As coronavirus halts nature-based tourism worldwide, employees and their communities are struggling to stay afloat.
There are fears they could even become prey to criminal networks.
For more than two decades, M Khairi spent his days working as a park guide, accompanying a steady trickle of tourists keen to trek across the lush forests of western Indonesia or spot an endangered orangutan.
But like thousands of others who earn a living from the 56 conservation sites across the archipelago – all shuttered since March to help stem the spread of the novel coronavirus – Khairi is now out of a job and struggling to make ends meet.
“It’s enough to buy rice,” said the 48-year-old, whose income has plummeted about 75% to $17 per week.
“Around 500 of us have lost our jobs,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation of his fellow guides at the Gunung Leuser National Park on Sumatra island.
Globally, more than 3.5 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed, with deaths topping 250,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
As countries move to contain the respiratory disease by shutting down their economies and enforcing restrictions on movement, national parks and conservation areas are also feeling the pain.
From guides and forest communities who rely on visitors for a living, to conservation efforts in protected areas and the wildlife that depend on those habitats, environmentalists warn the pandemic could have far-reaching consequences.
Indonesia’s foreign tourist arrivals fell 64% year-on-year in March to about 471,000, or fewer than half of January’s number, as the coronavirus outbreak discouraged travel, data from the statistics bureau showed.
The government has warned that the country could lose more than $10 billion in tourism revenue this year.
Khairi, who has four children to support, has managed to find low-paid manual work in a rubber plantation but has received no financial help from the local government and is worried about the future.
“It’s very bad for all of us now,” he said.
Criminal networks
In Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit communities that rely on the wildlife tourism business for their survival in countries like Rwanda, Kenya and Botswana.
More than 70 million tourists visited Africa last year, according to the U.N. World Tourism Organization – many enticed by safaris, game drives or trophy hunting.
But with airports and borders now closed, most of those revenues have evaporated overnight.
Not only has that cut off the economic activities of millions of impoverished families living in and around Africa’s national parks and protected reserves, it has also damaged forest conservation and anti-poaching efforts.
With little government funding, the continent’s national parks largely depend on tourism revenue to run their operations and care for the animals and plants that thrive there.
“The lack of funds means parks cannot do frequent patrols as they need fuel for their cars and they need food for rangers to go on patrol,” said Kaddu Sebunya, chief executive officer of the African Wildlife Foundation.
“There are no tourists and fewer rangers around due to social distancing measures, making it easy for criminal networks to harvest natural resources.”
Sebunya said his biggest worry was for the 20 million-30 million Africans who earn a livelihood directly or indirectly from tourism.
Many are involved in eco-tourism projects – from running safari lodges to giving village tours or selling traditional produce and handicrafts – and have no other way to eke out a living besides subsistence farming.
Wildlife trainer Shandor Larenty feeds and pets a pride of lions at the Lion and Safari Park near Johannesburg, South Africa, February 7, 2020. Image: Reuters/Tim Cocks
Conservationists fear that desperate communities – which have for decades helped control deforestation and poaching – may be exploited by criminal gangs to poach endangered animals or cut down trees for the charcoal trade, to get by.
“People are not going to sit home and starve. They will rely on what natural resources are next to them. If it’s a forest, they will cut the trees. If it’s a park, they will hunt the animals. If it’s a river, they will over-fish,” said Sebunya.
Those laid off from jobs in tourism lodges or as rangers “know the parks better than anyone else” and are at risk of being targeted for recruitment by poachers, he added.
‘Desperate times’
The 46 UK-based charities that form The Wildlife Trusts are also dealing with unprecedented challenges from the pandemic.
Conservation in Britain – one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries – has become harder than ever during the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Some staff at the network have been furloughed while those still working have lost valuable time on dealing with a proliferation of illegal activities such as shooting wildlife and fly-tipping, it said.
Vital conservation work has had to be put on hold, meanwhile, leading to an explosion of invasive species, deterioration of rare wildflower meadows, stalled reintroduction of wildlife and potential loss of species such as dormice.
“These are desperate times for our movement as income from visitor centres and fundraisers has crashed, yet the demands of caring for thousands of nature reserves are higher than ever,” said Craig Bennett, CEO of The Wildlife Trusts.
Bennett also pointed to the negative impact of delays in new legislation, the halting of animal vaccination programmes and beach clean-ups, and a rise in fly-tipping, vandalism and theft on nature reserves, as well as illegal shooting of rare birds.
Governments worldwide have their hands full dealing with the “human emergency” of COVID-19, making it difficult to argue for investment in nature right now, said Onno van den Heuvel, global manager of the Biodiversity Finance Initiative at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
But biodiversity conservation provides an estimated 22 million jobs globally, he said, adding that during lockdowns, people could help by crowdfunding ongoing projects.
UNDP is now considering specific crowdfunding campaigns for three to six countries to raise money to keep rangers in their jobs, for example, while also supporting their communities, many of whom were already poor before the pandemic, he added.
“Parks are closed, tourists are at home, and their revenue sources have been drying up – and they’re really in immediate need of additional funding,” he said.
Water is the lifeblood of humanity. With it, communities thrive. But, when the supply and demand of fresh water are misaligned, the delicate environmental, social, and financial ecosystems on which we all rely are at risk. Climate change, demographic shifts, and explosive economic growth all exacerbate existing water issues.
However, hope is not lost. Businesses can play a leading role in mitigating the water issue to limit not just their own risk but also the risk of all stakeholders relying on these systems. This can be accomplished by directing action through three spheres of influence: direct operations, supply chain, and wider basin health.
Water today
Water is as important to the world’s economy as oil or data. Though most of the planet is covered in water, more than 97 percent of it is salt water. Fresh water accounts for the rest, although most of it is frozen in glaciers, leaving less than 1 percent of the world’s water available to support human and ecological processes. Every year, we withdraw 4.3 trillion cubic meters of fresh water from the planet’s water basins. We use it in agriculture (which accounts for 70 percent of the withdrawals), industry (19 percent), and households (11 percent).
These percentages vary widely across the globe. In the United States, industrial usage (37 percent) is almost as high as agricultural (40 percent); in India, on the other hand, agriculture claims 90 percent of water withdrawals, while only 2 percent is put to work for industry. China’s withdrawals are 65 percent agriculture, 22 percent industrial, and 13 percent for household use. Considering that some of the agricultural usage is directed toward industry—for example, half of the production of maize, which is one of the top five global crops by total acreage and water consumption, is used for producing ethanol—the figures may understate how critical water is to business.
All industries rely on water in some way. A company’s water footprint can be seen in four key areas of its value chain: raw materials, suppliers, direct operations, and product use. Consider, for example, a T-shirt across its value chain—raw materials (cotton), suppliers (cotton-to-fabric processer), direct operations (final manufacturing, shipping, and retail), and product use (washing the shirt at home). Food and beverage companies use water a
s an ingredient in the products they sell, of course, but they also use it to irrigate, rinse, and clean crops, and to feed livestock. Metals and mining companies need water for dust control, drilling, and slurry when transporting products. In the tech industry, suppliers require ultrapure water for certain manufacturing processes, and data centers require water for cooling. Forest-products companies rely on water for making pulp and paper. Apparel companies rely on water to grow raw materials and wash garments. Even insurance companies are affected by water through claims related to water, such as crop-production insurance. Water’s uses and effects are as varied as business itself.
The availability of fresh water also varies greatly by location. The majority of the world’s fresh water is divided among 410 named basins, which are areas of land where all water that falls or flows through that region ultimately ends at a single source. These include the Huang He, Nile, Colorado River, Indus, and many others. Of these 410 named basins, almost a quarter (90) are considered “high stressed” (meaning that their ratio of total annual withdrawals to total available annual supply exceeds 40 percent). These 90 highly stressed basins account for just 13 percent of the total area of named water basins but account for 51 percent of withdrawals (Exhibit 1). About half are located in three countries with enormous water needs and high economic activity: China, India, and the United States.
The water crisis is here, and it’s getting worse
Water risk is not a worry to be addressed in some nebulous future. The supply of fresh water has been steadily decreasing while demand has been steadily rising. In the 20th century, the world’s population quadrupled—but water use increased sixfold. The strain is already apparent. In 2018, in the midst of a severe drought, Cape Town, South Africa, came close to experiencing a so-called Day Zero, where the city would have literally run out of water. To avoid that peril, the city government put quotas on agricultural, business, and domestic usage. The government also got lucky: rain replenished its basin just in time. All in all, the drought drove at least 5.9 billion rand (approximately $400 million) in economic losses across the Western Cape.
In 2018, South Africa’s Western Cape experienced its worst drought in decades.
This event, and others like it, are just a taste of what’s to come. As McKinsey’s 2009 report Charting our water future: Economic frameworks to inform decision-making made clear, climate change, population growth, and changing consumer habits are increasing water stress for many regions. The recent McKinsey Global Institute report Climate risk and response: Physical hazards and socioeconomic impacts notes that many of the world’s basins could see a supply decline of around 10 percent by 2030 and up to 25 percent by 2050. By 2050, according to UN estimates, one in four people may live in a country affected by chronic shortages of fresh water. The World Bank estimates that the crisis could slow GDP by 6 percent in some countries by 2050 as well.
Water stress is a risk multiplier. Alone, it is a powerful risk with the potential to upend socioeconomic and ecological systems. When compounded with other risks, such as those related to food and energy systems, politics, and infrastructure, it becomes detrimental.
The clear and increasing business risk
Two-thirds of businesses have substantial risk in direct operations or in their value chain. As water stress grows, they will experience that risk in four forms: physical, regulatory, reputational, and stakeholder.
Physical risks can be critical and costly. In some locations, key water sources may be inaccessible or unfit for use. A primary physical risk is having too little water, which can be a costly problem. A 2015 drought in Brazil drove up General Motors’ water costs there by $2.1 million, and its electricity costs rose an additional $5.9 million.
By 2050, one in four people may live in a country affected by chronic shortages of fresh water.
As the crisis worsens, companies may find themselves increasingly beholden to the whims of government regulators. When Chinese regulators mandated in 2015 that papermakers cut water consumption by 10 percent, Chenming Group, one of the top ten players in the global paper industry and the leading player in the Chinese market, responded by upgrading its assembly line with advanced equipment that reduced daily water consumption by 45 percent. In 2017, the state government of Kerala, India, facing a severe drought, restricted PepsiCo’s groundwater consumption by 75 percent.
A company’s pro-environment reputation is becoming increasingly critical. A 2018 Nielsen survey found that 81 percent of global customers say it is important for companies to improve the environment.1 Consumers are voting with their dollars for companies that align with these principles. The same survey found that 73 percent of customers would change their purchasing habits to reduce environmental impact. In the age of single-tweet public-relations crises, the best defense is getting ahead of issues before they strike.
Stakeholder risk is rapidly growing as more companies and influential bodies become aware of the other types of business risk. These significant players are able to exert outsize influence on other businesses to nudge them toward practices that are consistent with their own sustainability and business ethos. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink cited water risk in his 2020 letter to CEOs, stating, “What happens to inflation, and in turn interest rates, if the cost of food climbs from drought and flooding?” BlackRock, which has nearly $7 trillion in assets under management, was a founding member of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and is engaging with the companies it invests in to ensure that they follow these guidelines. Moreover, BlackRock is working internally to continually improve the standards of its own reporting in this domain as well. In addition to BlackRock, more than 600 other investment firms with $69 trillion in total assets under management now urge their companies to report on water-related risks and act to mitigate them. (For more, see “‘Bring the problem forward’: Larry Fink on climate risk.”)
How businesses can tackle the problem
The water issue is the reverse of the carbon problem; the cause is global, but its manifestation is highly spatial and can be addressed in a concentrated way. Not all basins have equal priority. In fact, several basins have water withdrawals that are well within sustainable limits. Rather than tackling water use across every geography, a more efficient route is for companies to understand how they are interacting with basins that are projected to become water stressed and focus efforts there. Apple, for example, anchors its water stewardship policies by mapping its global water use against regions with heightened water risk. As a result, it focuses its efforts on three regions accounting for 52 percent of its total water use: Maiden, North Carolina; Mesa, Arizona; and Santa Clara Valley, California.
There are three spheres of influence that companies can affect to help mitigate water stress: direct operations, supply chain, and wider basin health. Some companies are already taking action in all three areas.
Direct operations
Within their four walls, companies have several levers they can use to reduce water stress. They can implement water measurement and reporting practices, even including water use in relevant company key performance indicators (KPIs). They can aggressively identify and eliminate water leaks in their operations and introduce new technologies that reduce water stress.
In 2010, Ford set a goal of using 30 percent less water per car by 2014. It reached that goal through a combination of new KPIs and operational improvements. The introduction of internal water metering alone drove conservation behaviors to the department level and helped save around $5 million worldwide. A dry-paint-spray system eliminated water from the car-painting process, and a new lubricant that replaced water in the manufacturing process saved about 280,000 gallons per production line.
The water issue is the reverse of the carbon problem; the cause is global, but its manifestation is highly spatial and can be addressed in a concentrated way.
Colgate-Palmolive partnered with a water-technology company to meet its sustainability goals for a plant located in a water-scarce basin in Mexico. Its processes require a significant amount of water to ensure proper sanitation for the toothpaste, deodorant, and soap products produced. The new solutions were able to reduce the plant’s water use by 1.8 million gallons annually while also significantly reducing the amount of time required for cleaning and sanitizing.
Supply chain
Companies can further reduce water stress by using their influence to ensure that their suppliers and their suppliers’ suppliers are equally rigorous about their own contributions to water stress. There are three critical levers to pull: reducing energy use and shifting to renewables, setting supplier standards, and sending water-expert teams to help key suppliers identify and implement efficient water-usage solutions.
Water is required to both extract many energy sources and generate energy through steam-powered turbines. The reduction of energy consumption and the market shift toward renewable sources has the dual effect of lowering greenhouse-gas emissions and reducing water withdrawals. With the transition to a more decarbonized world, new energy-investment decisions can consider water benefits alongside carbon, cost, reliability, and other lenses. The production and use of fossil fuels requires up to four times more water than the production of renewables. If the future energy mix of the planet remains the same as it is now, withdrawals from water basins for energy can grow by 25 percent by 2040. On the other hand, switching 75 percent of fossil-fuel consumption to renewables by that time, per individual countries’ Paris Agreement targets, can reduce the water footprint of energy by 47 percent (Exhibit 2).
Companies can also set reporting standards for suppliers. In 2014, Levi Strauss launched a Recycle & Reuse compliance program, which requires that each supplier meet certain limits; use a blend of at least 20 percent recycled water in its facility processing, landscaping, cooling, and plumbing; and provide flow-meter data that tracks the amount of recycled water used on Levi Strauss products.
Nike has successfully implemented a water-supplier initiative, which the company refers to as the Minimum Water Program. Teams work closely with the company’s largest materials suppliers and others to ensure good water practices by offering their own expertise to assist their suppliers. The program has been a success—in 2019, Nike achieved its initial goal of reducing fresh water used in textile dyeing by 20 percent, 18 months ahead of schedule.
Wider basin health
Some businesses may choose to go further by using their influence in partnerships that promote water resilience.
During the United Nations’ 2012 Conference on Sustainable Development, 45 of the world’s largest companies united to advocate for governments to implement sensible water policies. The companies (including Bayer, Coca-Cola, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and Nestlé) signed a special communiqué demanding that governments raise the price of water to a fair and appropriate price. The companies committed to ongoing lobbying to support water-positive policies, such as a fair market price for water. Without price increases, water users do not have feedback mechanisms that incentivize conservation and the development of new technologies to cut usage.
Another significant initiative is the Water Resilience Coalition, a creation of the UN Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate. Launched in March 2020, it is built around a water-resilience pledge that binds signatory companies to a set of water goals to be addressed by collective action in water-stressed basins.
As with other key components of climate change, the time has come to address the water crisis head-on. Businesses have a key role to play.
The authors wish to thank Jonathan Glustein for his valuable content, analysis, and strategic contributions. In addition, the authors wish to thank Elaine Almeida, Maria Bernier, Katie Chen, Andrei Dan, Eduard Danalache, Annabel Farr, Philipp Hühne, Nico Mohr, Dickon Pinner, Laura Poloni, Martha Pulnicki, Rahim Surani, and Michael Zhang for their support.
Oat drink pioneer Oatly will soon ship plant-based drinks from its factory in Sweden on electric trucks developed by EV start up Einride.
The two Swedish sustainability innovators announced the new partership today, predicting the electrification initiative would shrink the carbon footprint of journeys between the Oatly factory and intermediary destinations by 87 per cent.
Simon Broadbent, the drink company’s supply chain director, said: “Sustainability is at the core of everything we do and we are committed to driving change across the food industry through embracing new sustainable solutions in every area of our business. Electrical transportation is a key part of our supply shain strategy globally.”
The partners claim that the deal, which is set to come into effect in late 2020, will make Oatly “one of the world’s first companies to electrify transportation on commercial routes”.
The deal gives Oatly access to Einride’s freight mobility platform, which provides insights into shipping volume, distance driven, and associated emissions.
Robert Falck, chief executive and founder of Einride, said that the firm was “proud” to be partnering with a “pioneer in sustainable food production”.
“Road freight transport as it currently exists is a system that drastically needs to change,” he said. Nearly seven per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions come from this road freight, a figure that will only increase if we do not switch to more sustainable solutions like Einride’s freight mobility platform, which enables both a sustainable business and environment.”
Einride, which is best known for its autonomous haul freight vehicles, raised $25m in a funding round in October that it said would fund its expansion into the US. The company also signed a deal to provide electric trucks to Lidl Sweden in April.
The government has unveiled its vision for a major rollout of high-powered, rapid-chargers for electric vehicles over the next 15 years, confirming a goal to deliver a network of 2,500 raid charge points across England’s motorways and A-roads by 2030 to meet growing demand ahead of its proposed ban on fossil fuel car sales.
Setting out details yesterday for its Rapid Charging Fund – part of a broader £500m EV charging commitment in the recent Budget – the Department for Transport (DfT) said its aim was to “ensure there is a rapid-charging network ready to meet long-term consumer demand for EV chargepoints ahead of need”.
England at present has more than 800 open-access 50kW EV chargers on motorways and A-roads, with an average of two at each motorway service station, meaning drivers are no more than 25 miles away from being able to charge up their electric cars.
But as demand for EVs accelerates, the government is aiming to increase EV infrastructure further in order to meet demand, targeting at least six high powered, open-access rapid charge points at motorway service stations by 2023, with as many as 10 to 12 at some larger stations, it said yesterday.
These 150-350kW-capable rapid chargers will be able to power up an EV three times faster than most chargepoints currently in place, it explained, delivering 120-145 miles of driving range for a typical battery powered car in just 15 minutes.
Then, by 2030, it expects to have built an “extensive” rapid charging network across England, targeting at least 2,500 points by 2030, rising to around 6,000 by 2035, by which time the government has said it wants to end sales of new petrol and diesel cars.
In order to support the rollout, funding will be available to cover a portion of costs at strategic sites across England’s road network where upgrading connections to meet future demand for high-powered charge points “is prohibitively expensive and uncommercial”, the government said. Further details on how the funding will be delivered are expected to be confirmed “in due course”.
Energy network firms, renewable power providers, and EV charging operators welcomed the announcement. Dr Nina Skorupska, chief executive of the REA, said the inclusion of specific targets for the EV charging network were an encouraging sign of commitment from the government.
“This is an important moment for the UK’s electric vehicle sector, one which should give confidence to investors, fleets, and individual drivers alike,” she said. “Rapid charging is a crucial part of the overall network that the industry is building, and complements the slower chargers currently being installed en-mass on-street, in businesses, and in homes across the country. Ensuring consumer choice in where, how, and with whom drivers charge is a key part of this major technology change.”
In addition, Randolph Brazier, head of innovation and development at the Energy Networks Association (ENA), said the trade body’s members were already “working with motorway service areas to come up with whole system to solutions that work for customers”.
In related news, while the government is consulting on plans to phase out fossil fuel car sales by 2035 or sooner if feasible, there are signs the current Covid-19 lockdown could potentially accelerate the shift away from private car use in some areas.
The government’s instruction that people who cannot work from home should return to work and avoid public transport if at all possible has fuelled fears of a spike in car use.
But it emerged yesterday that a number of local authorities are now considering significant crackdowns on traffic in urban centres. The City of London Corporation is planning to ban cars on the busiest roads of the capital’s financial district as the coronavirus lockdown is eased in order to provide more space for workers to keep a good distance from each other. And, if the plans are successful in keeping traffic down, the authority is to consider making the road closures permanent in order to improve air quality, documents seen by the Financial Times suggest.
Similar plans are being drawn up in York, which could result in it becoming the country’s first zero emission city centre after the lockdown is lifted, with the council seeking government support for a project to restrict access to EVs and bikes, The Times reported yesterday.
The latest developments follow the launch of Octopus Energy Group’s new roaming EV charging service, in a bid to streamline and simplify how battery car drivers pay for their car charging at home, on the street, or on the highway.
Dubbed the Electric Juice Network, the service enables EV drivers to pay with their Octopus account across multiple partner charging networks with all costs appearing on a single bill, enabling drivers to effectively roam across different EV networks with relative ease.
“Electric vehicle drivers have rightly long-complained that public charge points can be a real hassle, and it’s hard to keep track of costs, as every network runs on a unique app or card basis,” said Greg Jackson, CEO and Founder of Octopus Energy. “Octopus’s Electric Juice Network doesn’t just consolidate charging costs, it adds them to your Octopus Energy bill if you’re an existing customer. For non-Octopus customers, you can still use the service to ensure you’re able to track – and pay – in one simple way.”
The returns from a $1.1bn fund managed by the heirs of the billionaire founder of Standard Oil have oustripped industry averages, despite their decision to divest from fossil fuels five years ago.
A case study published by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) on Monday notes that its investment portfolio has exceeded expectations and outstripped industry benchmarks since the company decided to largely exit fossil fuel assets.
According to the study, the RBF posted an average annual net return of 7.76 per cent over the five-year period that ended in December last year. But in the same period, an index portfolio made up of 70 per cent stocks and 30 per cent bonds, including coal, oil, and gas holdings, returned a full percentage point less, at 6.71 per cent.
The RBF portfolio was also revealed to be less volatile than the industry benchmark, with 27 per cent less “annualised standard deviation” than the yardstick – meaning it has had smaller swings in its value and may be considered less risky.
Valerie Rockefeller, the great-great-granddaughter of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller and chair of the RBF board of trustees, said: “Oil is obviously a definitional part of my family’s past. But it has no place in our future.”
In its heydey, Standard Oil controlled 90 per cent of the US’ oil production, making John D Rockefeller the country’s first billionaire with a fortune worth well over one per cent of the entire American economy. After a Supreme Court antitrust ruling in 1911, the firm was broken up into nearly three dozen separate companies, which included the predecessors of ExxonMobil and Chevron Corporation.
Following its high-profile decision to divest its endowment from coal, tar sands, and oil and gas in 2014, RBF’s investment portfolio is now 99 per cent fossil fuel free.
The divestment movement has matured somewhat since RBF signed on, Valerie Rockefeller noted. In 2014, the movement boasted $50bn in global assets under management; but the value of funds pledging to divest from fossil fuels has since ballooned to around $12tr, as more and more universities, governments, companies, and foundations have pledged to cut fossil fuel investment. Oxford University became the latest high-profile member of the club when it announced last month that it would divest its multi-million-pound endowment from fossil fuel assets.
RBF said in the new report that it hopes that its financial performance would encourage other big investors to turn away from carbon-intensive coal, oil, gas, and tar sand projects.
“The rationale for continued investment in gas and oil is fading fast,” president and chief executive Stephen Heintz said, confirming that the fund’s departure from fossil fuels had also shielded its endowment from coronavirus-induced market volatility over recent months.
“We spent the last five years proving oil was bad not only for the environment but for the bottom line,” Heintz added. “Covid-19 did it in two months.”
Demand for crude oil has plummeted as flights have been grounded, commuters told to stay at home, and economic activity suppressed, sending markets into turmoil. Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are now expected to drop eight per cent in 2020, according to a report by the International Energy Agency which noted that renewables were the only power source set to grow this year.
Ed Crooks, vice-chair of the Americas for energy consultant Wood Mackenzie, argued in a blog post earlier this month that the Covid-19 crisis was highlighting the “superior resilience” of electricity businesses.
While clean energy has not been immune to Covid-induced downturns – investment in wind power and interest in roll electric vehicles, residential solar and renewable technologies competing with “bargain basement” oil and gas prices have all been adversely affected by the pandemic – Crooks said that there have been “some signs” that the “pandemic could accelerate the long-term transition to lower-carbon energy”.
“Renewable energy has been holding up reasonably well, and certainly better than oil. Well over half the world’s oil consumption is used in transport, which has been one of the sectors hit hardest in the downturn” he wrote. “Electricity demand has also fallen — in the US it was down about six per cent in April compared to the same month of 2019 — but it has not collapsed the way the oil market has. Prices have also held up much better for electricity than for oil.”
A new technique for cooling solar panels has been under development in Egypt. A mixture of water, aluminum oxide, and calcium chloride hexahydrate cools the PV modules from underneath.
This research, conducted in Cairo, builds on earlier research this spring that France’s Sunbooster was exploring. The technology found success and was able to cool down solar modules when their ambient temperature exceeded 25°C. Pipes spread a thin film of water onto the glass surface of the panels. The solution was implemented in rooftop solar PV systems and ground-mounted solar power plants. The technology enables an annual increase in power generation of between 8% and 12%.
Regarding the innovation in Egypt, researchers at Benha University applied various mixtures of their passive coolants to a 50 W polycrystalline PV panel. A cooling unit, DC pump, valves, water flow meter and connecting pipes provided a system with aluminum channels underneath the panels for the water and the Al2O3/PCM mixture. The panels were south adjusted and oriented 30 degrees from horizontal.
How It Works
The PCM mixture was heated to melting point to form a liquid and Al2O3 nanoparticles were added to it in the aluminum channels. “The dispersion of particles in the PCM liquid is done using an agitator bath with four different mass concentrations,” the group stated.
“Applying the cooling system, whether using water and/or [the] Al2O3/PCM mixture provides a noticeable drop in cell temperature compared with the uncooled [panel],” said the Egyptian team.
The researchers said a mixture of water and the Al2O3/PCM liquid outperformed the use of water alone and the best performance recorded used 75% water and 25% Al2O3/PCM.
Whether this is a cost effective solution — allowing for enough extra revenue through greater energy production (thanks to greater efficiency) than the solution costs — is not discussed. Assuming it is cost effective in some regions, those would presumably be places that get quite hot.
As people slowly return to work following the government’s announcement on Sunday, employers can encourage staff to embrace sustainable routes into work by launching cycle-to-work schemes, installing on-site facilities such as bike storage and showers, while working with local authorities to encourage better local walking and cycling infrastrucutre.
Business leaders could play a significant role in helping to tackle an expected uptick in road congestion and air pollution as commuters attempt to return to work while following explicit government advice to avoid public transport wherever possible.
In modest changes to the lockdown regime announced yesterday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that construction and manufacturing workers as well as other groups unable to work remotely should return to work from this week. But with the government still fearful of any uptick in the rate of coronavirus transmission, Johnson added that where possible workers should commute by car, foot, or bike in order to maintain social distancing measures critical to fighting spread of the coronavirus.
“We want it to be safe for you to get to work. So, you should avoid public transport if at all possible – because we must and will maintain social distancing, and capacity will therefore be limited,” Johnson said in pre-recorded address to the nation.
But an embrace of the car as the primary method of socially-distanced transportation for work or to travel to exercise destinations comes comes with its own host of environmental and health considerations. A sharp rise in people shunning public transport in favour of driving to work risks increasing carbon emissions and worsening air pollution – a factor that early research suggests may aggravate the coronavirus death rate – as well as increasing levels of congestion and traffic accident risks, especially as roads will also cater to a surge in the number of cyclists. The AA’s head of road policy Jack Cousens confirmed to BusinessGreen today that the group expects an increase in car, motorcycle, and bicycle usage as workers avoid public transport – a spike he said would prompt more traffic jams.
What is more, environmental and sustainable transport groups contend that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s endorsement of driving on Sunday was somewhat at odds with a historic £2bn emergency fund dedicated to short-term cycling and walking measures and infrastructure unveiled by the Secretary of Transport the day before. Johnson may have stressed that people should cycle and walk if possible, but for many commuters active transport is not yet a viable option.
Rachel White, head of policy at walking and cycling charity Sustrans, told BusinessGreen that the government’s encouragement of motoring to work and other destinations was a “concern” that was “out of kilter with the briefing the day before from the Secretary of State”.
A new £250m “emergency active travel fund” – unveiled by the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps in the government’s Saturday coronavirus briefing – is set to deliver pop-up bike lanes, wider pavements, safer junctions and cycle and bus-only corridors in England “within weeks”. The Department for Transport also said that it had fast-tracked statutory guidance that would allow councils to reallocate road space for cyclists and pedestrians, and announced that it had brought forward e-scooter trials planned for 2021 to next month in order to encourage a broader range of greener alternatives to public transport. The proposed investment, described as the largest ever boost for cycling and pedestrians, is the first stage of a £2bn investment commitment to boost active travel across the UK.
“The government is beginning to talk about cycling and walking in the same way that they talk about roads,” enthused White. “Roads often gets a huge funding settlement over five-year period and cycling and walking haven’t seen that long-term funding certainty for a long time.” She commended Shapps for the “ackowledgement that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver lasting transformative change in the way we make short journeys in our towns and cities”.
Meanwhile, the government’s recently-unveiled five-year £27bn road funding programme is facing a legal challenge amid warnings that the scheme will undermine government commitments to tackling air pollution and achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
Roz Bulleid, interim policy director of Green Alliance, also pointed to the disconnect between the government’s two big bank holiday weekend announcements. “The government’s recent funding pledge indicates that it wants the public to embrace active travel,” she said. “But to make sure this happens, it must be at the heart of messages from the Prime Minister and others, not an afterthought.”
The promised space for walkers and cyclists must be delivered quickly, she argued, in order to convince commuters who are currently considering making the shift to cycling. Furthermore, Bulleid warned “the government should also be careful not to stigmatise public transport at this time: Increasing car use is not a long-term solution and will worsen the health problems associated with air pollution, as well as contributing to climate change”.
It remains to be seen whether the government will continue to promote both driving and cycling in tandem or back up its new funding programme with a longer term effort to curb car use. But in the meantime, businesses can and should take an active approach in encouraging employees to embrace commuting on foot or by bicycle, green groups told BusinessGreen.
Sustrans’ White pointed to three key ways business leaders can encourage employees that can cycle to work to do so. “Provide facilities, work with local authorities – contact them to get road layouts changed – and bring in other organisations to help with behaviour change,” she advised.
Cycle to work schemes, which give employees’ discounts on cycle equipment, are a good starting point for any corporate active transport strategy, White said, as is ensuring that offices are fitted with cyclist-friendly facilities, such as showers and secure on-site cycle parking. Proactive communication with local authorities is key to ensuring that the right cycle and foot infrastructure is in place for employees, she said, adding that groups like Sustrans can encourage employee behaviour change by delivering cycling and bike maintenance workshops, she added.
“All those things together will helpfully create an environment where it’s a natural choice to cycle where possible,” White said. “Not everyone will be able to, but it’s about minimising the turn to driving and preventing in the short-term more people driving than before because they are not taking public transport.”
Meanwhile, Darren Shirley, chief executive at the Campaign for Better Transport, said that “clear communication” between employers and staff on how to manage their commutes to work would be imperative as workplaces reopen over the coming weeks.
“Large employers should engage with their local authorities and transport operators before reopening their workplaces to high numbers of employees so as to ensure that their commuting needs can be managed against the local transport capacity and circumstances,” he said. “They should request that local authorities expand footpaths and cycleways connecting to their offices and sites to make the journey into work safer.” Free bike hire and storage should also be made available, he added, and large employees should also consider contracting socially-distanced bus services.
He also warned the government’s directive for people to avoid public transport carries a risk of causing “immeasurable and permanent damage to the public transport system leaving communities disconnected, and those on lower incomes, or who don’t drive, unable to get to work or access shops and services”. As such he argued that it was vital for the government to develop “a concrete plan for the later stages of recovery on how public transport will be renewed to allow people to continue to get to work safely and sustainably and to ensure there is still a transport industry after the pandemic”.
Commenting on the weekend’s new cycling and walking funding announcement, Nicholas Boyes Smith, executive director of urban housing research institute Create Streets, provided some pointers on what a longer-term strategy might look like for central, city, and local governments looking to break what he described as the “diabolical alliance” between cars and urban design. His suggested measures ranged from more bike lanes and on-street bike storage and the rapid legalisation of e-scooters, to free bike training sessions, cheaper off-peak commuter fares, and on-street trading for shops, restaurants and cafés.
“Good consequences can flow from awful situations,” Smith wrote. “For three generations, a diabolical alliance between cars in town centres and modernist architecture – I call it ‘traffic modernism’ – combined to make our human settlements less pleasant, less prosperous, and less popular. This can now change. And this should be the point of inflexion.”
However, as green groups today noted, such a transformation will only happen if governments, businesses, and commuters proactively pursue it. Alternatively, the coronavirus crisis risks throwing a lifeline to the polluting car-based commuter model that had appeared to be on the retreat.
Leading sustainable buildings standard BREEAM has been given its most significant update in five years, with a greater onus placed on climate change adaptation and mitigation measures, as well as the social value delivered by new developments.
The Building Research Establishment (BRE), which manages the popular BREEAM standard, announced ths week that version six of the BREEAM guidelines for both commercial and residential buildings expands the manual for benchmarking and certifying existing residential assets and incorporates a new ‘Resilience’ category focused on managing climate changes impacts.
BRE said the new Resilience category would integrate environmental performance and occupant health and wellbeing measures, meaning the updated standard would consider past environmental performance of a building as well as encouraging enhanced performance in future.
Social impacts have also been more closely woven into the new standard in order to reflect the social and economic benefits of meeting green objectives, BRE said.
“This encourages assets to see that asset resilience and overall sustainability are deeply connected to the resilience and sustainability of the communities in which they are located, including direct references to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals,” it explained. “The Materials and Waste categories have also been combined into a single Resource category. BREEAM is the first rating system to incorporate these elements, alongside Environmental Performance, into a single platform with a focus on existing buildings.”
The update comes off the back of a review of latest building research, best practices, and standards, as well as consultation with BRE stakeholders, the research body said.
“One of the most significant changes with this update was to pivot BREEAM from not just looking back at past environmental performance but looking towards protecting the asset’s environmental and financial performance in the future,” said Shamir Ghumra, BREEAM director. “This linking of asset value growth and protection and environmental performance has always existed in BREEAM, but our changing world made it imperative that it was addressed more intentionally. The current situation we’re also subjected to underlines that sustainability and a focus on environmental, social and governance performance is now more crucial than ever.”
The update came as a new set of decarbonisation pathways for the global real estate sector was publicly launched yesterday by the EU-funded Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor (CCREM) project new alongside tools to help firms in the industry identify and manage transition risks.
The pathways – which identify annual energy and carbon intensity trajectories for real estate markets through to 2050 that are consistent with delivering less than 2C of global warming – are designed to help real estate firms meet the climate risk recommendations of the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFDs), CCREM explained.
And in further green building news, the UK trade association for liquid petroleum gas (LPG) – Liquid Gas UK – has called for revisions to the methodology for assessing homes Energy Performance Certificates (EPC).
At present, it said, the methodology favours higher carbon heating solutions such as heating oil for households over more energy efficient and lower carbon options, including heat pumps and LPG.
“No other European country includes input fuel costs as part of their methodology,” argued George Webb, chief executive of Liquid Gas UK. “By simply removing the input fuel cost, we can encourage off-grid homeowners to move away from heating oil in favour of fuels and technologies that are cleaner, such as LPG and bioLPG which sets them up for a hassle-free transition to Net Zero.”
The warnings are stark. With the Covid-19 crisis wreaking global havoc and the overheating atmosphere threatening far worse in the long term, especially if governments rely on the same old carbon-intensive ways, both economy and climate will sink or swim together.
“There are reasons to fear that we will leap from the Covid-19 frying pan into the climate fire”, says a new report, Will Covid-19 fiscal recovery packages accelerate or retard progress on Climate Change? Published by the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford, UK, it says now is the time for governments to restructure their economies and act decisively to tackle climate change.
“The climate emergency is like the Covid-19 emergency, just in slow motion and much graver”, says the study, written by a team of economic and climate change heavyweights including Joseph Stiglitz, Cameron Hepburn and Nicholas Stern.
Economic recovery packages emerging in the coming months will have a significant impact on whether globally agreed climate goals are met, says the report.
“The recovery packages can either kill two birds with one stone – setting the global economy on a pathway to net-zero emissions – or lock us into a fossil system from which it will be nearly impossible to escape.”
The study’s authors talked to economists, finance officials and central banks around the world.
They say that putting policies aimed at tackling climate change at the centre of recovery plans makes economic as well as environmental sense.
“… Green projects create more jobs, deliver higher short-term returns per dollar spend and lead to increased long term-term cost saving, by comparison with traditional fiscal stimulus”, says the report.
“Examples include investment in renewable energy production, such as wind or solar.
“As previous research has shown, in the short term clean energy infrastructure construction is particularly labour-intensive, creating twice as many jobs per dollar as fossil fuel investments.”
Fundamental change coming
Covid-19 is causing great suffering and considerable economic hardship around the world. But it has also resulted in cleaner air and waterways, a quieter environment and far less commuting to and from work, with people in the developed countries doing more work from home.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a recent survey that Covid-19 and other factors were bringing about a fundamental change in the global energy market, with the use of climate-changing fossil fuels falling sharply and prices of oil, coal and gas plummeting. The IEA also projected that global emissions of greenhouses gases would fall by 8 per cent in 2020, more than any other year on record.
The Oxford report says that with the implementation of the right policies, these positive changes can be sustained: by tackling climate change, many economic and other problems will be solved.
Sceptics have often said that public resistance to changes in lifestyle will prevent governments from taking any substantial action on the climate issue. The study begs to differ: “The (Covid-19) crisis has also demonstrated that governments can intervene decisively once the scale of an emergency is clear and public support is present.”
Economists and finance experts are calling for the UK to play a decisive role in ensuring that economies around the world do not return to the old, high-carbon ways but instead implement green recovery packages.
Climate conference
The UK is president and co-host of COP-26, the round of UN climate talks originally due to take place in November this year but now, due to Covid, postponed to early 2021.
The round is seen as a vital part of efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change.
“The UK’s global leadership in financial services provides a unique opportunity to address climate change by transforming the financial system”, he says.
“To seize it, all financial decisions need to take into account the risks from climate change and the opportunities from the transition to a net zero economy.”
Scientists show the circular economy has roots in ancient history.
Broken ceramics, Roman recycling and melting down glass all happened thousands of years ago.
Going circular could generate as much as $4.5 trillion in economic benefits, according to the World Economic Forum.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation says our current system is no longer working for businesses, people or the environment.
Think the circular economy is a novel idea that’s just come into fashion? Think again.
There’s evidence that the mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle” has its origins with the Romans, Greeks or even in the Bronze Age. A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems, according to one of its key proponents, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which also says the idea isn’t new.
Modern recycling systems actually have their roots in ancient history. Image: Ellen MacArthur Foundation
“The idea of feedback, of cycles in real-world systems, is ancient and has echoes in various schools of philosophy,” the Foundation says.
Here are three examples of how the ancient world embraced the circular economy:
1. Broken ceramics in Dubai 3,000 years ago
Polish scientists found tools in Dubai made from copper, bronze and iron refashioned from broken ceramic vessels. Broken ceramic vessels were not thrown away, the researchers told Science in Poland, instead they were modified and used as tools.
Researchers discovered objects in – Sarug Al Hadid, an ancient archaeological site located in the southern part of the Persian Gulf (today's Dubai). Excavations show that metallurgists living 3,000 years ago in the area, used recycling. #Dubai#Archaeologyhttps://t.co/LI6WB6VNOT
The Romans also recycled, according to a report in the Guardian newspaper. Mounds of rubbish preserved after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD were “staging grounds for cycles of use and reuse,” says Professor Allison Emmerson, an American academic who works in Pompeii.
Archeologists working at the ancient city of Sagalassos, now part of Turkey, found glass chunks, fuel ash slag and kiln fragments, that indicate glass recycling, according to a paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
It's Global Recycling Day!
Did you know that Archaeological evidence has been found that indicates that glass was being recycled in the ancient city of Sagalassos, part of the Byzantine Empire, as early as 330 AD?#GlobalRecyclingDay#Recyclingpic.twitter.com/p0MqMJLp4R
Even so, we should be careful not to overstate past populations’ commitment to recycling, argues Maikel Kuijpers, an assistant professor at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, on digital news site The Conversation.
“Our ancestors were no ecological saints,” he said. “They polluted their surroundings through mining, burned down entire forests, and they too created massive amounts of waste.”
And those themes are still relevant today.
A circular economy could result in as much as $4.5 trillion in economic benefits to 2030, according to the World Economic Forum. Just 8.6% of the world is currently circular, and the Forum’s work seeks to foster collaboration between private, public, civil society and expert stakeholders to accelerate the circular economy transition.
“The current system is no longer working for businesses, people or the environment,” the Ellen MacArthur Foundation says. “We must transform all the elements of the take-make-waste system: how we manage resources, how we make and use products, and what we do with the materials afterwards. Only then can we create a thriving economy that can benefit everyone within the limits of our planet.”
water also varies greatly by location. The majority of the world’s fresh water is divided among 410 named basins, which are areas of land where all water that falls or flows through that region ultimately ends at a single source. These include the Huang He, Nile, Colorado River, Indus, and many others. Of these 410 named basins, almost a quarter (90) are considered “high stressed” (meaning that their ratio of total annual withdrawals to total available annual supply exceeds 40 percent). These 90 highly stressed basins account for just 13 percent of the total area of named water basins but account for 51 percent of withdrawals (Exhibit 1). About half are located in three countries with enormous water needs and high economic activity: China, India, and the United States.
