Chapter 9: In praise of convergence

doing well by doing good

The progressive integration of environmental concerns through virtually all sectors has been a heartening subplot in Norway's recent industrial history. A primary aim has been to combine the nation's role as a major energy producer with a pioneering approach to environmental issues. One result has been the development of a comprehensive set of policy instruments to safeguard the natural environment whatever and wherever the activity that might threaten it.
 
We have seen that environmental protection and commercial self-interest can often coincide: in the offshore sector, for example, through a complex value chain involving power generation and the use of CO2 to enhance oil recovery with a corresponding reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
 
Environmentalists describe this phenomenon as "convergence", seeing it as the ideal outcome for any measure aimed at saving the planet. Of course, the benefits of convergence also include the spin-off effects of technological development, from R&D funding to manufacturing start-ups to exports, associated with environmental measures, particularly as the rapidly expanding environmental technology sector has become hugely profitable in recent years.
 
Green hotels
The "greening" of industry, then, can be driven as much by the profit motive (or, in the public sector, by the need to keep costs down) as by the need to comply with regulations. Fashion also plays a role: hotels, for example, are increasingly concerned to be seen as environmentally responsible, so much so that the secretariat of the regional Nordic Swan ecolabel lists several hundred hotels and youth hostels which have applied for and received its seal of environmental approval.
 
Hotels were taken into the Nordic Swan scheme, which covers Norway and its Nordic neighbours Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, about ten years ago, stealing a march on a similar plan by the EU to develop ecolabels for tourism on the principle that a service company should be no less subject to environmental standards than a manufacturer.  To qualify under such a scheme, the hotel is evaluated on a range of criteria including energy and water consumption, waste management, cleaning procedures, food handling, furniture and transport. The use of eco-friendly detergents, sorting of waste into various fractions, and prohibitions on PVC in furniture and brominated flame retardants in textiles are some additional factors taken into account.

Building targets
Another obvious example of convergence is the building and construction industry.
 
One case in point is Statsbygg, the Norwegian government agency which acts as property manager and advisor in construction and property, managing almost three million square metres of floor space in Norway and abroad. Its property portfolio comprises government and cultural buildings, colleges and public administration buildings, royal properties, embassies and diplomatic residences abroad.
 
As builder, manager and developer of state-owned property, Statsbygg claims "co-ownership in the country's total environmental challenges", in particular energy consumption, correct handling of hazardous substances, increased recycling and reducing volumes of waste for disposal. Statsbygg's goal is "to incorporate environmental consideration in all our projects and procedures and thus contribute to the total quality of all our activities", towards which end it has carried out a series of environmental surveys and set for itself a range of environmental targets.
 
Byggforsk (SINTEF Building and Infrastructure), part of the SINTEF group, runs a Research Centre on Zero Emission Buildings (ZEB) and a centre for research-based innovation, Concrete Innovation Centre (COIN), where it develops "new solutions for the built environment of the future". Other projects focus on methods and technical solutions for energy efficient buildings and "buildings and infrastructure which are adapted to the challenges presented by future climate change".
 
Moving ahead
Inevitably, the transport sector is all but obsessed with bettering its environment profile.
 
A report on the green impacts of transport published by the national statistics office (SSB) in 2009 concluded that road traffic accounted for 58 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions from mobile sources in Norway, and 19 per cent of the country's overall emissions. Demand for passenger cars had risen more than tenfold since 1960.
 
However, Norway's annual rate of increase in freight transport demand was less than a third of the EU average at 1.2 per cent, while nitrogen oxide emissions (largely from ships and boats) had shown a generally downward trend since the late 1980s.
 
The transport sector clearly looms large in Norway's greenhouse gas reduction targets, particularly in light of a government study released in February 2010 which found that the cost of meeting those targets is likely to be far higher than previously thought.

Transnova, a three-year project aimed at reversing recent trends so as to achieve a zero growth in greenhouse gas emissions from current levels, looks especially promising. "The most important objective is replacing fossil fuel with fuels with lower levels of - or zero - CO2 emissions", says the project's mission statement. "The development of hydrogen fuel is in this respect important, reflected by the fact that 40 per cent of the funding Transnova has provided has been given to hydrogen projects."
 
Overall, the approach is nothing if not optimistic, a quality that is typical of Norwegian industry in general and environmental technology in particular. Some of the reasons for such optimism are on display in the next section of this publication: a representative selection of Norwegian companies which stand to benefit as Norway's environmental technology sector continues to innovate, expand and prosper.