Next month with its Big Green Week (9-17June), Bristol is aiming to bang the green drum as loud as it can to boost its chances. And it needs all the help it can get.

Even though the city has put together an inspiring line-up of over 100 events in nine days – with some of the UK’s top sustainability minds like Caroline Lucas, Jonathan Porritt, and Bill McKibben coming together with artists, designers, musicians and comedians to debate issues ranging from the Olympics to behaviour change; from culture shift, to revolutionizing business and resource scarcity – no one outside Bristol (or Brussels, as the EU is behind the Green Capital initiative) seems aware of what’s at stake.

The European Green Capital award aims to provide an incentive for cities to inspire each other and share best practices, while at the same time engaging in friendly competition. There are reputational and commercial benefits to play for, which makes this is an opportunity for the UK, not just Bristol.

Bristol has always had a reputation as a city replete in ideas and imagination. At a time when UK plc needs to underline its competitiveness, Bristol needs our collective support to match the grassroots’ enthusiasm that exists in the city. There’s still time to spread the word. It’s the one European competition in June that England (and the rest of the UK) can win, so let’s all back Bristol.

You can throw your support by Bristol by getting involved in the events and through Facebook.

Eight19, a spin-out from Cambridge University, has launched a potential game-changer with a new pay-as-you-go personal solar electricity system that is bringing power to off-grid communities in South Sudan.

Eight19 has partnered with WorldVenture, an international charitable organisation, to bring the systems to rural villages in the Nimule region of South Sudan. Eight19 expects to deploy 1,000 units to Nimule in the first half of 2012.

The IndiGo units, which consist of a battery, a solar panel, lights and a phone charging device, will bring clean, affordable and renewable power to off-grid communities in South Sudan, which is the fourth African country in which Eight19 has deployed IndiGo since its launch last September.

This country has recently emerged from civil war as an independent nation and by bringing power to those living off-grid, the WorldVenture/Eight19 initiative aims to stimulate social and economic development and provide the energy to power lighting, Internet connections and electronic devices.

“I used to have to go to a market three kilometres away to buy batteries for my family’s battery-powered lanterns and had to charge our mobile phones at charging stations in town twice a week,” said Nyungura James Ode, a rural farmer in Nimule. “Now with I save about half of the money I would spend on batteries and kerosene and can spend more time at home now that I don’t have to walk to the village and wait for phones to charge. Also, I do not have to worry about the light running out of power when tending to my baby at night.”

1.6Bn people, over one fifth of the world’s population, lack access to electricity via a grid and pay high prices for kerosene to serve basic needs such as lighting. By combining solar and mobile phone technology, Eight19 is bringing electricity directly to people’s homes thereby by passing the need for a grid connection. By offering solar power as a service, without high purchase costs, these users can now access clean electricity for less than their current spend on kerosene.

“There is a pressing need for off-grid power in South Sudan, where sometimes the poorest even burn grass despite the smoke health hazard and fire risk, they just are so desperate for an affordable way to have light at night,” said Thomas Bell, South Sudan Director of Projects at WorldVenture. “Eight19’s pay-as-you-go solar is a grass root solution, which is particularly important in South Sudan, where there is a complete lack of infrastructure. IndiGo has the potential to transform the energy market by enabling local energy production meaning that many people can access power without having to wait for the grid. Eight19 has started a revolution in energy provision.”

Simon Bransfield Garth, CEO of Eight19 said, “The positive response and widespread interest in IndiGo since we launched it in Kenya six months ago has been fantastic and is fuelling our expansion. Working with local delivery partners, such as WorldVenture in South Sudan, ensures that IndiGo reaches those communities quickly and easily and so bringing immediate benefits. We are working hard to deploy our units fast enough to keep up with the demand to further stimulate economic development in the world’s youngest country.”

Empire State Building - an iconic green retrofit

Stefanie Matteson of Antenna - our global PR partner – writes that global warming doomsayers may have taken an ironic satisfaction from the fact that the cocktail reception and exhibition at the recent 4^th Annual Mid-Atlantic Cleantech Investment Forum was held in the dinosaur hall at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia.

In their view, the mass extinction of the dinosaurs offers a preview of their apocalyptic vision for the destiny of humankind if we don’t take strong steps to prevent man-made global warming from overheating the Earth.

The reception followed a conference focused on cleantech opportunities and challenges in the mid-Atlantic region that included panels on “fostering clean tech investment” and shale gas development, the latter being only fitting since most of Pennsylvania is covered by the Marcellus Shale Formation, the world’s third largest reserve of natural gas. The panels were followed by a cleantech showcase highlighting companies involved in enterprises as diverse as OmniWind’s wind turbines and Primus Green Energy’s technology to transform biomass and natural gas into a high octane, drop-in gasoline.

But if the conference were to be distilled down to a single idea, it would be energy efficiency, which was the theme of keynote speaker Mark Fulton, the managing director and global head of Climate Change Investment, Research & Strategy for Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors.

While politicians may still be debating the existence of climate change, investors at financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank are planning how to deal with it. Fulton coordinates a team of analysts who publish white papers on key industry, policy and strategic topics that are used to advise investment managers on climate change-based strategies across their asset management platforms.

Drawing on a  research study conducted by Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors and the Rockefeller Foundation, Fulton said that proven technologies to retrofit buildings — from upgrading lights to replacing heating and cooling systems and building controls — can both conserve energy and create a large number of jobs. He noted that buildings consume about 40 percent of the world’s energy and are responsible for 40 percent of global carbon emissions.

According to the study, an investment of $279 billion in the residential, commercial and institutional energy efficiency market segments could yield more than $1 trillion of energy savings over 10 years, which would be the equivalent of saving approximately 30 percent of the annual electricity spend of the United States. Perhaps more importantly — at least from a climate change perspective — the retrofits represented by such an investment would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by nearly 10 percent.

But the report also noted that, despite the market potential and rapid payback of energy efficiency upgrades and retrofits, this “low-hanging fruit” in the energy and climate space has consistently proven to be farther out of reach than expected. In his address, Fulton profiled various financing models with the potential to scale investment in these markets and to overcome supply- and demand-side barriers. He concluded that the Energy Services Agreement (ESA) model holds the most promise for the near term, given its potential to scale without the need for policy initiatives or regulatory changes. Under such a model, the lender funds the costs of improvements and assumes responsibility for the payment of the energy bill. The property owner is then charged back based on historic consumption, thus allowing the lender to capture the energy savings. For more on the benefits and drawbacks of the various financing models, please consult the report.

We hope that the climate change prophets of doom, many of whom say we have only a few years left until we lose the levers of control, are wrong. But if we are well on our way to environmental annihilation, as the zealots aver, learning to control the carbon emissions produced by the built environment, while not especially glamorous, would seem like an eminently sensible way in which to forestall catastrophe while we are waiting for those magic bullet technologies that the optimists predict are on the horizon.

Stefanie is a former award-winning journalist specializing in science and land use issues. She is focused on clients in the clean technology sector, representing the developer of a solar farm, developers of new PV technologies and clients in the carbon recycling and biofuels space.

The business case for energy efficient buildings as better investments (including a case study on the Empire State Building in New York) are explored in detail on the LessEn blog.

So, to help them realise the opportunities, a new national campaign has been launched by Planet Positive to offer all UK SMEs free sustainability advice.

The 7-days to Sustainability campaign is free and provides easy to follow steps to help business become more sustainable.   SMEs can register for the 7-day programme online on the campaign website www.7days2sustainability.com.  The first SMEs will start their 7-day Sustainability programme on Tuesday May 1st and SMEs will participate weekly thereafter for the remainder of 2012 and beyond.

Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker said: “Saving energy goes straight to the bottom line, helping businesses save money and increase competitiveness as well as cut carbon.    Free help and advice, like the Planet Positive campaign is offering, helps to build businesses on sustainable foundations and reap all the benefits that energy efficiency has to offer.”

The campaign brings together expert knowledge from respected business leaders and Planet Positive’s 5-year knowledge of practical steps SMEs can take to be sustainable.  Each SME will be sent a Planning Pack and then receive seven, daily activities:

1. Sustainability Plan; Employee engagement &  Behavioural Change
2. Switch on to switching off – Energy Efficiency
3. Waste & Recycling
4. Travel & Transport
5. Food & Water (+ Health & Well-being)
6. Procurement &  Supply Chain
7. Success – Marketing and Winning business

A year ago the Royal College of Nursing triumphed in the HR Excellence awards, winning Best HR team, the Health and Wellbeing award and the prestigious Gold award.

The RCN demonstrated that it could turn around a culture of inertia, old fashioned employee practices and depressingly poor staff morale through HR-led leadership and innovation.

It put into place measures that tackled stress and long term absence, re-designed training and careers programmes, and established links between HR’s own operational performance and staff satisfaction that added value to the business.

Fast forward to now and the RCN is refusing to rest on its laurels – it can’t afford to. The government is looking to find billions of pounds of efficiency savings and its members are among those that are potentially in the firing line. And the latest CIPD survey in February (across a range of industries) revealed that staff satisfaction rates are at their lowest since 2009. It highlighted that staff confidence in job security in particular, is decreasing.

“We are keen to ensure that the RCN keeps moving forward irrespective of the challenges facing our staff,” said David Cooper, Head of HR at the Royal College of Nursing. “And to that end we continue to invest heavily in initiatives that make for a happy and healthy workforce.”

Recently, it set up the Fantastic Four Working Group. The group focuses on four areas: developing career opportunities; encouraging staff participation and involvement in key issues; creating and managing high performance teams; and finding ways to give back to the communities that its members serve through a CSR group. A senior manager and a GMB representative have joint leads in each of the four working groups – a first for the RCN.

The CSR initiatives are driven towards improving the RCN’s procurement process and reducing the carbon dioxide emissions generated by its buildings. To galvanise employees, the RCN created the ‘Turn it Off!’ campaign.  Engaging employees around energy efficiency, cost savings and waste, it aims to change behaviour by tackling the simple stuff, like powering down office and kitchen equipment, switching off lights and using less office resources, such as paper and printing.

A secret survey was carried out by volunteers from the RCN before the campaign launched, which not only established some benchmarks, but provided a platform to launch inter-office competitions to cut carbon and energy use.

To give the campaign some additional cohesion, the RCN into the national Climate Week programme, which recognises and rewards individuals and organisations which are doing their bit for the environment.

To the HR Excellence Awards, the RCN can also now add a place on the Sunday Times Best Companies list. Indeed, it was the only trade union and professional association to feature. And the RCN’s employee satisfaction rates buck the national trend with the overwhelming majority (84 per cent) responding in its survey that they were proud to work for the RCN. Highlighting the importance of listening to the workforce – a factor which Mr Cooper believes has been vital to turning the business around – over three quarters of staff (78 per cent) feel that managers share important information with them.  A similar number (78 per cent) feel that managers take an interest in their wellbeing.

Shortlisted companies in the HR Excellence Awards 2012 will be announced later this month.

According to Deloitte, playing the game will enable participants to learn how to balance the qualitative and quantitative dimensions of people, planet and profit within the context of their business enterprise. In lay terms, employees – whether they are at C-Suite level or on the frontline – can use the game to identify, understand and work with corporate responsibility and sustainability activities that add value to the organisation.

During the game, employees make decisions about CR and sustainability and are presented with the impacts. Typically, players go through several business cycles, enabling them to assess the consequences of their actions in short to long term scenarios. Learning and development is focused on gaining insight into the complexities of CR and sustainability, and the competencies required to manage the associated risks. Over time, by playing the game, employees are trained to be more aware of risks and opportunities, and, it’s hoped, be more inclined to transfer insights and knowledge between each other – a goal for any organisation as it seeks to build high performing teams in corporate responsibility and sustainability.

The game deals with the challenges of CR and sustainability strategy, developing and implementing a programme in a coordinated way, managing processes and systems, as well as employee engagement, learning and development.

As many communicators will attest, employees do not change their behaviours overnight. Realising change requires intelligent and persistent employee engagement, and the creation of tools that encourage and facilitate learning and development so that employees continue to behave in responsible ways.

Deloitte has been working with organisations at different stages on their corporate responsibility and sustainability journeys to help them strengthen their activities and build employee awareness and participation.

Within a multinational manufacturing company, Board members and executive vice-presidents of HR, risk management, marketing, corp comms and health safety & environment competed in two groups in a Deloitte-facilitated game, which resulted in a greater understanding about how to reconcile the long term financial, social and environmental performance of the organisation versus short term profit. The game has been used to help integrate CR and sustainability into daily work practices and build commitment for execution among business unit managers.

Another multinational company, which has achieved several international awards in recognition of its sustained CR and sustainability programmes, introduced the game to clarify the strategy of the company. It felt that all senior managers and executives in its organisation needed to develop deeper knowledge, skills and behaviours to translate the CR and sustainability targets of the firm into practice. Here, the game has been played in various facilitated workshops, both face-to-face and through the internet to accommodate employees based in locations across the globe. Feedbacks from the game have helped identify what the company is doing well and where improvements can be made, accelerating its leadership in corporate responsibility and sustainability.

And, at a similarly strategic level, TNT (in The Netherlands) has added the game to its leadership programme – “…proof that the Deloitte Business Simulation Game is more than just a nice amusement for management,” said Peter Bakker, former chief executive of the Dutch international logistics and delivery services company.

Together, they have recently launched a campaign titled @myurbangreen to galvanise local people to care for these and other local green spaces. They hope to motivate 135,000 people to become involved to deliver at least 850 community events. Store managers, who already give up a considerable amount of their time to Groundwork, are likely to lead from the front. The initiatives are part of the retailer’s Plan A programme.

Community groups will be supported by a regional network of Groundwork green space experts who will be funded by M&S. They will be on hand to help with tips and ideas on how to identify and respond to local needs, recruit volunteers and design and deliver activities and events that raise the profile of their work.

The announcement is the latest development in the relationship between M&S and Groundwork – which last year opened the 100th ‘Greener Living Space’ – a network of new or improved green spaces at the heart of communities all over the country.

Mike Barry, Head of Sustainable Business at Marks & Spencer, said “@myurbangreen is a new, exciting programme that will create a dynamic legacy in communities across the UK for the ‘Greener Living Spaces’ we have created with Groundwork. It will help local people take ownership of their green spaces and ensure they are fit for everyone to enjoy. It’s simple and effective way for our customers to get involved in supporting their local communities.”

Sir Tony Hawkhead, Groundwork Chief Executive, added: “In Groundwork’s experience, people are very passionate about their community gardens, parks and play areas and value the many benefits they provide. However, now, more than ever before, we need to find increasingly creative ways of protecting these much loved local spaces.

“@myurbangreen will create a network of communities across the UK that have the skills, confidence and necessary expert support to roll up their sleeves and respond to local green space issues.”

Come this May, M&S employees will also turn their attention to Britain’s beaches with a massive clean-up operation with the Marine Conservation Society taking in 50 beaches up and down the country.

The clean-up is an essential part of Forever Fish, a campaign to help employees, customers and their children learn more about fish, clean British beaches and protect UK marine life. Currently, all of the profit from the sale of single use 5p food carrier bags now goes to Forever Fish. M&S is also investing over £1 million in WWF projects that help better manage UK fish stocks, such as cod, and protect important species like dolphins and turtles.

Samantha Fanshawe, Director of Marine Conservation Society, said: “Working with M&S offers a fantastic opportunity to protect our seas, shores and wildlife.”

Dax Lovegrove, Head of Business and Industry Relations at WWF, added: “WWF is continually working to address the over-use of natural resources by championing best practice in the sourcing of goods and driving sustainable retailing. Our partnership with M&S makes a significant contribution to these endeavours.”

Tanith Dodge, Director of Human Resources at Marks & Spencer, said: “Trust is one of the founding principles of M&S and through Plan A, it is embedded in the business. When we launched Plan A we were clear that it is not simply a CSR exercise – it is the way we do business.

“Employees need to trust the company they work for to act responsibly towards them as individuals, but increasingly employees want to be able to trust a business to act in the best interest of society. Plan A helps build that trust on the inside and it empowers employees to live a greener and healthier lifestyle. It also aids recruitment, helping position M&S as a company committed to doing the right thing.”

Through expert interviews with masterminds from companies like Lucid Design Group and YR&G Sustainability, our guest columnist Ashley Halligan presents five ways to boost occupant compliance and, therefore, the likelihood of meeting environmental performance goals.

1. Measure energy usage with new technologies.
2. Take a holistic approach.
3. Engage occupants before they move in with an eco-charrette.
4. Provoke competition among tenants.
5. Establish a sense of transparency.

Ashley Halligan is a market analyst at an Austin-based software advisory firm, providing CAFM (computer-aided facility management) software comparisons. Read in detail about each strategy and gather expert insight by reading the original Occupant Behavior article here.

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.