Peter Wognum, Director of Finance Online's green business commentator, introduces the Carbon Agenda special report.

 “… Britain faces a tough challenge in maintaining secure supplies whilst at the same time meeting its climate change targets. However, there is still time to act.” These are the words of Ofgem chief executive, Alistair Buchanan, after the recent publication of its review of Britain’s energy supplies.

Depending on which of the four scenarios in the review play out, we can look forward to increases in domestic energy bills of between 14% and 60% by 2020 and, although the business sector enjoys keener pricing, the outlook is not rosy here, either. Interestingly, the lowest price increase is predicted in the ‘Green Stimulus’ scenario - one where “high carbon prices and government policies support investment in renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage”.

Currently the EU spends about €3bn a year on research and development in clean energy; however, it has recognised that it needs to spend an extra €50bn on developing clean energy over the next 10 years, nearly triple its current investment. The EU commission is calling for €16bn for solar power over the next 10 years, €13bn for carbon capture and storage, €7bn for nuclear and €6bn for wind.

So there is already money available and there will be more. Despite this, we have seen the recent demise of Vestas, the wind turbine manufacturer, in the UK due to lack of demand/sales.

We hear about a raft of technologies, both in development and, in some cases, in routine production (power from wind, water, solar (ground-based and via satellite), lightning, hydrogen, etc.); yet the corporate sector is not rising to the challenge and is neither investing nor adopting to any significant degree.

This is short-sighted (in)activity at best; corporately negligent at worst. April 2010 sees the implementation of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme, with financial implications for all the +/- 20,000 companies and organisations that will likely exceed their carbon emission limit.

The investment, today, in green tech that will measurably and significantly reduce an organisation’s carbon emissions will not only help to delay the increase in energy bills but will also either reduce an organisation’s requirement to purchase additional carbon credits (in a market that is unpredictable at best) or actually generate a refund of allowances purchased.

Some green tech technologies have been picked up by certain political sections; green roofing, a technology that can reduce heating/cooling bills by up to 60% is now a key part of the London Plan and Barclays Bank HQ at Canary Wharf is a great example of what can be achieved with this technology.

Boris Johnson’s further commitment to rainwater harvesting in the London Plan provides further hope for a common sense approach to combating the natural resource poverty.

But to rely wholly on the political arena for either guidance or solutions to the problem is unrealistic; there are too many agendas in play and too few of them revolve around pragmatic change.

The best we can hope for is a cast iron commitment from the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference but even if one emerges, the likely timescales will miss the deadlines set by our own rapid depletion of carbon energy resources. What the business community needs to do now is act.

For an FD to become a key player in a strategy for success, he/she will need to be informed; informed of the consequences of not acting, requiring a thorough understanding of the CRC which, after all, is the key instrument designed to penalise you for not doing anything – and informed of the ways in which investing in green technology solutions will ultimately deliver not only survival but corporate growth.

It also helps if the FD understands fully how to access the € billions available in grants for these technologies. The following articles answer many of these questions…