AEA

Today’s media headlines, wherever you are in the world, are constantly reporting the potential impact of climate change. Significant action is needed to avoid tomorrow’s headlines being full of more and more disaster stories. In the UK we are facing up to, and indeed even leading the world in acting to avoid, the forecast future. But can we make a difference to the whole planet?

Governments taking a lead

To achieve this, other governments must also take a lead. The concerns about climate change and its impacts are already beginning to drive harmonisation of government action through an increasing number of international agreements. This would have been unthinkable only a short time ago. Moreover, individual nations are starting to take specific action. For example, in the United States, a huge amount of activity has recently been seen on the domestic front. States like California, New York and Virginia have taken significant action to reduce energy consumption.

Romania has recognised that it has to improve its performance not only to meet Europe’s climate change objectives, but also to improve its commercial competitiveness enabling it to thrive in the EU marketplace. The Romanian government has developed long-term strategies to improve this and other areas, such as air quality, resource efficiency and waste management. China and India are also starting to look at policy options that will enable them to alleviate the consequences of rapid economic development and its potential impact on climate change.

Of course there is a significant risk that international agreements and national promises are not met, but the shift of emphasis is an important step forward.

A new realisation

While this government level agreement and cooperation is vital to the creation of an international market and a setting responsive to change, we have also begun to see another significant shift – a growing realisation that early and effective action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions makes economic sense and can be part of a clear competitiveness agenda to which business and industry can make a real impact.

A set of trends has begun to emerge which provides governments and private organisations around the world with a framework for coherent action based on:

• The need to develop new low carbon technologies;

• The need for an internationally accepted approach to carbon trading; and,

• The need for human behaviour change

Supporting policy creation and implementation

AEA has over 40 years of experience helping governments, their Agencies and major private companies around the world to develop and implement policies in these three core areas and beyond. The Group has world-renowned experts in fields including:

• Resource efficiency and waste management,

• Energy (with expertise covering regulation, energy efficiency, renewables, biomass and Combined Heat and Power, CHP),

• Air quality,

• Transport, and,

• Knowledge transfer and behaviour change.

Policies and frameworks outline the goals we need to achieve. But every programme lives or dies by its implementation. Knowledge transfer and human behaviour change are the key links between signing off the policy and delivering the reality at a grassroots level.

Behavioural change is often talked about across a range of societal challenges and yet, as a process, it is rarely evaluated or indeed understood. It is in addressing this challenge when implementing a successful climate change policy that industry can really step up to the plate, and it is in meeting this challenge that industry can improve its global competitiveness.

Business leaders worldwide now face the real prospect of rising energy costs, rising taxes because of carbon footprint and business performance as well as stock market valuations being affected accordingly. But it doesn’t end there. Increasingly company employees and shareholders are pressurising directors on what the company is doing to minimise the impact of the business on climate change.

AEA is one of the world’s leading specialists in climate change. We have a proven track record of typically being able to reduce industry’s energy and water costs by 10%. To achieve that level of performance improvement may not require much investment in technology but it does require employees to get clear data about the impact of what they do and then to be incentivised against targets to be improved. When this behavioural change is implemented a feelgood factor amongst employees should not be underestimated and the 10-20% flow through to the bottom line is a valuable competitive edge within a CEO’s grasp.

W: www.aeat.co.uk