Let's Make Climate Change an Opportunity!

Whatever your personal interpretation of the 'Copenhagen Accord' it held some important indicators which need to be heeded by the plastics industry in planning its future.

The first is that the 'Climate Change' debate will intensify as the 'Climate Changers' endeavour to vanquish the 'doubters' and the search continues for face-saving formulae to embrace China in a potential  future Treaty.

The second is that Climate Change will suffuse government thinking much more widely in the European Union at least. It will be conjugated through most governmental departments with any new initiative being reviewed in the light of its 'climate change impacts'. An indication of this is the inclusion of a newly appointed Commissioner for the Climate in Barroso's team for his second term of office as Commission President.

The holder of this omniscient-sounding post will be Conniie Hedegaard the former Danish Climate and Energy Minister. Formerly a highly respected journalist with Conservative political leanings she played a leading role at the Copenhagen summit. Doubtless her appointment will herald a tranche of legal Directives in the time-honoured Commission fashion but perhaps also some funding for research and innovation but with even the Commission's budgets suffering under the current duress I wouldn't build up expectations.

Let's just hope that when Ed Miliband and his civil service team shuffled out of Copenhagen and indulged in their 'post-mortem' hand-wringing in taxis and aircraft they didn't dream up a compensating national initiative in which the UK would take the lead and 'set an example' to the rest of the world. If we are over-sensitive on this we have every reason to be. It was Tony Blair's enthusiasm following the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 that led directly to the Climate Change Levy which entered into force in 2001 and has been a millstone around the plastics industry's neck until this year. Blair wanted the UK to be in the lead in responding to the Kyoto targets for greenhouse gas emissions but unwittingly delivered an unprecedented hammerblow to the the competitiveness of the UK plastics industry.

Plastics Industry and Climate Change

To some extent all this is history. Up to a point the plastics industry was able to deal with the Climate Change Levy as just yet another massive cost increase and companies intensified their efforts to introduce energy efficiency measures. A major breakthrough occurred in Alastair Darling's April 2009 Budget when the British Plastics Federation,following months of lobbying and negotiation with the European Commission, secured the go-ahead from UK government for a Climate Change Agreement for plastics processing. Companies are now be able to receive an 80% rebate from their levy payments on electricity usage in return for signing up to a scheme and promising to reduce their energy consumption by 12% by the end of 2011 from a base year of 2006.

The BPF now has 267 sites in the scheme which closed to newcomers on December 31st. Companies interested in joining will now have to wait until 2012 when a new phase of the scheme with new targets opens up. For further information go the BPF Climate Change Agreement website at www.bpfenergy.co.uk

The BPF plans a series of events to help companies reach their energy- saving targets by facilitating an exchange of the industry's experience and the first seminar is scheduled for April 27th at the BPF offices.

Leading The Way In Innovation

There is a fund of knowledge which the industry can draw upon in its bid to cut energy bills. A pioneering project was the EU RECIPE (Reducing Energy in Plastics Engineering) Project funded under the EU's Intelligent Energy Programme. Its 'Best Practice Guide' is a superb account of how energy savings can be made. This can be downloaded freely on www.eurecipe.com

A current project going into more detail is the EU ENER-PLAST project accessible on www.enerplast.eu

Opportunities For The Future

If we take a broader view of Climate Change considerable opportunities for the plastics industry open up simply because our products offer so many solutions to help mitigate the effects of a changing climate. The essential lightweightness of plastics is key. For example, 100kgs of plastics components in a car can replace between 200 - 300 kg of traditional materials and over the average lifespan of a vehicle every 100kg of plastics will reduce fuel consumption of the vehicle by 750 litres with corresponding reductions in emissions. The same is true of aircraft where the latest generations are using increased quantities of composites to lighten the load, increase fuel efficiency and extend the range of the aircraft. A similar story can be told for packaging, enhanced even further by its increasing recycling record. On top of all this the low heat conductivity of plastics building products together with the tight seals achievable enable builders to meet governmental sustainability targets and householders to reduce domestic heating bills.

The industry could now be better placed to invest in manufacturing efficiency initiatives on the back of the BPF's Climate Change Agreement and develop new marketing themes based on the eminent suitability of plastics products for the much - vaunted 'low carbon economy'.