roundtable 41


The Business Magazine and solicitors B P Collins LLP invited sector experts to Gerrards Cross to discuss environmental issues in our region and debate, as it turned out …


Current frustrations in a stalling green sector


Participants


John Brace: MD, Harwood Hutton, business advisers and accountants


Neil Grundon: Deputy chairman, Grundon Waste Management


Andrew Hillier: Managing director and owner, Ice Energy Heat Pumps


Peter Prior: Executive chairman, Summerleaze


Sean Reel: Chairman and ‘eco-preneur’, One Delta plc


Lined up to debate: our Roundtable team John Burbedge reports the roundtable highlights


Is being green still ‘the new black’?


B P Collins LLP hosted an Environmental Roundtable in September last year, and, with several of its sector experts returning for this year’s Roundtable, David Murray began proceedings by asking the question: “One year on, how do you feel national understanding of ‘green’ concerns and support for the environmental sector is progressing at present?” The consensus was: “Not as well as we would like.”


Andrew Hillier said he believed the sector had “stalled, if not gone backwards from a governmental point of view” and he put this down to the current recessionary economic climate pushing green matters further down the austerity agenda. With the Government, despite its election mandate promises, shifting its focus to other areas, it was likely business and public awareness overall had reduced too. However, he felt, at consumer level, individual household waste management and recycling was now an active everyday function.


Peter Prior disagreed: “I don’t think people understood the ‘green’ environmental message very well anyway, so I’m not sure they can understand it now any less than they did. The biggest problem is that the Government and civil servants don’t understand it either. They just pick the ‘green’ winners that suit them at the time instead of just applying a tax on fossil fuels. People are driven by money, and as the price of oil gets higher or lower, people will take up renewables or use them less. By nature,


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – OCTOBER 2012


people will choose the cheapest option and the Government needs to accept that.”


Several environmental initiatives had received enormous support whereas other ones just as good in environmental terms got nothing, Prior added. “There is no level playing field for gaining support and that is always going to damage true understanding.”


Sean Reel: “I think in the last few years the focus has been on survival not on the green agenda. But now there is a growing green appetite driven by cost. Everyone wants to get the savings but no-one wants to make the investments, particularly with their long-term paybacks.”


Where’s the sector growth gone?


Murray reminded attendees that the 2011 Roundtable had believed that the environment sector would grow. “What has held it back this year?” he asked.


Reel felt it was uncertainty of the future policy structure for the sector. “Solar is a very good example – a market that has changed drastically. There was certainty and people were signing up for 25-year contracts, then there was a policy change on Feed in Tariffs (FITs). The underlying fact is that businesses and investors need stability and sudden changes in policy are just not very helpful.”


‘Pulling the rug’ would remain as a long-term memory for multigenerational investors and pension funds, and not just solar but also the green sector overall would suffer, Reel stated.


Jo Williams: Head of corporate accounts, FM sector, Biffa Group


Diane Yarrow: Partner, B P Collins LLP


Alex Zachary: Partner, B P Collins LLP


David Murray: Managing editor and publisher of The Business Magazine, chaired the discussion


“The sector needs a 25-50 year plan that is committed to by all parties, and which stays as the plan.”


Business adviser John Brace said a big challenge to companies, particularly SMEs, in the renewable energy sector was their reliance on government incentives. “The uncertainty that has been referred to makes it very difficult to plan your business properly. Two years ago there was a great deal of froth about renewable energy, both in people wanting to utilise it and others to make a business out of it. That has fallen away and a lot of companies have now closed down, particularly in the solar area, and people have concentrated on survival and traditional expansion of their existing business.”


B P Collins solicitor Alex Zachary commented on the shortage of available funding. “There used to be any number of environmental projects we were being consulted upon – acquisitions and investments in emerging 'green' technologies – and most of them have been shelved due to the economic climate, which has helped to hold the sector back.”


Zachary’s colleague Diane Yarrow agreed, revealing that recent research figures showed a 60% reduction in external investment in


Continued overleaf ... www.businessmag.co.uk


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