Category Archives: greentech

Business need for reduced costs drives Cleantech demand

Posted on 26/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

New research from audit specialist Grant Thornton has highlighted the change drivers behind the growing demand for cleantech products to reduce business costs.

Grant Thornton’s third annual International Business Report (IBR) report on the global cleantech industry shows that in general the adoption of cleantech products and practices is motivated by the commercial need to reduce costs and increase profits. It is no longer about being ‘green’.

For example, despite short-term fluctuations, the trend for key commodity prices continues upwards for example, Brent Crude oil recently rose back above US$120 a barrel. The outlook for nuclear energy is unclear following the Fukushima disaster – Germany, for example, has opted for the renewables route – and partly due to this uncertainty, cleantech is emerging as a suitable alternative source of energy or a means of reducing  consumption of expensive resources.

Over half of the business practitioners surveyed for the IBR who choose cleantech options do so to reduce their costs (52%); with 45% making the choice as a way to increase profitability. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) requirements and environmental concerns also remain important, but are not the main reason for adoption.

This increasing maturity of the sector is filtering through to expectations of cleantech business for the year ahead creating a bullish outlook for 2012.

Compared with companies in other sectors, the Grant Thornton report suggests that privately held businesses in the cleantech sector are now among the most confident enterprises in the world when it comes to future prosperity, far outpacing the optimism found in most global industries – and with good reason.

64% of cleantech businesses interviewed expect revenue to increase this year, up from 54% the previous year. 64% of respondents also expect higher profitability this year compared to 42% in 2011.  Cleantech providers currently see the greatest demand from the developed economies of Europe (51%), and US and Canada (39%).

Nathan Goode, head of energy, environment and sustainability at Grant Thornton UK said: “Interest in cleantech is no longer just about environmental concerns, it’s about whether it offers solutions that can boost the financial performance of companies. What we’re seeing is the potential for these technologies to compete with traditional forms of energy and the expectation that over time, they should.

“Governmental support remains key in many sectors and jurisdictions for cleantech to be successful, and fluctuations in this support are causing short term volatility for the cleantech arena. The mood of optimism in the sector appears to be driven by fundamental trends and reflected in broader indicators such as oil prices.

“Cleantech is a sector on the road to commercialisation but it is not necessarily all the way there yet. We’re at a stage now where the value proposition for cleantech is to save money and consequently demand for cleantech is set to increase meaning we could be on the cusp of something very big indeed.”

Cleantech and IT

The Grant Thornton report demonstrates how the cleantech sector is in transition. There are more companies involved in R&D (42%) and IT (29%) than in previous years (31% and 22% respectively).

Goode said: “Judging by this analysis, cleantech appears to have parallels with the biotech industry in that R&D is being used to explore new concepts and applications for existing technologies. As a result, R&D and IT is receiving greater focus as companies exploit advances in areas such as storage and smart grid technologies. In addition, the sector is adopting a broader base on which to apply its learning, putting greater focus on areas such as waste and water.”

In contrast, manufacturing activity has become relatively more subdued. The number of businesses citing involvement in manufacturing of energy efficient products has decreased over the past year from 26% in the 2012 survey to 19% in 2011, although manufacturing of products for cleantech energy generation has increased marginally to 17%, up from 14% the previous year.

There could be a number of reasons for this, but the Grant Thornton report stresses that the issue of capital constraint represents a big challenge for the sector and as a result, governments.

Goode added: “Manufacturing items such as wind turbines and waste processing plants is an incredibly capital intensive business.  However, what we’re seeing is a slowing in the pace of growth as a result of constraints on raising capital.  This continues to be an issue, especially in European economies where credit is constrained.

“Governments must be mindful of acting as a brake on investment, as it will quickly become a barrier to achieving carbon reduction targets and the desire to supply businesses and households with alternative supplies of energy – and at a time when it’s really starting to compete.”

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, cleantech, Climate Change, cost reduction, CSR, energy change, energy efficiency, environmental, Green IT, greentech, sustainability

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Winds of energy change blow through Germany and China

Posted on 24/04/2012 | 1 comment

By David Bicknell

Change in government priorities and policies can drive structural change that generates significant investment and growth. That is now particularly the case in energy production projects in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.

From this article on Business Green, it appears that Germany  is set for a significant investment in wind power with the setting up of a number of offshore wind farms with new hydroelectric power plants in the offing too.

German energy companies and investors are ready to plough up to €60bn into overhauling the country’s power infrastructure, following the government’s pledge to phase out nuclear reactors.

The energy and water industry association BDEW issued a report on the first day of the Hanover industrial fair revealing that plans are underway to build or modernise 84 power stations with a combined capacity of 42GW.

As Business Green says, the report also provides one of the most detailed insights to date on how the German energy sector plans to cope with the government’s commitment to phase out nuclear capacity in the country post-Fukushima.

Another recent article shows that China is making similar investments in wind energy, spending the equivalent of £4bn in the North-Western Gansu region.

As Jonathan Watts reports, “Wind turbines, which were almost unknown five years ago, stretch into the distance, competing only with far mountains and new pylons for space on the horizon. Jiuquan alone now has the capacity to generate 6GW of wind energy – roughly equivalent to that of the whole UK. The plan is to more than triple that by 2015, when this area could become the biggest wind farm in the world.

“Although it is the world’s biggest CO2 emitter and notorious for building the equivalent of a 400MW coal-fired power station every three days, it is also erecting 36 wind turbines a day and building a robust new electricity grid to send this power thousands of miles across the country from the deserts of the west to the cities of the east.

“It is part of a long-term plan to supply 15 per cent of the country’s energy from renewable sources by 2020. Most of that will come from nuclear and hydropower, but the government is also tapping the wind and solar potential of the deserts, mountain plateaus and coastlines.”

Meanwhile, Britain could pump £13bn into the economy and create up to 10,000 jobs by upgrading its power distribution network with smart grid technology, according to a Reuters report.

The technology has the potential to transform the way electricity is generated, distributed and consumed just as the Internet transformed the way the world communicates.

The idea is to create a communication network to maximise efficiency in supply and demand and to cut costs for homes and businesses.

Related Reading

UK smart grid could create jobs, help economy

1 Comment

Posted in Climate Change, energy change, government, Green IT, greentech, project management, sustainability

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Government to invest £1bn in carbon capture and storage technology

Posted on 03/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

The government is to commit more than £1bn of public funds to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology with the prospect of generating an industry with 100,000 jobs.

It follows  the publication of plans yesterday to create a government-sponsored competition to design the first workable demonstration project.

CCS uses technology to capture carbon dioxide from power plants and store it permanently underground. Such a move, it is said, will help meet climate change targets.

The government has also published the first UK CCS Roadmap which it says sets out the steps that the Government is taking to develop a new world-leading CCS industry in the 2020s. The Roadmap includes:

  • The competition, the ‘CCS Commercialisation Programme’, to drive down costs by supporting practical experience in the design, construction and operation of commercial scale CCS with £1bn capital funding, and additional support, subject to affordability, through low carbon Contracts for Difference;
  • £125m funding for Research and Development, including a new £13m UK CCS Research Centre;
  • Planned long term Contracts for Difference through Electricity Market Reforms to drive investment in commercial scale CCS in the 2020s and beyond;
  • Commitments to working with industry to address other important areas including developing skills and the supply chain, storage and assisting the development of CCS infrastructure

Here is the Guardian’s view on the story

UK CCS Commercialisation Programmme

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, Climate Change, energy efficiency, environmental, Green IT, greentech

Tagged , , , ,

How a Dutch SME is helping make software energy efficient

Posted on 02/03/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

It may take a little time, but in the future organisations will be able to track the energy efficiency of their software and know how much it is costing them to run.

It follows an idea developed by a Dutch SME that specialises in the quality of software. Amsterdam-based Software Improvement Group (SIG) has partnered with the nearby Hogeschool van Amsterdam (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences)  to create the Software Energy Footprint Lab (SEFLab).

SEFLab is now setting out to establish how the quality of organisations’ software code affects their energy consumption. The work will couple SIG’s knowledge and expertise in software monitoring  with the enthusiasm and technical expertise of the local university students.

Campaign4Change asked Dr Joost Visser, SIG’s Head of Research how it is going about tackling the energy efficiency of software, and what elements of the problem it needs to examine.

Joost Visser: There are basically two types of this problem that you can break this down and look into. One is across the software lifecycle. So just as with software defects where the later you find them the more expensive they are, so with energy efficiency, if you try to optimise your software once it’s already in production, you may have to make an explicit investment that might not provide an adequate payback. But if you already know what requirements you need to keep in mind at the design stage for energy efficiency, then, for example, you might actually choose a different communication protocol which can improve your efficiency. At each of the development process, there are things to do: in requirements, in the coding and in the testing.

Another issue is the hierarchical level of software. The thing you might see as the consumer is the application. But actually that’s not the first level that impacts energy efficiency. The first level is the user themselves. In a car, the person that is actually touching the accelerator has a lot of influence on how much fuel you would use. To reduce your fuel usage, you may need to change your (driving) behaviour. The same thing applies with users of software. If they know what the consequences are of clicking here and searching there, they might behave slightly differently and it might have an impact on energy efficiency. If you give people feedback, they will behave differently.

C4C: What sort of user feedback have you had?

JV: We did a survey around 9 months ago where we asked a lot of users about these types of things and the overwhelming conclusion of that survey was that, ‘Yes, we would like to change our behaviour but at the moment we have nothing to go on. We don’t know how to make that change.’

There is a premium on green products. People want to be green – but they have to be able to make a meaningful choice. There are various elements to consider. First there is the application layer. Then we have the various components from which the software application is built: a database; a runtime environment framework, and Java as a virtual machine. Then underneath there’s the operating system. Microsoft has made a big effort in its operating system to take energy efficiency into account but I think there are many more steps to be made there. Then there is communication. You have to think about your mobile device uses radio to communicate when you’re browsing. You may have to make an explicit switch to a Wi-Fi network which might be more energy efficient. Is it more energy efficient than 3G? We don’t know yet. That is one of the things we’re going to find out.

C4C: One of the areas that many organisations are talking about is the impact of consumerisation and the use of touch devices creating a new user interface that organisations’ applications will have to be rewritten for. What does than mean from an energy efficiency perspective?

JV: One of the very very real challenges now is that we want to go to those new devices with mobile strategies but time to market dictates how we think about energy efficiency. So you might choose to do develop once on different devices but on many devices, there’s no accounting for the energy consumption. You might go to HTML5, for instance, but it might consume much more energy than when you create a native application. I think by making the choices visible, we will enable people to choose. We will take away the time-to-market issue and people will be able to say,’ OK, we can have this a couple of weeks later and still make things provably more energy efficient’, which consumers will appreciate.

C4C: Will we get to a stage where the consumer will think about the energy efficiency, or are they really only going to be thinking about the coolness of the product i.e. I want an iPad and I don’t really care what the energy efficiency is?

JV: Let’s be realistic about this. Consumers want to get hold of new things. They’re right – they’re consumers. So the coolness of the device has to incorporate the energy efficiency. It’s a lifestyle product. If you offer that, they’ll want it.

C4C: But in the corporate world previously, the IT department would buy the product. Now the user, the consumer, is buying the product and he or she wants a cool devices and they don’t really know about the energy efficiency side of things.

JV: If you compare it to other types of products, fridges, for instance, suppliers do compete on energy efficiency. They all want to be rated A, and that’s partly to do with regulation and partly to do with the demands of the customer. But an essential thing to make that work is that there is a measurement, a consumable rating, that’s meaningful. And now with software, we are developing the science behind it.

Is it about green hardware? Or is it using an energy efficient battery? Or just using a bigger battery? It gives you as a consumer the incentive to use it.  There is also the recycling of the batteries to be taken into account, of course.

C4C: Going back to the way the user is using the software. If you take the car analogy, ultimately there is a cost for you if you’re not driving efficiently. How do we portray those costs in terms of energy efficiency of software?

JV: Maybe you should get feedback about your consumption, not in terms of the litre of fuel you used, but in terms of euros. You want to make that last step. Similarly in software there is a lot of knowledge about CPU cycles and megabytes. But in the end you want to know what is the calorific value of what you’re doing. And that has to be put into some perspective.

C4C: If you were to take it to the nth degree, would you be able to get an idea of how much electricity or energy you had used in your browsing session?

JV: If you keep all your tabs open, do you as a user know if that has any impact, or is that negligible? If you knew it was consuming energy, maybe you’d take the trouble of closing them because it has value for you. Energy consumption goes further than simply your own device. If you’re browsing, you’re pulling information in, and the server starts doing things for you and data starts being generated. It might be stored, consuming energy, for the next 50 years. And it makes a difference how it gets archived or stored. All of this has to be made simple for the consumer to comprehend. Then there’s the organisational side, those organisations that have bespoke software built for them.

They might be interested in ‘green’ from the idealistic point of view. Their clients are interested too and they want to be socially responsible. But those organisations are also very much interested in the cost aspect. Energy costs are rising and it’s not just costs, but scarcity too. If more work implies more energy, at some point you may not be able to get it as easily as before. Either you will get it back in higher energy costs or it just won’t be there.

C4C: Is there any way you can create a benchmark or figure that talks about how much inefficient software usage can cost?

JV: Not yet. For data centre efficiency, there is the PUE. It has lots of drawbacks as well. But is has had a good impact and made choices more clear. We are working on it. We have some development of KPIs. But it’s hard. There’s a real research challenge here. One reason is the mapping of software applications to hardware. It’s not one to one. We may have one software application running on many pieces of hardware and due to virtualisation and other techniques, we have many applications running on the same hardware. With the hardware you can map how much energy goes through it. But how do you map that to the consumer of the energy i.e. the software? That’s a very difficult puzzle.

Another thing is that we’d all like to have a benchmark. To have a benchmark, you need comparable things. But think about it. You have online payments for a bank versus using a browser. The type of work you do with the software, the user transactions, so to speak, is completely different.  If one consumes a certain amount of energy and the other consumes double that, what does that mean? Does that mean the one that consumes more is worse? Not necessarily. It may simply be doing more work. So we have to develop KPIs that allow meaningful comparison. One suggestion is to how much energy per function point. That sounds good, but actually it’s completely wrong, because a function point is about functional size and how many features you offer.  Yet it doesn’t have anything about the workload in it. You have to involve the workload into the KPI otherwise it cannot work.

Now workload is something that’s completely different between different vendors and operations systems and end users. Comparing an operating system to an end user application will not work. That’s why we’re trying to build these up through the lab.

C4C: You could end up having two years of discussions between vendors over what would be an appropriate standard for energy efficient software, couldn’t you?

JV: The way to make these protracted processes shorter is to have people with lots of initiative who just go for it in their own sphere of influence, and show that it can be done, and create a reality that others can follow. International standardisation processes take a long time, but you shouldn’t wait for it. You should go for it.

Links

Software Energy Footprint Lab

8 ways to make your software more energy efficient

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, Climate Change, energy efficiency, greentech, sustainability, virtualisation

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

CRC (Carbon Reduction Commitment) league table now expected in November

Posted on 28/10/2011 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

It seems that the league table associated with the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) energy efficiency scheme is now expected to be published in November.

This blog post on Local Energy suggests that a November date is expected. That could mean the table will be out next week or alternatively,  it may still be a month away.

Local Energy quoted Carl Sweeney the Operations Manager of the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme at the Environment Agency, saying:

“At this time, we anticipate that the PLT will be published in November. We have agreed with DECC that we will notify participants of the publication date one week before release. There is much ongoing work in the background to review and produce the PLT as accurate as possible, so at this stage I can’t be more specific as something unexpected could delay us.”

Third parties familiar with the situation say that the Environment Agency is getting ‘a lot of calls’ on when the table will be published. 

What does the league table mean? The Carbon Trust, a not-for-profit company that provides specialist support to help business and the public sector cut carbon emissions, puts it like this:

“A publicly available CRC performance league table will show how each participant is performing compared to others in the scheme. If your organisation is a good carbon performer, the league table will help give a significant boost to your organisation’s reputation, demonstrating its success in cutting emissions. Please note, however, that because of the changes announced in October 2010, there is likely to be no direct financial benefit under the CRC from an improved position in the league table.Your organisation’s league table position each year will be determined by performance in three metrics:

  • Early action metric: 50% of your score is based on what percentage of your organisation’s electricity and gas supplies is covered by voluntary automatic meter readings (AMR) in the year to 31 March 2011. The other half is based on the proportion of your CRC emissions certified under the Carbon Trust Standard or an equivalent scheme. Visit www.carbontruststandard.com to find out about achieving the Carbon Trust Standard.
  • Absolute metric: The percentage change in your organisation’s emissions, compared to the average of the previous five years (or number of years available until 2014/15).
  • Growth metric: the percentage change in emissions per unit turnover, compared to the average of the previous five years (or number of years available until 2014/15).

The weighting of these three metrics will change over time. In the first year, early action will count for 100% of your organisation’s league table score. Over the first few years of the scheme, the early action metric will gradually fade in importance until the absolute and growth metrics receive 75% and 25% weightings respectively in 2014/15 and thereafter.

As the Carbon Trust points out, if an organisation is a good carbon performer, the league table will boost its reputation, though there will be no direct financial benefit under the CRC from an improved position in the league table.

However, when the results come out, you can well imagine a few marketing departments either keen to trumpet their organisation’s performance or, conversely, trying to shore up their company’s ‘green’ reputation.

See later story: Environment Agency publishes CRC league table

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, Climate Change, energy efficiency, greentech, sustainability

Tagged , , , ,

Why the public sector must stop buying printers

Posted on 04/10/2011 | 1 comment

In the first in a series of Campaign4Change guest insights, Tracey Rawling Church, Director of Brand and Reputation at Kyocera Mita UK explains what steps the public sector needs to take to transform its procurement of printers and make its ITTs more cost efficient and low-carbon friendly

To cut its costs and carbon emissions, the public sector should stop buying printers. That may seem a ridiculous statement, coming from an imaging company executive, but actually there’s a serious point here. Most ITTs are written around a notional product – calling for a certain number of machines of a certain specification. And the tender process is quite rigid, so companies invited to tender are forced to propose a solution that fits the criteria in the ITT.

But in many organisations, the number of devices has crept up over time and device to user ratios are unnecessarily high – so replacing machines on a one-for-one basis only perpetuates a system that has become bloated and inefficient.

Sometimes the decision is made to consolidate devices, replacing desktop printers with shared multifunctional devices and an ITT is written on that basis, but to achieve real efficiencies that could reduce costs by typically 30% and carbon by as much as half, a detailed print audit should be undertaken to determine precisely what hardware is needed at which locations to support business processes.

However, even this approach misses the opportunity to obtain a solution that is properly optimised not just at the point of implementation, but into the future.

In the private sector, there is a growing trend towards managed document services, a holistic approach that encompasses every aspect of the printing and imaging needs of an organisation.

A managed document service project begins with a detailed audit of both the machines currently in place and the document flows through and within the organisation. Then a solution is designed that aims to reduce reliance on hard copy by combining document management software with a fleet of machines that have exactly the right functionality to support the document flow.

In most cases, this results in a much smaller number of devices, usually with more extensive functionality than those they replace. A bespoke service contract is crafted that includes remote monitoring of device states, service support to agreed service levels and detailed reporting of device use that can be segmented and analysed in a myriad of ways. And using the business intelligence gained from the reporting suite, the service can be continuously optimised to ensure it remains efficient, accommodating changes in the organisation over time.

For example, the managed document solution provided for insurance giant RSA has reduced paper consumption by 21% in just one year – despite the fact that their product depends on having a printed certificate. And energy consumed by imaging devices has been reduced by 55% with resulting savings in both electricity costs and CRC levies.

As you can imagine, this type of service doesn’t fit easily into a device-centric ITT. So vendors who know they could save cash and carbon through applying a managed document service are forced to respond with a ’round peg, square hole’ solution that is less than ideal, simply because the tender process focuses on products rather than outcomes.

Concerns about carbon emissions and resource scarcity are driving the evolution of innovative business models that overturn conventional norms and challenge the status quo. But unless procurement processes keep pace with these changes, the benefits of this fresh thinking won’t be realised.

To really drive through change, let’s have ITTs written by commercial managers and procurement departments that focus on objectives and targets rather than feeds and speeds. Throw down a challenge to reduce paper consumption by x, cut energy use by y% and drive down costs by z and see what the industry comes up with. I guarantee it will deliver solutions that are more resource efficient, productive and economical.

Events: http://www.kyoceramita.co.uk/index/events.html

MDS in the public sector http://www.kyoceramita.co.uk/index/mds/mds_in_the_public.html
RSA case study
For more information on the full results of the latest independent research into printing attitudes and behaviour,  email Tracey Rawling Church: trc@kyoceramita.co.uk

1 Comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, environmental, greentech, printers, procurement, public sector, sustainability

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Letter to No 10 opens up energy prices and climate change policy discussion

Posted on 06/09/2011 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

It seems as if with the party conference season not far off, discussions are taking place around the edge of government over energy policy, which may have some implications down the line as far as business energy costs and climate change legislation are concerned.

It follows a leak to the Daily Telegraph of a note to David Cameron  discussing the impact of energy and climate change policies on energy prices, Although the focus of the letter is on consumer energy prices, it is possible that a wider review may also need to examine the effect of government policies in the form of climate change legislation on businesses.

The letter suggests that four policies stand out as having the most significant impact on household energy bills: carbon pricing (both the carbon price floor and the EU emissions trading scheme), the new Energy Company Obligation, the Electricity Market Reform package and the Renewables Obligation.

The letter goes on to ask whether policies can be opened up, particularly support for relatively high-cost technologies such as offshore wind, in a way that minimises cost and disruption to investment.

It’s possible that, as the Guardian suggests, the leaked letter is part of a sabre-rattling exercise ahead of the conference season. On the other hand, with consumers strapped for cash, energy prices on an ever upwards spiral, and businesses struggling in a stagnant economy, a healthy debate over energy policy is  perhaps not a bad idea, though, as the Guardian headline puts it, that risks pitting fossil fuels against renewable energy.

There is some more background to the story here:

http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/james-blog/2106683/10s-criticism-decc-lacks-credibility-energy-ideas

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2011/sep/05/greenpolitics-energy

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, Climate Change, environmental, greentech, sustainability

Tagged , , , , ,

Engaging with the disengaged on sustainability

Posted on 05/07/2011 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

Sustainability has made it onto the business agenda of most large organisations. Admittedly some organisations treat the sustainability reality more seriously than others:  some will use it as a competitive enabler, or to beef up their brand identity. Others will use it as a means of cutting costs: i.e. ‘talk green, mean lean.’

Whatever their commitment, there are precious few organisations that have not had some discussions about either sustainability in their supply chain, or their corporate social responsibility, or  how they can engage with their customers on green issues.

Sometimes, however, ‘engaging’ is easier said than done. Preaching to the converted is fine – but it’s the unconverted that need to be enlightened. This was the subject of a recent event in Reading hosted by Clarkslegal and organised and moderated by C8 Consulting.

The attendees included Connect Reading, Kyocera Mita, Global Cool Foundation, Locus, Reading Borough Council, Ennismore Partners, The FD Centre, Integral, Jacobs Engineering, Reading Football Club, Graft Thames Valley, CBS Business Interiors, Thames Water and the Campaign4Change.

One of the key topics discussed was the need to find a way of making sustainability desirable. As Global Cool put it, ‘Climate change doesn’t have an awareness problem. But it does have a marketing problem. Almost everyone is aware of the climate issue, but only a minority are changing their lifestyles to reduce carbon. Remember the old adage, “If what you’re doing isn’t working, do something else.”

Companies sell products which are fabulously profitable. But they do it not by talking about profitability, but by showing how cool and desirable the product is. The same must go for sustainability. That means not talking simply about sustainability – because most people aren’t interested – but showing how lifestyles and products which happen to be sustainable, are in the ‘customer’s’ interests.

Another issue discussed is the challenge of getting SMEs engaged on sustainability. The problem is that in today’s economic climate, most SMEs are running around just trying to keep their businesses afloat. Sustainability – or ‘green’ – just doesn’t register. Even the various loans, grants etc available pass them by, because in many cases, they have to spend to get matching grants ‘to save’.

The idea was mooted that maybe SMEs might have more clout – and more interest in what they could save off their energy bills – if they had a bigger voice. One large voice composed of a million smaller voices carries more clout than one single voice. It’s the difference between a choir and a chorister. Perhaps this model for SMEs demands more exploration. For the moment, however, the sustainability – and potentially lower cost – message is being drowned out by the ‘bigger drumbeat’ for the SME –  of customer retention and acquisition – and survival.

More thoughts on this subject to follow.

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, Climate Change, greentech, sustainability

Why CIOs can become corporate sustainability heroes

Posted on 28/06/2011 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

Technology has always been a driver of business change. Indeed it’s been said that the best Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are looking beyond the tactical duties of their  jobs to “enable new business models and help the CEO use technology as a  competitive weapon.” And that certainly applies to the most successful corporate sustainability programmes.

An excellent recent blog post by Heather Clancy on ZDNet recently summed up the challenge – and opportunity – facing CIOs – in both the public and private sectors.

Clancy suggests there are several reasons the CIO should be central to advancing the corporate sustainability cause. She explains them like this:

* IT is the one role within most companies that touches every division. One of the fastest growing software application categories today is  enterprise carbon and energy management. You can think of this sort of like ERP for electricity and greenhouse gas emissions data. I firmly believe that these features will quickly become integrated into the common operational tools use to run companies. That’s because what good is this data if it isn’t considered in context? The only way to get the complete context, of course, is by exposing that information across the company. That’s where the CIO comes in.

* CIOs are used to working across many different divisions in a “dotted line” role. Mark Greenlaw, the former  CIO-turned-sustainability executive for Cognizant, said one big example of this  is the insight that the IT team can bring to facilities managers who are trying to cut the electricity associated with lighting, drive smart building technology investments or address data centre power management issues.

* CIOs know how to CYA. What team outside the legal department has borne the brunt of covering your company’s ass when it comes to  privacy mandates, corporate disclosure rules and other compliance measures? Yes, the IT team. Right now, many companies report their progress toward environmental, diversity and social goals voluntarily, but it is easy to foresee a day when that might become mandatory. There is no way that businesses can get around that challenge without using technology to collection and report that data — on a much more real-time basis.

* CIOs have been programmed to think sustainably. Greenlaw said he has called upon his knowledge of how to pitch large capital projects, a skill he exercised often as CIO, as a means of investigating the technology investments that Cognizant might make to operate more sustainably. Those investments run the gamut from alternative energy technologies such as wind generation to the business value of long-term service agreements to the appropriate lighting retrofit approach.

* Increasingly, the lines between business technology and information technology are blurring. There is probably no bigger potential example of the convergence of purpose-built business technologies and what we have been trained to think of as IT than building management systems. Although building management systems aren’t under the direct control of IT, there are myriad ways information technology can help optimise their performance—and more are emerging every day.

You can read Clancy’s complete piece here.

It’s also worth reading this excellent piece on sustainability heroes by Jo Cofino in the Guardian.

Leave a comment

Posted in Campaign4Change, Climate Change, greentech, sustainability

Tagged , ,

M&S, Ford reports discuss profitability from sustainability, show water usage now a concern

Posted on 20/06/2011 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

I came across an interesting piece regarding the savings Marks & Spencer (M&S) says it is making from its sustainable development initiative, Plan A.

According to this article, initiatives such as being more energy efficient in stores and distribution centres saved £13.5 million last year. It also saved £2 million by using less fuel, £1 million by recycling or reusing clothes hangers, and £11 million on reducing the amount of packaging it uses.

M&S’ total carbon emissions have been reduced by 13%, down by over 90,000 tonnes CO2e from 2006/07 whilst its sales floor footage has continued to grow.

There is a useful story here

You can read more from M&S itself on Plan A progress here

Another familiar name that is reporting on its sustainability initiatives is Ford. It released its annual sustianability report last week, with the highlights being:

* Carbon dioxide emissions for the 2010 model year have been reduced by 10.5 percent for U.S. products and 8.1 percent for European vehicles, when compared with the 2006 model year

* From an operational standpoint, Ford managed a 5.6 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions between 2010 and 2009.

* Ford has set a new goal for facility’s related carbon dioxide emissions: A reduction of 30 percent by 2025 on a per-vehicle basis.

One of its key concerns is around water usage, as this report from Smart Planet makes clear.

You can read Ford’s sustainability report here. There is much detail in a well laid out report, though at first sight, not a lot of references to any notable Green IT or technology developments beyond Ford’s core car business.

Leave a comment

Posted in Climate Change, greentech, sustainability

Tagged , , , , ,