Low Carbon Zones – platitude or palliative?
To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, “Boris, Show me the money!”
Boris Johnson jumped on the bandwagon last week at Prince Charles’ May Day Summit on Climate Change by pledging to develop 10 Low Carbon Zones (LCZ) in London.
That’s the good news, since these LCZs should help reduce carbon emissions as well as stimulating employment for these initiatives.
The bad news is that he is only pledging £3 million for this; not a large amount in the grand scheme of things and it is only a pledge, so there’s no guarantee that any of the dosh will actually ever see the light of the day if past experience is anything to go by.
What is even more worrying is that any monies, if released might go the way of most of the taxpayers’ contribution to the NHS – consultancy fees.
Boris has committed at least £200,000 to funding each approved project.
If past experience (again!) is anything to go by, every penny of this will be swallowed by the big 5 consulting houses, who have spent the last 10 years gearing up to capitalise on the very real concerns that climate change and planet heating are presenting to society in general and the business community in particular, with the ‘evolution’ of ’standards’ like ‘green six sigma’.
And remember, £3 million is what these consultancies bleed the NHS of in about 3 days (last year they cost the NHS £350 million), so time is very short indeed!
If Boris really is ready to put his money where his mouth is, then you should get on the phone and now; over the past few weeks I have outlined several innovative and significant ways for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint that require investment in the short term but that pay back in the medium and long term – take the living roofs example just last week.
Now, you may have ignored it because many businesses are still stuck in the antiquated paradigm of recession, reduce spend, put green issues on the back burner.
Here is an opportunity to get funding to do something that will not only put the City back on the map for positive reasons, help to reduce the UK’s carbon footprint but will also lower your operating costs almost immediately as well possibly bring you below the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), potentially saving you even more in carbon credits (when the cost of these is finally fixed in 2013!).
And don’t forget the PR win; it makes a difference to your customers/clients if you can actually substantiate your green claims (something you will be required to do by law anyway when the full force of the CSR sections of Companies Act 2006 comes into effect in October for all you companies employing more than 50 employees and turning over more than +/- £6 million per annum).
The days of ‘greenwash’ are over and here is an opportunity to ‘get with the programme’ that need not cost you as much as it otherwise might have done.
If Boris is to redeem himself after the debacles of a third airport for London, electric cars for London and his most recent sound bites like the ‘living bridge’ near Waterloo or the ‘choose-a-tree’ outside your home scheme, then why not give him a helping hand and challenge him today to put his money where his mouth is; carbon- and cost-reducing initiatives that you might like to consider in addition to living roofs could include solar power and heating generation, intelligent energy consumption reduction technology, waste to energy conversion systems.. the list goes on and has sustainability written all over it… and we don’t need overpaid consultants to tell us what we need and what to do!
To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, “Boris, Show me the money!”
