Yorkshire Forward, the Regional Development Agency charged with improving the Yorkshire and Humber economy covers 22 local authorities and has some 270,000 businesses contributing to an economy worth over £75 billion. Its carbon reduction initiatives include a 1000 delegate-strong conference staged in February 2007 that had former US Vice President and environmentalist Al Gore as its keynote speaker. Mel Poluck spoke to Dr Stephen Brown, Yorkshire Forward's Sustainable Development Manager for Energy and Climate Change.

What differentiates Yorkshire Forward from other Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) ?

"We're the only RDA that has a target to reduce CO2 emissions through its activities - it's been part of our objectives since 2003. Our target is to reduce carbon by half a million tonnes per year through a mixture of low carbon building projects and energy generation projects."

What have been among your most successful low carbon initiatives?

"A project finished in December with York City Council - the York 'Eco depot' project where we helped develop a vehicle depot and Europe's biggest straw bail and timber-framed office building.

"And we helped implement a biomass [boiler] pathfinder project. The heat from the biomass boilers supplies a housing scheme in Barnsley and public buildings in Sheffield. The Barnsley [Metropolitan Borough Council] project in 2006 won the Ashden Award - the 'Oscar' of the renewable energy world."

What challenges did these projects pose in implementation?

"When doing building projects, it can be the attitudes of contractors that's difficult to change - the industry is a bit set in its ways. With the biomass heat project, the biggest problem was persuading the people that host the boilers that they're going to have the fuel to supply them. Also, most urban areas have smoke control zones but there is a list of exempt appliances. Biomass boilers comply with regulations, but sometimes it's a challenge persuading development officers."

How do you work with local business to reduce carbon emissions?

"RDAs deal with the BREW - Business Resource Efficiency and Waste - scheme from Defra, working with small and medium-sized businesses to improve resource efficiency performance by helping them use less energy and recycle more waste.

"The Carbon Trust and [Government programme] Envirowise do an audit to see where the easy gains are, which is great, but by and large these are not implemented. BREW is a small scale funding project to implement those easy gains."

What's next on Yorkshire Forward's low carbon agenda?

" - the Carbon Action Yorkshire programme. Through the regional economic strategy, the region has a target to reduce carbon by 25% by 2016. The aims are: to get companies to sign up by adopting a carbon reduction plan; to get the best value from BREW and Envirowise; and [by] persuading businesses in the region to develop new low carbon products and services."

What are the barriers to change in business?

"Businesses are hard-headed. If they can't see the advantage, they won't make the change. Companies won't change until bank managers are saying 'what are you doing about your climate change risk?' One of the things we want to do with Carbon Action Yorkshire is to get involved with the big "warriors;" the accountants and banks. A lot of accountants don't realise how influential they are. If we can influence that group, we can indirectly influence every company in the region."

What future trends do you predict?

"It's a challenge for everybody in terms of the waste landfill directive. The penalties are punitive, running into tens of millions of pounds. We have to get our heads collectively together and [focus on creating] energy from waste. Incineration is seen as unpopular publicly, but if we're going to meet targets on landfill diversion, the only way to get it done is to gather energy from waste."

What is the key to success in encouraging the region's public and private sector organisations to reduce carbon?

"It's about having the right people to champion change; it doesn't matter whether it's the public or private sectors. To get companies to change you need multiple levels of buy-in."

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Best Practice Tips

Please visit the Forum here and share a tip that you have for organisations to reduce their carbon emissions. Often the very simplest ideas can have the greatest effect in reducing carbon emissions:

• Look at investing in videoconferencing to save journeys to and from meetings - in the last year Yorkshire Forward RDA saved 17,000 miles of travel and around 3.2 tonnes of CO2 in this way.
  (Dr Stephen Brown, Sustainable Development Manager Energy and Climate Change, Yorkshire Forward)

• Don't carry unnecessary weight in your vehicle, such as roof-racks
  (Andy Taylor, Business Development Director, Ford of Europe)