Sustainability « Carbon Voyage's Blog

Thoughts on Durban

December 12, 2011 by jcswanston Leave a Comment

At the start of this month, I got an email from One Hundred Months just highlighting that there are five years left to start making some significant changes to what we are doing in terms of reducing carbon emissions…

I am not particularly certain of whether to think that the COP17 talks in Durban were good or bad, but I am certain that more was certainly achieved than in other recent talks. The real positive news is that there now seems to be a degree of consensus that something needs to be done, and a long term framework that is legally binding. Without a doubt, this is a great step and is something that has been missing from the climate change agenda in recent years; consensus is crucial to any capacity for things such as Australia’s carbon tax or any emission trading schemes in shipping and aviation which I have previously written about. The EU did very well to achieve its aims for the conference – and not surprisingly the United States has failed to demonstrate any leadership in this despite Obama’s pre-election promises (and with the presidential elections twelve months out, it is unlikely to improve) – see for example here. It will be interested to watch China, as the biggest emitter, to see what they do in the next few years to curb emissions – at a national level, they seem to appear as if they may be more committed to addressing this that the US or even India.

From the Washington Post

However, the real downside here is about the timing of what is meant to come next. The existing binding agreement (although very limited in terms of what countries are signed up to it) expires next year, so there is going to be a real gap in terms of commitments to reductions over this very critical period of the next few years in which extensive action is needed. This is precisely the same period in which it is crucial to bring yearly emissions down, so it is almost a case of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted…

Filed under Sustainability Tagged with carbon emissions, cop17, durban, kyoto protocol, sustainability

Australia and Sustainability

November 17, 2011 by jcswanston Leave a Comment

As the Greenest Government ever decided to wreak havoc on the solar industry at the start of last week, the Australian Government last week finally passed a bill through the Senate imposing a carbon tax starting at approximately £15 per tonne. Of course this has not been without its detractors, but I do hope that the funds raised do get used to promote and support the use of more sustainable technology – once the price is right, these things are more efficient (as well as being good for the environment), and from a capitalist perspective, allow for improved profits.

The scheme itself is a good idea, but as with the debate about shipping emissions recently, or indeed airline emissions, that has fired up some interesting debates between the EU and the US, then the whole thing will fall down unless there is a degree of global consensus on this as Greg Hunt mentions in The Australian. So perhaps, as the following clip suggests, they might be a part two to the whole story!

And next week, I’m looking forward to attending the press launch of some UNEP reports in the lead up to COP 17 which should be rather interesting – perhaps a well placed question about global consensus wouldn’t go astray!

Filed under Shipping, Sustainability Tagged with airline emissions, australia carbon tax, carbon tax, COP 17, dawes and clarke, environment, EU, shipping emissions, sustainability, The Australian, UNEP

The Greenest Government Ever – maybe not…

November 8, 2011 by jcswanston Leave a Comment

As a conservative voter and environmentalist, I was really delighted to hear David Cameron make this particular pledge around 18 months ago, which was a far cry from some of the unfortunate rantings back in Australia. The intervening months have seen some good and some bad things come from the government, as the Guardian nicely shows in their green-o-meter. Many people will realise that any environmental credentials and plaudits have been fairly well obliterated perhaps as highlighted by an open letter written by Solar Century. For a government that talks so much about big society, it has failed to look at the big picture. No one can question that these tariffs needed to come down; doing this so quickly will dramatically ruin the solar industry and be completely detrimental to efforts to reduce fuel poverty, and of course efforts to reduce the carbon impact of energy needs.

So why am I, who is involved in the transport industry, starting off this post talking about solar stuff you may ask. I think ultimately the key issue here is about government’s role in supporting efforts to reduce climate change, and particularly bringing in new technologies. Sustainable technology often needs government support to help pump prime industry as sometimes there is a very long return on investment period, and sometimes emerging technologies cost a lot to start with. When I was involved in the Suststainable Development Commission’s Mobility 2020 work, this was one of the key things we looked at where it was going to be critical for governments do major procurements to help bring down the cost of technology. From an economic perspective, this shouldn’t be about long term subsidies, but rather financial support that reduces over time, otherwise it is unsustainable (although certain industries do have long term subsidies that have particular political imperitives attached to them). I would highly doubt that other industries would accept a cut to subsidies within six weeks, particularly midway through a review period of subsidies. I do hope the government backtrack on this, but it will forwever tarnish any good work that they have done to date.

Filed under General, Sustainability Tagged with david cameron, feed in tariffs, fit, fuel poverty, government subsidies, greenest goverment ever, guardian, mobility 2020, solar century, solar industry, sustainable development commission

IBM Sustainability Summit 2011

November 3, 2011 by jcswanston Leave a Comment

Watching an empty train roll past yesterday morning while I waited to get on my way to a meeting gave me some pause for thought to consider the IBM Summit I attended on Tuesday in central London at 8 Northumberland. Unlike the event last year which was completely focused on transport, this had a wider series of topics being discussed, many linked to getting consumers to be more sustainable. There were a number of breakout sessions and workshops focused on questions around getting people to act in more sustainable ways, and some specifically linked to transport, for which the consensus was that it was crucial to challenge the norm of behaviour.

As with other more general sustainability events, it was a good opportunity to reflect on what we do and what some of the challenges are that we need to consider in overcoming in order to act/ be more sustainable. The key transport breakout session was around the topic of liberalising travel information to help people go greener. This is important, but at the very heart of the matter is the issue of pricing – until sustainability and pricing are linked, then it is going to be difficult to get the behaviour change necessary to really achieve great things with sustainable transport.

This morning, I attended an event put on by the Committee on Climate Change discussing UK shipping emissions, which was particularly interesting in terms of highlighting that transport-related emissions are going to become a greater problem over time as it is left behind energy in priority. It is clear, as they suggested, that this issue does need to be addressed, but it does not come without difficulty. I fear that a key stumbling block will of course relate to getting some form of international consensus on how to deal with this through the International Maritime Organization. It sort of reminded me of a Monty Python short video played on Tuesday by Mark Earls, one of the speakers at the IBM summit (shown below). Fortunately though, as one person highlighted today, it is in the best interests of the shipping community to reduce costs which will hopefully reduce carbon emissions anyway!

Filed under Events, Sustainability, Technology, transport, Travel Tagged with 8 northumberland, 8northumberland, carbon voyage, committee on climate change, green travel, HERD, ibm, ibm summit, mark earls, monty python, shipping, sustainability, transport, uk shipping emissions

Sustainability briefing for freight companies

September 12, 2011 by jcswanston Leave a Comment

Last week, we run a small session for a number of freight companies that are part of TfL’s Freight Operator Recognition Scheme. We went through some basics of sustainability and the history of how greenhouse gas reporting started through the last 120 years or so, and then onto how companies can improve their reporting as well as understanding about Greenhouse Gas Reporting protocols. The presentation was fairly big, but here is part 1!

CarbonVoyage FORS Sustainability Briefing Part 1

Filed under Events, Freight, Logistics, Shipping, Sustainability Tagged with behaviour change, carbon emissions, carbon voyage, congestion, CSR, environment, fors, freight, greenhouse gas reporting, james swanston, logistics, sustainability, sustainable transport, tfl, transport

Are you a freight company in London?

August 30, 2011 by jcswanston 2 Comments

We’re running an event on 6 September to help FORS members meet their environmental objectives. If you’re a freight company in London and not a member of FORS (which is run by Transport for London), you should think about joining – for more information, apply here!

Filed under Freight, Logistics, Shipping, Sustainability, transport Tagged with carbon emissions, carbon offsetting, carbon voyage, climate change, CSR, emissions, environment, fors, FORS benchmarking, freight, freight operator recognition scheme, ghg, GHG emissions, green travel, logistics, london freight, London Freight Plan, mayor of london, road freight, shipping, sustainability, sustainable transport, sustainable travel, tfl, transport, transport for london

Freight and Collaborative Consumption

August 19, 2011 by jcswanston Leave a Comment

Back in February, I went along to a great session at NESTA all about Collaborative Consumption, an issue that is closely linked to sustainability – I guess you could say that it is all about sharing assets/ resources which reduces waste and thus cost (and by extension carbon). The underpining concepts of collaborative consumption are just as relevant in freight/ shipping/ logistics as they are for consumers. Empty capacity rates in logistics are significant – up around the 30 – 40% (which I mentioned in my last post) – an interesting example of this is the following diagram taken from Merge Global.

Freight and shipping utilisation rates

While there are certainly external factors that influence this (such as what could potentially be transported on a backhaul), it does not really help the profitability of a freight company. The current economic climate is not particularly helpful as Maersk points out. There are certainly structural inefficiencies which will never allow for perfect utilisiation rates of transport. With an oversupply of freight assets, low profitability and minimal rates of economic growth in major economies, there are some tough times ahead for the industry.

While our focus to date has predominantly been on road freight, it seems that there opportunities for collaborative solutions which are missed. In passenger transport, my favourite example is taxis and airports (particularly Heathrow) where there are millions of empty taxi and minicab journeys each year.

Freight seems to exhibit many similar characteristics, without some of the behaviour change issues that affect making passenger transport more efficient (such as the issue of sharing). Recently, we’ve been working on a location that has many different businesses (eg. a business park or business improvement district or other transport hub) and there has fundamentally been no collaboration between each of the organisations in freight deliveries or collections. What that means is that when courier drops off a package, it often happens as the same time as another courier shows up to pick up a package; or, that there are multiple milk deliveries on a Monday morning from different places. Aside from the basic cost implications, it creates unneeded congestion in an area that has very limted road access. As we look at traffic/ freight patterns in the context of the Olympics, there is of course the option to restrict deliveries to particular times, but this won’t make things more efficient.

Given the impact of cost, congestion and carbon, the only real option (other than not having things delivered or collected) is to look at a more collaborative approach to working with other organisations that share similar needs. There are a number of works/ studies that look at the potential impact of more sustainable transport on cost and carbon, such as one I mentioned over a year ago from the National Geographic. In a report we are doing for a client at present, we are using some of the statistics from the London Freight Plan regarding the impact of carbon and congestion (for this client, cost is not actually the issue). The London Freight Plan suggests that efficiencies in freight could result in 0.61 million tonnes of carbon savings, and that the financial cost of congestion is between £2-£4 billion per annum which is clearly considerable. Previous work that we’ve done, including that with the University of Manchester and Tesco has given us into some of the barriers to behaviour change for people to travel in more sustainable ways, and it will be very interesting to see which of those barriers is also present for freight…

Filed under Freight, Logistics, Shipping, Sustainability, transport Tagged with behaviour change, business improvement district, business park, carbon, cargo, collaborative consumption, congestion, economic growth, environment, freight, fuel, logistics, London Freight Plan, maersk, national geographic, Olympics, sea freight, shipping, sustainability, sustainable transport, tesco, transport, university of manchester

Carbon Voyage and Freight

August 14, 2011 by jcswanston 2 Comments

So we’ve built a freight version of our software.

Ever since starting Carbon Voyage, we have been interested in understanding where inefficiencies existed across all parts of the transport industry given the impact on cost, carbon and congestion. Over the last twelve months in particular, we’ve been working with a few clients to fully understand this in terms of freight and develop a baseline understanding (mainly in London) of what some of these inefficiencies are. While it is a bit too premature to discuss the precise findings (other than say that they clearly demonstrate that there is a real mess that needs to be sorted out particularly in the lead up to the Olympics), it is quite instructive to understand that these inefficiencies are incredibly costly. Given that freight is sometimes empty up to 40-50% of the time (depending on mode and ‘shipping’ routes) and that fuel costs are potentially 30-40% of the total operating expenditure for a freight company, then anything that can be done to reduce inefficiency is very beneficial to freight companies. The London Freight Plan from TfL has some very useful statistics about the cost of congestion also.

The core of our software concept was all about making transport more efficient (i.e. optimisation) – find opportunities to share journeys, fill empty return journeys and find the right mode of transport based on what’s moving. As a basic concept, that applies to both people and things, so it was only a matter of time before we were ready to launch the freight side of things, which we are about to do. I think it’s great that there are already a few companies out there addressing parts of this market, and it is certainly clear that there are some great opportunities out there to make freight more efficient, given how critical it is to trade, and indeed the way we live.

If you would like some more info, please contact freight [a] carbonvoyage [dot] com or if you’re a freight company anywhere, visit here.

Filed under Freight, Logistics, Sustainability, Technology, transport, Travel Tagged with carbon emissions, cargo, empty loads, environment, freight, loadboard, logistics, London Freight Plan, Olympics, sustainable transport, technology, tfl

Greening Your Holiday

July 4, 2011 by jcswanston 1 Comment

With Green Tourism Week recently ending, it is a great time to talk about green travel and ways to green your holiday. Reducing your carbon footprint while traveling takes planning and research. Traveling, whether for a holiday or for business gives you an opportunity to explore new surroundings and learn about a new culture. But, it has its costs. Traveling gives off an enormous amount of carbon emissions. There are several ways to reduce your carbon footprint when you are traveling around the globe and most of which will save you money as well. Sustainability in travel has become a competitive advantage for many companies and it is easier than ever to get on the web and do a little research before you plan your next vacation.

Traveling green does not mean that you can’t travel more than 5 miles from your house, and it isn’t necessarily about how you get there… it is about creating an unforgettable trip that will impact the environment as little as possible. Start by choosing the best method of traveling to your destination. Flying is usually the most direct and fastest way to get from point A to point B, however, it does increase your carbon footprint the most. To reduce your footprint, get the most direct flight. Taking off and landing has the biggest environmental impact on a flight. You can also offset your emissions every time you fly, although this should be seen as a last resort after minimising the carbon impact of travel. Taking the train uses half the amount of energy or more that is used when you fly. A high-speed train like the EuroStar is the most efficient train to take. If you need to drive, rent a hybrid or biodiesel car if you can. Or at least use a smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicle that will use less fuel and emit less carbon emissions. Public transport is a great alternative to a taxi and is the least expensive way to get around a large city. In places like London, you also have a cycle scheme which is a fun way to get around town. Packing is the most daunting of tasks when traveling. The best tip here is to pack lightly. Packing too much requires more fuel, which will in turn produce more CO2 emissions. Pack multipurpose clothing that can be dressed up or down, bring reusable items like an aluminum water bottle, reusable batteries (don’t forget the charger!), and a reusable shopping bag. Try to take as few nonessential items with as possible. You will learn that you can travel without all those extras.

When finally at your destination you can make simple choices that will make a lasting impact. Choose a locally owned and operated hotel or bed and breakfast (we once stayed in the Good Hotel in San Francisco which was pretty cool). If this is not a viable option simply ask about opting out of fresh towels and linens everyday. This saves water and energy. Support local business, attractions, and transportation companies that have environmentally friendly practices. And instead of hotels and other commercial options, take a look at the growing collaborative consumption movement – share a car, or do some couch surfing and meet new friends!

Filed under Sustainability, Tourism, Travel