It’s been a while…

…but hopefully I’m back online with this blog from now on.

After a very busy year with Forum for the Future’s Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development I needed a good break. I’m now working as Policy and Research Manager at an education charity, DEA, and have updated the blog to reflect this.

More soon.

Cardinal Wolsey’s advice on how to renew our education system

Be very, very careful what you put into that head because you will never, ever get it out.

So said Cardinal Wolsey sometime in the 16th century. I was reminded of his comment this morning listening to Liz Coleman, Head of Bennington College in the USA, giving one of the awesome series of TED lectures.

Liz made an impassioned plea to develop a new vision of our education system, a subject that is close to my heart because I believe that sustainable education is one of the best opportunities to engender social resilience. She summarised her argument as:

When the impulse is to change the world, the academy is more likely to engender a learned helplessness than to create a sense of empowerment.

Her solution?

Enhancing the public good becomes a primary objective [of education]…Our ways of approaching agency and authority turn inside out, to reflect the reality that no-one has the answers to the challenges facing citizens in this century, and everyone has the responsibility for trying and participating in finding them…When the design [of a revitalised education system] emerged it was surprisingly simple and straightforward. The idea is to make the political and social challenges themselves, from health and education to the uses of force, the organisers of the curriculum…and the point is not to treat these topics as topics of study but as frameworks of action.

A powerful argument (even more so if you watch the video). But take heed of Cardinal Wolsey’s pearl of wisdom. A revitalised education should not, cannot attempt to give students the answers to the major political and social challenges we face. It cannot tell students what to think. Instead it must tell them how to think, giving them the critical analysis, empathy and ability to deal with uncertainty that will allow them to make up their own minds about these challenges (The RSA’s Opening Minds curriculum framework is a great example of this).

So Liz, by all means lets develop a new vision of education fit for the 21st century. But not to make it a tool for indoctrination. We have had enough of that already. We need to develop an education system that creates a generation resistant to indoctrination, and empowered to find collective solutions to meet the challenges we face this century. That would be true social resilience.

Resilience in the carbon markets? Not if the investment banks have their way

Fascinating discussion with the Head of Environmental Sustainability at one of the major investment banks yesterday afternoon (under Chatham House rules).

After discussing the bank’s efforts to increase sustainability within the current economic model, we eventually came to a broad agreement that finance for decarbonisation cannot be ramped up fast enough to combat climate change unless we move away from a ‘profit-at-all-costs’ economic paradigm. Something to chew on…

More interesting for this blog, though, was our discussion of the role of carbon markets. We initially agreed that a carbon market is essential to leverage finance for low-carbon development to enhance social resilience. However, a carbon market will only provide this function if there is a credible carbon price i.e. one that will not fluctuate wildly, creating an uncertain investment environment.

My contention is that speculation over the carbon price undermines that credibility, because it moves the price away from the market fundamentals, often on the basis of herd behaviour rather than market intelligence. This is what happened in the housing market in previous years, and it reduces the resilience of the economy.

I therefore put it to the bank’s representative that speculation in carbon markets must be curbed in order to make the markets effective. He disagreed, arguing that without speculation the market would die. But in so doing he presented this argument as a false dichotomy; there is a case for curbing speculation in markets, rather than eliminating it altogether. Such speculation may be curbed through a tax equivalent to a Tobin tax on carbon transactions. This would bring stability to the carbon markets, providing a more certain investment environment for low-carbon technologies.

The fact that, despite what we’ve learnt about dysfunctional markets in the past year or two, the Head of Environmental Sustainability at one of the major investment banks is still arguing within the old, discredited economic paradigm, is somewhat depressing. Broadly characterised, he provided an honest and accurate assessment of how much can be achieved within the current, profit-led market system.

But this isn’t going to be enough to keep the risk of going medieval to an acceptable level. Logically, therefore, we need to find an alternative market system. More on one of the alternatives soon…

Protect us, but don’t nudge us: the Government’s role in building social resilience

The Government’s role in building social resilience is a particularly thorny issue, particularly while our politicians are viewed with such contempt. Frankly, the government going any further in telling me what I can and can’t do is a bit terrifying. Which is why I am suspicious of David Cameron’s desire to decide what is best for us, and then nudge us in that direction, like a dog herding passive sheep.

But at the same time, the financial crash has shown us how a lack of government oversight of our economic decisions (such as the conditions under which we can buy a mortgage) has left us with dangerously little economic resilience. Better oversight of social and environmental decisions is badly needed if we are to prevent an ecological crash even deeper than the financial crash. Is there a way around this apparent contradiction?

Why we need a new public acceptance of risk

So I was in a discussion today with Jonathon Porritt, who can only be described as the godfather of sustainability (calling him the daddy sounds a little too much like he’s a figure from those wrestling programmes that were all the rage when I was a kid – WWF – does that even still run?)

JP, as he’s affectionately known within Forum for the Future, was feeling a little pessimistic. He succumbed somewhat to the Jim Lovelock line that its too late to stop climate change, that there’s nothing we can do and that we need to prepare to go medieval. Well, he didn’t go quite that far, but you know what I mean.

It seemed a good opportunity to explore this idea of social resilience. So I asked him to assume that it IS too late – what should we do to make the grand downturn as pleasant as possible?

Voluntary carbon markets double in size, but ‘buyer beware’ still holds true

Originally written for the FT:

The voluntary carbon offset market doubled in size between 2007 and 2008 to $750m, according to a report (PDF) from New Carbon Finance and Ecosystems Marketplace, confirms that 123 million tonnes of carbon credits were bought and sold last year around the world. This is more than double the 2007 figures, of 65 million tonnes, worth $331 million. The average price for voluntary offset credits rose 20% to $7.34/tCO2 equivalent.

This is good news, of sorts. But the voluntary market is by far the smallest part of the carbon markets; in contrast the EU emissions trading scheme was worth $95bn in 2008. And, as the FT has previously reported, the voluntary market is the least well regulated, with offsets of very variable quality being sold in the past.

However quality does appear to be improving – New Carbon Finance and Ecosystem Marketplace emphasise that “more than 96% of offset credits were verified to a thirdparty standard in 2008.”

Related links:

Beware the carbon offsetting cowboys (FT, 25/04/07)
Guide to good carbon offsetting (FT, 25/04/07)

Throwing out the myths: the realities of recycling

Originally written for the FT:

The Government’s Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has been coming to the defence of recycling recently, addressing three key myths that have been circulating in the press.

Myth 1: Collecting and transporting recycling is bad for the environment as it causes CO2 emissions.

According to Dr Liz Goodwin, WRAP’s chief executive, this greatly overstates the emissions associated with transportation. “The impact of collecting and transporting is a tiny fraction of CO2 emissions, equivalent to 0.04 tonnes per tonne of recycled material.”

Dr Goodwin adds: “Current levels of recycling in the UK save 18 million tonnes of CO2 per year. This is equivalent to flying the population of Northern Ireland to Australia and back twice.”

Myth 2: Recycling is a waste of time – there are better alternatives such as burning waste.

This is not true either, apparently. For all combustible materials except wood, more energy is saved by recycling than is recovered by incineration. WRAP’s figures show that burning plastic recovers between 5 and 12 MJ energy, compared to 100MJ required to make the plastic in the first place, and 12-20 MJ saved by recycling the plastic. For paper and card, the energy saved by recycling is double that recovered by incineration.

Dr Goodwin comments: “There is a role for energy-from-waste, but it should not be the starting point – we should be trying to recycle as much as we can before burning.”

Myth 3: There is no benefit to recycling if it goes abroad

Again, the transport of recycling is relatively unimportant here, according to WRAP. “The emissions caused by transporting materials amounts to less than a third of the emissions saved” even if the material is sent to China.

For example, Craig Simmons of Best Foot Forward, a carbon footprinting consultancy, highlights that recycling a tonne of glass saves over 300kg of CO2, and that “the difference between exporting to Europe or the Far East is only 30kgCO2/tonne”, or a tenth of the overall carbon saving.

So recycling makes carbon sense, then. But in discussing these figures, WRAP also dispelled a further myth:

Myth 4: Recycling reduces the UK’s carbon emissions.

It doesn’t, unfortunately, because of the system of national carbon accounts that countries currently use to calculate their emissions.

To illustrate this point, Dr Goodwin uses the example of a tonne of aluminium, manufactured in South America. Using virgin materials releases 11 tonnes of CO2 in the manufacturing process, whereas recycling the aluminium only releases two tonnes. That’s a nine tonne saving for a tonne of aluminium. “The problem is that the CO2 accounting system is national not global, so that the nine tonnes are orphaned tonnes.”

The concept of ‘orphaned tonnes’ needs a bit of explaining. The UK’s emissions will actually rise by two tonnes if the aluminium is recycled domestically, and the primary producer of aluminium (Brazil, say) will not record an emissions reduction because they have not produced the recycled aluminium at all. So the nine tonnes of saved CO2 will be ‘orphaned’, not counting towards any country’s carbon reduction targets.

(It must be noted, however, that Brazil’s emissions will be 11 tonnes lower than if the aluminium had not been recycled because, presumably, the UK will buy a tonne less aluminium from Brazilian producers.)

All this means that, from the UK’s perspective, recycling contributes little to carbon reduction targets, because the UK imports so much of its raw materials. Perhaps the plight of orphaned tonnes will twinge policymakers’ heartstrings and lead to a reform of the carbon accounting systems to remove such anomalies?

Price surge for recyclable materials should encourage more efficient energy from waste

Originally written for the FT:

As reported in the FT over the weekend, the price of waste in the UK has surged this year. Good news for recycling, but what about the energy from waste (EfW) sector?

Higher prices for recyclable materials should reduce the volume of waste that is incinerated. On the other hand the higher value of specific materials is likely to encourage the more effective sorting of waste, which in turn will encourage more efficient EfW technologies such as anaerobic digestion to flourish.

Creating energy from waste remains controversial, because the energy is usually extracted by incineration. Environmental groups tend to oppose incineration because of the harmful dioxins that are emitted into the atmosphere during combustion, as well as the resulting fly ash, which in some cases qualifies as hazardous waste.

An alternative EfW technology is anaerobic digestion of food and other organic wastes, from which it is estimated that 1.45 TWh electricity could be generated in the UK. Anaerobic digestion avoids some of the environmental problems associated with incineration.

However, anaerobic digestion requires that biodegradeable waste is separated from other wastes (for example through household food collections) – a mixed bag of rubbish cannot be treated using this technology.

Higher prices for recyclable materials encourages the separation of waste, particularly because high quality recovered material (with few impurities) commands a price premium. In turn this means the barriers to anaerobic digestion are reduced, making it a relatively more attractive EfW technology in comparison to incineration.

Based on this analysis, the increase in prices for recyclable materials sends the right market signals. Because some types of waste have a high economic value it encourages the sorting of waste. This allows recyclable materials to be recycled, and biodegradeable materials to undergo anaerobic digestion. A much lower volume of residual wastes can then be either incinerated or sent to landfill.

Replaceable batteries: Pipe-dream or the future for electric cars?

Originally written for the FT:

In the race to develop a low-carbon replacement to the internal combustion engine, the electric car has always had something of a handicap. Whilst we are used to refilling petrol engines in a minute or two, the standard time to charge a car-sized lithium-ion battery is 8-10 hours (reports of a 10-minute charge time seem a little far-fetched).

Hence the excitement about Better Place’s battery-switch technology, unveiled last week in Japan. The Silicon Valley startup has developed a $500,000 prototype ’shuttle’, which can remove a dead battery and have the car back on the road with a fresh one in around 80 seconds, without anyone needing to get out of the car at all.

This would greatly increase the usability of electric cars, but raises at least two further challenges.

The first is that Better Place’s vision needs a dense infrastructure of ‘Switch Stations’, creating a chicken-and-egg scenario whereby the technology can’t take off until the infrastructure is in place, but there is no incentive to develop the infrastructure until the technology has been widely adopted. This negates one of the great advantages that electric cars have over, say, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.

The second difficulty is that for the technology to work the auto industry would need to standardise the batteries they use for the next generation of vehicles; something akin to putting the same engine in a hatchback and a sports car. Wired is sceptical, apparently based on comments from two leading automakers.

Resistance from the auto industry shouldn’t come as a surprise. At around $10,000, batteries are a significant portion of an electric car’s value, and Better Place’s business model would require a consumer to rent the batteries, rather than purchase them along with the car. By implication, the manufacturer is selling a less valuable product.

This may be overstating the problem, however. As production ramps up, the price of a battery is likely to fall dramatically – some analysts predict a drop of two-thirds by 2010-11. It is also easy to imagine a small number of battery makers becoming dominant, with swap stations offering each type of battery – much like fuel stations currently offering three or four types of fuel.

Lastly, the auto industry is in such a poor state at present that standardisation of battery technology may be a small price to pay to access what could soon be a swiftly growing market.

Waste outshines gold as prices surge

Originally written for the FT:

It has become the latest – and perhaps most unlikely – sector to nourish the green shoots of economic recovery: the price of recyclable rubbish has doubled since November, outperforming traditional commodities.

Prices for plastic and paper have surged from a dramatic crash last year. Languishing at £19 per tonne of material in November 2008, cardboard has trebled to a price of £59 per tonne in May 2009, above the 2004-08 average price of £53 per tonne. PET plastic, used in drinks bottles, has risen almost as strongly, more than doubling from £75 per tonne in November to £195 per tonne in May, well above the long-term average of £156 per tonne.

In comparison, the price of gold has risen by 14 per cent, crude oil by 16 per cent and the FTSE 100 by less than 2 per cent in the same time period. And with the incentives in favour of recycling presented by the government’s landfill tax, it is no surprise that Nigel Aitchison of Foresight, the venture capitalists, considers the waste management sector a “timely place” to invest.

Once considered plain old rubbish, commercial and municipal waste is now a valuable global commodity. The UK recycling sector is worth £12bn, and the government’s Waste and Resources Action Programme predicts it will expand to £20-30bn by 2025.

But the sector has been hit hard by the collapse in commodity prices worldwide.

“It’s been a bit of a white-knuckle ride in the past few months,” said Ian Wakelin, chief executive of Greenstar UK, a recycling and waste management company. “You woke up one morning and prices for recycling had collapsed. Demand had just disintegrated.”

“On average, prices dropped 70 to 80 per cent from their peak. We reduced production levels, cut costs by laying people off, and were forced to go back to our customers and put prices up where we could. Then we just had to tough it out.”

The price of recycling tends to track the price of non-recycled commodities closely; if the price of plastic drops, the price of used drinks bottles is likely to drop dramatically.

The remarkably quick recovery can be explained by two factors: the lower volumes currently being traded in the sector, and the resilience of the overseas market for waste.

“Prices are increasing because volumes are down by around 40 per cent on last year,” said George Broom, owner and general manager of Environmental Support Services, a commercial cleaning and recycling services company. “The crash has taken some of the players out of the market.”