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Sponge debate

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Rather arse about tit day yesterday. To a business exhibition, The Thames Gateway Forum, to see a politician (Gordon Brown, with no sign of Yates from the Yard in tow) in the afternoon and then to the House of Lords in the evening to take part in a debate with a bunch of business professionals on off-site renewables. The debate was held by the Sponge group in the splendidly ornate Moses Room and was to discuss the motion "This house believes offsite renewables have an essential role in delivering the Government's zero carbon building targets". Motion was, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly passed.

What a week, so many questions

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Phew. It's been quite a five days. Lots of questions: Will housebuilders stick to their Code targets if the market crashes? Can New Labour refocus on delivery? Will there be a pronounced downturn? If so where does that leave environmental concerns - dismissed as non-essential and non-critical or moved even further up the business agenda? Will binding emission reductions ever be agreed by the international community? Is carbon rationing ever going to be a reality? Can micro-renewables ever make the grade?

Gordon looks east, and looks more comfortable

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To the Thames Gateway Forum this afternoon to see in Gordon Brown in action. The prime minister managed to escape his hellish week in Westminster - there wasn't a brown envelope in site - and took to the Excel conference centre for much more comfortable surroundings. This was the environment to make a stage-managed entrance in front of a friendlier audience and deliver a pre-prepared speech with as many statistics and "we're going to change the world" phrases as you could fit into a 15 minute speech. Then be whisked off with no hint of any donor or data-related questions.

Heathrow: what Kelly could have said instead

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By guest poster Mark Brinkley

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Should Heathrow be expanded? Last week, the Transport Secretary, Ruth Kelly, launched a consultation exercise over a major expansion to Europe’s biggest airport which could result in a third runway and a sixth terminal. Kelly said: “If nothing changes, Heathrow’s status as a world-class airport will gradually be eroded – jobs will be lost and the economy will suffer.” So, not a lot of fence sitting on her part. One wonders just how meaningful this consultation exercise is going to be.

Renewables and the credit crunch

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I've just gone through some notes from an event I attended last week on energy, offered a perspective of the state of the renewables sector from a source I hadn't heard from before - a banker. Mark Muldowney, head of the energy and utilities group at Fortis Bank, gave a fascinating insight into the view of the financier on how attractive a sector it is for him to fund. His conclusion? Good and bad. Positive in the fact that renewables is now seen as "mainstream" according to Muldowney, negative in the potential affect from the credit crunch.

Upstream acquired

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Very interesting acquisition struck earlier this month. Property consultant giant Jones Lang Lasalle has bought sustainability advisor Upstream. I'm sure we will see a lot more of this kind of activity in the coming months. Upstream seems to have an impressive list of clients and most recently compiled a report on the green credentials of leading housebuilders.

Olympics - bronze medal?

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If as I just wrote 2008 (and beyond, of course) should be the year of delivery what are we to make of the Olympic green targets set yesterday? Permanent buildings to perform 15% better that Part L 2006 standards? Homes to reach Code Level 4? A legacy target of reducing emissions from the Olympics Park by 50%? I'm sure the clamour to keep costs down on this job has probably hampered the environmental ambition. So our next challenge for the next year and beyond is achieve the dream, to prove that the sustainable solution is the lowest cost one. It's a target set by a evangelical consultant I met last week and if he nails it I'm thinking he's found a licence to print money.

The CBI message

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"Substantial changes will be needed in the way the economy works... Many of the technologies and solutions that will be required already exist... The pace and scale of implementation must now be accelerated." So says the CBI report Climate Change: Everyone's Business. The report, and the video on the site the CBI has created to launch it, hammers home that it's a challenge that needs a tripartite approach - Government, consumers and business. The three are interdependent. As an example it says that "the current rate of insulating the existing housing stock needs to triple over the next 20 years. This will only work through much closer working between government, business and consumers, with focus on delivery."

Reports, reports

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Two big ones to greet me on a Monday. The first Climate Chane: Everyone's Business, is by the CBI to coincide with their annual conference and written by the body's climate change task group. And the Met Office is presenting one tomorrow at said event on adaptation. Oh, and there was also an NAO report released on the performance of the Carbon Trust, which I mentioned some months ago.The three of these will shut me up for the rest of the day.

China to put us to shade?

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There are clearly many troubling things about the growth of China which I won't go into. One thing it's probably difficult to question (probably just because of said troubling things) is that if the country sets a target it usually hits or exceeds it. Compare and contrast with the UK. Proof of such delivery comes in a report released last week by the Worldwatch Institute, which has plenty of publications of interest on its site, on the renewables sector in China.