Cleantech Trends 2012

Posted on February 15, 2012 by msaxton1

Our partner agency Antenna is the largest clean technology public relations firm in the States. Drawn from input provided by client-partners, Antenna has identified the top 10 cleantech trends for 2012. These are the headlines:

1. Energy efficiency goes retro

2. Cellulosic biomass comes online

3. Recycling finds its true potential

4. The EV market picks up speed, while Tesla, Fisker get some competition

5. Smart meters reach critical mass

6. Offshore wind takes root in the Northeast

7. Dropping balance-of-system costs nudge solar closer to grid parity

8. Distributed solar continues to thrive

9. Grant-to-tax credit shift means more third-party ownership of solar systems

10. Gas-to-liquids technologies go mainstream

Go behind the headlines and read the analysis by clicking here.

Government reveals Renewables Investment and Jobs Map

Posted on December 31, 2011 by msaxton1

Biomass and wind projects emerged as the renewables technologies that received the lion’s share of investment in 2011.

DECC has published research showing that between 1 April – 16 November 2011 companies announced plans for almost £2.5 billion worth of investment in renewable energy projects in the UK. If all of these planned projects go ahead, they would create 12,000 jobs across the country over the next few years.

A regional map (see below) provides a breakdown of where the projects and jobs are taking place, or slated to take place. A handful of projects make up around a quarter of these new schemes. These include:

Two 299MW biomass plants by Drax Power in Yorkshire, which will create up to 1500 jobs.
49MW biomass plants by Air Products in the north east, up to 750 jobs.
A £600m investment into 299MW biomass plant by Anglesey Aluminium Metals Renewables in Wales, creating up to 700 jobs.
Vestas is planning a wind turbine factory in Sheerness in the south east, designed to create up to 2000 jobs.
Energi Coast – an alliance of 19 north east businesses – is aiming to create 2000 new jobs.

Against this background of green investment and green jobs, the Energy Secretary Chris Huhne and Chancellor George Osborne have seemingly been at odds over the contribution of the renewables sector to Britain’s economy for much of 2011.

Osborne has blamed green taxes for high energy bills. At the Conservative conference in the autumn, he said: “We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business.”

Mr Huhne struck a different note yesterday. He said: “Renewable energy is not just helping us increase our energy security and reduce emissions. It is supporting jobs and growth across the country.” However at the same time he also sounded defensive, almost apologetic, perhaps not wishing to inflame Mr Osborne, when he added: “Our renewable target is less demanding than other EU member states”. Less demanding in the sense that Britain has set itself a target of sourcing 15 per cent of all energy from renewable sources by 2020. The EU-wide target is 20 per cent.

Britain will need to play catch up fast to meet the 15 per cent target. Although the government yesterday pointed towards an increase on the previous year in energy sourced from renewables, it still only accounted for 3.3 per cent in 2010. Various industry experts believe that a minimum of 4 per cent will need to be achieved for the current financial year (2011/2012). Given the economic problems that have beset the country and the fudging of legislation around the RHI and Feed-in Tariffs that target may be optimistic – and it will need to climb to around 7.5 per cent by 2015/2016.

DECC’s statement of 29 December 2011 can be found in full by clicking here.

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.’

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.

Greenpoint becomes Planet Positive

Posted on July 13, 2011 by msaxton1

Planet Positive

We’ve measured our carbon footprint – and we’ve made a commitment to reducing our emissions by 5% on an annual basis with Planet Positive.

In becoming a Planet Positive certified business, we have had our footprint independently measured and reported by Planet Positive. It stands at 8.81 tCO2e. We have joined pioneering companies like Land Securities and Deloitte in precisely measuring our carbon footprint and taking steps to reduce it.

As part of the certification, businesses make an investment into approved sustainability projects through the Planet Positive Foundation, a UK-registered charity.

Greenpoint has chosen to support the Planet Positive Schools Programme engaging children and their families with sustainability and creating links between businesses and schools.

“We believe that good business goes hand-in-hand with positive social and environmental actions,” said Michael Saxton, Director of Greenpoint. “Achieving and maintaining our Planet Positive certification demonstrates our commitment to reduce our carbon emissions and environmental impacts. Our employees are a major part of this activity and, along with Planet Positive, they will help us create a better way of doing business.”

The certification is based on the internationally recognised Planet Positive Protocol, which brings together sustainability methodologies from around the world. The Protocol is administered by an independent Technical Committee of academics and experts to ensure that it is always at the forefront of best practice.

Martin Goodman, Executive Chairman of Planet Positive, said: “Planet Positive is about taking action. We are delighted that Greenpoint PR has shown leadership and become Planet Positive certified. They can prove their commitment to the environment by cutting their carbon emissions, saving energy and saving money. Being green is good for employees, good for sales and good for business. Greenpoint is now part of the solution.”

Planet Positive is an international certification and environmental management system for businesses, products, buildings and services. Certification demonstrates a company’s commitment to environmental sustainability to employees, stakeholders and customers.

Planet Positive goes beyond compliance into proof of action, behaviour change and encouraging business to support local and global sustainability projects. The Planet Positive Foundation, a UK registered charity, has been established to develop, promote and fund sustainability projects locally, nationally and internationally.