Environment, Europe, Headlines

ENVIRONMENT: Climate Control Can Be Good Business

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Sep 20 2004 (IPS) - Climate control is a good idea, but it can also be good business. Companies can make profit and do the world a favour, or so British companies are being told.

That message went out loud from British Prime Minister Tony Blair to a business gathering in London last week. The audience of business leaders said something just by listening; Blair was not addressing environmentalists. He saw businessmen in a position to actually do something to control climate change.

British companies are moving into the business fast. Ernst & Young has produced a business report setting out just how attractive Britain can be for companies in the field. And how attractive other countries are for businesses engaged in climate control products, or where climate control measures can be tagged on to existing business.

Energy generation and control of emissions from electricity plants burning fossil fuels such as oil and gas are obvious prime targets for new technology that companies can develop. But other areas such as renewable energy sources, emission reduction from automobiles and aircraft and conservation measures promise to be rewarding business.

Environmentalists recognise that it is business that will have to take these steps.

”Any innovation by private business in this field is very good news indeed,” WWF UK spokesman David Cowdrey told IPS. ”All countries need to make a contribution to reduction of carbon emissions.” These emissions are believed to be the prime cause of warming of the atmosphere, leading to increasingly more destructive changes in climate patterns.

”The potential for innovation, for scientific discovery and hence, of course for business investment and growth, is enormous,” Blair told the business gathering. ”With the right framework for action, the very act of solving it can unleash a new and benign commercial force to take the action forward, providing jobs, technology spin-offs and new business opportunities as well as protecting the world we live in.”

Blair said ”UK excellence in science is well documented: we are second only to the U.S. in our share of the world’s most cited publications.” A particular strength is the environmental sciences, he said. ”There are immense business opportunities in sustainable growth and moving to a low carbon economy.”

Blair also flagged other possibilities. ”Swiss Re, the world’s second largest insurer, has estimated that the economic costs of global warming could double to 150 billion dollars each year in the next 10 years, hitting insurers with 30-40 billion dollars in claims.” Insurance is a particular strength of the British market.

Britain has already shown that it can have a strongly growing economy while addressing environmental issues, Blair said. ”Between 1990 and 2002 the UK economy grew by 36 percent, while greenhouse gas emissions fell by around 15 percent.” He called for investment both in ”large scale in existing technologies and to stimulate innovation into new low carbon technologies for deployment in the longer term.”

For once environmentalists are in tune with business goals. ”The UK leads in some forms of renewable energy like waves and tidal energy, and in building designs and fuel cells,” Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK told IPS. ”We are very much in favour of technical innovation; it is an essential part of the solution.”

But while business can find solutions ”the government cannot abdicate its responsibility to lead,” Tindale said. ”The government has to set the right policy framework.”

Business is itself responsible for emission in many areas, but the government has a direct role to play in areas such as domestic energy and transport. In many such areas people do not need technological innovation. ”We know what the concerns are,” Tindale said. Another is that Blair talked about this area but offered no specific measures.

With so much that will remain for a government to do, and with so much scope for business to do things, environment groups believe they can help build the environment to make it happen.

”The message is becoming clearer and clearer, and international pressure to act will grow,” Tindale said. The question now is finding the point between ”how quickly we can act and how much damage would be done in the interim.”

WWF UK has launched a power switch campaign as its way of bearing down on business. The campaign aims to get the large power generators to cut emissions before smaller businesses are tackled.

But the success of such campaigns too would have to be a business success. The business of building technology to bring the changes these campaigns seek is the kind of business Blair hopes to turn into a British market strength. So that one way and another, Britain stays in business.