Love, longevity and locality: the future of sustainability

Dr Peter WellsSenior Research Fellow

CAIR and BRASSCardiff University

The storyline

• This is the story of the relationship between things and thoughts: the twin sisters of innovation– Things: innovation as objects– Thoughts: innovation as ideas

• It is a turbulent and torrid tale– It is up to us to give it a happy ending!

A key question: is innovation sustainable?

• YES, everybody seems to think so:– Enriches our lives– Reduces our workload– Makes new things possible– Creates markets; generates wealth

• AND– Makes things more resource-efficient, hence more

sustainable (the ‘Factor X’ argument)– For example…

A key question: is innovation sustainable?

• NO, not necessarily:– Consumes scarce social resources– Creates product redundancy and hence waste– Creates the ‘efficiency trap’ and hence greater

consumption (rebound effect)– Generates social turbulence– Reinforces the cult of the new– Often ‘spurious’ innovation

Is innovation sustainable? An eco-velocity perspective

• Measure CO2 impact of an industry from manufacture to consumption:– Take away mitigation efforts that reduce CO2 burden– If ratio is over 1, then the industry is eco-speeding– In Japan, 1995 to 2000, rate of consumption growth

exceeded rate of technology advance e.g:• Eco-velocity of personal computers went up from 2.97 (1995)

to 3.95 (2000)• IT sector had eco-velocity of 25.1 (in 2000) due to growth in

internet usage

Is innovation sustainable?

• Rebound effect:– Average energy consumption of EU household

appliances (dishwashers, etc.) fell by 21% 1990 to 2002

– Total energy consumption fell by just 2% due to increase in number of appliances and their use

– (Source: European Environment Agency)

Actually, the problems are:

• At the household level the big categories of impact are:– Transport– Housing– Food

• Accounts for 75-80% of environmental burden– Measures all impacts, including global warming /

greenhouse gas potential; often use footprint concept• BUT perhaps we need to take a look at lifestyles

Household consumption

• We get richer, while innovation makes things cheaper…so we consume more!– US international departure flight costs (US$

1978 constant)• 25 cents / mile in 1947• 5 cents / mile in 2002

– Air travel therefore growing faster than net economic growth in most advanced economies

A key question: is innovation sustainable?

• A key issue: the focus on object innovation rather than ideas innovation:– Technology leaps forward

• We accelerate the world at huge environmental cost– Social structures and ideas do not

• Cultures, practices, organisations, governments, regulatory frameworks, ideologies, religions, mindsets, etc. much slower to change.

A case study: CO2 emissions from cars

• Contemporary cars hopelessly inefficient…of the total energy content in the fuel tank:– 60% lost due to thermal inefficiency of the engine– 15% lost during engine idling– More energy lost in drivetrain, power to accessories etc.

Say 15%– Most of delivered energy to the wheels a) accelerates the

car itself; b) moves the air to one side c) overcomes rolling resistance

– Less than 1% of energy content in the fuel actually moves the driver!!

A case study: CO2 emissions from cars

Ranking

Make Model EngineCapacity

cc

Trans-mission

CO2(g/km)

FuelConsumption

(mpg)

Fuel costof driving

12000 miles

1 HONDA Insight 995 5MT 80 83.1 525

2 TOYOTA Prius 1497 E-CVT 104 65.7 664

3 PEUGEOT 107 998 M5 109 61.3 712

4 TOYOTA Aygo 998 Multi5 109 61.4 711

5 SMART City Coupé Hatchback 698 SM6 113 60.1 726

6 DAIHATSU Charade 989 M5 114 58.9 741

7 VAUXHALL Corsa 998 MTA 115 58.8 742

8 SMART Roadster 698 A6 116 57.6 758

9 HONDA Civic IMA 1339 5MT 116 57.6 758

10 DAIHATSU Sirion 998 M5 118 56.5 772

Compare with…

A case study: CO2 emissions from cars

• Compare with the Land Rover Discovery 3– Engine 4.4 litre V8 petrol– Transmission 6-speed automatic– 354 g/km CO2– 18.8 mpg (combined)– £2,612 fuel cost for 12,000 miles

• Four times the cost of Prius• Approx £30,000 of fuel over vehicle lifetime (2007 prices)

– See www.carfueldata.org.uk

Likely proportion of the 140 g/km target to be reached by the top 20 brands by 2008/09 if current trends continue.

EU agreement not working so far…Source: E&T lobby group

Toyota Prius uses hybrid drive system and smart engine management…but not radical or difficult to do

Acceleration…

Cruising…

Deceleration..

A case study: CO2 emissions from cars

• RMI Hypercar concept for a zero CO2 emissions vehicle:– CFRP body shell 70-80 kg– Aerodynamic shape 0.20 drag coefficient– Hub motors with regenerative braking– Hydrogen fuel cell– Or plug-in battery / series hybrid with small

engine

A case study: CO2 emissions from cars

• OR…WalkCycleGet a horseDon’t travel at all

• Even a bicycle has an environmental burden

A case study: CO2 emissions from cars

• But just as shocking is the economic performance:– Less than 3% of lifetime profit generated by a

car goes to vehicle manufacturer for making it• Chronic depreciation in car value

– Industry has huge turnover (GM $180 billion)• Barely and rarely profitable• Massive capital intensity• Chronic serial restructuring

Industry (and consumers) locked into traditional patterns

• Fire and forget production• Purchase cost rather than lifetime cost• Financial cost rather than environmental

cost• Brands and emotional values rather than

functionality• More stuff makes you happier!

The triumph of centralisation

• Traditional business logic and consumption norms:– Economies of scale– Mass production– Standardisation– Cost reduction– Market expansion– Globalisation

The triumph of centralisation

• Traditional business organisation and strategy:– Consolidation and rationalisation

• The tendency to monopoly• Illusion of choice

– Primacy of capital flows– Jobs and places sacrificed to this cost

perspective

The triumph of centralisation

• Discourses of development:– Primacy of free trade and market forces

• WTO, World Bank, Davos– Ignores many non-business dimensions

• Non profit-maximizing business• Social business• Charity• Gift economy and voluntarism

A key conclusion

• In the context of global warming, the challenge is to change social practices fast enough to prevent self-destruction:– Can this be done?– How?– By whom?– In what ways?

• Read Jarad Diamond ‘Collapse’

Re-thinking object innovation

• Objects used to be treasured and loved:– There were very few of them– They had a high (relative) financial value– They had a high emotional value– They were personal– They had embedded stories and meaning– They were worth preserving

Re-thinking object innovation

• Objects used to be understandable:– We could repair them– We could know how they were made, and often

by whom– We could know how they worked– We could feel their personality– We could sense that they were appropriate to

our circumstances and conditions

Re-thinking object innovation

• Object innovation needs to recapture some of those values:– The problem is not the lack of technology per

se, but the application– Core technologies (objects) to challenge global

warming exist:• The problem is to find ways to apply those

technologies…• And that demands innovative ideas about society

New patterns of consumption and production

• We need to love our products, and keep them a long time:– Durability / longevity data hard to be definite about:

• Things often kept but not used• Or sold on E-Bay!• Technological redundancy may occur e.g. digital TV• Aesthetic redundancy may occur e.g. mobile phones• Economic redundancy may occur where it is too expensive to

repair a low-value product e.g. cars, washing machines• System redundancy may occur where there is no support

service available

New patterns of consumption and production

• We need products that are appropriate to our circumstances:– Solar power in Wales?

• We need drizzle power!– Wood chip biofuel in Somalia?

• Maybe not, but local biodiesel production could be huge benefit to rural poor in many countries

– Food miles and the Braeburn apple problem

New patterns of consumption and production

• The key word here is DIVERSITY

– Diverse technologies– Diverse ways of producing and consuming– Diverse ways of living

• Implies a return to LOCALITY

New patterns of consumption and production

• Take the example of lawn mowers for technological diversity…

This is a basic lawnmower…rotating cylinder of blades, hand-pushed, pressed steel plus tubular steel sections, cast-iron blades

OR you could have…

Conclusions

• We need to find the technical solutions, but also the social and organisational innovations:– Latest IPCC report underlines urgency– Non admitted data makes it even more vital that

we change A LOT and SOON– Our greatest resource is 6 billion brains…we

need to use them all!!