the rapidly increasing cost of fossil fuels is now having a major effect on the cost structure of transport and industry. More attention is accordingly being given to avoiding waste, and to using as efficiently as possible the energy which we do use. Naturally, this helps with climate change – because the less fossil fuel we use, the less CO2 we emit. Today there are also anxieties about the reliability of imported fuels and a desire to reduce dependence on them.

Unfortunately, although improved efficiency and economy are essential, alone they are not enough to allow us to reach the target of a 60% emissions reduction by 2050, as set by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and adopted by the government. We shall, therefore, have to progressively replace fossil fuels with energy derived from renewable or low-emission sources. All of this amounts to a very profound change in the way we do things and a host of new opportunities. All times of change offer opportunities to the nimble, and threats to the sluggish. Today is no exception. There is now scope for a wide range of new devices and services which a decade ago would have made no economic sense and for which there would have been no demand. Many of the technologies we need in order to achieve change are immature or may not even exist. Another characteristic of times of change is that lateral thinking is at a premium and it may often turn out that an idea or a technology originally developed for some quite different purpose can satisfy a new need. This is the kind of thinking at which we have traditionally been good. Some of the larger opportunities for changing energy use in industry may be difficult for small businesses to address, but that is only part of the problem. A quarter of the UK’s energy consumption is within private homes for heating, cooking, lighting and operating a wide range of appliances – and effective steps to reduce CO2 emissions here will translate into market opportunities for innovative businesses.

Shell has launched its Springboard scheme [see right] to help people to grasp some of these opportunities, and to take the first steps towards turning their ideas into viable businesses or products. We hope the scheme will help discover some individuals or groups who have ideas that might be able to contribute in some way to the global energy transformation that has to come about. We have tried to advertise the scheme as widely as possible and have great hopes – we look forward to their being realised.

Lord Oxburgh is chairman of the UK judging panel, Shell Springboard.

22 September 2005

Ron Oxburgh