The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) is currently conducting an inquiry into the prospects for green jobs and policies aimed at increasing employment in environmental industries. It will consider how the UK can maximise the environmentally positive opportunities arising from changes in public spending and how this might help with employment during the recession. (more…)
Archive for the ‘UK’ Category
400,000 Environmental jobs 2015
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
Could the CRC have a positive impact?
Friday, August 14th, 2009Guest post by Bethany Cox, Marketing Manager at Acre; climate change recruitment specialists and co-founding organisation of the CRC Network
As I’m sure the members of Renewable Energy Jobs are well aware, the Government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment legislation comes into full effect in April 2010. Many of you may be involved in you’re the measurement of your organisation’s carbon emissions and actions to reduce these emissions to minimise the impact of the CRC financially and from a brand perspective. (more…)
Last week’s Cleantech Innovation Forum
Monday, June 22nd, 2009Last week I went to the Cleantech Innovation Forum in London, at Kensington Olympia. The forum had a highly interactive format, with a series of discussion groups and pre-arranged one-on-one meetings, rather than the traditional format of presentation with networking coffee breaks. This proved to be pretty useful as a networking tool, although I found myself with an action-packed schedule! (more…)
Carbon Capture and Storage - a ramble!
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009Why another ramble now, well some new teak steamers (from sensitively managed forests I assure you, as John Lewis have assured me) and a sunny day finds me sat in the garden. The minute it looks like I’m not doing something constructive I can imagine a long list of gardening chores that require attention. So I have decided to set down my thoughts on Carbon Capture and Storage (“CCS”) before Jean decides I need to repair the greenhouse. (more…)
Dear job seeker…..
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009Dear job seeker,
I have some good news and some bad news. If you are new to cleantech and are perhaps viewing it (quite rightly) as one of the few areas of the economy that is doing (relatively) well then the good news is that cleantech is an industry and not a technology. What do I mean? As a colleague of mine, Hugh Parnell, put it, it’s not a technology, like biotechnology, but rather a collection of technologies. I would go further and say it’s an industry like, say, the car industry. In fact several clean technologies are being developed by the car industry, such as fuel cells and plug-in hybrids. So the good news is that cleantech is a very broad industry in which you can valuably exploit your existing skills. This is in fact the basis of the various ‘green-collar’ stimulus packages being deployed by governments around the World. (more…)
Climate Change: symptom or cause?
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009As the so-called fourth industrial revolution arrives, and our latest comic book hero, the “Green New Deal” strides forth to save not just our capitalist way of living but also the whole of planet earth, we may feel that we can start to breathe a sigh of relief again. The sun is shining, there are rumours that the housing market has bottomed out and, bar the imminent relegation of Newcastle United, things are on the whole looking a bit more positive. As a species, we are generally good at adjusting to changing circumstances, and as we get more accustomed to the new economy, so our confidence in the future will continue to build and the good times will roll again. (more…)
2050 - will we get there?
Monday, May 18th, 2009Conferences, don’t you love them. We all go and there are just so many we could spend our entire lives listening to “experts” tell us about ‘climate change’ and ‘energy’. I was recently at the launch of the first 5 years’ Research Report by the UKERC. One-day long, excellent venue (IET, 2 Savoy Place), host of well-known folks on the podium, but I fell asleep. Literally. Must’ve been tired.
The UKERC Energy 2050 report is ‘weighty’ - “Making the Transition to a Secure and Low-Carbon Energy System”. You can tell, each word took several committees to determine. It is a “Synthesis Report”, bringing together the research results of a nationwide team assessing how the UK can “move to a resilient low-carbon ’system’”. If the report is not enough, you can wait for the book in 2010. And then maybe if you’re really keen, the film of the book…. The conference was merely the start of this publicity extravaganza.
But now here’s the thing - the research was a mix of behavioural, technological and mathematical, some of it doubtless excellent and new. But it is reported as a series of 23 “scenarios” with such romantic titles - CFH is the “Carbon Reduction Faint Heart” world where the UK achieves only half the 2050 targets; “LC Renew” is an accelerated technology pathway with all technologies delivered fast; “Dread” is the low-carbon world with any new technology ‘constrained’ and “Nimby” is a world where ‘local impact’ has forced the non-deployment of new technologies e.g. wind! (more…)
Corporate Responsibility: a dead parrot?
Monday, May 18th, 2009As the Recession has started to bite, budgets have been slashed and projects mothballed across all sectors and industries. Investments in Sustainability, Corporate Responsibility and Carbon Management have been no exception. For many, who see such spend as purely discretionary, the demise of such, potentially “distracting”, initiatives has been loudly heralded. But is the “parrot” really deceased, or are the obituaries premature?
Is CSR a dead parrot?
The reality is that in cash-strapped times like the present, the principles of Sustainability, applied in a materially relevant way, should be seen as more - not less - important in ensuring long-term organisational survival. Properly planned and implemented, such initiatives can provide a stimulus for all sorts of good business practices, whether cutting costs through targetted reductions in energy use, enhancing loyalty through increased employee engagement, or speeding up planning processes through effective stakeholder management> in all such instances the effective implementation of the right initiatives in the right way can rapidly and meaningfully add to a companies bottom line. (more…)
