Category: Sustainability

Human health is profoundly affected by the animals and the environment in which we all live. That’s the starting point for the One Health initiatives – a holistic slice of health with connections between human disease, animals and sustainability.

One side of this is predicting disease drivers and outbreaks from environmental losses and human connections. EcoHealth Alliance highlights two big factors for disease outbreaks land use change – if we chop down a forest you change the dynamics of wildlife in that forest, you put people in there and they make contact with wildlife and you get these diseases – and travel and trade. Mapping the impacts guides intervention and prevention as well as protection.

One Health also encompasses practical action, including environmental awareness, preventing future animal to human diseases epidemics (e.g. like SARS). For more see this February’s 1st International Conference on One Health in Melbourne and this Australian Health Report story about it.

Nick Stern, in his ground breaking economic review, prescribes three essential elements for addressing climate change. We’re familiar with the price and technology approaches. But less is said about the third – behaviour change.

The American Psychological Association’s Global Climate Change task force report is a great addition to this behaviour space. It includes strategies for delivering action.

For example, people cut their energy use competitively if their neighbours are doing it. But not so well when asked to use fans instead of a/c, turn off lights or look after future generations. And financial savings are not too effective either, the influence of your neighbours can be far more important.

How cost is framed is also important. Many business cases, showing the profitability of energy efficiency, inexplicably gather dust. These cases often focus on savings. Yet future loses are a more compelling motivation. It’s better to tell people and businesses they are wasting $100,000 a year than we can save 100 grand.

Naturally, there’s a lot more – such as identifying whether your stakeholders respond best to the influence of neighbours or are a group of globally minded and motivated citizens – see The Mind.

Also see Climate Change Leadership and Worldenergyblog (picture above) on psychology. But… for a quick (unscientific!) snapshot …

Vote for the most compelling Murraylands Life sales pitch. I’d buy this home if told (click if you can’t see poll):
http://www.google.com/reviews/polls/display/5887708438211003602/blogger_template/run_app?txtclr=%23666666&lnkclr=%235588aa&chrtclr=%235588aa&font=normal+normal+100%25+Georgia%2C+Serif&hideq=true&purl=http%3A%2F%2Fgreenmodesustainabilitydevelopments.blogspot.com%2F

Business knows supply chains are vital. For both direct profit and, in an increasingly connected and information rich world, the embodied environmental impacts.

But, these are not easy assessments. The ecological backpsck concept helps. It creates one measure for the total amount of materials that go into producing a product or service.

As you’d expect services tend to have a smaller backpack. 2kg of materials are used to let you watch a movie for an hour. Versus 53kg to create a coffee machine.

There’s some obvious wins here as society changes. It takes two and a half times less material to download music versus buying the equivalent CD. And some rather staggering numbers. A ten gram wedding ring has a five tonne backpack.

For business, as the Harvard Business Review highlights this month: societal needs, not just conventional economic needs, define markets, and social harms can create internal costs for firms. Concepts like the ecological backpack help define the connection between society and economic progress – unlocking a wave of innovative growth.

Picture: Screen shot from ecological backpack video. Volkswagen Autostadt exhibition.

The previous two posts focused on numbers and technology. And, if this is what is driving climate change solutions, then surely we would have already implemented the proven, low cost and profitable solutions.

Unfortunately we are far from doing so. Various estimates, such as this McKinsey study, find that changes can be made using currently available technologies – and with a good rate of economic return to individuals or organisations – at more than twice the current rates of implementation.

It’s quite something of a paradox. We say that the cost of taking action on climate change is an impediment to business and society sustainability. But we also do not act when it is profitable and the financial rewards, through energy efficiency, can be achieved at low risk.

To bridge this action gap some experience from waste generation, recycling and disposal is very relevant. We often look at the world through only one or two lenses – measurable objective numbers and profit. But successful waste and sustainability interventions are doing far more than this.

These interventions actively consider the worldviews and perspectives that individuals hold. And they are considering the organisational culture or society’s developmental centre of gravity.

In other words, when we look at the world through four lenses, including things like:

1. Culture
2. Personal beliefs and worldviews
3. Individual environmental footprints
4. Organisational profits

We get better results. It’s a big topic and, for more, please see this talk: A thinking feeling lean wasteline.

Image originally from Barrett Brown presentation to Integral Sustainability Colorado workshop 2006. Previous post in this series The Tech

There’s always a lot of innovation in a year but 2010 saw clean technologies take out 4 of the top 5 spots for venture capital funding.

At the same time very substantial implementation efforts were underway How about catching the train from China to London in under two days?  Links between China, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia have already started.

Staying with China rail, it also announced the first fuel cell train on top of the world’s fastest train, More generally the country is about to pass its own clean technology targets by a large margin.

Transport also continued its electric push. For a big business plan example you can’t go past GE. The company is predicting $0.5 Bn in turnover from a business decision to buy (not sell) 12,000 Chevrolet Volts. Revenue is generated through the associated infrastructure and other spin-offs for the company.

Are we seeing the light? Maybe. And in practice (sorry) GE’s new LED bulb went on sale Monday 6 December. It’s statistics, 77% less power for the same amount of light, are not trivial. Especially considering the International Energy Agency finding that we could cut global electricity consumption by almost 10% with such changes.

2010 also may be the year when managing power demand – the times we all want to switch on appliances like air-conditioning together – finally came of age. Solutions such as standards and building demand started to mature and, for some big numbers, the Brazilian government announced a mandate for  62 million digital networked electric meters!

And lastly growth in renewable power generation continued to grow exponentially. The World Wind Energy Council is predicting over a 26% increase for 2010 which, on top of a measured 31% increase in 2009, continues the trend to double wind energy every 3 years.

Next The Mind; Previous The Money

Follow the money. It’s a famous tradition and there’s been lots of impressive 2010 announcements. These include the big picture: India’s green domestic product; and, the International Energy Agency calling for the world to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. These currently stand at $312Bn in 2009 versus renewables at $57Bn

At a project scale there are substantial moves and the numbers are getting large: a  $1.3 billion finance package and loan guarantee for the world’s biggest on land wind farm in the USA. Or the world’s largest solar project close to securing a loan guarantee. Overall wind power grew 25% globally this year, representing about $60 billion of investment (at USA costs).

It’s not only big projects but coordinated individual action as well. For example, in Australia 100,000 rooftop solar panels were installed this year. That’s more were installed in the entire previous decade.

On a company scale, GE’s business case for buying (not selling) electric cars sees it predicting a half billion dollars in revenue. And a sector scale HSBC estimates energy efficiency opportunities to be a $1.2 trillion market in 2020.

Next post continues the 2010 wrap looking at Technologies Previous post Overview: The Money, The Tech The Mind

2010 more than ever before has seen clean green solutions becoming mainstream. Here’s a short sweep across the changes, from the more conventional money and technology measurements to the as important, if not driving underpinnings, individual mindsets and our local and global cultures.

The wrap: We’ve seen five waves of innovation since the industrial revolution and the sixth wave could be a clean revolution. But is it mainstream? Or more to the point when is it likely to be?

There are some compelling signs. These cover from big picture measurement: Bloomberg reporting India will have a Green Domestic Product by 2015 (environmental costs into GDP source press release); to, pop culture: electric cars in rap and the movies.

There’s a pressing need with indicators, such as greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity impacts, continuing to head in the wrong direction. We need fast change, past just technical solutions and into society.

Hugo Spowers, founder of Riversimple, frames this opportunity well. He says the principle barriers to sustainability aren’t actually technical. If you are prepared to change multiple things simultaneously you overcome so many barriers. Listen to the whole interview here: hydrogen car, new business model

This is a set of four short posts covering some of these changes. Next: The Money

2010 has seen – at least in the first half of the year – a fair bit of pessimism on climate change action, particularly government policy. But, with the US National Academy of Science saying warming is a settled fact, many governments have continued to act regardless of slow progress on a global agreement.

Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond is a good example. He says green energy is a pivotal turning point in human history. Scotland has committed to 80% green electricity by 2020 and reportedly 100% by 2025. Technologies include offshore wind and the world’s largest tidal turbine.

The Scotland’s overall emissions cut target is 42% by 2020. Recent research finds a 40% European wide cut is achievable by 2020. And the payoffs are substantial with HSBC estimating a global low carbon economic opportunity of up to USD 2.7 trillion by 2020.

Image: Visit Scotland

Most people agree a business case for sustainability is critical. However, the initial findings from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan Management Review 2010 sustainability survey finds nearly half of its responders have not yet developed one. But they are spending money on it anyway.

The full report is set to be release in January 2011. Check here for details. Early results include finding:

• Forty-seven percent of those who are substantially outperforming their peers have developed a business case for sustainability.
• Among lower performing companies, only thirty percent have developed a business case for sustainability.
• Fifty percent of North American companies have yet to try to develop a business case for sustainability efforts, compared to thirty percent in the Asia-Pacific region.

At the same time potential profits are substantial. Just one example – GE has announced an expected nearly $0.5 billion of revenue in 3 years catalysed by buying (not selling) clean technology electric cars.

All of which leaves open questions. What’s holding other companies back?

A clear business case needs more than the profit numbers. For effective leading sustainability change its about managing the visible objective measured change as well as viewpoints, values and cultural world-views that sit beneath this – the invisible drivers. In other words, a sustainability case that is right for the organisation.

Want to fly above traffic propelled by your own legs? That’s the inspiration for Schweeb (pictured) inspired from Tokyo.

It may sound a little unlikely but Google has invested $1 million in the project. The Schweeb is one of 5 winners, out of 150,000 ideas of Google’s, 10 to the power of a 100 project.

10^100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.