Lewisham Council has worked with SE2 on a number of projects over the years including events, research, marketing and the design of retrofit schemes. They bring an insider's knowledge of what’s going on across the energy and fuel poverty world, with a commitment and flexibility that makes them easy to work with.
Martin O'Brien, Asset Management Planning Manager, Lewisham Council
Ten Years of SE2 #5: A Changing Climate for Business
Over the past ten years, we’ve worked with individuals, communities, public sector organisations and others to address the challenge of a changing climate. We have also worked with the business sector, and that’s where my attention has turned for this latest in our blog-fest to celebrate ten years of SE2.
It’s easy to forget how much progress has been made by business. Some of the strongest voices for tougher action on climate change are coming from business: we’ve had the honour of working with the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership over the past few years and have had a real insight into how sustainability is becoming part of everyday business in some of the world’s largest organisations. Mandatory carbon reporting, the CRC (albeit a watered down version), the new ESOS, Plan A, supermarket chains installing CHP across the country, behaviour change campaigns and energy champions schemes: so many things have become part of the mainstream that we almost forget that once upon a time the world looked very different.
We have played our part, albeit in some of the less well-known parts of the business spectrum. We have had great fun building capacity, distributing small grants and supporting behaviour change among SMEs in London – first for the Islington Climate Change Partnership and then as part of a project for Waltham Forest. We worked with independent retailers, restaurants, estate agents, pubs, building companies, taxi firms, charities: a whole spectrum of SMEs. We have also advised larger organisations, notably international legal firm Linklaters; we helped to revitalise their green champions scheme by making it much more specific to the nature of their business. We have also created resources, guidance and advice to help businesses in the design and construction sectors embed sustainability in their thinking and practices.
What we have found is that many of these businesses faced similar challenges:
- Understanding their environmental impacts
- Feeling empowered to make a change
- Knowing what change could be made
- Having the resources (human or financial) to act
Over the years, we have worked on a number of projects with Emma Burlow of QSA Partners, our SME sustainability guru (she literally wrote the book….). I asked her what she felt were the biggest challenges facing businesses when addressing sustainability. Her list reads similarly to ours:
- Getting the head space to hear the opportunity
- Finding good advice to build a financial case
- Having the internal commitment to want to change
The point I’d like to stress is that most of the challenges and barriers that businesses face are at the human level. They’re not about technology or products; they’re not usually about finance – in fact, if the human angle is strong enough, financial arguments often go out of the window!
Rachael’s recent blog and our posting about skills make the same point: engaging and inspiring people, giving them the confidence and the desire to act, and providing the support (whether financial, advisory or just a reassuring nod that they’re doing the right thing) are the real catalysts for change.
And green business is good business. Have a read of this from Bloomberg, this from UPS, and this from Nokia.
We’d love to hear what you think, about skills for sustainability in the business sector and how we move from early action to a large scale transformation of how we work, the things we make, how we use them and where they end up. Get in touch on Twitter with @se2limited or email liz.warren@se-2.co.uk.