Podcast: Changing the Way We Think About Cars- Forever

Copyright Philippa Roberts 2012 Riversimple's car will be a whole lot more efficient than this

A discussion with Hugo Spowers from Riversimple about the hydrogen fuel-cell powered car of the future.  But you can't buy it!


Start: Who, or what are Riversimple?
5min: What is a hydrogen fuel cell and how does a hydrogen fuel cell car work?
9min: Mass decompounding explained
10min: The car company that doesn't sell cars
12min: Car materials - carbon fibre versus steel
15min: Business risks
17 min: End of life vehicles (ELV) - disassembly and recycling cars
19min: Open source design
23min: Company structure and innovative governance

Futuristic car, futuristic company

Had a great morning interviewing one of the founders of Riversimple.  It's the most inspirational company and one that caught my interest a few years ago because of its open source car design.

The company itself aspires to change personal transport, and so has created a hydrogen fuel cell car; no battery, no combustion engine.  Amazing what you can do when you start with a blank page and a problem - i.e. how to make transport sustainable.  When you compare this with the normal approach of  tweaking what you already have, you can understand why both their proposition and their business model is so exciting and, I think, demonstrates so well what I am talking about when I speak about collaborative capitalism.

More to follow.  I'll edit the podcast this week so you can hear all about it for yourselves!

Moving the goalposts - again!

At the beginning of this week DECC published its timetable for implementing the RHI or Renewable Heat Incentive.  It's a great incentive because it works in the same way as Feed-in Tariffs and ROCS - it pays you to produce, and hopefully use, renewable heat.

And yet, in the same ways as they dramatically changed Feed-in Tariffs at short notice, the Government have now announced a delay of the second phase of RHI till 2013.  The disappointment within the renewables industry is palpable.  The Solar Trade Association, ABDA (the anaerobic digestion industry body) and the Renewables Energy Association have called the changes "premature", "unhelpful" and a "source of huge frustration".

The sting in the tail, however, is the small part of the announcement that stated the Government is proposing a policy of "cost control".  In other ways, it is keeping the door open to do what it did with FITs, dropping the level of incentive at short notice.

While the talk this week has been about panic buying petrol, pies and postage stamps, the serious issue is the lack of growth in the economy.  There is little plan for growth and absolutely no plan for sustainable growth.  This change, once again, to existing schemes continues to undermine the fledgling green industries that should be at the centre of our economic strategy.  People will not invest when the future is so uncertain.  A depressing time for all of us working in this area.

Podcast: The Co-op Approach to Solar

Copyright Ben Whittle 2012 Leominster's Solar PV

This podcast discusses what you need to do to get a community-owned solar PV project up and running.  Ben Whittle and Philippa Roberts talk about the issues faced in Leominster, Herefordshire.


Start: How Ben became involved
3min: Why a solar co-op?
6min: Who else is involved and why?
9min: How to set up a solar co-op
13min: Changes to the Feed in Tariff (FIT)
18min: Getting PV on the roof and the support from Good Energy
20 min: The future of community renewables.

Can Community Solar Survive?

Copyright Ben Whittle 2012

I recently interviewed Ben Whittle, a founding Director of the Leominster Community Solar Co-op.  This Herefordshire based community project aimed to put a large solar PV array on the local sports centre; owned and funded by people who lived in the area.  Unfortunately, the launch event happened a matter of days before the Government's first 'review' of the Feed-in tariff.

While the solar industry has seen strong growth in recent years, and should be considered a success story, it is under threat from a lack of faith in the investment environment.  Regular and unexpected changes to any subsidiary will always cause uncertainty, and make it harder for projects to get off the ground.  I personally know projects that were cancelled as a result.



So did the Leominster project make it?  Listen to the interview and find out!

Can Technology Save Us?

Interesting article from the TED Conference showing the contrasting views of Paul Guilding and Peter Diamandis.  While Paul argues that our obsession with economic growth is overloading the planet's capacity to support us, Peter believes that technology will save us.

It's an argument that has been going on for some time, and one I've written about before in an earlier blog.  It's hard to defend growth when you hear about the environmental limits, but harder still to not defend it in this time of austerity.

I think the conversation would be more fruitful if we were trying to figure out what sustainable 'growth' could look like.  It's probably true that we are measuring the wrong things, but GDP is going to be the indicator of choice for some time yet.  So while that is the case, now is the time to be looking at the new business models that will change the world.  There are ways to improve living standards that don't involve consuming more.  There are collaborative businesses that do this, whatever there legal status.  I'm tracking some of these down to find out how and why they do what they do, and will be writing about them here.  If you know of any, or you are one, please get in touch. I'll bring the biscuits when I come and visit.

Collaborative Capitalism - The Detail Behind the Soundbites?

"It’s the economy, stupid"

The centre-ground that is occupied successfully by any political party is the one that focusses on economic stability.  If a party cannot be trusted to be a safe pair of hands when managing the economy, then it has no credibility.

But since the last time we had this conversation twenty-odd years ago, things have changed.  Pay inequality has grown, as salary rises at the top vastly outstrip the increases in the middle and bottom.  Familiar companies that were considered national institutions have disappeared, gobbled up by private equity and larger corporations, without account being taken for their importance as national symbols of success and collaborative capitalism.  Building a business or a service, and creating value is not considered as interesting as the quick win of trading and the X Factor of takeovers.  Suddenly 'moral' capitalism is back battling against 'crony capitalism'. However I don't believe these  soundbites are anything but a reaction to what is happening.  There is very little detail on what a better future might look like.

Which is where collaborative capitalism comes in.  It has a long history in the co-operative movement and the Quaker-founded businesses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: in the paternalistic industries from the turn of last century and the social enterprises of the last 50 years.  The time has surely come for a “less degenerate capitalism”.

Collaborative capitalism is based on the principle of working together.  It means a long-term approach to business and the economy.  It means productive investment: in skills for workers, in creating products that last, and buildings that are efficient.  It means working to the triple bottom line, where sustainability (in the Brundtland sense of the word) means considering the social, the environmental as well as the financial consequences of what you do.  It means support for SMEs and businesses that are embedded, and invest, in their communities.  Collaborative capitalism is innovative, because it pays attention to the viewpoints of many, not just the people with the largest share.  It is open-source, crowd-sourced and crowd-financed.  It is networked.

And it is happening. It’s happening with RiverSimple’s open-source car designs, with crowd-financed films like the Age of Stupid, with 38 degrees’ campaigns and in workspaces like The Hub.
The examples above of collaborative capitalism have happened in spite of, not because of, government.  However, there is a case for the state and it is one we should be arguing.

Government should provide the safety net for when things go wrong.  When entrepreneurs remortgage their homes, or invest their savings for projects they believe in, then there is an argument that this level of risk deserves a  different level of reward.  Taxes can be used to incentivise the long term holding of investments over the short-term trading for quick profit.  If we care about the environment, we need to have the conversation about whether ultimately resources should be taxed, rather than labour.  Government procurement should drive innovative change, not orders abroad.

Government is a partnership.  We must weed out the disingenuous arguments from the right that we’re all in it together when the economy is actually going backwards.  We need to show where growth can come from – collaborative capitalism is part of the solution.

Christmas and Consumerism

The consumerism of Christmas always highlights to me the difficulties that we face in reducing our environmental impacts.  Finding resourceful solutions to these problems will take time, but I am encouraged by the increasing role of the circular, or closed loop, economy.

One only has to look at the tenders that WRAP have been putting out this year to see that the shift to resource security and new ways of working is well underway.  To many people, the waste sector is one that is focussed on the stuff we throw away.  But for those of us working in it, it has always been about the resources we use, and how to use them better, with less impact.  As the world shrinks and economies grow, the way we use these resources becomes more important.  Back in 1972 the Club of Rome wrote the first Limits to Growth report, arguing for the importance of the environment and the things it provides for us.  At the time, the counter-argument won the day, as in economic terms, resources that are valuable will never run out, just become increasingly expensive.

Now, with the growth of China and the BRICS and the ever-consuming populations, the limits to growth arguments are once again reaching the mainstream.  It is not only the coal or the rare earth minerals that we should be concerned about, but also the ability of the ecosystems to provide the vital services we need - clean water and air.

I went to a fascinating Green Alliance event last week that explored the issue of resource resilience and security.  We talk regularly about energy security, but our economy also needs resource security, or resilience, if it is to be sustainable.  Hence the new focus on different models of business, where products are leased, not sold.  Where jobs are created in service and maintenance if not in production.  Where new organisations, such as the Ellen Macarthur Foundation are aiming to educate the next generation.  If this is the way we are headed, then I am feeling positive about 2012.  So as you unwrap those presents, the challenge is to see if you can think of a different way for the wrapping paper industry to work.  Merry Christmas!