Amidst the ongoing talk of a ‘green’ dividend for the Scottish economy and the creation of thousands of eco jobs, I am encouraged to hear of that last week British wind farms have provided over 5% of electricity to the UK national grid over the period of a day . Over one hour on Sunday 29th August, wind turbines in the north of Scotland produced more energy, approximately 700MW, than was required by customers. Add this to the recent expansion of Whitelees Wind Farm, already the biggest in Europe, and all seems to be going swimmingly in the clean energy world. Not to mention the onward expansion of offshore wind, wave and tidal energy technologies.
Even the hardest sceptics are perhaps coming to accept that there may be something in all of this green eco stuff. Something that smells of money as opposed to freshly mown grass or wildflower meadows (prescious few of which remain alas). These same sceptics rightly pointed out that wind turbines [on or offshore] require less manpower to maintain, however, they missed the many other jobs in design, engineering, support, consultancy, IT, marketing and finance that have and will be created. While renewable have been grabbing all the glory, the green dividend will also be reaped through a whole host of other companies and organisations that will create a wide variety of jobs and add economic value in previously unseen ways – an ecosystem if you like.
This ecosystem will contain financial services companies such as the Green Insurance Company that recently announced record profits and the creation of 60 new jobs in Scotland. While the ‘green’ element of this company primarily relates to the purchase of carbon offsets of customer vehicle emissions, this business model will no doubt develop. For example, low carbon travel insurance or vehicle or business cover that prices in carbon emission or waste reductions. Other financial service providers will also emerge from existing companies or start ups. Banks’ asset finance operations will grow through funding for clean technologies, possibly building the value of waste, water or carbon savings into the lending formulae. Auditors and accountants will grow their assurance business as more companies choose or are compelled to disclose their environmental and sustainability performance. Fund managers will start to take climate change adaptation seriously and turn to the vast array of data and experience at the Met Office to draw up regional risk and investment profiles.
In addition to the finance jobs, there will be work aplenty for those that actually do the work and get their hands dirty helping to reduce environmental impacts. There will be opportunities for the entrepreneurs and companies that develop and sell technology to decontaminate water, reduce water use, recycle waste, reuse waste, clean contaminated land, monitor and scrub air pollution, monitor and reduce energy. The list goes on. These jobs will be research based, operational, marketing and financial – either in house or supporting outsourced providers.
Within and around this, there will be a growing band of companies that continue to sell food, chemicals, consumer goods and many other products or services, while taking greater control over their impacts on the environment. These companies will be users of the services and products offered from elsewhere within the ecosystem, whether it be to reduce waste or energy, for example. These companies will do so because they see the opportunity to be leaner, more cost efficient and pursue competitive advantage through greater control and disclosure of their environmental performance. While they may be responding to pressure from their own customers, they will pass this pressure up the supply chain and demand greater scrutiny of their own suppliers. Thereby the ecosystem propagates and thrives, with all parts linked to and depending on others.
Accepting the above, the green dividend could be very significant for Scotland as a home for clean technology and service companies and other companies tackling their environmental impacts. The ultimate environmental good is hard to predict, however, the need to adapt to a changing climate will be ever present anyway. Our ecosystems are changing, long live the ecosystem.
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