Environmental protection: new messengers needed?
15 Jan 2000
As our features clearly show, this country is still capable of developing - and using - innovative environmental technologies. These are not simply end-of-pipe solutions to existing pollution problems. Reducing NOx and SOx emissions by minimising their production in the first place is high on the agenda of power generators and process companies. And the comeback of clean coal technology (see page 9) shows there is a market - and, probably soon, the political will - for technologies that will maximise our resources in the most environmentally friendly fashion possible.
So, the technology is there, the market is there, but where is the suppliers' marketing effort? One answer is that it is still there, but simply not labelled `environmental protection' any more. This is a valid point and one supported by surveys such as the Chemical Industries Association's annual reports on its members' capital expenditure plans. These increasingly show a blurring of the boundaries between `environmental' investment and spending on new plant per se. If no other, the chemical industry has realised that environmental protection is now part and parcel of efficient process engineering.
What of other industries though? A common theme in discussions with process equipment suppliers is their perception that industry in general has still to take on the message that environmental protection equals efficiency. To many it remains a cost burden, to be shouldered only when the pollution inspectors are at the gate.
Attempting to sell environmental equipment, systems and processes in such a climate cannot be easy. Suppliers can become the engineering equivalent of insurance salesmen - and just as popular - as they ply their wares to a begrudging marketplace.
More than one equipment supplier is of the opinion that having legislation in place is one thing, enforcing it is something else again. Admittedly, the Environment Agency has shown its teeth since its arrival two years ago, but can more be done?
