East Midlands EXPO 2009 - Greening the Economy

The sessions will take place during the afternoon of the East Midlands EXPO and will be introduced and managed by a facilitator, who will provide feedback and provoke discussion to the audience throughout the afternoon.

Each talk will take place at a table seating around 10-12 delegates, with 4 sessions throughout the afternoon. If a presenter is only taking part in one session then anyone who wants to hear from that presenter will have to make that their priority.

For more information about the ‘15 Minutes of Fame’ sessions please visit the 15 Minutes of Fame webpage. This page includes information on how to reserve your place for the sessions.

Report identifies long-term opportunities in UK environmental consultancy market

A new report from Environment Analyst concludes that the UK environmental consultancy sector grew by 9% in 2008 to reach a turnover of £1.46 billion. This marks a deceleration on the average 13% per annum growth of the previous four years (2004-07).

Consultancy is inherently a lagging indicator of economic cycles due to work signed off in the pipeline months in advance, so it was not until the last few months of 2008 when the tide turned and environmental consultancies were suddenly struggling to keep all of their staff busy. It was during this period of uncertainty that Environment Analyst conducted its first annual benchmark survey of firms active in the sector.

The final report – Market Assessment of the UK Environmental Consulting Sector 2009 – forecasts that the overall market will be flat this year, growing by low single digits at best, but still outperforming the economy as a whole and related areas such as management consulting.

Environmental consultancy disciplines with strong underlying regulatory and political drivers – such as climate change & energy and waste management – are expected to be most resilient. Demand from both the traditional energy sector (oil, gas and nuclear) and renewables industry are also still growing strongly for the environmental consultancy market as a whole. There is also healthy growth in government-funded projects, with the public sector accounting for just under a third of total market revenues in 2008.

Export commodity

Another positive finding is that UK environmental consultancy expertise is very much in demand globally, with overseas work and projects for international clients accounting around a quarter of our survey sample’s total UK revenues. Extrapolating these figures to the market as a whole would mean international work brings in revenues of some £350 million on top of UK-sourced contracts.

The report’s author, Environment Analyst Editor Liz Trew comments: “British environmental consultancies have developed world-leading expertise in areas such as climate change and carbon management and are successfully exporting their services. Our survey shows that most are hoping to win more overseas work over the coming months to help offset the softening domestic market – with the Middle East emerging as having the best growth prospects for these firms globally in spite of the region’s recent problems.”

Recession impacts

Of the twelve disciplines which Environment Analyst considers to form the core of the environmental consultancy market, the strongest performers in 2008 were climate change & energy and ecological/landscape services – both growing in excess of 20%. Growth in revenues from environmental impact assessment (EIA) and related services also increased above the overall market rate last year, but will be inevitably curtailed in 2009 due to a slowdown in the pipeline of development support work.

The survey findings confirm that contaminated land, the biggest single income stream for environmental consultancies (at 16% of total market revenues), has taken the biggest hit from the economic downturn of all the major service areas. Around half of the consultancies surveyed were experiencing contracting revenues from this field of work at the time of the survey, while revenues were flat for a further 20%.

Liz Trew comments: “Overall, the contaminated land segment continued to grow by a respectable 7% in 2008 – largely thanks to projects completed in the first half of the year – but is set to fall sharply this year as brownfield development in the commercial sector has effectively ground to a halt in many areas.”

A cutback in discretionary spend among specific client sectors is also evident from the survey responses. Two thirds of consultancies reported a reduction in revenues from the construction/property sector – with one in ten suffering a drop of 15% or more. Half of consultancies also saw a decline in project spend coming from financial & professional organisations as the banking sector crisis accelerated from the middle of 2008. Revenues from the manufacturing industry were also down or flat for 75% of consultancies.

Further information is available at http://environment-analyst.com/intelligence

£10m Grand Challenge To Make Housing Greener

The Technology Strategy Board is to launch a new £10m competition for innovative solutions to improve the energy efficiency and environmental performance of the UK’s housing stock.

The competition, announced today by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, will invite proposals for suppliers to design and install new high performance solutions to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of houses.

The competition, labelled Retrofit for the Future, will be launched in March. Companies will be invited to bid for contracts to work with social housing providers, refurbishing example buildings and evaluating their environmental performance.

Richard Miller, Low Impact Buildings Innovation Platform Leader with the Technology Strategy Board, said “We have to act now to meet this challenge. The UK has a target for an 80% cut in carbon emissions from buildings by 2050 - yet well over half of the homes we will be living in by then already exist today.

“Current technology does not have all the answers. This demonstration programme will encourage and support companies large and small, giving them fully-funded contracts to develop innovative solutions which can dramatically increase the environmental performance of our existing homes.”

Iain Gray, Technology Strategy Board Chief Executive, said “In the current difficult economic climate, innovation is more important than ever. This competition is part of our drive to help business meet the major challenges of our day and build new markets through innovative technology.’

The competition and demonstration programme, to be launched in March 2009 under the Low Impact Buildings Innovation Platform, will aim to deliver a minimum of 50 demonstration prototypes and will be managed by the Technology Strategy Board in collaboration with social landlords.

For an information leaflet about the competition please click here.

Free* Carbon footprint training for businesses

By the year 2050, the government has promised to cut UK emissions by 60%. As part of this, a variety of carbon-related legislation is being introduced.  This includes the Carbon Reduction Commitment, which comes into effect in April 2009 affecting a variety of companies such as supermarkets, banks, hospitals, local authorities and offices.

Calculating your carbon footprint will help you comply with this upcoming legislation and reducing your footprint will help save money. To assist with this, Business Envestors, part of Peterborough Environment City Trust (PECT), is running a free half-day workshop on the 18^th of November.  This will cover the principles and drivers behind carbon footprinting, methods used for calculating carbon footprints, suggestions on how to reduce your carbon emissions and comply with legislation.

Clare Watters, Environmental Consultant for Business Envestors explains that, ‘There is a great deal of confusion surrounding carbon footprinting at the moment.  It is an excellent method for identifying key “carbon culprits”, but if businesses don’t understand how to carry the calculation out, they can waste their valuable time trying to work out where to start.  At Business Envestors we aim to remove the confusion, so businesses can focus on managing their key impacts and saving money, which is particularly important in today’s economic climate.”  According to the Carbon Trust poor energy efficiency costs business an estimated £2bn annually.

*To check whether your business is eligible for this free seminar and to book your place, contact Kalai Mahalingam on 01733 569830, or for more information visit www.businessenvestors.co.uk

What’s the carbon footprint of your product?

Businesses can from today assess the carbon footprint of their goods and services and play a greater part in fighting climate change, thanks to a new standard launched by BSI British Standards, the Carbon Trust and Defra.

The standard - called PAS 2050 - is a consistent way of counting the greenhouse gas emissions embedded in goods and services throughout their entire life cycle - from sourcing raw materials, through to manufacture, distribution, use and disposal.

The aim of the new standard is to help businesses move beyond managing the emissions their own processes create and to look at the opportunities for reducing emissions in the design, making and supplying of products.  This will then help businesses make goods or services which are less carbon intensive and ultimately develop new products with lower carbon footprints.

Brown Says Downturn Won’t Hit Green Plans

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Tuesday the global economic downturn would not affect a government drive to reduce the country’s carbon emissions. However, an industry executive cast doubt on the ability of the UK’s existing power transmission network to cope with planned increases in wind power output. Brown told a wind energy conference in London ministers were committed to meeting a target to produce 15 percent of the UK’s energy supply from renewable sources, such as wind and wave power, by 2020. “You may have heard some people say that these difficult economic times should or will reduce the government’s commitment to building a low carbon economy. They should not and will not,” Brown said in a recorded statement shown by video to delegates at the British Wind Energy Association’s (BWEA) conference. Doubts have been expressed about the UK’s ability to meet its renewable energy targets, with investors warning that companies need more financial incentives to develop wind farms. A report in Britain’s Observer newspaper at the weekend said delays in gaining planning approval for farms, long delivery times, escalating costs, and technical problems were all threatening to derail government plans. But BWEA Chief Executive Maria McCaffery said in a news conference on Tuesday the industry was confident it would be able to meet the targets. “It’s an area where there is tremendous positivism and confidence,” she said. However, the UK’s power transmission grid system is not capable of dealing with the output from planned new wind farms, said Keith Anderson, director of the renewables division of Scottish Power, part of Iberdrola SA. The grid is between 30 to 40 years old and needs immediate modernisation and investment, Anderson said at the news conference. A proposed upgrade of the main Beauly-Denny transmission line in Scotland, which would allow a significant increase in renewable energy capacity in the far north of the United Kingdom if it gets the go-ahead, was likely to take 10 to 12 years to carry out, he added. “We need more upgrades of that size and scale,” he said. “We cannot afford for that process to keep taking 12 years. If you start the process now for the offshore and marine sector, you’ll already be in 2020. It needs to happen now. “Scotland contributes a huge proportion of the onshore target to the overall target and if you don’t start building the transmission lines, you block some of that development and reduce its potential.” BRITAIN OVERTAKES DENMARK The United Kingdom would achieve three gigawatts of installed wind energy production capacity this week, up from one gigawatt in 2005, with the completed construction of Centrica Plc’s Lynn and Inner Dowsing wind farms near Skegness in eastern England, the UK’s Department of Energy & Climate Change said in a statement. Earlier Tuesday, Centrica said it had gained approval for another 250 megawatt project off the Lincolnshire coast and was exploring the possibility of constructing two further wind farms totalling 1,000 MW. Britain had now overtaken Denmark as the world’s largest producer of energy from offshore wind, with 597 megawatts of capacity fully built, the government said. Offshore wind farms in the United Kingdom now have the potential to power the equivalent of about 300,000 UK homes, it said. “What this means is the creation of an unprecedented 100-billion-pounds market for renewable energy sources in just over a decade,” Brown told the conference. “That will create huge new business opportunities - and around 160,000 jobs.” Reporting by Phil Waller; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien, David Cowell and Simon Jessop, Reuters.

Cambridge eco town plans scrapped

Plans to construct an eco-town in Hanley Grange have been abandoned.

In a new development, the Wellcome Trust - which owns most of the land in question - revealed it will not sell the land to Tesco, which was intending to construct 12,800 houses in the area.

One of 15 such towns initially proposed, the site had received strong opposition from local people and MPs.

Project director for the development Nick West said: "We are naturally disappointed that the Wellcome Trust has decided not to join us in exploring the opportunity for an eco-town at Hanley Grange."

He went on to say that the project team will now consider the options for moving forward, adding that no decision have yet been made.

Recently, plans for other eco towns in Norfolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire have been opposed by the East of England Regional Assembly, which claims they would be too far from jobs and public transport.

Pupils raise awareness with climate conference

A group of year nine pupils are to hold a climate change and global issues conference this week.

The event, taking place tomorrow (July 15th), is the brainchild of two 14-year-old girls, Amy Bew and Elise Galvin, who have organised the day-long conference, EDP24.couk reports.

Some £2,500 was raised in order for Hellesdon High near Norwich to stage the event, which will entail a range of workshops concerning local and global climate change, as well as refugees, deforestation, among other issues.

Ms Galvin is reported as saying: "We are hoping to make the year group more aware and to make them want to act.

"We would also like to take it to some local primary school and teach them about the issues."

One of the most pressing issues in the east of England is the Suffolk flood defences, according to the Blyth Strategy Group, which has lobbied the government over flood protection plans.