Sustainability: UK

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The European Conference on Sustainability, Energy & the Environment 2017

"East Meets West: Innovation and Discovery"

From natural phenomena and the results of climate change to pollution and societal traumas, migrations and war, the enormous challenges that face humankind and our environment are frequently daunting and difficult to comprehend. However, with every new challenge or disruption comes the opportunity for innovation and discovery. Whether inventing new technologies, implementing innovative systems, enacting better policies, legislation, or governance, or ensuring greater cooperation and information sharing, responses are many and varied.

The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and World Stage Design 2013 are currently seeking proposals for the competition to design a sustainable temporal theatre. The winning design will be built in Cardiff and house performances and events as part of the World Stage Design 2013 festival. Open to students and professionals from across all related disciplines, the structure must be weather and sound-proof and be designed using either existing and readily available building components or alternative sustainable elements. The deadline for submissions is March 1, 2013. More information after the break.

"So far the NHS is meeting the challenge of maintaining strong finances in a period of austerity. It is clear, however, that parts of the service are under strain.

"For value for money to be delivered in future, two things are required: firstly, careful management of the risks created by transition to a new commissioning model; and, secondly a coherent and transparent financial support mechanism which outlines when trusts should be supported, or allowed to fail."

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, 5 July 2012

United Kingdom's Flag Looking Like Canvas (Photo credit: Chrisser)

O2's three year sustainability plan promises to deliver up to 4 million tonnes of carbon savings and equip one million young people with skills.

The Think Big Blueprint has three key goals and 40 individual commitments:

• Think Big for planet – a commitment aiming to deliver carbon reductions for customers that are ten times greater than the impact of O2's network.

• Think Big for customers – an undertaking to help ten million people live in easier and more sustainable ways through O2's products and services.

• Think Big for people – a pledge to help one million young people to develop skills for life and lead community projects across the UK.

Bute House in Charlotte Square, official resid...

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Money will be invested in cycling networks, low-carbon transport and transferring freight from road to rail.

A total of £50m will be invested in eco-friendly transport over the next four years, the Scottish Government has announced.

Transport Minister Keith Brown said that the money will be invested in cycling networks, low-carbon transport and transferring freight from road to rail.

"A large number of corporate pension funds are still lagging behind the leading schemes in their approach to responsible ownership and investment." -- UKSIF chief executive Penny Shepherd[1]

The cost of paying for future pensions in the United Kingdom has inflated due to a reduction in the yield of government bonds, according to figures released last month by the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), a statutory fund that protects members in case of employer insolvency.

The UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development has issued a warning that tropical countries participating in REDD+ schemes, whereby they get compensated for protecting their forests to limit emissions of greenhouse gases from deforestation, could fail to reap social and environmental benefits.

The warning is based on the findings of the Forest Governance Learning Group (FGLG) teams in ten nations in Africa and Asia where it promotes decision making about forests that is "fair and sustainable".

• How can business schools teach complex sustainability issues to the leaders of tomorrow?

• This was the topic up for discussion in our recent live chat. Read a summary of the debate here

Business schools often integrate sustainability into at least one course for each of their disciplines. Some have gone further by embedding a focus on sustainability across the entire curriculum.

Investments for profit, people and the planet.

With some experts predicting a ten-fold increase in impact investments to $500 billion by 2014 (1% of all managed assets), this forward-looking conference will analyse and debate the most effective ways for investors to generate environmental, social and financial returns.

Aid policy: towards more diversity in aid agencies

When long-time humanitarian Margie Buchanan-Smith was interviewed for one of her first field posts – in Sudan in the 1980s – she was asked: “Will you burst out crying when you arrive?” “No,” she replied – and got the job. But when she arrived she was one of few women on the ground, and was always questioned if she was up to it.

Things have moved on since then: There are thousands of women working at all levels of the humanitarian sector, but when it comes to the top positions, at least in Western international NGOs and particularly in the field, staff are too often white and male,

George Osborne MP, pictured speaking on the la...

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Impervious to experience, strangers to reason: the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, and the chancellor, George Osborne, have learned nothing from the economic crisis. They claim that laxer town planning "is key to our economic recovery". But the European countries hit hardest by the economic crisis – Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland – have weak planning controls and urban sprawl.

Image by stumayhew via Flickr

There have been far too many people who want to blame the debts in which the world’s developed nations find themselves on the banks and the people who run them.

They are wrong to do so, the fact is that just about all of those nations, including the UK, were running deficits before the banking crisis began to take hold in 2007 and 2008.

Therefore the need to bail-out banks compounded an already growing debt problem. Nonetheless the fact that banks needed to be bailed out at all warranted a root and branch restructure of the industry and The Independent Commission on Banking Vickers Report seems to provide a framework for that to happen.

The UK should build the business parks of the future rather than making the same old dirty mistakes of the past.

The government has revealed the last 11 areas to be made into enterprise zones. This policy forms the nucleus of the government's growth strategy to make more "stuff" other than financial services.

In 2010 the UK proudly announced that it would be the first country in the world to create a bank dedicated to investing in greening the economy.

Although it was originally announced by the previous Labour Government, the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition has pushed ahead with proposals as part of its green agenda. When it comes to green credentials, the UK has a strong tradition in wanting to be top of the class, even if only on paper.

Over 150 of Britain’s most innovative and sustainable public and private sector businesses have been announced today, Tuesday 2nd August, as finalists of the National Business Awards in partnership with Orange.

Organisations shortlisted this year range from the well-known Debenhams, JD Wetherspoon, moneysupermarket.com, Harvey Nash and Stannah — through to the rising stars of Ovo Energy, Door-Stop, ShortList Media and HeartSine Technologies.

http://www.sustainable.onbeon.com/2011/07/making-social-investment-more-appealing.html

Pensions funds, banks and private equity firms are showing more interest in investing in social enterprises. A new report explains the new investment packages that are being produced.

It is almost 20 years to the day since the UK Sustainable Investment Forum was founded to promote responsible investment.

With a strong history of philanthropy, the City of London has long supported the development of this sector, co-founding the London Accord – a co-operative research project to share thinking around sustainable investment - and, in partnership with the forum, rewarding innovation in sustainable finance through its sustainable city awards.

The New Era Of Sustainable Investment

We're unlikely to see a film any time soon starring a reformed Gordon Gekko proclaiming "green is good", but until that happy day the Environmental Tracking Index Series is an interesting instrument for Fools who want to save the planet and make money.
Launched in May, it's a kind of exchange-traded fund and its unapologetically noble purpose is to punish polluting companies while rewarding green ones. More later, but it does so by ranking companies according to their greenhouse gas emissions, whether they like it or not.

Office equipment company Ricoh has launched its first UK eco billboard in Europe, powered by wind and solar power.

The advert is on the M4, between London and Heathrow Airport, and is powered by 96 solar panels and 5 wind turbines.
This is the first fully sustainable advert in Europe, which illuminates only after enough energy has been collected to allow it to do so.
Steve Saito, chairman and CEO of Ricoh Europe said:

Image by BriYYZ via Flickr

British Airways has thrown its weight behind weekend’s launch of a European Advanced Bio-fuels Flight Path by the European Commission and its partners. According to the airline, the initiative will encourage, support and provide incenti-ves for fuel suppliers and airlines to pursue the commercial scale develop-ment of biofuel to help deliver a more sustainable future for the aviation industry.
Keith Williams, British Airways CEO, said:

Officials at the Financial Services Authority (FSA) could need training courses if they opt to delve further into product intervention.

This is the view of Penny Shepherd, chief executive of UK Sustainable Investment and Finance (UKSIF), who was responding to the publication of a report on the topic by the regulator.

She suggested there is a real risk that financial institutions may find themselves being stifled by such input.

Ms Shepherd said: "If the FSA intervenes more strongly in the design of financial products, its supervisors will need a greater understanding of modern sustainable and responsible investment approaches."