low carbon

 

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.

 

 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.�

 

Quick link to Learning History blog site 

A highly interactive Learning History workshop for achieving low carbon reduction in local authorities has led to the creation of the UK’s first ever online collaborative learning history. Created and hosted by CARPP PhD action researcher, Margaret Gearty, the site is inviting comments and continuing participation from those who came to the workshop and others whom they may recommend.

Even if you weren’t able to attend the workshop in Bath in February 2008, you can read  the various stories of low carbon innovation such as the development of a district heating system in Southampton or the widespread use of biomass in Barnsley and see and hear what other people learnt.

The idea of using blogging technology, although innovative when applied to creating a joint learning history, has already established a place in higher education. For some background to how this learning movement is developing we refer you to the following paper: Exploring the place of blogs in higher education

 

Action researcher Gill Coleman, has recently returned from a visit to an eco-factory in Sri Lanka which will be supplying underwear to Marks and Spencer. Gill was impressed by the collective ingenuity and the speed of innovation achieved by the company, MAS. The idea is to create a learning history at the site to enable the company to learn from its success so that it can be replicated elsewhere.

Set up an rss feed using the orange button above if you want to be kept up to date with this project.Â

Margaret’s Phd project in lowcarbonworks:

I joined Lowcarbonworks just after I’d completed a Masters in Business and Responsibility at the University of Bath. Before that I’d spent 15 years working as an engineer and project manager in the hi-tech semiconductor industry. On Lowcarbonworks I’m interested in really getting behind examples of where innovations have occurred and finding new interesting ways to learn from them.

To do this I’m conducting what’s called a Learning History of innovative approaches to carbon reduction in Local Authorities. The learning history has been used with considerable success in settings ranging from Car Manufacturers to The Natural Step (a Swedish environmental education organisation).

It’s different from a conventional case study analysis in two main ways. First, by foregrounding the human story, it is not presenting a definitive, exhaustive explanation - rather it is working with multiple different perspectives that represent different levels too. So analysis, story, reflection and recollection all go side by side in the history. Second, by using an action research approach, particular attention is paid to there being value for the participants and for others influenced by the research.

So this is not extractive research. What we do with the Histories is as important as the documents themselves. Workshops, online support and other forms of engagement are being organised around the central ’story’ of low-carbon innovation in local authorities.

It’s been fascinating and inspiring to travel up and down the country this past year meeting individuals who have been involved in projects that show Low Carbon sometimes really does work!

 

This demonstration air cycle rig is being assembled at Bristol’s Food Refrigeration and Process Engineering Research Centre (FRPERC).

Air cycle is not a new technology but might be described as a rediscovered one. Air cycle or “cold air” machines were used in food stores and on ships a century ago but they were superseded by CFCs in vapour-compression refrigeration technologies.

Now that the contribution of CFCs, and their replacement HCFCs, to the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming is recognised, there is a strong case for the relaunch of air cycle.

 There are many advantages to air cycle:

• Air is free, safe and non-toxic.
• Equipment using air is reliable, reducing maintenance costs and system down-time.
• Performance does not deteriorate as much as the alternatives.
• Air cycle units can produce heat as well as chilling so efficient, low energy processing becomes possible.
• A much higher temperature differential can be produced.
• Air does not contribute to global warming or ozone depletion.

Many advances in air cycle technology have been made over the last century, including the use of rotary compressors and expanders similar to those used in car turbo chargers, the development of air bearings and ceramic components, and compact heat exchangers. These advances have improved the efficiency and reliability of air cycle making it technically competitive with existing vapour compression systems.