News
Clear About Carbon Wins Again
Our project has been amongst the gongs yet again – this time bagging the ‘Innovation’ prize at the Cornwall Works WISE Awards Ceremony held last week.
Established in 2008, these awards are an annual celebration, recognising excellence in employment and skills activity and highlighting the important role that the European Social Fund (through the ESF Convergence Programme) plays in boosting employment, skills and training and innovation across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. The red-carpet event took place on the 9th May at the Headland Hotel, Newquay, and covered four key areas:
- Welfare to Work
- Innovation
- Skills
- Employers
Mixing it with the stars, our very own Clooney – Stuart Farmer, of Cornwall Development Company – dusted off his kitten heels, located his LBD, and accepted the award on behalf of the Clear About Carbon team.
The award – the project’s second after the ESF Sustainable Development Specialist Project Leader Award in 2011 – underlines the achievements made by the team over the last three years, and the impact that the project has made – and is continuing to make – amongst business both in the south-west and nationally.
Cornwall Works is the over-arching strategy and co-ordinating brand for employment and skills activity in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. The organisation assists people to start, stay in and progress in work by acting as an information and services hub – bringing people, organisations and funding together, trialling new services and new ways of delivering them, and ensuring that Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly make the best use of all the programmes and services available in order that the population is able to achieve its full employment potential.
Stuart Farmer (back left, in LBD by M&S Man) with the other award winners from the Cornwall Works WISE ceremony.
The Carbon Show 2011 – time to evolve?
The 2011 Carbon Show took place in late October beneath the vaulted ceilings of the old Royal Agricultural Hall (or “The Aggie” as it was known by locals) – now resplendent as the Business Design Centre. A hardened posse of Clear About Carbon delegates made the journey to the capital to learn more of the event’s outcomes: present were the (ever-sartorially floral) Paul Holmes from the Eden Project along with Fernando Correia and Simon Ramsay from the University of Exeter Business School.
Source: The Carbon Show, October 2011
As in previous years, the Show provided a varied programme of seminars, exhibitor sessions and networking opportunities for those working within the industry or searching for the most up-to-date information. General feeling seemed to concur, however, that this year’s attendance was considerably lower than in previous years, and there was much discussion amongst the stands on what the reasons for such a lower turnout might be. Economics would be the obvious response but other important events have occurred over the past twelve months that have most certainly played a role. Last year, for example, the Show opened ahead of the commencement of the Carbon Reduction Commitment, and there was a consequent rush from organisations trying to understand its implications and the tools available to address it.
Turn the clock back twelve months from 2011 and you would also have felt a distinct policy buzz on issues of carbon emissions and climate change, engendered by the previous Labour government and which seemed, at the time, set to amplify when the new Tory PM announced his intentions to make this ‘the greenest Government ever’ (www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/14/cameron-wants-greenest-government-ever). Since that announcement, however, all sorts of changes have taken place at policy level. The Carbon Reduction Commitment was changed from a competitive to a mandatory scheme; the rules regarding the Feed-in Tariffs have been altered; support for renewable energy has been reduced; the Sustainable Development Commission has been scrapped. Even references to carbon reduction and climate change have all but disappeared from Government-speak at higher levels. Perhaps predictably, only Chris Huhne (Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change) seems to keep this subject in the public and policy-makers’ eye, when in the previous government there wasn’t an official speech which didn’t mention Britain’s green ambitions.
Whatever the reasons, there was a feeling was that the sense of urgency seemed to have disappeared from the Carbon Show this year. Was that a reflection of the Government’s silence on this issue? Maybe it was pure economics. Or maybe whatever information people needed in terms of available tools and resources for carbon management, climate finance, green technologies and the like had already been obtained in previous years. Perhaps the Carbon Show, in this guise, has already satisfied the sector’s requirements, and the 2011 Show did not contain anything really new to capture people’s attention – maybe whoever needs carbon services is already being taken care of. Indeed, this is a services market that is quickly becoming saturated and, if anything, the implication was that we can expect this industry to consolidate significantly over the next few years.
This last point highlights the risky situation that any organisations which haven’t been addressing the carbon issue may find themselves in. As the market matures and consolidates – and the major players standardise their carbon management approaches – any businesses not keeping up with this shift will find themselves swiftly consigned to the role of peripheral players, with all the implications this can have for business successes and opportunities. Cornwall is already at the geographical (and in many cases economic) edge of the UK and the region’s businesses should have no enthusiasm at all in being also located on the margins of the carbon agenda. Just as the old Aggie has evolved to become a shiny commercial centre, so the Carbon Show will need to evolve if it is to remain pertinent for the ‘big players’. And so projects like Clear About Carbon will become even more vital in hastening the adaptation process of Cornish organisations if they are to keep pace with this new business reality.
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- Business, Carbon Credits, Carbon footprint, Construction, Events, Policy, Procurement, Public sector
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- business, carbon footprint, Carbon Show, events, policy
Green Build shaping up for this weekend
Cornwall’s first sustainable construction event, where Clear About Carbon will run several seminars, is shaping up nicely, with several new exhibitors confirmed.
- Visitors will be able to step inside and take a look around the beautiful Studio Ark (right), a compact eco building made of timber made by local company Pioneer Environmental Buldings.
- RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) will be offering free Ask an Architect sessions on their stand, where members of the public can ask about reconfiguring their home to maximise space, add value or introduce energy- and money-saving measures. Homeowners are encouraged to bring along any drawings they have.
- There’ll also be a fully charged electric car onsite.
Visitors can also find out about green building options, renewable energy and careers in Cornwall during the two days, through:
- The Renewable Energy Street: Information on solar hot water, solar electricity, biomass boilers, wind power systems and heat pump options – plus material on the Feed in Tariff and the Renewable Heat Incentive.
- An exhibition of local construction suppliers that have adapted their operations to meet the growing green building market. Information on training and career development opportunities in the renewable sector throughout the country.
- Free seminars exploring issues such as low-impact building and recycled building materials, living roofs, waste minimisation and retrofitting. These are aimed at construction industry delegates on the Friday, while Saturday’s seminars will be of interest to the general public.
Find out more about the event programme on the Cornwall Sustainable Building Trust website, where you should also register to get free entry to Green Build, to take part in Friday’s seminars for the construction industry, or to book an Ask an Architect session.
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- Business, Carbon footprint, Construction, Events, Procurement, Public sector, waste
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- business, Construction, events, public sector, recycling
Procurex National 2010 – Changing the rules of the game…
Procurex National 2010 took place in March, at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre. This was advertised as the UK’s leading event dedicated to public sector procurement. Indeed, it had a fairly complete and varied programme of conferences and short training courses, covering most of the key current issues in public procurement. Inevitably, the economic crisis and expected cost-cuttings throughout all areas was a central point in most presentations, since procurement will be at the centre of any public institution’s savings strategy.
Some of the conference presentations, though, were very enlightening on how the rules of the procurement game are changing and in what ways they can impact future practices. The new EU Remedies Directive, for instance, is one of such examples. In force since the end of December 2009, it completely changes the balance of rights between bidders and procuring authorities. Bidders have now much more rights than before and can much more easily challenge procurement decisions. For instance, procuring authorities are now obliged to inform ALL bidders on why and how they were selected or excluded, with clear explanations of criteria and evaluation results. This should happen prior to any award decision and giving enough time for bidders to challenge the decision. Bidders have now also several opportunities along the procurement process to challenge, stop, delay, invalidate, and even bring financial sanctions to procuring authorities if these fail to constantly demonstrate the transparency of the process and all decisions along the way.
A bigger focus on clearer and/or more objective evaluation practice and criteria is then likely to happen, in order to protect procurers from any accusations of subjectivity. This is a positive step, but its downside is that it might come at the expense of innovation, or a performance-based approach to procurement, where authorities can use the process to promote the development of innovative solutions to old or new problems. Low carbon procurement, for instance, is an area that can greatly benefit from a greater openness to innovation and untried solutions and a lesser focus on pre-determined and clear-cut criteria or solutions. The subject is not mature enough to benefit from the introduction of any rigidities in its evaluation, and even the various carbon footprinting tools still vary widely in its methods, assumptions and results.
Nevertheless, the increase in transparency in the procurement processes and of the rights of bidders is a welcomed step. But it is going to be interesting to see how procurement officers will react and adapt their working practices to a legal system that greatly increases the scrutiny, legal weight and consequences of their decisions. Likewise, it is also going to be interesting to see how the seemingly popular practice of using procurement to drive public policies is going to adapt to a system that brings a bigger emphasis to the objective commercial rights of the bidders and less room to subjective decisional criteria. To be watched…
- Categories:
- Carbon footprint, Events, Procurement, Public sector
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- carbon footprint, events, procurement, public sector