Action researchers shared their work on sustainability with over a hundred people from business, government, consultancy, the arts and academia at an event on sustaining ecosystems services last week. Organised by Bath University’s Institute for Sustainable Education and Environment the event showcased some of the lowcarbonworks project findings  in advance of our final conference this July.

A world cafe style process enabled participants to mingle, reflect and make sense of presentations by the guest speakers.

For seminar outputs including edited audio highlights see more stories, below, or latest. We will be adding to these over the weeks ahead and invite your comments and feedback. If you would like to hear the whole of a presentation we will send you the MP3 file if you contact us.

One of the biggest threats to ecosystems is shipping. Work at the University of Southern California highlights the amount of carbon emitted in getting consumer goods from China to the Port of Los Angeles. Before the recent ecomonic turndown, close to 50% of US consumer goods from China and the Pacific Rim came in through the ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach. The throughput is exected to double in the coming decade. At the same time cargo related transportation
is estimated to contribute to much higher than normal ill health. In order to address this and releases of harmful chemicals, action researchers are convening inquiring conversations between key players such as the shipping companies, truckers and port authorities to raise standards of care. In the above 4 minute extract from a recent seminar held by lowcarbonworks and the Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment, Hilary Bradbury-Huang, Research Associate Professor at the Center for Sustainable Cities explains how they’ve been engaging salient stakeholders……..

Judi Marshall action for change

Action Research can be a powerful practice for developing “action for change” in the field of sustainability. In the above edited highlight from the recent seminar on action research for the social stewardship of ecosystem services, Professor Judi Marshall from Lancaster University describes some of the ways in which the MSc in Responsibility in Business Practice at Bath University and courses at Lancaster provide a radically different approach to education. A complete recording and accompanying slides are available. �

Our site moderator has pulled together the above blow by blow account to using and participating in this online community.

US ice cream maker, Ben & Jerry’s is trialling a new kind of freezer which replaces the refrigerant HFCs with Hydro Carbon (HC) gas. They claim that HCs do not contribute to global warming nor the deterioration of the earth’s ozone layer if released to the atmosphere. Their aim is to trial the freezers in a couple of geographical areas while they wait for approval from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for widespread commercial use.
They have pledged “to share the technology far and wide, with the long-term goal to make HC freezers the standard in the United States.”

Here is Ben & Jerry’s explanation for this change in technology taken from the press release on their website:
“Most small freezers in the United States today use hydrofluorocarbon gases (HFCs) to generate cooling. HFCs work well in freezers, but they have a significant downside. With help from our friends at Greenpeace we have learned that HFCs are among a group of refrigerants, known as “F-gases”, that are highly potent greenhouse gases.

The most commonly used HFC (HFC134a) has a global warming potential (GWP) of 3,200. This means that a ton of this gas in the atmosphere has the same global warming effect as 3,200 tons of carbon dioxide. The problem is that, under normal use, freezers leak a small amount of these F-gases each year. Over time, all those leaking freezers as well as disposal at end of useful life can make a significant contribution to the problems of global warming.
We believe HC freezers can be a big part of the solution. The HC gases we’re using in our Cleaner, Greener Freezers - purified propane - are just as effective at cooling a freezer as HFCs and are 10% more energy efficient. But HC’s contribute almost nothing to global warming, and have zero impact on ozone depletion.

Hydrocarbon (HC) refrigerants are already in use around the globe. Household freezers and small commercial freezers outside the US have successfully used these hydrocarbon-based refrigerants for the last few years. So why has the US not adopted this technology? First, the three butane-lighters-worth of gas that is contained in the freezers is flammable. So, before we place any HC cabinets for commercial use, first we made sure the cabinets were tested and approved by Underwriters Laboratories to ensure they could be operated safely. Second, the EPA requires that any new alternative gases go through a rigorous evaluation process known as SNAP (Significant New Alternatives Policy).”

The Prime Minister has today announced a long-term strategic partnership between Qatar and the UK as part of the UK Government’s commitment to forge new partnerships between hydrocarbon producing countries and consumer countries to help the move to a low carbon economy.

The Carbon Trust - set up by the UK Government in 2001 and one of the world’s leading experts on low carbon technologies - has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) on a new Low Carbon Innovation Partnership to set up a new £250m Qatar-UK Clean Technology Investment Fund and to investigate the creation of a Low Carbon Innovation Centre in Qatar.

Thanks for this alert from Anna Smee at the Responsible Business Club. Perhaps LCW researchers should be interesting Quatar in our work?

We are working with managers from the Ginsters factory in Cornwall to develop a learning history of their environmental management practices over the past 10 years.

Ginsters, part of the large and privately owned Samworth Brothers Group, have been making Cornish pasties and other savouries for over 40 years and currently produce over 3.5m products per week. With nearly 1000 staff on-site they are the largest private employer in Cornwall, and they take their community responsibilities and local reputation very seriously.  Their contribution to local sustainability was officially recognised when they won the “Best Large Company” and “Overall Winner” in the Cornwall Sustainability Awards 2006. 

Through the Learning History approach, we are helping Ginsters to notice, understand and learn about the factors which have come together to enable their proactive approach to carbon reduction.  In particular, we will be telling the story of Ginsters’ approach to resource efficiency and waste management.  We will attempt to show how changes in government legislation were the initial drivers for change (particularly the new IPCC† regulations in 2004) but how these ‘external’ factors have given way to more self-sustaining or ‘internal’ drivers, as the business benefits of sustainable practice have become more apparent, and a group of environmental ‘champions’ has emerged.  The Lowcarbonworks team are working with a number of theories which might help explain some of the contextual factors which Ginsters have faced .

An important turning point in Ginsters’ environmental history was their decision to support a new Anaerobic Digestion plant at Holsworthy, North Devon, in 2003.  The £7.8m plant was originally conceived by a group of local farmers as a cost-effective solution to their farmyard waste, and was one of the first of its kind in the UK.  The plant takes a mixture of farmyard slurry and local food waste and converts it into biogas* which is then sold back to electricity generating companies as green energy. The remaining by-product (or digestate) is spread back on the land as a nutrient-rich, natural fertiliser.  The biogas plant encountered significant technological, management and financial difficulties in 2005, which resulted in it being sold to a London based waste management company, so it is no longer in community ownership.  Another recent development is that from June 2008 the plant has stopped taking farmyard slurry from local farmers, and only accepts food waste from local manufacturers and municipal food waste collection schemes. This type of waste contains higher energy levels and has the potential for greater biogas production.  The new owners are hoping that this will enable them to make a profit for the first time since the plant opened.  Ginsters continue to send 20 tonnes of food waste to the plant every week, which would otherwise go to the landfill, and the green energy produced by the plant has the potential to power about 1000 homes.  

Despite the huge potential for anaerobic digesters to provide green energy, and the fact that thousands are being used in mainland Europe (particularly in Germany and Austria) only about 12 generators in the UK are currently being used to produce energy, and this is mainly to power farms.  There is currently a lot of interest in the press and government circles about the potential for such ‘Waste to Energy’ technologies, but there seems to be little understanding about all the complex factors which have to come together to make this finely-tuned technology actually work, and also the potential social, legal and political barriers which can stand in its way. By writing this Learning History we are hoping to achieve 2 important aims:

1. To enable Ginsters to learn from their own experience of working with this new technology and apply that learning to any future investment in low carbon technologies.

2. To disseminate the learning more widely, both within and outside the food industry, to help others understand the economic, organisational and political issues that might need attending to, in order to make this new technology a success.

We are currently in the process of conducting interviews with key people from within Ginsters, and also a number of external people who were involved at the conception of the biogas plant, and the current owner.  We will then construct and share the Learning History with the Ginsters team before disseminating it more widely.  

† Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPCC) regulations came into affect in 2004 and apply to all food manufacturers who produce more than 75 tonnes of product a day.  All companies in this category must get a permit from the Environment Agency in order to conduct their business.

* Biogas produced by AD consists of mainly methane and carbon dioxide. The Biogas can be
used to generate electricity and heat (CHP). It can also be converted to a vehicle fuel.
Biogas is a renewable energy source. It displaces fossil fuels and therefore helps to reduce
additions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. It does produce carbon dioxide when burnt
but this comes from the natural atmospheric carbon cycle, so it doesn’t add to the stock of
green house gases that lead to climate change.

Air cycle refrigeration systems use air as their refrigerant, compressing it and expanding it to create hot and cold air.  This technology was originally developed in the late1800’s for transporting frozen food from the antipodes or the Americas on board ships.  With the invention of CFCs in the 1930’s there was then a shift away from air cycle technology.  Currently air cycle is utilised in most passenger aircraft and in the German high speed trains, both for air-conditioning purposes.

Recent concern about the damaging environmental effects of certain chemical refrigerants, along with a desire to reduce energy use, has prompted a resurgence of interest in this low-carbon technology.  We are working with Judith and a number of food companies on a Defra funded LINK project to develop a commercially viable prototype, which can be used in the food industry. 

There are many advantages of air cycle over conventional technology for cooking and cooling/fast freezing food including:

• Creation of very high cooking temperatures (250ºC) and very low cooling temperatures (-125 ºC) with just one integrated piece of equipment
• This combined heating and cooling facility results in a highly efficient production processes and lower energy usage
• Air unlike conventional refrigerants such as HCFCs/HFCs/ammonia is free, safe and environmentally benign.
• Air cycle equipment is more reliable than vapour-compression systems, and does not leak environmentally harmful refrigerant (meaning less maintenance and down time). 
• Air cycle has the potential to make significant carbon savings if it were used efficiently by food manufacturers since it is estimated that refrigeration systems use as much as 15 percent of the total energy consumed worldwide.

Lowcarbonworks is helping Judith and the project team to identify potential barriers to the adoption of this promising new technology, and to explore ways to overcome these.  So far we have identified barriers which are not just about the performance of the technology itself, but have as much to do with the ‘human’ and organisational issues surrounding its adoption, such as:

• Communication barriers - in a project team composed of experts in the technology and non-experts it can be challenging to find a universally understood language.
• Internal competition issues can sometimes crop up for project partner - where the new technology may threaten their existing business.
• There may be competition issues between project partners which need careful handling - for example, discussions about Intellectual Property rights.
• Representatives on the project team may find it hard to ‘sell in’ the project to their own companies - particularly where it does not immediately align with management priorities or these may have changed since the start of the project.
•  Previous studies of Defra LINK projects have shown the need for a customer to champion the project in order to pull it through effectively to commercialisation.  Projects are in danger of stalling where this role is not fulfilled.

As part of the project we are also interested in how niche technologies, such as air cycle, get adopted into the mainstream market, and the process by which ‘closure’ around a particular design or application occurs.  Air Cycle is an interesting example of a technology which has not yet become ‘locked in’ to its final form, as multiple applications for this technology remain open (i.e. for cooking, refrigeration/freezing and air-conditioning). There are also inquiries coming in about this technology from industries other than food (including the building and defence industries) which may well shape its final form.  As part of the Lowcarbonworks project we will be tracking the development path that Air Cycle takes, and inquiring into the influences around this, as a way of building theory about how the transformation to low-carbon technologies can be accelerated.

*FRPERC is the Food Refrigeration and Process Engineering Research Centre, attached to the University of Bristol.

 Action researcher, Gill Coleman creating a learning history with a MAS Intimates employee.

We are engaged in a learning history process to describe the development, construction and start up of the Thurulie low carbon factory (see video) in Sri Lanka which has been built by the Sri Lankan company MAS Intimates to supply lingerie to Marks and Spencer as part of the latter’s Plan A.

MAS Intimates in Sri Lanka has a longstanding reputation for innovative products and manufacturing and an equally longstanding concern for creating high employment standards. The company is a significant player in the Sri Lankan economy with considerable economic and political power. The wider Sri Lankan context presents both challenges and opportunities: wage and skill levels are relatively high and to compete in the global economy leading companies need to offer added value, often through contributing an ‘ethical’ dimension-social and environmental-to the supply chain.

The Thurulie factory has been designed to minimize energy through a set of design features that create a building appropriate to its tropical environment. The main green features of the building are:
- designed to sit lightly on the site, with minimum disturbance to ecology, on two floors to minimise footprint
-  ‘returned to nature’ at night
- set in a cool micro-climate to maximise thermal comfort and air quality, using native plants
- carbon neutral, using green power - hydro and solar PV
- low operating energy, using evaporative cooling, and natural lighting supplemented by LED task lights
- structure of re-usable steel framework and timber flooring to upper floors
- reflective roofing and partial green roof, to minimise heat absorption
- walls and roads built using cement stabilised soil with low embodied energy
- rainwater harvesting tanks to collect storm water
- anaerobic treatment system for waste water

As our theoretical orientation would suggest, the creative adoption of these technical features has only been possible because several stakeholder groups have collaborated to design and build this factory:
* Strategic thinkers within MAS looking for opportunities to add ethical value to the supply chain and strengthen relationship with a key customer;
* Marks and Spencer, whose need to create a novel strategic position in the UK high street aims to ensure that the goods it offers, and thus its entirely supply chain, reach high ethical and ecological standards. (See Plan A);
* A centre for energy studies at Moratuwa University in Colombo, whose members have been developing energy-saving practices in the tropics for many years, linked to an architect colleague with a passion for green design;
* A project management group able to act with energy and creativity to realize these strategic objectives in practice;
* A senior management team in MAS with a strong ‘can-do’ culture willing to give freedom and space to support innovation;
* A highly skilled and responsive building contractor able to respond flexibly and speedily to their client’s unusual requirements.

We have interviewed representatives of all these groups and at the time of writing are developing a draft learning history which we will take back to Sri Lanka for collaborative exploration in July.  The purpose of this learning history is to help those involved in a project reflect and learn, so that future projects may benefit from the experience.  Everyone involved has been extremely busy getting the factory to completion, and so it has been difficult to reflect on what has happened.  Further, each person involved has their own perspective, and it is difficult for individuals to have an overview and see how the different contributions have fitted together.  So our first objective in this visit is to help them in thinking about this, and noticing what has gone on.

We also have a second important purpose as part of the wider Lowcarbonworks research project.  Given the challenges of climate change and the importance of reducing carbon emissions, we wish to engage a wider audience in understanding interaction of technology and contextual factors in the achievement of a low carbon future. What has been achieved at Thurulie is important, and clearly demonstrates the systemic complementarity between several approaches to low carbon  with contextual factors including organizational strategy and inter-organizational relations in the supply chain, economic opportunity, national cultural conditions and the individual knowledge and agency of several important champions. We believe that the story of Thurulie offers important lessons for both business and policy audiences and contributes to our academic understanding of the adoption of low carbon technologies We hope the story will encourage business audiences to emulate it in their own original projects.�