Environmental sustainability & innovation

Fred StewardProfessor of Innovation & SustainabilityPolicy Studies Institute

The challenge of climate change

‘the most important and difficult environmental problem in the next two decades’

Distinctive challenges ‘wide variety and economic importance of the

activities that cause the emission of greenhouse gases’

‘differences between developed and developing world’

‘agreement will be reached, successively, and over a number of years, on targets for reductions in emissions’

The actual record

Kyoto 1997 UK Climate Act 2009

Global warming: policies in Britain

Measures likely by 2010 Include

• Promotion of energy efficiency in all sectors of economy

• Higher prices for energy and private transport

• Increased investment in public transport systems

• Switch from coal to natural gas in power stations

• Increased development and use of renewable energy

The UK track record (1)

Breadth of policy challenge ‘consequences felt in a great many different aspects

of personal, commercial and industrial life’

‘nuclear power and renewables cannot be expected by 2010 to make more than a marginal contribution to the solution of the global warming problem’

‘substantial savings could be made without need for the use of new, untried technologies’

‘the main contribution will have to come from improved energy conservation and efficiency in use’

20 years later

Policy forecast ‘policy measures for reducing the emissions are

likely to include initially a range of information services, incentives, penalties and regulatory arrangements’

‘since in Britain…governments normally seek to avoid painful measures if they are able to, at first they are likely to be at rates which do not hurt much - in many cases encouraging people to do things which it would have made sense to do anyway’

Policy transformation ‘the logic of global warming would seem to

imply that many approaches that have worked well in the familiar world may need to be stood on their heads in the greenhouse world’

‘there will be need for new, hard thinking in the 1990s if the necessary changes are to be managed efficiently in the next century’

The limits of balance

Tension between realistic forecast and normative transformation

Value of targetted backcasting & challenge-led foresight

Implies different approach to 2030

Innovation

Realism about pace and implementation

Alternative to the utopian visions of the 1980s

Variety of technology paths ‘the 'paperless office‘ - IT has helped to generate

even more use of paper by organisations..there is the potential for using less paper’

‘unlikely that over the next two decades computer-based home working will attract more than a small proportion of the workforce’

‘the use of smart cards is likely to become widespread during the first decade of the next century’

World paper consumption

Signals missed Internet & world wide web Take off from 1993 onwards ‘Internet’ did exist Focus on telecommunications and workplace

technologies Foreseeability difficult but possible

The 20 year horizon

Reading current signs and trends

has to be combined with

Articulating societal goals