Job boom for climate engineers

As Greenbang reported last week, the fast-changing energy industry is creating a boom in eco-power jobs.

The Sunday Times had a feature on this yesterday, written by Jonathan Leake (but we got there first )

“Phil Williams, an executive director of RPS, an international engineering consultancy that employs 4,000 people, admits that the energy sector has not had a good employment record. “It has had periods of boom and bust, such as when the price of oil fell to $10 a barrel in 1999 and lots of people got laid off. Things are different now. The energy sector is heading for a long-term major expansion.”

That boom, combined with the shortage of qualified recruits, could mean engineers have a chance to claw back some of their former status – and salaries – as one of the top professions. Ivor Catto, a director of design and engineering solutions at Atkins, an engineering consultancy with 17,000 staff, is convinced the profession is heading for a revival. He has boosted the firm’s nuclear section to 500 engineers in anticipation of new orders. “Engineers do not make as much as accountants and lawyers but as demand rises and shortages hit home, salaries are going to go up,” he says. “

Eco cheese wins contest

Greenbang probably won’t cover a lot of cheese stories - but this one takes the biscuit (get it?). Sorry.

Patrick Berridge’s cheese won a gold prize at the World Cheese Awards last month - partly because of its production method.

They produce their own electricity by pumping anything left over after making the cheese into an anaerobic digester which breaks the waste down and produces bio-gas. This bio-gas is used to run a generator which produces the electricity for the farm. It’s only one of 4 such systems in Ireland at the moment.

Carbon offsetting explained

Current TV, Al Gore’s web TV channel, has a good menu of self-made films.

This one explains carbon offsetting, which there are a lot of questions about. That’s primarily because it doesn’t really solve the problem of putting too much CO2 into the air, yet some firms are making fortunes from aiding people to do the offset thang.

Green MEP slams oil firm Shell

Shell is in trouble with the Green Party again. This on the party’s website:

GREEN MEP and ‘politician of the year’ Caroline Lucas has hit out at the main sponsor of a leading climate change conference - Shell - for undermining efforts to tackle the problem, during a speech at the event today.

Dr Lucas said she applauded Shell’s decision to be lead sponsor of the Guardian Climate Change Summit for key policymakers and businesses, but condemned the company’s record of investing around just 1% of its research budget in renewable energy compared to some 70% looking for yet more oil and gas.

Ireland’s Green Party ready for action

The Green Party in Ireland is very much like that of the one in the UK. For a long time no one listened. But that appears to be changing - in both countries, and I’d suspect more.

Colum Kenny writes in the Irish Independent today the party could face trouble from bigger political parties that look to absorb their power:

“THE Greens are a party whose time has come. Those who feel most threatened by them are on the wrong side of history. They have splattered egg on the faces of macho politicians and commentators who characterised the party as flaky. People who never had green credentials, and seemed proud of that fact, are now loudest in decrying “the betrayal” of those who do…

…The danger for the Green Party is that [head of the country] Bertie will use them to do what he has to do, taking credit for Green measures among voters who care about such matters and quietly blaming the Greens when it comes to mollifying any Fianna Fail supporters who care little in practice for the environment and who are angered by restrictions on their polluting activities.

“

A free lunch - what’s the catch?

You never can quite tell how good free stuff will be until it’s in your hands. But you can get tons of it locally with Freecycle.org.

It’s basically an online noticeboard advertsing stuff people want rid of.

The nice thing about Freecycle.org is that it runs without any money changing hands. That’s the main rule, in fact – you can’t charge for the stuff you advertise.

Last week I got rid of a Lexmark printer – it was in perfectly good condition but you had to feed the paper in piece by piece. I advertised it and someone was round to pick it up within the day.

Our editorial genius, internet guru and blagger Will Rankin put out a request for 100 boxes of dried, organic soya. Within a day the boxes were sitting in his living room.

It’s an ideal way of keeping stuff out of landfill – and you can make a few mates on the way.

Greenbang explodes onto the web

Hello and welcome to Greenbang.com

I’ve talked and talked about this for so long, but we’re officially launching today and from now on will be tracking the news on the business of environment and technology.

Greenbang is a place for everyone to chip in and debate about this, so have a look around and feel free to tell us what you think.

We already have a few writers on board - one even reporting from China. But we’re constantly on the look out for contributions - be they film clips, photos or your words. So get busy. We’ve got plenty of room for everyone. Remember to keep it informal though - this isn’t a B2B print magazine. We want to keep our community interested.

Best regards

Dan Ilett
Chief of Greenbang.com

Firms demand eco IT

Me old mate Andy McCue, silicon.com journalist, writes that companies now want more green things out of their IT suppliers. The research, which comes from analyst Forrester, suggests their could even be a carbon tax in the future.

Check out the story…

Environmental concerns are rising up the corporate IT agenda with one-third of European organisations now taking ‘green’ factors into account when evaluating and selecting IT suppliers.

Consumers get green ethics (well 18% anyway)

PR Teresa Horcroft from Eureka Communications just sent this in - remember the 4% that reject companies on ethical grounds could indicate 96% don’t give a monkey’s:

Out of 10,000 British consumers, 4% said they would actively reject purchasing a brand as a result of poor corporate ethics (e.g. they don’t trust the company, don’t like the company’s working practices or ethics or the company has a poor reputation).

Further, 18% claim to have bought a product because it was environmentally friendly and 11% said they had refused to buy something because it was harmful to the environment.

When asked about actual buying behaviour, 33% of Brits said they had actually chosen not to buy a product because of the way a company behaves.

Less gas, more ass

Cyclists across the world made a rude, nude green protest at the weekend.

My lunch on Saturday just off London’s Tottenham Court Road was somewhat disturbed by an alarming spectacle. Hundreds of naked cyclists, blowing whistles, waving flags and shouting, zoomed past, putting me right off my sushi.

While some protected their modesty, with strategically-placed body paint, and tape, many went completely starkers while touring the streets of London and other cities around the world on Saturday, to protest oil dependency and the predominant car culture.

Greenbang tracks the explosion of the environmental industry, reporting on news of green innovation and thought leadership.

We blog on this rather than the environmental problems of the world because we are interested in the answers to climate change.