Robert Fripp

Growth in a Green Age

By Robert Fripp

A tight focus on training and technology distorts the national debate on productivity by downplaying a third factor: achieving efficiencies by reducing (or rethinking) inputs into manufacturing, construction and transportation. Energy-intensive sectors can reduce fuel and material inputs in many ways, achieving accompanying waste reduction while, in many cases, improving finished products and/or profit margins.

Until better public education takes hold in this area, the nation will continue to be subjected to the sort of ill-informed headline that appeared in the Globe and Mail on December 28th, 1999. It read: "Emissions pact will hit Canada hardest: Kyoto targets could cause massive job loss, stunt economic growth, cost billions."

We are told that Canada will not have a federal Budget in 2001. That is too bad, because the 2000 Budget missed the boat on "eco-efficiency", too. The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy lobbied hard last year to press for eco-creative measures. The Round Table's web site reported on last year's budget: "Absent from [the debate] has been the closely related concept of 'eco-efficiency.' This means doing more with less."

That sentence makes clear that it may not be necessary to sacrifice "eco-" in the economic sense to achieve "eco-" in the sense of ecological benefit.

Let's look at three energy-intensive sectors where innovative savings depend on seeing old problems in new ways. They are: manufacturing and remanufacturing; "green" building methods and innovative construction technologies; and the automotive sector in a world of new technology and newer paradigms. We can examine each of these sectors under six distinct headings: design improvements; new technologies; improved, integrated controls; corporate culture; new processes, and material savings.

In design: a "new view" whole-system approach will revolutionize the auto industry and much of manufacturing in less than a decade. Used with conspicuous success to design and manufacture the first "paperless" civilian aircraft, Boeing's 777, whole-system computerized design saved the company 40% in rework costs.

Meanwhile, making better use of computer-assisted fluid dynamics would cut energy demands needed to drive air- and liquid-circulating pumps in factories and office blocks. Too many "modern" facilities are built using blueprints developed when the cost of energy was negligible. In many applications, new technologies can make do with half the electricity they used in 1995.

Improved, integrated controls can effect enormous savings. But many factories lack gross-scale optimization control; and office towers continue to burn energy as if it were free. Motion sensors could reduce office lighting needs by very large factors. Building-efficiency consultants often offer their services with no up-front charge and recoup their fees through the resultant energy savings.

Consider new processes. Compare the manufacture of the ultra-strong fibre, Kevlar, with the manufacture of an even stronger fibre, spider silk. One chemist noted that the making Kevlar requires that "the energy input is extreme, and the toxic by-products are odious." On the other hand, Nature-exemplified by spiders-works in short loops. It makes nothing that something else cannot digest. Paper mills are discovering this. Organic compounds are beginning to replace chlorine as bleach, reducing effluent, easing water recycling and cutting electrical use by half. In short, same output, lower cost, cleaner world.

None of the above is confidential. Canada has issued a $500 million Action Plan 2000 on Climate Change. This follows research and development expenditures of almost $1.5 billion over the past five years, spent in selected sectors, such as transportation, energy, industry, buildings, technological innovation and science. Fully implemented, it is anticipated that Action Plan 2000 will carry Canada one third of the way to compliance with its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol.

So why does our Government's eco-efficiency performance appear so timid, so fearful of bad press based on ignorance? The Canadian public needs aggressive education on the advantages rather than the supposed disadvantages of eco-efficiency. At the very least, a federal mini-budget mouthing a few words about eco-efficiency might reverse the perception of damage lately done to Canada's reputation at the Hague.

Robert Fripp (fripp@impactg.com) is a communications consultant at The Impact Group, specializing in hi-tech, science and e-business issues. He has a special interest in environmental affairs.