Cornwall makes a splash

Posted on February 14, 2012 by msaxton1

The UK’s first Marine Energy Park is to be created in the south west. Cornwall Council and Plymouth City Council have teamed up to commission the work to develop the South West Marine Energy Park, which will give the region a leading role in the development of marine renewable energy.

The South West Marine Energy Park will support job creation by fostering a partnership between local and national government, Local Enterprise Partnerships, technology developers, academia and the industry. It is also hoped that the Park will create a critical mass for attracting investment and accelerating the commercial development of the industry.

Over the past seven years more than £100 million has been invested in the marine energy industry in the south west, creating world-leading research and demonstration facilities. This investment has supported the development of the largest consented area for marine technologies in the world at Cornwall’s Wave Hub, the Fab–Test nursery site at Falmouth, globally–leading research facilities at Plymouth and Exeter universities and the National Composites Centre at Bristol.

At the launch, Energy Minister Greg Barker said: “Marine power has huge potential in the UK not just in contributing to a greener electricity supply and cutting emissions, but in supporting thousands of jobs in a sector worth a possible £15bn to the economy to 2050.”

“The South West Marine Energy Park builds on the region’s unique mix of renewable energy resource and home-grown academic, technical and industrial expertise. The Government will be working closely with the South West MEP Partnership to maximise opportunities and support the Park’s future development’.

InvestinCornwall – Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly’s inward investment service – played an instrumental role. Since its launch in 2004, it has helped over 150 innovative and dynamic businesses move to Cornwall.

Smiles all round for Low Carbon Vehicles

Posted on February 9, 2012 by msaxton1

The commercialisation of fuel cell vehicles took a significant step forward this week through a joint venture between Suzuki Motor Corporation and British company, Intelligent Energy.

The two have cemented an alliance that first started in 2006 by creating a joint venture company called SMILE FC System Corporation to develop and manufacture air-cooled fuel cell systems for a range of industry sectors. The joint venture also includes a non-exclusive license agreement that gives Suzuki access to Intelligent Energy’s class-leading fuel cell technology for its next generation of environmentally friendly fuel cell vehicles. Under the terms of the contract, both companies will take a 50 percent stake in the joint venture.

The agreement arguably represents good value for both parties. It provides Suzuki with cost-effective access to Intelligent Energy’s advanced fuel cell technology through partnering and licensing, thereby avoiding the higher costs associated with in-house development. Intelligent Energy will benefit from Suzuki’s production expertise and the emerging Japanese supply chain to jointly develop the next generation of automotive standard air-cooled fuel cell systems.

The two have a solid track record in working together, which augers well. This includes the development of the Suzuki Burgman Fuel Cell, which received Whole Vehicle Type Approval from the European Union, allowing the scooter to be sold across all EU member states. The cell runs on electricity produced by an air-cooled polymer-electrolyte fuel cell located under the passenger seat and a hydrogen tank located along the bottom of the scooter’s frame. The fuel cell generates electricity, which charges a lithium-ion battery, while producing water as its sole emission. Suzuki claims a range of 217.5 miles at a constant speed of 18.6 mph from the cell with a fully charged battery and a 70 MPa high-pressure hydrogen tank. The cell is expected to enter full production by 2015.

The two companies also collaborated to produce the Suzuki Crosscage concept which was unveiled at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show.

Intelligent Energy technology has been also been used to power a London taxi and the world’s first manned fuel cell aircraft.

Sustainability key for tomorrow’s CEOs

Posted on January 26, 2012 by msaxton1

Get ready to meet the Sustainable Generation. According to Sky, a new generation of business leaders are emerging from university that are determined to place sustainability at the heart of business.

Dubbed ‘the Sustainable Generation’ because they have grown up with issues like environmental protection and social responsibility as a constant feature in their lives, this new generation describes itself as knowledgeable about sustainability and confident in what they will do in the future to address it.

These young business leaders are also sending a clear message to HR directors about the importance of sustainability credentials to their own career plans. In Sky’s survey, 34% of respondents see creating social and environmental value as an overall career goal, just 1 percentage point behind earning personal financial rewards.

However, despite their drive towards embedding sustainability into business, they have mixed views about how the current crop of corporate leaders are faring. Just three per cent believe UK businesses are succeeding in their efforts to integrate sustainability.

Their views are hardly surprising in this respect. There seems to be an awful lot of announcements by organisations about their intentions, but far less comparable evidence of of concrete achievements. When the best example of a UK business walking the walk, talking the talk remains M&S with Plan B, that’s really not good enough, is it?

May be it’s just the general appetite for climate change and sustainability-led issues. Certainly, as the national newspaper and broadcast media coverage of Durban, has shown climate change is no longer front-page news. It’s not even page seven. Al Gore has made it his mission to make Americans treat climate change as a priority. What does that mean in real terms? To make it a top ten issue. Right now, it’s nowhere near. For example, more than half of Tea Partiers do not believe in man-made climate change. So much for sustainable generation on that side of the great pond!

UK future leaders, however, are a more certain and ready to lead bunch if Sky’s survey is to be believed. 70% agree that sustainability can create new opportunities for business. And the despite the woes of the economy, 68% believe that it should not be an excuse for businesses to ignore sustainability.

The Sky survey raises questions about the quality and quantity of sustainability training provided by business schools and businesses. Just over a third of the 750 graduate trainees, middle-managers and MBA students polled do not believe that their employers are providing adequate levels of training or education on sustainability. For many current MBA students dedicated tuition on sustainability does not feature significantly in their business courses.

Yet despite all of this they are optimistic because they feel that the business case for sustainability cannot be ignored, and with much of the groundwork (in the area) being tackled by today’s leaders, they are confident that they will be able to go much further themselves. In this latter respect, the sustainable generation has a ‘five-point plan’ to go further than their predecessors in integrating sustainability when at the helm of the UK’s businesses. This plan includes collaborating across industry to share best practice; taking more responsibility for supply chain sustainability credentials; integrating sustainability into values and decisions; using new technology to improve business performance on sustainability; and improving employee engagement.

Responsible business: The Fire Station

Posted on December 7, 2011 by msaxton1

The Big Society: I first remember hearing David Cameron talk about the concept on the Today programme – and boy, did he struggle to explain it.

But now two, nearly three years on, the idea of creating a climate that encourages people and business to take an active role in their communities feels like one of the smarter moves to create jobs and drive growth.

The Fire Station is a pioneering partnership between the private, public and third sectors that mines this potentially rich vein by helping disadvantaged individuals develop skills and find work.

Set up by PwC, which restored an old fire station building as part of its office development in More London in Southwark (historically one of the capital’s most deprived boroughs), The Fire Station also involves the likes of Dragons Den success story chef Simon Boyle, the School for Social Enterprise, Blossoms Healthcare, Social Enterprise UK and De Vere Venues.

Set over three floors, the building aims to fulfil a number of purposes, from providing workshops to apprenticeships in the hospitality and catering industry through Boyle’s Beyond Food Foundation, through to business consultancy and training from PwC volunteers, as well as a level of healthcare support to those working at the Brigade, the aptly named kitchen team run by chef Simon.

Although The Fire Station opened its doors in September, Global Entrepreneurship Week (17 November) provided the platform to showcase the partners’ ambitions.

Through a scheme called Freshlife for example, Simon Boyle aims to engage around 500 homeless and disadvantaged people in short-span food workshops. Of this number, it is hoped that nearly a third will participate in work experience. Establishing seven full time apprenticeships is the modest but manageable yearly target.

Blossoms Healthcare has embraced the idea of the social enterprise culture of The Fire Station by providing support to the businesses that come through it. And The School for Social Entrepreneurs and the separate body of Social Enterprise UK are aiming to carve out opportunities within the business environment where social enterprises can thrive.

PwC in the Community has a hefty involvement in the venture. It has committed the firm to establishing The Fire Station as a centre of excellence that will power a new breed of social entrepreneurs. PwC’s people are expected to play a significant role in delivering the services through the firm’s volunteering programme.

“We’re never short of volunteers for mentoring and supporting in social enterprise. The principles of business remain the same but the challenges, and the scale are different. It’s a real eye opener for many of our people who could have spent 10-15 years in a big corporate environment,” says Gaenor Bagley, PwC head of people.

“I firmly believe people learn more on the job than you do in a classroom. Volunteering your ability to explain a concept, build teams and relationships, get results – all the things we value in our people. It accelerates the way you learn, gives you a much broader perspective, and is personally very rewarding.”

John Laughlin, HR senior manager at PwC is mentoring a graduate from The School for Social Entrepreneurs. He became involved in mentoring having completed a coaching diploma a few years ago. “I liked the idea of tapping into a whole new sector that I didn’t know a lot about and working with someone who does something very different to what I do,” he says. “I want to get a broader perspective and a new way of looking at things and of course I hope that I can help my mentee develop his organisation for his benefit and for those that he’s working to help.”

On the ‘client’ side, Alistair Wilson, Chief Executive of School for Social Entrepreneurs, is equally enthusiastic: “I’m really excited to see what will come out of The Fire Station – I think it will be an incubator space for some really big and interesting social enterprise ideas.”

More muscle with SuMo

Posted on October 1, 2011 by msaxton1

In the eighteen months since my column began in HR Magazine, I have seen an increase in the number of organisations taking steps towards being more responsible. ‘Responsible business’ is a broach church. Depending on who you talk to, it can embrace ethical, social and environmental issues, sustainability, employee diversity or investing in communities.

Most organisations have a clear idea about what they want to achieve when they start their journey and putting an employee engagement programme in place is typically a cornerstone of a responsible business strategy. None of us would debate the logic of this: value-driven individuals are like gold. Get them correctly motivated and briefed and they will go above and beyond, not only deliver the changes that matter to your organisation, but also provide ideas to drive the programmes forward.

However, organisations are not always adequately set up to capture ideas in easy, cost-effective and practical ways, which means they are potentially losing out on invaluable insight. Indeed, according to a survey by Brighter Planet, a company dedicated to the mitigation of climate change through personal action, the more an employer has a system in place to share ideas and best practice, the more likely that initiative is to succeed, almost 3 to 1.

One approach is to use technology as an enabler or driver of ideas’ sharing and behaviour change. CloudApps has developed an interesting solution for HRDs in organisations which are targeting CO2 reductions. Called SuMo (it stands for Sustainability Momentum), it is a desktop dashboard that provides each employee with all the tools to record, track and share their personal contributions to the company’s carbon footprint, and the means to propose new ideas for sustainability initiatives.

HRDs can set SuMo to compare individuals’ CO2 information to colleagues in their workgroup, in other departments and regions, or any other classification they wish in order to create some healthy competition within the organisation. The SuMo ideas tab is a key feature. Once an idea is posted, employees can vote on it and it will be ranked on a leaderboard. This allows HRDs and others to understand staff motivations, chart ideas and potentially fast-track these into development.

Already SuMo has attracted the interest of some large companies. It is being actively trialled by a major US retailer, a global construction company, one of the leading global waste management operators and a top two UK retailer. Ashridge Business School has introduced SuMo into the classroom as a teaching tool.

“Employee engagement is all too often ‘management by poster slogan’,” says Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps. “What SuMo does is link every worker’s daily efforts to the strategic sustainability of the business in a very measurable way,” “With SuMo, each employee has personalised and verifiable targets to achieve and its effect is to increase employee engagement naturally over time as work habits change. HRDs and employees alike can now share increased visibility directly from the frontline of the business by using SuMo’s real-time feedback.

He adds, “We now have the ability to collaboratively change actual working habits, not just ‘hearts and minds’ and deliver on the corporate sustainability which many have promised, but few to date have achieved.”

There is scope too for the SuMo dashboard to play a role in rewarding green bonuses to high performing staff, structure that is gaining ground as companies turn their back on the traditional approach of linking bonuses to profits. For example, TNT has rolled out a sustainability-linked scheme, so too has DSM in The Netherlands. While all 600 executives at AzkoNobel, another Dutch company, will only receive bonuses based on how much they have contributed towards reducing injuries among staff and cutting carbon, energy, water and waste. Indeed, deployed in setting green bonuses, SuMo gives HRDs some extra muscle that its acronym implies.

Make a ding in the universe

Posted on September 29, 2011 by msaxton1

If you gave your employees one day to work on any project or idea that they had to make your business more responsible, the chances are that you’d get a whole load of ideas and stuff done that would go way beyond the things that you instruct them to do. Let’s all try it, we can make the world a little bit better, or as Steve Jobs would say ‘ make a ding in the universe.’

Al Gore

Posted on September 22, 2011 by msaxton1

Despite Americans becoming increasingly sceptical about man-made climate change, Al Gore does not despair as you’ll discover in this great radio interview by Mike Williams for BBC One Planet.

IEMA environmental skills map will help HR pick training interventions

Posted on September 6, 2011 by msaxton1

I came across recent research from the Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment (IEMA) showing more recruits are hoping to work in environmental roles in business.

Its June survey found 88% of employees experiencing high satisfaction levels after changing to an environmental career. Nearly 45% had made the career change either to make an environmental difference or because they have a personal interest in the subject. A further 20% said the area had become vital to the development of an existing role.

IEMA has launched a skills map that offers HRDs a framework to recruit, train and engage staff in environmental roles.

The initiative is appropriate in many ways, not least because the green economy is seen as a platform to kick-start growth, but also because UK plc needs to meet carbon reduction targets.

Defra conservatively estimated the UK would save £23 billion per annum through implementing no-cost/low-cost energy resource and waste-efficient measures.

A key challenge to organisations is how to equip their workforce with the skills required to reduce their environmental impact. IEMA claims its skills map will bridge that gap by defining the knowledge and skills required to become an environmental practitioner – one who works to deliver cost savings and environmental improvements.

Caroline Parsons, HR manager in Balfour Beatty’s sustainability working group, is convinced. Like many large private sector firms in the construction industry, Balfour Beatty takes its commitments in this area seriously. By 2020, it wants sustainability to be embedded in everything it does. Parsons says that means all parts of the business are ‘focused on the challenge – from marketing and bid teams, project management and design through to service delivery and procurement, finance and human resources.’

She said: “Balfour Beatty employs more than 50 environmental and sustainability practitioners in the UK. The launch of the IEMA skills map is timely. It will help us to develop environmental talent.”

Another advocate of the skills map is EEF, the trade association for UK manufacturing. Malcolm Bland, its head of professional development said: “By using the skills map, HR professionals will be able to identify effective training interventions and retain the best of what the environmental profession has to offer.”

IPSO shines a light on Solar

Posted on July 13, 2011 by msaxton1

IPSol provides testing, certification and consultancy services to the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry writes Tim Carter of IPSO Ventures.

While its customers are the manufacturers of the solar panels you see on roofs and in solar farms, the value of what it does cascades through the supply chain all the way to the beneficiaries of the clean energy that is generated. The economics of solar electricity production rely in significant part on the long-term performance of the panels, generating day-in-day-out for 15-25 years. Such assurance comes in the shape of an international system of certification that rigorously assesses safety, performance and reliability.

IPSol has recently been recommended for accreditation to test these international standards by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service. It is the first such lab in the UK, and competes with only a handful of specialist providers around the world. Partnered with the Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology (CREST) at Loughborough University, it is also able to provide bespoke testing and measurement for clients developing new PV products, including thin film and concentrator panels. A consultancy division completes its service offering, allowing IPSol to advise on aspects of solar PV from manufacture to design, installation and monitoring.

So why did we invest?

A couple of years ago IPSO Ventures looked to make its first play in the clean energy market. While solar was and remains an attractive sector, even then there were a reported 150+ privately-backed solar PV technology companies globally. So IPSO looked further for its opportunity in this gold rush, eventually focussing on the significant unmet needs in testing and certification. IPSol was the result, and its timing could not have been better.

UK solar, long a small backwater of the fiercely growing global clean energy market, was finally poised to enter the mainstream. In April last year the government introduced a ‘feed-in tariff’ for the generation of clean energy, including solar PV. A similar subsidy in Germany has given it the largest installed PV capacity in the world, and that despite no more sunshine than in the UK. From just a few installed MW of PV capacity at the introduction of the tariff, the UK now has around 500 MW. The growth potential of IPSol lies in international growth and this massively expanding, but naïve, national market, which requires testing and advice.

IPSol did not find easy traction with the venture capital community, not being based upon disruptive technology and a 20x return. However, for those with knowledge of the solar PV market the business’s solid fundamentals, lower risk profile and high capex spend proved an attractive package. Following seed investment by IPSO, the company raised £400k in finance late last year predominantly from angel investors. The company is currently considering raising growth capital, enabling it to take full advantage of the current expansion in its customer base.

ULI signs Greenpoint for Europe-wide comms

Posted on July 13, 2011 by msaxton1

The ULI is a global non-profit education and research institute. Its mission is to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide.

Greenpoint is providing strategic comms advice covering media relations, events, awards, publications, social media and membership engagement across 16 countries. The remit is also to help the ULI celebrate its 75^th anniversary, which takes place later this year. The account is headed by Michael Saxton and associate director Julie Kirby.

Said Michael Saxton: “The ULI delivers leadership in responsible land use and sustainable community building. Given that members include leading cities, institutions, private and public sector organisations, the ULI has the unique ability to anticipate emerging trends and issues and propose creative solutions. For example, the Gensler/ULI Open Spaces report, which is influencing the plans to develop the north bank of The Thames as a destination in its own right.”