Is it possible to be green in a downturn?

Article that appeared in Buildign Design last Friday

It’s the current conundrum for those designing, supplying, developing and building green. How can we keep the sustainability ship afloat during increasingly stormy economic waters?

The spectre of changed priorities for business as a whole — the shift from seemingly fluffy corporate social responsibility and the rush to prove your contribution to solving climate change towards maintaining market share, bottom lines, budgets and cost-cutting — hangs like a dark cloud over the green agenda at the minute.

In a bid to be balanced in tackling this potentially worrying trend, I’ve decided to put forward the differing viewpoints as to the short-term prospects of the green agenda. Let’s call it the green “half glass full or empty?” approach.

“Green glass half full” is for the slightly nervous staffers with the word “sustainability” in their job titles (and that includes me).

These issues are not going to go away. Energy from fossil fuels is on a permanent price rise, which will force more concentration on efficiency and alternative energy supplies.

Policy is also forcing the market to move to more efficient new and existing buildings. Hold firm and we’ll get through this sticky patch.

The “green glass half empty” argument is for those of you who never really believed the climate change guff in the first place. It was just a fad, wasn’t it?

Business will be getting on the next bandwagon before long, while Gordon Brown and his gang of less than happy followers are obsessed with house prices and popularity rather than with ecological disaster in coming decades. Sustainability legislation will be fudged, and we’ll forget Al Gore ever existed. Move on.

Joking aside, it’s a finely balanced argument, and I’m trying to retain my green-tinted spectacles for now. But in a strange way, a downturn will make those involved in offering sustainable solutions get real — by focusing on what works now and concentrating on incremental improvements rather than wildly ambitious targets.

The economic environment will force us to focus on the cost, the payback, the business case, and real data to copper-bottom the case for building green. This should ensure more certainty among clients that there are definite savings or even profits to be made in going green. And current economic forces may also push the market to address the existing stock of buildings rather than new schemes, which is an absolute necessity in tackling the footprint of the UK built environment.

I’m hopeful that the threat of impending recession will be much worse than the reality for the sustainable movement.

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