The letter is shown below and this is the link:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/20/business-must-show-green-leadership

Business must show green leadership

The Guardian, Thursday 20 January 2011
Article history

The prime minister is right to make economic growth his priority for 2011. However, the UK will enjoy a healthy, long-term recovery only if business leaders put the environment at the heart of corporate strategies. In the past, UK plc has too often regarded “sustainability” as an optional add-on, rather than an essential element of corporate and national economic success. We have been changing. During the recession, costs worth hundreds of millions of pounds have been cut through improved energy efficiency.

However, unless “green” business practices are taken to a new, higher level, Britain’s recovery could be compromised, as the economy is choked by rising energy costs and out-of-date thinking. Globally, the low-carbon economy is already worth some £3,000bn annually and is forecast to grow by at least 4% a year over the next five years.

According to worrying new research by the Carbon Trust, which this week has launched a campaign to highlight the importance of low-carbon growth, only a third of business leaders say they are currently working on greener products and services. We must do better. The coalition government can help by removing regulatory barriers and by providing the right incentive but, ultimately, it now is up to business to show leadership.

Marc Bolland Chief executive, Marks & Spencer, Richard Evans President, PepsiCo UK & Ireland, Dalton Philips Chief executive, Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc, Jeremy Darroch Chief executive, British Sky Broadcasting Ltd , Colin Sharman Chairman, Aviva, Ronan Dunne Chief executive, O2, Ian Cheshire Group chief executive, Kingfisher, Mark Elborne National executive for North Europe, GE, Don Jordison Managing director, Threadneedle Property Investments, Mark Fairweather CEO, Allied Bakeries, David Camp Chief executive, Stanhope plc, Terry Last Chief executive, Tarmac, Adam Fowle Chief executive, Mitchells & Butlers, Gonzalo Galindo President, UK operations for CEMEX UK, Paul Kelly, External affairs and corporate social responsibility director, Asda, Paul Lazarevic Managing director, RLtec, Simon Harvey Managing director, Benchmark Software, Chris Kirkby Managing director, Magnomatics, Chris Smith Managing director, G-volution, Mark Boocock Managing director, Econotherm, Herbert Piereder Chief executive officer, Applied Superconductor, Peter Bance Chief executive, Ceres Power, Jonathan Luke Chief executive, Senselogix, David Palmer-Jones Chief executive, SITA UK, Martin McAdam Chief executive, Aquamarine Power, Patrick Dempsey Managing director, Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants, Martin Wright Managing director, Marine Current Turbines, Des Crampton Chief executive, Checkmate SeaEnergy, SB Cha Chief executive, ACAL Energy, Kevin Hurst Marketing and communications director, Veolia Environmental Services, Jochen Weilepp CEO, Voith Hydro Ocean Current Technologies

• In your article (The population explosion, G2, 14 January) you say “the so-called ‘green revolution’ in agriculture enabled a much more productive global grain harvest than [the professor of population studies Paul Ehrlich] ever imagined. Could technical innovations facilitate our continued expansion?”

The green revolution was instigated as a result of the efforts of Norman Borlaug, who, while accepting the Nobel peace prize in 1970, said: “The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.”

No notice was taken of his prediction, and here we are four decades later in the same situation. All that a technical innovation will do is to let the population grow to a new level, then we will have to cope with the problem all over again.

Roger Plenty

Stroud, Gloucestershire

It is a mandatory scheme that is “central to the UK’s strategy for improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, as set out in the Climate Change Act 2008.”

Basically, if any organization, including the Public Sector, used more than 6,000 MegaWatt-hours (MWh) in 2008 they will have to comply with the scheme or face penalties. The penalties will, according to the DECC, be “recycled” back to the organizations, depending on “how well they perform”. Only a cynic would suggest that this won’t be the case.

Anyway, each organization buys “allowances equal to their annual emissions” and there is a cap on the allowances that should encourage them to reduce their emissions. Interestingly, they can “buy” extra allowances.

You can find out more here

So how is this going to affect Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) ?

Well, organizations can be considered to be responsible for their emissions in different ways, both directly and indirectly, but it is generally accepted that organizations are expected to have some responsibility for the activities of their suppliers. (Remember the child-labour scandal that hit Primark a few years ago?) This means that they are expected to purchase “ethically”, or go somewhere else, so creating pressure on suppliers to be sustainable and ethical.

Now, the CRC doesn’t include any requirement for supply-chain emissions to be reported (although it does include subsidiaries of each organization). But at some point, SME suppliers are going to start being asked questions and those that have at least some answers are going to be considered more favourably. Also, in time, it is not unlikely that the scheme will be expanded to included organizations that use less than 6,000 MWh of energy. How long will it be before EVERY business has to report the energy it uses? Five years? Ten?

Back in September last year, I participated in a “Webinar” hosted by 2degrees. During it, I asked the question “How will the CRC affect SMEs? The answer, from Trewin Restorick of Global Action Plan, was that initially organizations participating in the CRC were going to be very inwardly focused on the cost of complying with the CRC, how they were going to reduce their emissions and where they appeared on the league tables. Ah yes. Each organization in the CRC is going to appear in league tables, so there is going to be a lot of concern about where their competitors or peers appear in the tables.

But, it was generally felt that eventually it was going to hit SME’s eventually. At a meeting on our sustainability projects in the Cornwall Council offices on 1st February, one attendee said that following discussions with Defra, it was felt that the one thing that was going to get SME’s moving on sustainability and reducing their carbon footprint was “fear”. Fear of losing business; fear of increasing energy costs and fear of their competitors getting ahead of them. It’s a good point.

At this stage, it’s still pretty easy for SME’s to ignore all of this. However, anything an SME can do at this stage to get ahead of the game, without being too much of a burden on time and money, will put them ahead of their competitors and ready for what the future holds. And probably save a lot of money on their electricity bills!

This question is obviously part of the larger issue of how the move towards sustainable business is going to affect SMEs and what it means to them. Stay tuned for more blogs on the subject.