What should you drive to be green? It's a fair question, but the answer right now is tough. I regularly drive a mix of two cars - my Alfa 156 1.8TS and my partner's Peugeot 106XN.
The latter is my favourite city transport. The 106 is ten years old, light as a feather, has no airbag and you wind the windows up and down yourself. It has a zippy engine of 1.1 litres that I don't actually think consumes any petrol at all. With 20,000 miles on the clock, it is a hoot to roll around London, lolloping over speed bumps without a care (Joe earnestly explained to me recently that it was 'one of the last proper Peugeots when they did their own dampers'). It's also so uncool that it's kinda got something going - though I can never truly decide whether it makes me look like a Parisian student or a male nurse.
Trouble is, how do I begin to assess whether this car is more or less efficient than something new, shiny and Prius-shaped? Right now, it looks like noone will bother to help, leaving me consulting the original (CO2-less) owner's manual for a few nuggets on fuel consumption.
In the UK there are several places you can go to get information on CO2 emissions - but the Directgov emissions check and the VCA Carfueldata site both only show new car data. Likewise sites such as www.whatyoucando.co.uk have pretty lame analysis and the mindless www.howgreenisyourcar.co.uk appears to have been compiled by a summer intern at Tory party HQ that did a straw poll around the office. BP's targetneutral.com site is pretty baffling and can't answer the 106 Question either.
It seems that only new cars are green. According to those in the know.
Except it seems that those in the know might not actually know much anyway. Today's London Evening Standard features Saab's UK managing director Jonathan Nash publicly challenging the sluggishness of TFL, London's key transport body, to get its act together on whether the E85 bioethanol Saab 9-5 was exempt from London's Congestion Charge.
We have mixed (actually quite negative) opinions on the merits of biofuels, but let's put that to one side for now. The point here is who decides what is cleaner (and how) and what isn't.
"A TfL spokesman insisted that the Saab 9-5 BioPower did not meet the right emissions standards and that as the car could operate solely on petrol, there was 'no way to determine the mix of fuels being used."
"He said, 'The criteria against which cars are eligible for a congestion charge discount is decided independently by the Energy Savings Trust. It is the vehicle manufacturer's responsibility to establish with the Trust if its car meets these standards."
Now apart from the obvious point that the best way to assess the emissions of a car is to have a sensor on the tailpipe that rewards clean driving rather than clean cars, this got me thinking. It implies that only vehicles which have a dedicated lobbying team are going to get rated as efficient, because those who decide these things make the decisions based on who bangs the drum. Saab has clearly lacked the lobbying nouse needed - unlike GoinGreen who are clearly very smart. But who will ever lobby for the 106XN, out of production for a few years now? Green groups who like cars are very thin on the ground (we like Plug in America - Marc Geller's enthusiasm for his plug in 97-03 RAV4 is intoxicating... but I've struggled to find an equivalent in the UK that actually champions the cause of older cars).
The dangers of this who-lobbies-wins approach can be seen in another sector - computer software. As IT software blogger James McGovern points out here, the IT analyst industry has consistently failed to wrap its collective head around the benefits of open source software projects.
In order to appear in either the Quadrant or Wave [of analyst firm Gartner or Forrester], the process first starts by filling out a grueling 300+ question form that seeks information on customers, features, product roadmap and of course revenue. The analysts indicated to me that many open source projects simply don't go through the trouble of filling out the fine paperwork. It is my thought that maybe us enterprisey folk shouldn't be even noodling for a second contributing code but should instead do something we do best which is fill out paperwork of questionable value.
The second insight that I learned was how industry analysts actually work. For example, analysts are used to being briefed and don't really have the incentive to scour for research. This tells me that leaders of open source projects need to do a better job at reaching out to analysts and not just expecting them to do, well research.
Such a system might just about enable a functioning if problematic IT industry to wheeze along, but decision-making processes in relation to energy and environmental efficiency cannot simply be based on corporates launching products that they lobby to have on preferred product lists.
The dangers are obvious if you start to envisage a future process of decision making on what technologies will impact the built environment. Everyone - policymakers, consumers, public sector buyers and corporates - lacks insight into what they should do to reduce energy use right now. Do you adapt logistics and if so how? Do you incorporate new technologies into buildings and if so which? How do you monitor energy performance and ensure strategy and execution are aligned? And how do you support rather than confuse customers on this journey?
The 106 Question is just one in a million that deserves an answer - what's certain is we need a new breed of analyst to provide better answers.
Mark Charmer is director of The Movement Design Bureau.
i wish you talked to me before you posted this. lets make some waves.
Posted by: James Governor | January 03, 2007 at 04:58 PM
Fantastic. I'm all ears. Call me when you can.
Posted by: Mark Charmer | January 03, 2007 at 05:27 PM