An Insider discussion on why Yorkshire’s progress to become a low-carbon economy is patchy threw up many issues – not least Treasury prevarications.
Yorkshire may be home to the world’s largest building made of compressed straw bales, but Michael Smith, head of sustainable development at regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, is keen to point out the reason for this.
“It’s the largest because at the moment it is the only one,” he said at an Insider discussion at Yorkshire Forward.
In other words, even if such buildings are carbon-neutral and very sustainable, they are not having much take-up. It’s the reason for this torpor in moving towards a low-carbon economy that Smith feels needs further investigation.
“Yorkshire Forward has had a long-term commitment to carbon reduction through a lot of programmes,” he said. “But while we have done good things, we are just not shifting the regional economy as a whole to a low-carbon economy.
He said Yorkshire Forward has a low-carbon economy policy. “It’s one of our ten core policies,” he said. “We have a greenhouse gas calculator for every project we do. We have agreed we will benchmark our decisions against a virtual draft regional carbon budget in line with the budgets in the Climate Change Bill, and will say yes to projects that meet that budget, and no to those that don’t. But we have to think about the implications.”
There might also be economic benefits in some of this action, he said, such as a Yorkshire-Forward backed plan to capture 60 million tonnes of carbon and put it underground in a process known as enhanced oil recovery, for which there would be some payback. “Enhanced oil recovery is trading at 27 euros a tonne,” he said, “and is forecast to rise to 40 euros next year. What a massive benefit for the regional economy.”
That is one of the reasons Yorkshire Forward is keen for Yorkshire to be seen as a leader in the field, “far greater than anything else that’s going on around the country”, said Smith. It has set up a subsidiary, Carbon Action Yorkshire, to achieve that, and held a May Day event where some 130 regional organisations committed to carbon reduction.
One company that made a pledge is Bradford-based Provident Financial. The loans company has been managing its environmental impact for six years. “We pledged we would engage with customers on lowering their footprint,” said group corporate responsibility manager Rob Lawson. “We are asking them if you are going to take credit off us what’s the best you can do for your carbon footprint?”
There is no threat of not providing a loan if such steps are not taken, however. And the scheme will be piloted in Scotland first because company research found “fuel poverty is the biggest issue among MSPs”.
Another pledger was train operating company Northern, which is going to try to encourage more people to commute. But environment manager Karen Booth said there were implications with this, not least that its trains are usually full at commuter time “and people don’t like having noses in armpits”.
“We also didn’t commit to reporting carbon footprint,” she said, “because we have issues with measurement.”
Nevertheless, Smith feels such activity presents Yorkshire with a unique opportunity. “We have the highest concentration of pollutant in Europe,” he said, “which we have kept quiet about. But with carbon in such a concentrated area we can trade in that and establish a network where polluting countries can plug in and operate within that.
There is, he feels, also an opportunity to build more business by providing low-carbon economies, and, as a result, access a market he claims is worth $500bn. But the region is behind, with such technology accounting for less than 1 per cent of the regional economy.
Why was there this torpor in getting started down the road? The concensus seemed to be a lack of information about best practice, and what companies can do. John McGhee, senior partner at Yorkshire Bank, felt more emphasis needed to be put on showing people how small steps make a difference. He said: “Most of our computers at the bank had to be left on all night because upgrades happened overnight. But most nights there wasn’t an upgrade.
So somebody produced a “night watchman” system, where from the centre you can power up all the computers in the bank and shut them down afterwards. In our quarterly magazine we suggest other people do things like this. I suspect there are lots of people doing good things no one knows about.”
Craig Eastwood, chief executive of fit-out company Work Inc, which is doing sustainable fit-outs, agreed too many people were getting too caught up in what they might do, so they ended up doing nothing. “If you try to get too big about it you are trying to boil an ocean,” he said.
But many others wondered whether such a softly, softly approach hadn’t been operating for too long.
McGhee thought public transport was the biggest issue, particularly for service industries. “Why do we use cars so much?” he said. “Because its convenient. But it’s also ridiculous that I use one even just to go to Hunslet.”
Booth agreed there were difficulties with public transport. In a previous job she had been responsible for promoting buses, she said. “Look at what buses do,” she said. “They don’t pick you up where you want to be picked up and drop you off where you don’t want to go. We need to be realistic. Railways are not going to solve the problems of people who need to get to meetings and come back. We need to look at video conferencing.
Another issue, she said, was the landlord. “Network Rail might have this high up their agenda,” she said, “but at the local level it is difficult to get those messages to them. Given what influence the government has over Network Rail, I am surprised they aren’t being made to deliver. We need legislation.”
The need for legislation was a recurring theme, with Eastwood saying research his company had done showed legislation would be inevitable in the next decade. Jane Southworth, a lawyer at Eversheds who specialises in sustainability, said it would still take time. “Carbon-reduction commitments will bring in maybe another 5,000 organisations that up to now have had nothing to do with it,” she said. “But a middle-of-the-road business in Yorkshire will sit there unless you can convince it savings can be made.”
Bill Bartlett, corporate affairs director at McCain, agreed with the need for businesses to be more convinced. “My company would say it is a hard-nosed commercial organisation,” he said. “We buy 12 per cent of the UK potato crop, and we need a sustainable supply base. So we are working with our farmers on nitrogen pesticide reduction and we are reducing our pallet movements, thus our overall transport costs. And we are cutting our energy into the factories to make ourselves more competitive. A lot of the obvious business decisions have carbon reduction behind them. Businesses need to see this as a sound commercial reason to do something.”
Other companies were also pressing forward. Steetley Dolomite has entered into a carbon trading scheme, helped by the Yorkshire Bank. Managing director John Carlill said: “We generate 850,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, so we are using 35 per cent recycled fuels.”
Stone supplier Marshalls’ carbon footprint, meanwhile, is 60,000 tonnes a year, and energy manager Jan Bastiaans said that while this was more diffuse than was the case with Steetley Dolomite, steps were being taken. “We have 130 HGVs,” he said. “We are considering biodiesel and reducing our carbon footprint by retrofitting energy efficient technology.”
It was consumer pressure, he said, that was pushing much of what the company did. “Our customers are asking for low-carbon products,” he said. “You need to stimulate this by offering products and by making information correct.”
He also revealed that the page on the company website that features a carbon calculator so customers can calculate the carbon footprint of Marshalls products was the most popular page on the site.
But others were more circumspect about apparent public approval of the need to reduce carbon. Eastwood said research by his company indicated the issue was important, but only for the younger “Millennium” generation.
Bartlett, too, explained why his company would not be following Walker’s Crisps and Innocent Drinks by including carbon footprint details on packaging.
“Our consumers tell us they have enough trouble understanding nutritional labels without having to worry about that,” he said. “For example, a potato product has a carbon number of 80 per 100g, but if you add carrots and parsnips that goes up to 300 per 100g because you have to grow them. How does the consumer get around that?”
While Bastiaans and Smith thought consumers may become more aware, Bartlett said carbon measuring systems had still not been harmonised. “Consumers are only interested in buying products from a socially responsible company,” he said. “You need to demonstrate you are.
It’s not PR, it’s promoting facts.”
Peter Asquith, commercial manager at office fit-out company Overbury said: “Blue-chip clients are frightened at not being carbon-neutral. Larger companies are writing it into contracts.
And it’s not just material content, but the process, too. We have been doing this for two years and are on our ninth project.”
But then came the issue of how much extra businesses were willing to spend. Smith wondered whether an option to put an extra 10 per cent on capital expenditure on a new office building to cover sustainability issues would be accepted. Eastwood said it depended on the company, and on how you measured payback.
Tom Knowland, head of sustainability at Leeds city council, however, felt that should be palatable for a local council. “If we aren’t setting a high standard,” he said, “we will not be taken seriously.” But he admitted councils also feared setting conditions that were too “onerous” may mean investment went elsewhere. Smith said that was why Sheffield council had turned down his 10 per cent suggestion.
There is also the issue of infrastructure. Tom Jeynes, development and environmental co-ordinator for ABP in the Humber estuary, highlighted the discrepancy between canal development in Britain and elsewhere. Canals in Europe, he said, could carry huge amounts of freight, while our Victorian inland waterway system was so obsolete it probably wasn’t worth redeveloping it. But there were other options, he said. “We are a relatively small island with a big coastline, and there are lots of ways to get things to people that we haven’t thought of,” he said. “Our coast is a resource.”
Bastiaans said when it came to infrastructure he was amazed Britain was not following Germany and Greece in offering special rates for companies that generate their own electricity and feed it back into the national grid. “In Europe feeding tariffs can be set up where you get a fixed tariff of three to five times what you pay for the electricity coming the other way, fixed for 25 years,” he said. “Here leadership is lacking.”
And there was the great bogey – central government. Everyone felt that while it, and the Treasury, was blowing hot and cold on carbon reduction, little progress would be made.
Carlill said the Treasury – “The F-word”, he called it – had offered a special grant for people moving their freight to the railways, but had then withdrawn it. Smith said this was where Yorkshire Forward could come in. “We can lead the way with the Treasury,” he said. “We could do with a focus group to pull together these issues. We need a cohesive view and we can harness it through Carbon Action Yorkshire.”