Hill+Knowlton Strategies

I’ll admit it. 

I didn’t want to go. 

Where, I hear you ask? 

Ecobuild. 

Nothing against sustainable construction, mind you.  It’s just I’m not a huge fan of the ExCeL centre, or – and I hate to say it – trade shows in general. 

But….

I was pleasantly surprised. Dare I say it, I even enjoyed myself.

This year’s event was HUGE.  Bigger than I anticipated, even though I did check out the website and peep some of the vendors sites before I went.  There were more than 1,300 exhibitors from the fields of design, construction and what Ecobuild calls “the built environment”.  Still not sure what that is. Seems a bit vague….but I think they mean people who sell and install things for inside your building…floors, toilets, plumbing, windows, etc.

So, why did I enjoy it?

1. I got to know a very cool company – REC Solar.

2.  I was thrilled to see what a huge presence solar was at the show.  Despite concerns around the government’s planned review of feed in tariff policy and what this could mean for the UK solar industry – all the big players were out in force. Go team.

It’s a solar bear…get it?!

3.  I got to get back in touch with my techie roots and play with phase change materials (PCMs for the uninitiated) – check out BASF and DuPont.  There was a great little demo centre called the Cool Workspace, which showed how PCMs can be used to create a more sustainable office environment by storing both heating and cooling, reducing the carbon footprint of buildings by up to 30%.

4.  The people. Yes, that old chestnut.  I was genuinely impressed with the huge range of people that were drawn in.  From the big corporate sales guys, to students, to apprentice builders, to eco-conscious consumers, to, er… models dressed as Canadian mounties (see below).  While most of the attendees were indeed more of the corporate ilk, it was refreshing to see that there was a noticeable representation from a huge range of people. 

As nice as it would be to preserve all the green space left in the world, that’s never going to happen.  Construction and physical development is a reality.  Even here on our little island, we’re expected to increase our population to from 61 million to 70 million in about 15 years.  Whether that growth is sustainable from a resources point of view or not is a different blog post, but that’s a lot of new housing, schools and hospitals. Let’s hope they’re built in a way that takes a lesson from Ecobuild.

Expanding unrest in the Middle East has jolted the oil market, sending crude to $119 a barrel since Egyptians first took to the streets in January. The oil market doesn’t like uncertainty, and nothing could be more uncertain than the volatility spreading to Libya, Africa’s third-largest oil supplier, and Tunisia. Some analysts are even concerned about Saudi Arabia.
Rising oil prices mean rising gasoline prices, which have surged to an average of about $3.13 a gallon at the pump in the U.S. This comes on the cusp of the summer driving season, when prices usually peak as Americans hit the roads.
Some analysts say oil could reach $220 a barrel if Libya and Algeria halt exports. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Feb. 8 that the monthly average retail price for regular gasoline could exceed $3.50 a gallon during summer 2011. And that was before the Libyan situation developed.
What typically follows these price upticks is a round of Congressional hearings as indignant constituents’ wallets are squeezed.
Surging oil prices usually bring a fresh look at renewables too, so green energy companies should be prepared to seize the moment. Companies involved in alternative fuels such solar and wind can use this time of high oil prices to once again showcase their offerings.
This would also be an opportune time for oil companies to press for Gulf of Mexico drilling permits, long stymied by the ghost of Macondo.
Times of unrest often call for times of new beginnings.

It’s a shame that rocket launches of satellites do not receive the same level of interest and media attention that they used to given that this is still a huge technical undertaking. Of course it is understandable given that according to the National Space Science Data Center at the end of October 2010 6,578 satellites have been launched into orbit since 1957. However, it is a shame because important launches of satellites like that of NASA’s Glory satellite will go largely unnoticed, when in fact they will provide incredibly useful data that will help to inform the future development of mankind and our use of the planet.

NASA Illustration of Glory

The Glory satellite is designed to “Increase Our Understanding of the Earth’s Energy Balance”. What this means to you and I is that NASA will be observing the very fine balance between incoming radiation from the Sun and outgoing radiation reflected and emitted by Earth and the impact of aerosols on this balance. This is important because life on Earth rests in the small margins of this equation. With the launch of Glory NASA will be able to map atmospheric aerosols in far more detail than ever before and improve our ability to predict how climate change and the net cooling effect of aerosols will impact different regions of Earth.

This is important for organisations and countries in helping to inform the management of their emissions, but this may also be important for better informing the decisions made by authorities when for example a volcano erupts and guidelines are required for air transport (although this is just my assumption and not something that NASA are claiming).

As those who first travelled to the moon observed, moving to the final frontiers of this world allows us to do one important thing – to look back and admire the glory and the fragility of the planet that we inhabit today, perhaps that is why NASA adopted the name of this special satellite.

Glory Launch Date : February 23, 2011 2:09 a.m. (EST) . . . and counting. Here’s hoping this is a successful launch and deployment.

So following Larry Hagman’s (Dallas’ JR Ewing) switch to alternative energy with American solar panel company, SolarWorld, it seems solar is the hot topic of the summer!

Everywhere I look this week in the media there is a story on solar and its benefits, but is it really a friend for the future or will it turn and bite us?

A neighbour of mine has had solar panels fitted for a while now and seems quite content with them. I can see the benefit of using such a powerful natural resource as a source of power but would I put solar panels on my roof? Not likely to be fair and I’m sure I’m not alone in this view, although reports from BBC show that more than 2,000 homeowners have already had solar panels installed and are using electricity for free.

Now it seems the government has chosen solar as its new ‘thing’ and is creating cash incentives for people who generate their own power. As we saw with the car scrappage scheme, cash incentives seem to work in this country so I’m sure we’ll see solar panels popping up left, right and centre in the near future. But as they say, you don’t get anything for free!

Whilst we’re all basking in the warm glow that solar panels will give us free electricity and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, folks across the other side of the pond are asking questions about the long-term environmental impact of disposing of solar panels. Erica Gies’ piece on The Guardian’s website discusses what impact making and disposing of solar panels has on the planet and our health and it’s quite an eye-opener. I hadn’t realised that solar modules contained so many potentially dangerous materials.

I guess there’s two ways of looking at this – we either embrace solar full on, knowing that there are risks but that solutions for recycling are being investigated and that we need to have alternative fuels for the future or we wait, see how solar progresses in the next few years and hope that manufacturers find safer ways to make and dispose of panels and probably get left behind the rest of the world. Whichever way you go, it looks like solar is here to stay – all we need now is the sun!

Now if this was April 1st, I would have sworn that the story about the Volkswagen Beetle powered by human waste was an April Fools’ Day joke. However, it’s not April and this is not a joke. As reviewed by The Telegraph’s Harry Wallop, the clever people at GENeco, a Wessex Water subsidiary have converted a good old VW Beetle and made it run on biogas.

How we get and use fuel is an ever increasing hot topic with fuel companies looking at how wind and solar power can power our homes and car manufacturers looking at hybrid and electric engines. It seems we have become a nation obsessed with finding new ways of powering our homes and cars.

Personally, I think what we flush down the toilet is called waste for a reason and shouldn’t end up powering my car to the supermarket or the beach but you have to admit with an ever growing population – projections suggest UK population will exceed 65million by 2018 – it seems there will be an endless supply of ‘suitable materials’ that could be turned into biogas for many years to come.

 Now this is clever. Get the actor most associated with oil to front an ad campaign for solar energy.

J.R.Ewing

Launching last week, SolarWorld make quite a splash with an ad fronted by Mr Oil Baron himself, J.R. Ewing. The ad campaign, with Larry Hagman’s most famous alter ego, has proved a coverage generating hit getting a largely positive and amused response to his perceived u-turn. http://tinyurl.com/33rxxa7

The knowing nod to the bygone days of ‘glamorous’ oil  made me think how hard it actually is for most big energy companies to reconcile the traditional parts of their energy business with the new energy side.

We should be celebrating investment in the world of solar energy and I find it extremely rewarding to work with companies who can communicate positive achievements in renewables. However, the hard fact is that on their own renewables don’t yet provide the solution to all our energy needs. Whilst it would be great to decrease our dependance on the traditional energy sector and completely embrace solar, wind, geothermal etc. etc. we do have to accept that energy companies need to provide energy for today as well as tomorrow. Sadly, renewables don’t yet have all the solutions.

Perhaps instead we should be doing more about our own energy consumption habits so that we can be in a better position to deliver the energy we need to tomorrow.

Perhaps.

It would be good though to know what J.R. has to say about that.

You can’t escape the media’s preoccupation with energy at the moment, if it’s not new trans-continental pipelines, it’s wind farms, solar, Carbon Capture Storage and our ‘old friends’ coal and nuclear. On a daily basis we’re presented with a full gamut of energy solutions that will power our ever busy lives.

Energy is even dominating media coverage of the World Cup – from the hot air blasted out by the eardrum splitting and nausea-inducing Vuvuzela to the huge power surges during the half-time of England matches. The Bangladeshi government has even allegedly asked factories to stop production during the evenings to save electricity so that their football-mad countrymen can tune into the World Cup.

Renewables are also playing a part in this World Cup. Some Ghanaians are using solar energy to power their World Cup coverage and a new wind farm has been launched to provide energy for the Nelson Mandela Stadium in Port Elizabeth. More is expected of London in 2012. A key indicator of whether we are able to move to a low-carbon future is our capacity to produce renewable energy for major sporting events as well as for industry and private households.

So as I write this with the next England match only hours away when millions of televisions and radios will be switched on and fridges rammed with six-packs of beer, I’d be interested to know how much energy is used directly or indirectly as a result of the World Cup. Do these figures exist?