With the government having enshrined carbon reduction targets in law the pressure is on for you to be able to show your goods and service are environmentally friendly.

In April, a new government scheme to make companies compete to reduce their CO₂ emissions begins. Originally called the Carbon Reduction Commitment and now renamed the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, it is introduced for companies with fuel bills of about £500,000 or more, but anyone who believes it is not going to cover pretty much all companies within the next few years is likely to be in for a shock.

Another government initiative to try to increase the amount of electricity from renewables, called the feed-in tariff, is also introduced in April. This is to encourage micro-generation of renewable energy by paying people to feed it into the National Grid. 

This month (February) the values of the feed-in tariffs were announced. They vary significantly depending on how the electricity is generated and how much is generated, but a typical 2.5kW photovoltaic (PV) installation would earn £900 in the first year, even if all the electricity is used by the person generating it. 

On top of that would be the savings of not having bought that electricity from a supplier. A typical 2.5kW PV installation would cost about £10,000. In other words, if you put the panels on the roof of your house or workshop, they could have paid for themselves in 10 years and the tariff lifetime for PV generation is 25 years. 

The government says the announced tariffs will be adjusted each year to take account of inflation, although there is no guarantee of the rates the tariffs will be set beyond three years.

One stone quarry company, Forest of Dean Stone Firms, who quarry Pennant from the Forest, are planning to take advantage of the feed-in tariff by making use of a development on their site built in 1753 to power an iron works. They plan to install two, 7kW hydro generators. 

MD Nick Horton says planning took longer and cost more than he had anticipated, the generators cost £60,000 plus the civils and £20,000 for new switching to cope with three sources of electricity used by the company – diesel generators, the grid and the hydro-electricity.

When Forest of Dean Stone Firms decided to go ahead with the project they were anticipating a feed-in tariff of 17p that would give them a 10-year payback period. In fact the tariff was set for their size of operation this month at 19.9p, which remains the same (adjusted for inflation) for the next three years, giving Forest of Dean Stone Firms an annual return on investment of 11.5%. 

Nick is now also looking at installing water-to-water heat pumps to heat the factory and plans to work with consultants to introduce environmental impact management at the company in order to satisfy an increasing number of customers’ requirements, as well as saving money on the electricity bills and doing his bit for the environment. (NSS will be taking a closer look at the developments at Forest of Dean Stone Firms in the May issue. In the meantime, there is a bit more on page 25).

Back to the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (let’s call it the CRC). To help you understand it consultants Greenstone have produced a guide giving seven steps to compliance. You can download it from their website (www.greensto-necarbon.com). They have also introduced what they call Acco2unt software that enables you to record energy consumption from a range of sources across the scope of your business operations, manipulate that information to ensure the most cost-effective compliance with the CRC and automatically generate the reports required.

One of the 10,000 or so companies that will be affected straight away by the CRC is Marshalls, who have sales of £300-400million a year from quarrying their own York stone, selling imported stone and making concrete paving products.

Marshalls are way ahead of the stone industry in general in encompassing both the environmental and ethical issues of stone production and importation. They have decried ‘greenwashing’ by other companies and given veracity to their own claims by working with organisations such as the Carbon Trust for carbon footprinting their products. Among the various standards they work to is ISO 14001, an environmental management system with a supporting audit programme.

Chris Harrop, Marshalls’ Group Marketing Director, says that given the level of suspicion from the press and others about environmental and ethical claims, Marshalls were keen to have third party verification of their status.

The CRC involves companies buying enough allowances to meet their annual CO₂ emissions. The first year of the scheme, starting in April, will be used to measure CO₂ outputs using a conversion table produced by the government (some extracts from which are reproduced below). Then, in April next year, they will have to purchase allowances based on this year’s figures at a fixed price of £12 per tonne of Carbon Dioxide produced.

The government says the scheme will be revenue neutral with the best performers receiving up to 150% of the price they pay for the allowances back at the expense of the worst performers, who will get nothing back. Performance will be measured by a reduction in CO₂ output, the idea being that companies will compete to reduce the amount of fossil fuel-derived power they use. 

The government expects the firms in the scheme to be cutting CO₂ emissions by around 4million tonnes a year by 2020.

Chris Harrop says Marshalls were forecasting in 2002 that consumers would have environmental issues and carbon emissions at the front of their minds by 2008. They think they were about a year out.

Chris says Marshalls put a lot of effort into looking at consumer trends, and polls show as much as 60% of the population seek to buy low carbon products in acknowledgement that climate change is real and they have a part to play in tackling it.

Having put the effort in, Marshalls shout about it. On their website all the products, domestic and commercial, carry a carbon footprint so they can be compared and a carbon calculator translates any particular scheme into a tree equivalent (for example 100m² of Haworth Moor Antique paving has a carbon equivalence of 4.4 trees). 

The UK’s government is the first in the world to enshrine carbon reduction into law, which will be and is being reflected in the procurement habits of central and local government, who are major purchasers of Marshalls’ hard landscaping products.

Chris says some councils are still buying on the lowest price, some are looking for lifetime costs, some are taking into account ethical issues and a growing number are asking for detailed carbon data.

Another factor in cutting energy use is the cost of it. “I was at Shell before coming to Marshalls and I could tell the peak oil was going to reach,” says Chris. “The long term planning of any business has to factor that in. I think we all know which way long term energy prices are going to go.”

Even apart from the concern about the impact on the business, Marshalls’ directors were concerned about the impact of their operations on the environment. “We are the same people as we are at home. We don’t morph into something else when we get to work,” says Chris.

They started working with the Carbon Trust, set up by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), on a carbon reduction programme in 2006. “They give you consultancy time,” says Chris. “They find the right people to help you through the process.”

The management buy-out team at Realstone are also now working closely with the Carbon Trust (www.carbontrust.co.uk) to help their business reduce its effect on the environment. 

The Carbon Trust has developed an overall approach to help Realstone identify the risks and opportunities relating to climate change mitigation. Realstone’s aim is to identify cost-effective ways to cut emissions and save money while helping the environment.

The carbon footprint figures on Marshalls’ products cover the energy used in extraction of the raw materials, the processing and the delivery of them, as set out in the BSI Publicly Available Standard (PAS) 2050 published in 2008 (available free from the BSI website www.bsigroup.com). “If you use that, no-one can accuse you of having a number that can’t be justified,” says Chris.

Marshalls even have their own specific products included in BRE’s Green Guide, which generally gives an environmental rating for generic building processes (sandstone and block cavity walls, for example) rather than individual products.

Last year Marshalls set themselves a target of reducing CO₂ emissions by 2,000tonnes and they have committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 in line with the government’s targets. They say they have already reduced the carbon footprint of some of their concrete products by 39%.

Their carbon reduction programme is at the heart of their business, incorporating carbon management, energy plans for every site and energy champions who promote the programme throughout the organisation.

They even had an energy saving week for their employees at home towards the end of last year in conjunction with the Energy Saving Trust. Using £20 meters they checked where and how much energy was being used in their homes. Half the staff took part and the average fuel bills saving has been £200.

Company drivers have all been given ‘green driver’ training. In the quarries, fuel bills have been cut by 25% by improving the way machines are operated. Across the board there has not only been a 15% fuel saving resulting from driving more smoothly but also a 10% improvement in journey times as a result of spending less time stationary.

“There are huge benefits in cost savings of reducing energy use,” says Chris. “We are moving into an era where we consider fuel as a scarce resource – which it is.”

He says: “In any market there are always early adopters, followers and traditionalists who only change when forced to do so.” His recommendation is to get involved in the change now while there is still free advice and help to be had. “Don’t leave it to the last minute because you can be sure at the last minute the cost of complying will be huge.”

Stone Federation Great Britain have been trying to get that message over to their members since David Richardson of BRE gave a rather dramatic presentation to the accompaniment of REM’s song It’s the end of the world as we know it to members when he took over as President at the annual meeting in 2006.

He said stone had to be promoted as a sustainable product. “We have to give a very positive impression about this material we make our living from,” he told members.

Jane Buxey, the Federation Chief Executive, says the Federation will publish more guidelines on sustainability for members this year and urges them to address the issues with some urgency.

Although David Richardson is no longer President of Stone Federation, as Director of Construction Consultancy at the BRE he is in an ideal position to be their spokesman for sustainability. And he has a warning that while PAS 2050 carbon footprinting might be a good place to start, it will not tick all the environmental boxes.

“The only schemes that pick up on environmental issues in a meaningful way is something like BREEAM.” BREEAM is the BRE Environmental Assessment Method for buildings. “If you think carbon footprinting is going to start scoring you points under BREEAM… well, it’s not.”

Building systems in the BRE’s Green Guide (available to view on line at www.thegreengu-ide.org.uk) can tick the right boxes for BREEAM but natural stone has not benefited from the Green Guide in all categories as much as suppliers of UK stone had hoped. 

There are 13 key components to a Green Guide rating and stone does not do well on waste and water usage, although the waste produced is not waste in the sense of most construction industry waste because it just stays in the quarry or goes back there after processing. And although processing stone uses a lot of water, it is normally recycled. These are issues that the Green Guide team has been asked to reconsider. 

David says: “The stone industry has engaged after the event.” In other words, it waited until the Green Guide had been published before taking much notice of it.

Another project assessment used for hard landscaping is CEEQUAL (Civil Engineering Environmental Quality Assessment & Award Scheme). It aims to improve sustainability in civil engineering and public realm projects. It is being promoted by the Institute of Civil Engineers and industry organisations such as CIRIA, CECA and the Association for Consultancy & Engineering. 

Its objective is to encourage the attainment of environmental excellence in civil engineering, and thus to deliver improved environmental and social performance in project specification, design and construction. Its use by Arup in Swindon and Gloucester has helped inform the decision to use Forest Pennant in the projects. “We’re looking to use English stone first from a carbon point of view,” Arup’s Richard Hunt told NSS. “The problems we have come up against are cost and… well, cost is the big issue.”

There are various environmental management standards companies can work towards. The most common are ISO 14001 and the European Ecomanagement Audit Scheme (EMAS). 

Associated with ISO 14001 is BS 8555, which is designed to make it easier for small and medium sized companies (SMEs) to work towards ISO 14001 through a phased approach. BS 8555 is useful for demonstrating a company’s commitment to environmental improvement, particularly where it has been asked to achieve an accreditation as a contractual requirement. 

There are plenty of consultants out there willing to help you, although achieving an environmental management standard takes time and is not cheap – it will almost inevitably take more than a year and will cost thousands (probably tens of thousands) of pounds.

There are beginning to become web-based solutions for those who believe that, given the right software, they have the skills and time to do the work themselves to achieve a standard. Loreus, a spin-off company from Nottingham Trent University, offer one such solution (www.loreus.com). 

The MD is Peter Redfern, a lecturer at the college. The system is used on-line, rather than downloading it to your computer, so it can be continually up-dated by the company. That means, for example, if the CO₂ emission factor for an energy source (see table on page 19) is changed by the government it will be changed by Loreus, so you do not have to keep an eye on those parameters. You buy a licence to use the program with licences starting at £8,000.

Loreus also offer professional distance learning courses for environmental issues, such as a three-module course that will give you associate membership of the Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment. It costs £550 and normally takes participants less than a year to complete – Bolton Wanderers football club have just signed up for it.

For Stone Federation members a sensible first port of call is David Richardson. The BRE picks up most of Stone Federation’s technical support and David is always willing to talk to members about environmental issues in the first instance. 

He says quarries ought to be seriously looking at ISO 14001 and masons ought to be encouraging their suppliers to address environmental issues, because if clients do not already want those environmental questions answered, they soon will, especially as more government carbon-reducing initiatives kick in and deadlines such as the 2016 zero-carbon requirement for houses become imminent.