Going green
23 Feb 2005
In an article in The Guardian this month, Adrian Wilkes, chairman of the Environmental Industries Commission, argues that 'tackling environmental challenges also creates new business opportunities'. For the industry he represents this is undoubtedly true.
The world market for environmental goods and services is, at an estimated $515billion, comparable with that of the aerospace and pharmaceutical industries. For the industries facing those challenges, however, Wilkes laments that it is cheaper for them to spend money on lobbying against environmental regulation, rather than on environmental protection itself.
While this may be an unduly harsh view of those industries that pride themselves on their environmental track records, there is little doubt that few industries welcome increasing regulation.
The chemicals industry, for example, might well have accepted the EU's impending REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals) regulations — but not without lobbying long and hard against what it saw as a potentially damaging initiative to the industry's competitiveness.
Wilkes' view - on new opportunities, if not the benefits of lobbying - receives support from the government's science minister, Lord Sainsbury. Explaining how government is encouraging innovation across UK industry, he cites the REACH proposals as presenting not just challenges to the chemical industry, but also opportunities for it to innovate.
One of the government's initiatives in this area is the Crystal Faraday Partnership, which specialises in green chemical technologies.
Its managing director, Neville Hargreaves, takes a pragmatic view of innovation.
'Green chemical technology is only ever relevant,' he says, 'if it has an economic component.' Or, as Wilkes reminds us, 'intelligent policymaking recognises that there is no inherent conflict here between environment and competitiveness'.
