There is an ample source of renewable energy in East London, it is organic waste. It currently goes to landfill and could be processed locally into gas, which could fuel the Olympic Park. We have been recommending this should happen for 2 years and although we have seen a lot of activity we see no real results. There seem to be a lot of real or imaginary bureaucratic, commercial and technical hurdles and not enough determination to sort them out. If this is not resolved soon it will be too late, losing the opportunity for the park and putting LOCOGs zero waste to landfill target for the Games at risk.
There is a bigger picture to carbon emissions. The excellent work to develop a carbon footprint for the whole London 2012 programme shows that the main impact is through construction materials, not the traditional "enemy", air travel. We are calling on government to mitigate the 1.9 million Tonnes of residual carbon footprint by building on the experience of the ODA to create new knowledge around this subject. If we can learn how to develop, design, build, use and dispose of buildings and civil engineering works in a way that minimises emissions over life, the application of this knowledge will reduce the 1.9 million Tonnes many times over. Current thinking, such as the UK sustainable construction strategy, has a focus only on the use of buildings, not other aspects of the construction process. If this work is started now, a new standard for managing embodied energy in construction could be available to the world by 2012, if applied, the carbon savings could dwarf the 1.9 million Tonnes, if British companies are smart in selling their skills to apply the standard, the economic benefit of the Games would be multiplied many times over. If we follow the example of the energy from waste opportunity and spend the next 2 years having meetings, writing position papers and generally achieving very little, somebody else will do this and another opportunity will be lost for ever.
This illustrates the need for businesses to think ahead, property developers, construction companies and manufacturers need to be aware of future government policy in order to anticipate what will make their business successful in the future. For example:
In today's competitive world, you don't get much for a silver medal. To download the report 'Extinguishing emissions? A review of the approach taken to carbon measurement and management across the London 2012 programme', click here