Brite Green directors, Darren Chadwick and Alex James, at the Future 100 awards ceremony

We are very pleased to announce that at an awards ceremony last night at the Ernst and Young HQ in More London, Brite Green were named as one of the UKs top 100 young social and environmental entrepreneurs.

The awards recognise entrepreneurs that have created innovative new businesses in the fields of social and environmental responsibility.

As you can imagine, we are completely over the moon with this award. It’s fantastic recognition of what has been a great few years for Brite Green, and helps to affirm our belief that during these difficult economic times, sustainability is a solution for businesses, not a distraction.

The judging criteria required us to demonstrate economic success, with significant positive social and environmental outcomes. With a client list that include FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 firms, private equity, government suppliers, hospitals, and universities, our commercial success in the first few years is clear. What is also really encouraging is that when we sat down to quantify the impact we’ve had in delivering economic, environmental and social outcomes, we have been able to help our clients to identify savings of thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions, helped quantify and report the social impacts of investments across sub-Saharan Africa, and have been able to help our clients to reduce costs, reduce their risk exposure, and develop new innovative products for new markets.

This award is very special for us, and we are so excited to have been recognised in this way.

For more information about the Future 100 awards have a look at their website. There are profiles on the other winners which makes impressive reading and it was a real pleasure to spend an evening meeting and talking with such exciting and passionate people who have really made a difference through their work

Darren

Brite Green Global Policy Seminars

This week was the latest in the Brite Green Global Policy Seminars series at the University of Oxford. The seminar,  run in conjunction with The Institute of Human Sciences, OXPEACE and the African Studies Centre, was entitled “Environmental Conflict and its resolutions” has three excellent speakers: Karen Witsenburg, Harry Verhoeren and Andrew Loveridge.

The seminar looked to explore the relationship between humans and their environment and the impact of conflict. Karen’s talk focussed on Ethnic violence, water scarcity and managing resources to promote peace and demonstrated the counter-intuitive relationship between ethnic violence and water scarcity. Her research showed that where water was scarce, violence decreased and various tribes and factions worked together to manage their resources. Only when the rains came did livestock raids start, leading to violence, injury and deaths.

Harry’s presentation continued the exploration with a detailed analysis of the conflict in Darfur, put forward by many as a true resource conflict. His research suggest that current Liberal and Neo-Malthusian accounts on environmental development conflict misdiagnose the problem and offer problematic solutions. He suggest that rather than the climate change narrative being helpful, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the conflict in Darfur. He suggests that local and national politics are more to blame, and discussed how the development narrative has been used as an excuse for political power grabbing.

Andrew looked at conflict between lions and people in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, and outlined the nature of the relationship from over a decade of research in the area. Andrew outlined the biological and geographical conditions that lead to conflict and the nature of it, with lions killing livestock, and people snaring and poisoning lions. His talk explored the need for expectation management and how local involvement and ownership is needed to avoid a mutually destructive relationship.

The speakers’ slides are available on our website

The Brite Green Policy Seminar Series was created to spark interdisciplinary discussion and debate on key global issues. They are free for all to attend, and are well attended. If you are interested in finding out more or would like to attend the seminars, then do get in touch.

http://www.environmentalistonline.com/article/2011-06-10/the-e-learning-curve

Brite Green run finance and business risk workshop for IEMA

A few days ago Alex and I took part in the IEMA East of England conference, running a session with Stuart Bowman of huntleypalmerflatt, the engineering consultancy.

The theme of the conference was finding the business opportunities beyond compliance and brought together around 70 environmental professionals from industry, consultancy and the public sector.

Environment managers within organisations are sometimes perceived as only dealing with compliance, but in fact are often in a great position to deliver wider business benefit, both in financial terms and non-financial value. However, environmental professionals can struggle to effectively communicate the potential value of projects to senior management leading to worthwhile projects being shelved.

As experts on sustainable strategy, Brite Green was asked to run the workshop on finance and business risk with Stuart Bowman. The interactive workshop focused on introducing approaches to help practitioners to successfully develop the business case for sustainability in their organisations.

Thanks to Steve Marsden and the rest of the team at IEMA East of England for inviting us along and for making it such an enjoyable day – and for the wine!

Here are some of the key messages from the workshop:

Know your target audience

In order to successfully make the case for sustainability, we need to put ourselves in the place of stakeholders and construct a business case that is meaningful for them

We asked the groups to think about some key questions:

• Who are the financial decision makers and what’s the best way to get through to them?
• How should you communicate the business benefits to them?
• What are his or her current objectives and how does your project align with those?
• What are the appraisal criteria for projects?

These questions help to frame the context in which to build the business case, and will maximise your chances of success. As sustainability might be a new issue for whoever is making the decision, you should also understand whether they know enough about the issue to make an informed decision, and how to help to get them up to speed if needed.

Where’s the value – where’s the risk?

The case for sustainability can include a wide range of issues. Some are purely financial, such as reducing energy costs, but there are a number of others that can be considered. The benefits in terms of company reputation, strategic position, staff motivation, better management of costs and risks etc should all form part of the case. Conversely, the costs to deliver the project should be accounted for with equal rigour when making a robust cost-benefit assessment of your project.

The risks that relate to a successful outcome should be assessed and planned for. Project risks (e.g. have you got the capacity to deliver), risk from outside the organisation (such as changing government policy) or from within (competing interests for limited funding, for example) need to be recognised in your approach.

Get your message right

Created a clear, targeted message will maximise your chances of success. Presenting the case using robust metrics that the decision maker is used to, and aligning the wider non-financial benefits with the company or departmental objectives ensures your message will hit home.

Alex James: Sustainable Dragon at Imperial College's Business Plan Competition

Alex James, Director

Yesterday afternoon I sat on the panel for the final Dragons’ Den for the Business and Environment masters students business plan project at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial. Despite never having watched a full episode of the real show, I really enjoyed the experience. There were some great ideas and this year’s class are a very talented, passionate and thoughtful group.

The five plans that were presented were:

Credo – an online community and networking tool for sustainability professionals and students, based on an alumni management system.

The Shed - a communal space for learning and sharing craft and handyman skills and projects.

Greenpea – an online tool and app to share information on sustainable food and match up consumers, producers and retailers.

The Hearth – a sustainable cooking and dining space that can be used for classes and events on a membership/rental basis.

Resource Network – a scheme for domestic food waste collection for energy recovery via anaerobic digestion.

A lot of creativity and energy had clearly gone into all the plans and the presentations and although there were some weaknesses, there were a lot of positives in all of the proposals.

Also on the panel were Jason Mollring of Unltd and Clare Brass of the Seed Foundation, who both brought a wealth of experience in sustainability and social enterprise. It was fantastic to see the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship alive and well and that the students can see the vast opportunities that the green economy brings.

Thanks to Dr Mike Tennant of CEP for inviting me and to the students for making it such an interesting afternoon.

Alex

Brite Green launch the global policy seminars at the University of Oxford

Brite Green have launched a series of global policy seminars with the Institute of Human Sciences at the University of Oxford. The series, which will bring together leaders in business, policy, government and academia, will create interdisciplinary discussion on pressing international issues.

The inaugural seminar, held on the 18th February, focussed on sustainability and international development. The interdisciplinary panel comprised Stephen Doughy, former DFID special adviser, Rob Bailey, Head of Economic Justice at Oxfam and Michele De Nevers, former Environment Specialist from the World Bank.

For more information click here.

Brite Green's new office

2011 has started really well for us, which is great news. With new clients, strong growth quarter on quarter, and an impressive array of pot plants, Brite Green has moved to new offices just off the Albert Embankment in Southbank House, the former Royal Doulton pottery.

Darren Chadwick, Director

The workshop introduces soft systems thinking and the rich picture tool kit, and how they can be used to create an effective stakeholder engagement strategy on climate change. The soft systems approach makes it easier to break down and document the interactions and concerns of multiple stakeholders, allowing organisations to plan an effective approach to dealing with them.

There are three parts to the approach:

• Identify the structure of the relationships
• Identify the processes which occur
• Identify the concerns of the stakeholders

These three areas are then represented pictorially to give clarity to what is often a complex set of relationships.
As the process breaks down the relationships into structure, process and concerns, a clear picture of the nature of the stakeholder relationship emerges. Once this is clear, strategies to engage with the various stakeholder groups can be developed, tailored to their specific circumstances.

Alex James is a strategy consultant at Brite Green Ltd, the sustainable strategy consultancy. He leads the sustainability audit and reporting group and has over 10 years experience in financial and environmental audit. As a founding partner at the firm, he has developed Brite Green’s end to end sustainability offering, from strategy to solution implementation.

Dr Mike Tennant is a lecturer in Business and Environment at Imperial College, London. He specialises in systems thinking, complexity and innovation for business sustainability, and is particularly interested in using and developing creativity and systems tools to design disruptive and innovative products and services that meet environmental and social needs.

www.brite-green.co.uk

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/environmentalpolicy

• CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme to become a carbon tax: There will no longer be any revenue recycling from the CRC with the Treasury now retaining all revenues from the sales of permits. This is estimated to amount to a carbon tax of approximately £1 billion. Changing the scheme at this late stage is bound to cause confusion and is a blow to companies that have worked hard to meet the Early Action Metric criteria but it will simplify the administration of the CRC and strengthens the business case for reducing emissions.

• Uncertainty over the Green investment Bank: The Bank has only been earmarked capital of £1 billion rather than the £6 billion many analysts have said is required and as yet the is no clarity over its structure.

• Large cuts to Defra’s budget: Resource spending will be reduced by 29% and capital spending is set to fall by 34% over the course of the CSR period.

• A mixed picture for DECC: Resource spending is to fall by 18% while capital spending will increase by 41% in real terms over the CSR period.

• Carbon Capture and Storage: Up to £1 billion is available to fund the development of a commercial scale CCS plant.

It remains to be seen whether these measures will help the Coalition to live up to its claim to be the ‘greenest government ever’ but from a business point of view the biggest change is the recasting of the CRC.

A more comprehensive review of the CSR can be found on the IEMA website here.

If you would like to discuss how this will affect your business and how you can seize the opportunities the CRC presents, contact Alex James at alex.james@brite-green.co.uk.