Manchester City Council has released its Sustainable Procurement Policy and takes another step towards transistion. In brief the new document gives preference to goods, services and products that are better for the environment, for society and for the local economy. Preferences are given to small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and community and voluntary sector (CVSs) businesses and those which are magority owned by groups protected by legislation such as disabled, women and older people. For greater detail please read the SPP Statement of Intent.
New Documents July 1, 2009
Hello,
I’ve just added some more documents to the SNAG library. Including the Rethinking Capital (forum for the future), Green New Deal (NEF-ish), Road to Copenhagen (DECC & Defra) plus Manchester City Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Report 08/09.
Happy reading.
Draft Climate Change Action Plan Structure June 22, 2009
Hello Everyone,
The Green City Team have produced a draft version of the structure of the Climate Change Action Plan. When finalised this structure will dictate how the Action Plan will be constructed, who will be involved and what themes will be concentrated on.
If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know by Thursday morning. The agenda for this meeting is here. Again comments by Thursday morning please.
Best Wishes, Tim.
New Words for the your Dictionary June 19, 2009
Afternoon,
Have made submissions to Urban Dictionary in order that the words SNAG and Snaggers be known by their right definition:
SNAG
acronym for a sustainable neighbourhoods action group – “He joined his local snag because developers wished to build a massive supermarket in his town, which would but his local independent business out of business.”
Snagger
A word describing someone in a group (or group of people) who take(s) action to ensure the progression of sustainability issues in their neighbourhood(s) up the agenda of a local authority -
“Campaigners from a local snag were once again protesting outside City Hall today. The snaggers were demanding city leaders grant greater access to quality organic food growing land in their neighbourhoods.”
Carbon Reduction Commitment June 12, 2009
Please see below conversation regarding CRC raised following SNAG notes from the last ESPB.
FAO Nick Skates,
Can you please tell me whether under the Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme, organisations who use above 6,000MWh of energy but procure this from 100% renewable suppliers such as Good Energy are still required to enter the scheme.
I would also like to draw your attention to http://www.cheatneutral.com/
Best Wishes, Tim
Dear Tim
Thanks for your email regarding electricity procured from “renewable suppliers”. The short answer to your question is that switching to a green tariff won’t exempt any organisations from participation in CRC.
Electricity supplied to participants via the grid will be treated equally using the grid average conversion factor, irrespective of the tariff structure adopted by the customer, meaning that green tariff electricity sourced via the national grid will not be treated differently from standard tariffs.
This is because all licensed electricity suppliers are obliged under the Renewables Obligation to source a specific and annually increasing percentage of the electricity they supply from renewable sources anyway.
This approach is consistent with that taken under the UK Emissions Trading Scheme and Climate Change Agreements.
I trust this information will be useful.
(PS: I enjoyed the satirical link, many thanks for that)
Regards
Stewart Riley
CRC Team
Environment Agency
National Customer Contact Centre
Dear Stuart,
Enormous thanks for responding so promptly. I thought as much.
It is such a shame that Government refuses to support 100% renewable energy production in this way. It is also shameful that Government allows energy suppliers to profiteer from their packaging of “green tariffs” (a treacherous term which should be abolished) as the supply of green energy. It is a rather dangerous state of affairs when consumers are duped into believing that they’ve already made the switch to a lower carbon lifestyle; the reality is that they continue to fund and provide backing/consent to carbon intensive energy supply. Madness.
If CRC took into account sustainable energy procurement (i.e. 100% renewable) high level energy consumers could begin funding a formidable renewable energy infrastructure programme – simply by continuing to buy energy – with astronomical knock-on effects for the green economy and effectual employment for our engineers and scientists, not to mention climate change mitigation. This would be real carbon reduction commitment. The UK is rather uniquely placed geographically speaking, a position which has allowed to thrive agriculturally, socially and economically for thousands of years. I’m not sure why we fail to maximise this fortunate position now.
CRC as it stands seems scarily similar to short term economic gain at the expense of the environment – on a continental scale. However, I note with pleasure the crchelp@environment-agency.gov.uk address which I shall dredge for further info. Thank you for your help and time.
Best Wishes, Tim.
Watch this space….
ESPB and EAP Update June 11, 2009
Session 2 of the Environmental Advisory Panel met on 4th June to continue cross sectoral talks on the advancement of the Climate Change. It was a really useful, frank and open discussion with a presentation by Marc Hudson on the Call to Real Action. Discussion focused mainly on the direction in which the formulation of the Climate Change Action plan. It was understood that marketing was key in it’s delivery and that working groups should be set up with specialist from across the CVS, the public sector and private business. These groups would be tasked with the writing of topic specific sections of the plan.
Following on from this, members of Manchester Climate Forum met with Councillor Cowell on 10th June to discuss matters further. The result of this is that the council is adopting the C2RA model for developing the Action Plan. MCC are producing a ‘grid’ of themes which is to be produced via the EAP Forum http://eap.beproudlovemanchester.com/ The themes are to include areas such as behavioral change, technology and infrastructure.
The initiation of the process will begin immediately with suggestions for the themes being submitted to the EAP Forum (membership is closed however, nominations for new members are welcome – please get in touch for list of members or to nominate); these will be decided upon and published in the next two weeks. The working groups as mentioned above will be established to write each of the themed sections.
The Action Plan is not to become a policy document – it will be a working document with the aim of competing for a larger share of the mainstream MCC budget and will also be used to lever larger contributions from MCC partners.
The responsibility of writing the Action Plan will lie with MCC, with the final sign off being from within the council. Although there is a desire from Councillor Cowell that the ownership will be wider than the council and the names assigned to each theme will not be inclusively councillors.
The Environmental Strategy Programme Board met for the 6th time on Monday 8th June. SNAG notes from this meeting can be viewed here. Official council minutes are available here.
Best Wishes, Tim.
Prof. K. Anderson June 10, 2009
The latest from Climate Hero Prof. K. Anderson – 
Climate Change in a Myopic World
Introduction
As an academic whose employment and conscience are dominated by climate change it is easy to forget the UK is a peculiar little island. Within our shores not a day passes where the media isn’t either bashing climate-science or predicting climate-induced apocalypse. Yet, across the North Sea, even our environmentally more progressive neighbours are not subject to this intensity of debate; perhaps our sea-faring nation’s obsession with ‘weather’ explains the difference. Whatever the reasons, it is certainly rewarding to witness science so rapidly informing the climate debate. What is less welcome, however, is the subsequent economic capture of that debate and the almost sterile policy arising from it.
The challenge
Put simply, CO2 is the principal greenhouse gas and, not withstanding the current economic downturn, global CO2 emissions are increasing at a rapid rate. More alarmingly, if international efforts to return global society to previous growth paths are successful, there is no indication that this rate is likely to change significantly in the coming decade or that global emissions will peak before 2020. Current global emission trends and the absence of meaningful political leadership by even the more climate-progressive nations, suggests that there is now very little hope of staying below the 2°C threshold between ‘acceptable’ and ‘dangerous’ climate change. In other words, according to our scientific understanding of the issues, there is a very high probability that the world will enter a prolonged period of what some have defined as “dangerous climate change”. The sooner deep reductions in global CO2 emissions can be achieved, the less we will venture into this “dangerous” and unpredictable territory. Within the UK, there have been several important indicators that the Government is beginning to consider seriously the mitigation challenge. At a national level the lengthy energy review process and the more recent report by the Committee on Climate Change are evidence of such. Whilst at an international level the Treasury commissioned ‘Stern review on the economics of climate change’ demonstrated interest in the issue from ministries other than those with immediate environmental responsibilities.
Economic hegemony
The publication of Nicholas Stern’s thorough and solemn review has, in many respects, served to catalyse both public and private concern over our escalating emissions of CO2. Whilst the broad acknowledgement of climate change as a serious and urgent policy issue is certainly welcomed, I, and I suspect many climate scientists, see the response to the Stern report as another sad indictment of societies privileging of economics over science. For more than a decade dedicated climate scientists have attempted to provide public and private policy makers with reasoned and accessible arguments as to why our emissions of CO2 should be curtailed substantially. Despite the wealth of such reports and papers from, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s own Hadley and Tyndall Centres, it has taken a relatively narrow financial interpretation of the science to alert policy makers to the undesirable repercussions of a climate-induced collapse of existing human societies and ecosystems. In policy parlance, this is another example of science, and even society and nature, simply becoming subsets of contemporary market economics.
If this were just the sour grapes of scientists wishing to be regarded with the reverence of economists it would be of little relevance to the climate change debate. However, not only does the severity of climate change only gain currency within policy realms when couched in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, but so, it appears, does the debate on how to control our CO2 emissions. Policy makers refuse stubbornly to contemplate mechanisms for mitigating CO2 emissions that cannot be demonstrated to, at best, not threaten short-term economic competitiveness and preferably offer early monetary returns. Again, the prevailing dominance of this accountant mentality would not be a concern if it could be reconciled with the direction and scale of the message emerging from the scientific and quantitative analysis of climate change. Unfortunately, there currently appears no scope for reconciliation, despite valiant attempts by some to characterise climate change and the mitigation of CO2 in terms of win-win opportunities.
Unique scale
Whilst there are several important examples of where responses to looming environmental crisis were, at least in significant part, achieved at small economic cost or even on the basis of win-win (e.g. acid deposition and ozone destruction respectively), these are poor analogies for climate change and CO2 emissions. Certainly there are technical and thereby commercial opportunities for providing low or zero CO2 energy supply; similarly technologies are available for improving the efficiency of how we use energy. These opportunities, however, are dwarfed by three aspects of the scale of the problem, which collectively negate the appropriateness of analogies and consequently frame climate change as a problem unique to modern societies. Two of these scale issues clearly work in conjunction; the global pervasiveness of the fossil-fuel energy system and the quantity of fossil fuel that has, is and will likely be combusted. The other scale-related distinction between climate change and earlier ‘environmental’ problems arises from the substantial disjuncture between political timescales and those associated with the carbon cycle.
The dilemma
Consequently, we are today faced with a dilemma. Do we continue to pay lip service to the issue of climate change, and hope future generations will understand our preference for barely-veiled hedonism over stewardship? Or are we prepared to respond genuinely to the scale of the challenge we have brought upon ourselves? If it is the former, then we should carry on as we are, with a weakly-capped and leaky European Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme, the expansion of aviation with token green gestures, installing a few thousand wind turbines and the several nuclear power stations, buying the occasional hybrid car and swapping to energy efficient light bulbs, – all with a self-congratulatory, but ultimately insincere, pat on our own backs. If it is the latter, then we need to begin by revisiting the financial accounting model that has come to dominate our lives, and re-establish society’s dominance over economics. Has the tripling of our economic wherewithal since the 1950s brought about a tripling in our sense of well being, do we really gain significant welfare benefits from our daily access to mange tout, and are the carbon emissions, noise and physical division of communities by busy roads adequately compensated by our easy access to private transport?
The scale of the challenge arising from our understanding of climate change will demand responses that, despite all our economic massaging, will incur substantial financial costs; – we can no longer have our short-term and narrowly-defined economic cake and eat it! However, once we escape the financiers’ myopia we will be in a position to identify the myriad of indirect benefits that will accompany a coherent and comprehensive strategy to reduce substantially our emissions of CO2. If we are prepared to exchange our current self delusion for a more honest recognition of the scale of the challenge, the message is one of hope not of despair, with a prosperous future measured, if at all, by a range of metrics of which money is just one.
Gypsy Roma Travelling Showman History Month June 10, 2009
The aim of Gypsy Roma Showman Traveller History Month is to encourage communities to work in partnership with schools, councils and other public bodies to creatively challenge the many myths and stereotypes that can blight Gypsy, Roma, Showman and Traveller lives. It offers us all a chance to raise awareness and explore the history, culture and language of these communities and to celebrate their many varied academic and artistic achievements.
- Roma Film at The Cornerhouse, Thursday 11th June at 6.00pm cinema 2, Latcho Drom by renowned director Tony Gatliff. To be introduced by guest speaker .
- Fairground artist, Lloyd Holland and Kirk Mulhearn, Education liaison Officer, Showman’s Guild (NW) Friday 19th June,activity sessions in two schools.
- Roma Artist, Ferdinand Koci, Wednesday 10th and Thursday 11th June, creative sessions in four schools.
- GRSTH Event at the Irish Centre, Cheetham Hill , Saturday 20th June (12.00pm-3.00pm), in association with Salford EMTAS. Lots of fun involving culturally specific craft activities, food, famous Gypsy storyteller Richard O’Neil’ and traditional music.
- Showman/Fairground film at The Cornerhouse, Wednesday 24th “Electric Edwardians” 8.10pm cinema 2, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon archive footage of the fair. To be introduced by guest speaker Kirk Mulhearn, Education Liaison Officer for the Showman’s Guild North West.
- Pavee Ceilidh, taking place at the ‘Friends Meeting House’ Tuesday 30th June all day, organised by the ‘Irish Traveller Movement Of Great Britain.
Supported by:
ESP Projects Update June 9, 2009
Introduction
In the Call to Action there was a public declaration to spend 3 months at the start of 2009 undertaking project planning. At ESPB on 24th April 2009, project updates were requested from project leads to enable there to be a review of progress of individual projects and Environmental Strategy Programme (ESP) as a whole.
Project management findings
- Wide mix of projects, from those well-developed and being delivered, to those not yet fully scoped.
- Timescales were not generally defined in projects.
- No detail provided on resource requirements, either already in place or yet to be identified. Both staff and finance (capital and revenue).
- Use of online Project Management System would assist with management of individual projects and programme as a whole. Recommend that PMS is mandatory for all MCC projects. Recommended for non-MCC projects. Need to consider training implications.
- Need to work towards each project having a signed-off Project Initiation Document.
- Once PID’s signed off then need Green City will need a monthly highlight report to track progress. (This could be accessed through PMS).
ESP-specific
- Energy infrastructure is emerging as a recurring theme within several ESP projects. Need a strategic, citywide approach to this topic. I.e. ‘Energy Infrastructure’ project within ESP. Will therefore need to consider resource implications and appropriate approach in terms of MCC and AGMA role.
- Behavioural change is emerging as a recurring theme within several ESP projects. Needs a strategic approach. I.e. ‘Awareness Raising and Engagement; project within ESP. Will therefore need to consider resource implications.
- Digital infrastructure activity has been reviewed as part of ESP review. Important to feed into ESP as may be a theme relevant to a number of ESP projects.
- Need to produce a funding strategy to support the delivery of ESP. £1m Carbon Reduction Fund will be part of this wider strategy but need to make sure the strategy maximises return on investment from the £1m and levers in match from other sources.
- Linkages between projects: As per those identified in original project summaries submitted in February. Energy Infrastructure and Awareness Raising and Engagement strong recurring themes. Need to identify linkages to any other non-ESP projects.
- Need to consider the carbon savings from each project, including target setting.
- Need to put in place a plan for the delivery of the Climate Change Action Plan, showing how and where individual projects will feed in.
Next Steps
- Project summaries from all project leads to Green City by Friday 22nd May 2009.
- ESP review final report from Green City to ESPB 8th June 2009.
- Project-specific feedback provided direct from Green City to project leads after 8th June.
Latest SNP Board Papers June 9, 2009
Hello All,
OK it’s that time of the month (well that time of every second month) again. There are quite a lot of papers this time round so maybe select the ones that are of most interest to you and comment on those rather than the whole lot perhaps? I think the most interesting are those in bold.
Agenda, Previous Minutes, SNP Forum Report, Housing Strategy Report, LAA Q4 Report, SNP Action Plan, Working Neighbourhoods Fund Report, SNP Risk Report and SNP Work Programme.
These documents will be available on line until the next Board Papers are published in approx. 2 months – at which point they’ll be available via e-mail only. Just ask…
Best Wishes, Tim.
