From: Ben Block, Worldwatch Institute, More from this Affiliate
Published April 4, 2009 07:16 AM

A Sustainable Business View on Economy, Climate

To gain perspective about today's many interrelated sustainability issues, Worldwatch staff writer Ben Block pulled aside Björn Stigson, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), for an interview this week at a U.S. National Academies of Science climate change summit. Stigson has overseen the global coalition of some 200 leading  corporations since 1995.

How do you expect the ongoing recession to affect sustainable business efforts, such as reducing pollution, water consumption, and energy use? Are businesses turning away from corporate responsibility?

The question I get from around the world is: Has sustainable development fallen off the table given there is a recession? My response is the opposite. What has happened is that sustainable development has come to a tipping point, in my view, and that the focus on the strategic aspect on sustainable development, climate change, and so on - that focus is even stronger than before. It's stronger in companies, and it's stronger in governments. The recession is not really a barrier or a blockage.

What are your thoughts on the public response to the ongoing recession - the stimulus packages in the United States and around the world?

The green elements are still quite small in these packages. Still, there is a green element. And we sometimes lose perspective of money. President Obama came out with a stimulus package, some $25 billion for energy efficiency. We say, "Ah, it's really not that much money, as a percentage of the stimulus package." Had $25 billion not been connected to the stimulus package, people would say, "Wow, that's huge!".... So I think it's quite positive that the green element is coming in there. There is a lot that can be done.... A lot of the technologies and solutions that we need to go forward, for actions towards 2020, a lot of that exists. It's a question of getting it deployed.

Governments are meeting in Bonn, Germany, this week as part of the negotiation process leading up to December's international climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. How can policies aimed at tackling climate change help businesses develop sustainably?

If you look at the analyses by the International Energy Agency, and you look at actions up to 2030, then 50 percent of emission reductions must come from energy efficiency. Then if you look at where you consume energy in the industrialized world, about 40 percent of energy use is in buildings, 25 percent is in land transport - cars and so on. So two-thirds of the problem is efficiency standards for buildings and cars.

The price of carbon will not do anything for the energy efficiency of buildings. Energy efficiency of buildings is a very important part of the efficiency improvement in society, but it's such a fragmented value chain. So the price of carbon is not going to have any real impact, for the individual.... Between the owner of the building - residents, so on - the lever for change for any individual actor in that value chain would be so small. So if you want to improve the energy efficiency of buildings, you have to look at the building codes and formal standards. The example of California is a good example.


How would you rate various countries' efforts in improving energy efficiency, so far?

It varies in Europe. The EU does not have a common history; you have differences. In the northern parts of Europe, look at Scandinavia, down to the middle of France and Switzerland - they have since a long time had stringent building codes. That goes back to the energy crisis in the 1970s. Europe is much more energy efficient than the U.S. If you look at it in a scale, Japan started looking at [efficiency] earlier, then comes Europe, then comes the U.S. The U.S. is on the same level as China, and so on. It's not a very energy-efficient country.

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