Recent research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) was reported by the New Scientist (6 November 2010) indicating that cities are much more environmentally friendly than we were led to believe.

Advantages of a city include less daily travel distance by city dwellers; better access to public transport; and easier and more efficient utility distribution. People in the IIED re-examined the differences between rural and urban carbon footprints and have shown that cities produce about 30%-40% of the emissions of a country i.e. including rural and urban.

I can understand these arguments but what the report does not say how the emissions were calculated. Anyone can ‘re-examine’ information and draw a different conclusion. For example they can use more up to date information or they can choose more, or less, variables for comparison.

So many people are interpreting information in a way that suits their argument. As it happens so often with ‘emissions’ calculations it is a case of lies, damn lies and statistics. The article does state that ‘the figures may need some qualification before we can arrive at a firm figure for the environmental benefits of living in a city’.

The UN recently reported that 50% of the world’s population live in cities which take up, about, 3% of the earth’s land area. This migration to cities will increase rapidly as the worldwide population continues to grow. This is where cities could have a potential long-term benefit:
• Children in rural communities are a source of cheap labour whereas they tend to go to school in cities making it more difficult to maintain big families.
• Woman in cities tend to have better job opportunities and have their first child much later in life.

This would indicate that cities will help attenuate population growth.

But the mass migration to cities is clearly for a reason. Last year I visited Beijing as part of a UK Trade Mission on Sustainability. There were several presentations that discussed what could be done to improve the conditions for people living in remote rural places – some of the problems these people faced were primitive. Also I saw the poverty first hand when I visited a remote part of China to see the Great Wall of China. It is easy to see why so many people want to live in cities.

Interestingly in my visits to Beijing you do not see the poverty that you see in cities like Delhi. So can we create a society where our cities have no slums? The belief is that cities may be the best place to tackle poverty. Look at the differences in European cities over the last few hundred years. Are slums caused by cities or an underdeveloped economy? Based upon European experience I would say it is the latter and it will be interesting to see if, for example, in India that slums are reduced over the next couple of decades as the Indian economy grows.

Image (Peter Pearson)

It has been a while since my last blog.  Much as happened and there will be a number of interesting IES Press Releases over the next few months so watch out.

So the Cancun climate conference has come and gone.  Did you notice?  How much did you know about it?  Do you know what was agreed?  What will be the lasting impact of the conference?

I come back to Cancun.

In the meantime Northern Europe has had a very cold start to the winter.  Climate Change?  One winter won’t make swallows extinct but what if we see a succession of harsh winters…….

The UK was particularly badly hit.  The UK Meteorological Office reported:

• UK average temperature was -1°C, the coldest since records began in 1910 and the first time December’s average monthly temperature was below freezing.
• The coldest day was 1^st of December with an average UK temperature of -8.7°C.

Nevertheless it appears that 2010 was the second warmest in term if global temperature based upon satellite measurements.

We are also seeing unseasonable flooding in Queensland, hopefully the swallows won’t drown.

Can we keep ignoring this catalogue of extreme events that we have been seeing for the last few years around the world?  Well as a matter of fact we can.  Let’s go back to Cancun.

The reports I have seen have said that the Mexican hosts did a great job at pulling together an agreement.  By the sound of it they did well.  But not to belittle the effort what was agreed?

The draft agreement says that deeper cuts in carbon emissions are required, but it did not suggest a mechanism for achieving the pledges countries have made.  There appears to have been much cheering at this ‘progress’.

The attitude appears to be that the global economy is our immediate problem.  Climate Change can be dealt with by the next government.  I can understand this rational.  But if our respective Governments had controlled the banks and the people making a fortune out of helping many people into debt then we would not have these economic problems.

Now if our Governments will not act to mitigate climate change, and remember they do agree about the likely consequences of climate change, then I fear they will have a much greater economic disaster to ‘manage’.

Have a Happy New Year.

The next major climate summit will be held in Cancun, Mexico in November.  Can we expect any more success compared to Copenhagen last year?

Sorry to say it doesn’t look like it.

The final round of preparatory talks is taking place in Tainjin, China.  They appear to be attempting to create something from the ruins of Copenhagen; however the signs are not promising.

The agenda at the meeting in Tianjin is focusing on two main topics:

• Industrialised nations’ commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, including further emission reductions after 2012, when the current period ends

• Progress on a draft negotiating text for the Cancun summit

Roger Harrabin a BBC Environmental Analyst wrote ‘China says it is worried about climate change but it has warned that it can’t offer much more than it has already – that’s a promise to slow Chinese growth of energy use and greenhouse gases emissions.

With American policy held up in the Senate and the EU taking a back seat, the most significant advance from this meeting may be an incidental one.

Chinese media will be covering this conference in force. They’ll send a message to China’s local officials and industrialists who often ignore national policies on cutting energy use and pollution.’

Wow!  That’s the best we can get.

This was reinforced by Asad Rehman who is senior in the Friends of the Earth who said: “The future of the Kyoto Protocol is in doubt because of US attempts to weaken the framework already in place to tackle climate change internationally – and now other countries, including Australia and Japan, are racing to put the lowest possible voluntary pledges on the table,” he said.

He called on rich countries to meet their responsibilities outlined in the Kyoto Protocol, and “agree tough new emissions targets of at least 40% by 2020 (from 1990 levels) without offsetting”.

Mr Rehman warned: “Only action on this scale will give the UN climate summit in Cancun the momentum needed to agree strong and fair action on climate change.

“If the US is unwilling to demonstrate a similar level of ambition then they should step aside from the negotiations rather than obstruct them.”

The easy solutions cannot be implemented because of the impact it will have on us all.  Do I think Cancun will provide a good solution?  No.  However, I do believe that the major governments can’t afford to leave without some form of agreement.  So will there be an agreement to appease the environmentalist – Yes?  Will it be effective…?

We all know that the Copenhagen climate talks last year failed to achieve any agreement that would make a difference. The outgoing UN client chief, Yvo de Boer was recently quoted as saying that there is little or no chance of any effective agreement before the next summit in South Africa in 2011.

So two years lost!

Tony Blair has called for action in a BBC 4 Radio interview. He said that world leaders may pay a heavy price in history if they fail to tackle global warming and that politicians did not have to wait for chaotic climate change in order for them to act.

Blair said that climate change science contained uncertainties and that it was far better to express the issue as one of risk. He felt that because of the potentially massive consequences associated with the risk of not cutting emissions then the risks justified action.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Now it is interesting that whilst I and others believed that the UK, under PM Blair, had significantly reduced our emissions. Counties such as China and India had been very bad and significantly increased their CO2 emissions and should follow our lead. However, it has recently come to light that emissions in the UK actually rose under PM Blair if embedded emissions from goods imported into the UK were included in the national figures.

So this highlights a major problem that I think will continue to derail international agreement on reduction of CO2 emissions. Do you account for CO2 emissions at point of use or where the product is sold? We are then into the endless cycle of tracking where all the components of a product came from or where products go and if these exported products are part of a larger product where was that product sold.

This type of problem will continue to plague any international agreement. Meanwhile the risks don’t become any smaller!

This is a follow-up to my blog on losing engineers due to the recession and getting school leavers into the industry. The same CIBSE Journal discussed the difficulties that face young engineers in finding and/or keeping a job.

I remember the recession that seriously impacted the UK construction industry in the late 80’s/early 90’s there were a few years where student numbers entering the industry fell significantly. This ‘lost generation’ has been missed by the industry since then. As pointed out in the editorial we are seeing young Building Services Engineers moving out of the profession into the energy-supply sector working for utilities or renewables companies. This could well mean another lost generation which will pose a future problem when more demanding regulations are going to make the need for top class Building Services Engineers even more necessary.

So when the recession is over how can we attract kids into the Building Services sector?

I mentioned in my previous blog passionate people can help make passionate engineers. There are many kids who are worried about the environment and want to do something about it. Now imagine getting these kids as they are deciding upon a career, getting them to understand the impact of buildings on our environment and let them see that they can make a significant difference. Same goes for students interested in Architecture. Let’s make the future building designers – Eco-Warriors – that have both the enthusiasm and aptitude to tackle sustainable design more aggressively.

Today’s kids are also much more tactile than previous generations as they have been brought up on Playstation’s and Wii’s. This will make them more willing to use building simulation tools and computer technology that will be key components in achieving the highest standard of sustainable design.

However, to make the work environment more conducive for this next generation and for the future of the construction industry we would need the long awaited changes to the construction industry to take place. Consequently, I think professional engineering organisations such as CIBSE (UK), ARBS (Australia) and ASHRAE (North America) and architectural organisations such as the RIBA (UK) and AIA in North America should be helping in making the construction industry more appealing in order to attract more high quality students into the industry. To achieve this objective it is important that academic institutions play their part to provide the course that excite and stimulate students and provide them with the knowledge to become Eco-Warriors.

Am I confident of success? Unfortunately not in the timescale I believe we need to mitigate climate change.

For a few years Google SketchUp have had a little program called LayOut ‘hidden’ as part of SketchUp Pro.

At the AIA exhibition in Miami LayOut was launched in full force. The SketchUp (SU for simplicity) booth was dedicated to LayOut and from what I saw the public loved it.

LayOut was originally a presentation tool for SketchUp. Late last year the SketchUp team announced LayOut 2.1 as part of SketchUp Pro 7.1. What excited the SU community was that dimensioning was added to LayOut and ‘shizam’ LayOut was a whole new proposition.

At the AIA booth there were lots of construction documents generated from LayOut. They looked very, very good.

You can find out more about LayOut (http://sketchup.google.com/product/layout.html) on the main Google SU website.

Alternatively there are a couple of YouTube videos that are worth viewing: an introduction and an explanation of the three principal reasons for using LayOut…

You can also go to the IES website for more information on the free IES SketchUp plug-in and ways get LayOut via discount on SketchUp Pro.

It is well worth a look.

I have just left the AIA exhibition in Miami which was on from the 10th-12th of June.  It is the first time I have been to Miami and as expected it was hot and humid.  Dimitri, Michelle and Angela from our US division were on our booth.

We announced the launch of version 6.1 of the <VE> and in particular our new SketchUp plug-in, the next generation of our Gaia technology and our Bioclimatic analysis capability.  There was lots of interest in all of these new capabilities as well as our improved Revit plug-in, and the new gbXML healing tool that considerably improves gbXML import for Revit, Graphisoft, Bentley and other gbXML exporters.

The exhibition looked good and the Miami Convention Centre was much better than the Moscone Centre in San Francisco last year.  However, the footfall was extremely low.  Many of the big companies have been slowly paring back their activity at AIA and many said they would put in less effort next year.

AIA need not worry as IES will be their next year so that should help protect their numbers!

There is a ‘software pavilion’ where they group all the disparate software companies together.  This makes it much easier for anyone interested in software to find us, and also much easier for others to avoid the ‘techies’.

What was interesting was several of the biggies e.g. Google SketchUp, Autodesk and others had big ‘sustainable’ booths built of all recycled materials.  Smaller booths with less people would have been even better.  They will probably do both over the next few years unless the show’s numbers pick up.

On the last day Michelle was telling me that she met the Vectorworks people who had been miscategorised and put rows and rows away from the software pavilion.  Don’t worry guys you did not miss much.

However, to be fair although the footfall was low we had good quality contacts so that’s better than large numbers of contacts that don’t have much value.

I personally had a number of press interviews and good discussions with others including SketchUp, Autodesk, Graphisoft, Bentley and Trelligence.  So it was well worthwhile suffering the humidity.

Those of you that know the company I work for – IES (www.iesve.com) – will know that we are the market leader in providing analysis tools for the construction industry. 

Now what I am about to say is not marketing, it is extremely important to the point I wish to make.

IES is seen by the venture capital community as a Cleantech company.  We have won Cleantech awards and are highly rated in many VC Top Cleantech company lists.  Now IES supplies our technology to the construction industry yet IES is seen as Cleantech and the construction industry isn’t – Why?

Look at the companies that are grouped in the Cleantech space for example there are companies which cover renewables, energy storage, advances materials, energy controls, environmental quality and safety, and water.  The IES software covers all of this and more so we are a Cleantech company. 

Now it is the architects and engineers that have to wade through the Cleantech manufacturer’s greenwash then design and make this Cleantech technology work in buildings.  They are the ones that have to make the buildings meet increasingly stringent regulations and also get a good BREEAM or LEED rating.

Therefore why are companies in the Cleantech space so highly regarded by the VC community but the construction industry is not?  The growth potential for Architects and Engineers in terms of sustainable design is increasing dramatically so why are construction companies not re-branding themselves as Cleantech? 

I think there are three reasons:
• The construction industry is seen as a low margin business and hence not sexy as far as VC’s are concerned.
• The construction industry is a behemoth that is slow to respond.  Other industries (e.g. utilities, renewables, materials) have been quick to jump onto the Cleantech bandwagon and these companies have seen their share value benefit.  How many products have suddenly become ‘Green’ over the last few years.
• The worldwide construction industry is being forced into the sustainability market e.g. regulations and market forces such as Voluntary Environmental Rating Systems (VERS) such as LEED and BREEAM.  If you visit the websites of most construction companies they talk the talk but crawl the walk.

As a consequence construction companies are not seen as Cleantech.  However, I expect some bright, nimble architects or engineers will see that they have more chance of significant VC investment and subsequent value if they alter their business model and differentiate themselves by committing fully to sustainable design.  I am sure they would get the VC funding with the right strategy and that they would be successful. 

Once the sustainable design business model was proven the Behemoth would slowly turn in the right direction.

In a letter to the CIBSE Journal the impact of losing engineers in a recession to other industries was raised.  This reminds me of the other long UK recession in the late eighties and early nineties that saw many engineers more to other sectors.  However, it was easier to move to other sectors two decades ago as whilst the construction industry was badly affected many other sectors thrived.  Today the conditions are different as most sectors are seriously impacted by the recession.

So the construction industry is losing engineers that are key to ensuring that buildings will be more sustainable.  How will they be replaced, particularly as progressively more demanding regulations will require better engineers to meet the technical challenges that lie ahead in the forthcoming decades?

This problem is compounded by the fact that one of the biggest problems experienced throughout the world is that school leavers tend to want the fast route to the perceived big incomes in other sectors e.g. Marketing or Business Administration.  As mentioned in the letter by Ken McDougall in the CIBSE Journal many UK University building services courses have closed in recent years due to lack of interest.

Some however thrive such as the course at the Dublin Institute of Technology.  I meet with so many DIT’ers who are dispersed throughout the world and IES employ about ten of them.  One of the reasons this course is so successful is the passion of one of the lecturers, Ken Beattie.  Ken has passed his passion on to so many people that are making a significant contribution to engineering community throughout the world.  The industry and good sustainable design need more Ken’s.

In October 2009 it was reported that large deposits of Rare Earth Metals were found in Greenland.  This has enormous implications on all of us as it reduced China’s worldwide monopoly in rare earth metals.  ‘So what?’, I hear you say.

Well the rare earth metals are extremely important in both green technology and electronic technology.  Realising this, and with large deposits of rare earth metals, in the mid-nineties the Chinese Government embarked on a policy of making rare earth metals to China as oil is to the Middle East.

They had succeeded as there was a general belief that they had gained a total worldwide monopoly of rare earth metals.  China implemented a policy of buying up companies that owned non-Chinese rare earth metal sites until they owned more that 95% of the market.  They also started exporting 6% less per annum creating potential short-falls in a market that was growing in demand by 10% per annum.

There were also allegations that if a rare earth site was close to coming on stream the price for rare earth metals would suddenly drop making the site uneconomical and when the site closed the price would surprisingly rise again.

This Chinese Monopoly was causing panic in Japan as they needed rare earth materials to maintain their position as the major manufacturer of ‘green’ as there are now a lot of technologies that can’t work without rare earth metals.  Therefore someone having a monopoly on such a key component of our future in helping attenuate climate change is worrying.  Currently, China is in effective control of the global supply and it has positioned itself to retain control.

This would render the plans of many Government plans to build a green society meaningless with access to rare earth metals.  With China significantly cutting export quotas there would be insufficient supply of rare earth metals for the rest of the world, driving prices up and limiting ‘green’ aspirations unless purchased from China.

There was a wide scale belief that because China dramatically cutting its annual rare earth export quotas it would soon become impossible for any company to produce a wind turbine or hybrid electric car outside China.  This would give China an enormous commercial advantage in manufacturing ‘green’ technology.

Consequently, many believe that perceived China’s monopolistic strategy is as follows:
• Give its own high-tech industries a chance to flourish and gain a huge competitive edge over rivals in the rest of the world,
• Force foreign companies to move their high-tech jobs to China to circumvent quotas.

Quite frankly you cannot help but admire how the Chinese have adapted to capitalism and have created this monopoly from under the noses of the rest of the world.

However, this new site in Greenland will redress the balance.  It is the world’s largest known reserve of rare earth metals and has the potential to meet at least 25 per cent of global rare earth demand for the next half century and is expected to be able to produce about 50,000 tonnes per year of rare earth-bearing ore by 2014.

Consequently, this Greenland site has the potential to significantly reduce China’s power in the global supply of rare earth metals. 

This is obviously very good news for us all – unless of course China purchases the company that plans to develop the site!