Tackling the climate emergency properly will save businesses money and generate new growth as well as being an investment opportunity.
That is according to Sir James Bevan, head of the Environment Agency, who said businesses must be proactive at making changes to address climate change for their own good.
“Each business will either be part of the problem or part of the solution. The key to ensuring that most businesses are in the second category is to re-frame the issue: to recognise that tackling the climate emergency properly will not impose unacceptable costs on business but will actually save money and generate new growth.” Bevan said. “This climate emergency is also a huge investment opportunity, in particular in those sectors which are the backbone of the economy such as housing, transport, retail, utilities and industry.”
Speaking at the Royal Holloway’s Gordon Manley lecture on climate change, Bevan said water companies, energy companies, those in the retail sector and others are recognising the business sense in investing in their businesses now to ensure resilience later.
“As the Chief Executive of a large water company said to me recently: if I don’t have water, I don’t have a business,” he said.
He cited the Thames Tideway Tunnel as an example of a business factoring climate change into a new build project. The completed tunnel will increase London’s resilience to the higher rainfall that will result from global warming. The low carbon concrete is expected to last 120 years and 95 per cent of the carbon emitted in Tideway’s lifetime will be from construction itself. The finished project will include new green spaces where the boring and construction sites were.
Addressing students in the audience, Bevan said: “We don’t yet have all the answers about climate change and how to tackle it. We may not even yet be asking all the right questions. We need the best evidence, the best analysis, the best predictions, the best new ideas – that’s what institutions like this, and students and faculty like you, can offer.”