Resource Efficiency Yorkshire - REY - is a recently re-branded and expanded not-for profit firm founded by Yorkshire Forward, the Regional Development Agency, to guide and encourage business in Yorkshire and Humber to increase resource efficiency and cut greenhouse gas emissions. With regional and European funding of £9.8 million, it aims to stimulate the market for energy, resource and carbon-saving services in Yorkshire and Humber.

Andrew Hartley joined REY's forerunner, Recycling Action Yorkshire (RAY), in June 2005 and was responsible for developing the initial scoping studies into a detailed business plan, forming a new team and moving into delivery. A key focus has been building awareness and attracting additional funding into the programme, which saw the initial £1.5million core funding grow to £3million.

"RAY created an additional regional spend of £13.6 million on recycled products in its first three years, supported 300 businesses to recycle an additional 149,200 tonnes of material, and saved an estimated 114,200 tonnes of CO2," Andrew says.

This led to the creation of 82 new jobs and private sector investment of £2.4million, alongside £620,000 of additional public sector investment leveraged from national partners and created new business sales of £6.5million and Gross Value Added of £11.9million.

Andrew was previously Director of Strategy & Communications at glass industry trade body British Glass.

How does REY intend to help local businesses to save resources and cut carbon emissions?

"In partnership with Yorkshire Forward, we have now developed a second, three year programme of support to businesses on resource efficiency. This new £9.8m programme called Resource Efficiency Yorkshire (REY) will include the existing RAY team and activities but requires the substantial expansion of our operations. The funding is provided by Yorkshire Forward and the European Regional Development Fund.

"The aim is to increase the competitiveness of regional businesses through the wide-spread adoption of resource efficiency measures, which will also mean reduced emissions.

"We'll be acting to ensure that our support increases the awareness and implementation by businesses of measures to reduce their consumption of resources - energy, waste, water, raw materials - and to embed this activity into their practices for the long term.

"We will also continue to develop sustainable, ongoing networks which help businesses, particularly SME's, to learn from each other.

"The overall policy aim is to 'decouple' economic growth from resource use and environmental impact.

"We'll measure our progress through the number of jobs and businesses created, the degree of private sector investment attracted, the number of businesses we help and the skills created in the process. Of course, a major indicator will be the actual reduction in GHG emissions, landfill, and other indicators.

"We aim to break down the current market failure, creating a mutually supportive, virtuous cycle of growing demand and increasing supply of resource efficient services."

Your organisation has recently changed its title: what's that all about?

"The change of title reflects the wider role of the programme but also provides some clear continuity. Recycling is one of the core elements of resource efficiency but it is not everything a business should be looking at and other activities lead to greater carbon reductions.

"We have also had to consider the Government's review of all business support which means that changes to national environmental support programmes and communications are very likely. These changes will undoubtedly require REY to adjust our future branding."

How will you choose which businesses to back?

"REY will work with businesses in four main ways:

"The general business community can access resource efficiency support through the Business Link and REY is developing a focused, long-term capacity building programme for Business Link advisers and customer contact centre staff.

"In targeted groups of businesses, for example in the food and drink sector, which have the greatest opportunity to reduce emissions and improve competitiveness.

"For re-use and recycling businesses through a team of specialist project managers, and for environmental consultants through the Green Business Support Organisation, an ongoing specialist best-practice network."

Will REY play any role in the region's public sector?

"REY works closely with the regions local authorities, universities, the NHS and other public sector organisations. These organisations make up a huge procurement pull for more resource-efficient products and services. Local authorities also have a strong leadership role for the waste and resource efficiency agenda with their local communities and businesses, particularly SME's."

Do you see REY as a role model for other regions?

"The Regional Development Agency's are very effective at sharing information and from the beginning REY has been a member of, and benefited from the ReMaDe UK network. REY has therefore learnt a lot from other regions and in turn has influenced other regions to pursue similar delivery models.

"However the business make-up, economic status and geography of each region is so different it is very difficult without an intense regional understanding to say which delivery model would be best."

You are also chairman of the ReMaDe UK Network: what does this organisation do?

"The RNUK is a network of regional recycling market development organisations from across the UK. It provides access to good practise and experience based on many years of operation of support programmes in other regions. The initial development and delivery of the programme benefited greatly from access to this combined knowledge."

Will you be involved in the Low Carbon Best Practice Exchange in October?

"I will be at the LCIN event in Harrogate to get an insight into the suppliers of resource efficient products and services, to continue to highlight the win-win impact of resource efficiency for business - good for the bottom line, good for the planet, and to support colleagues from Carbon Action Yorkshire who are sponsoring the event."

What is your proudest low carbon achievement?

"Developing a business focused support programme which had an outward focus on increasing investment, creating jobs and saving businesses cash, while behind the scenes its primary measure carbon reduction."

What are you working on right now?

"Mainstreaming business resource efficiency advice through the Business Link. The aim is to work with the region's 120 customer-facing Business Link staff to ensure the benefits of resource efficiency, estimated to be a potential £553m in Yorkshire and Humber, can be accessed by all the regions businesses no matter their size or sector."

What advice do you have for other low-carbon leaders?

"I've made most progress for my own endeavours when working in partnership with other programmes, sharing information and being flexible. The level of expertise and ideas around is just amazing. It keeps me focused on improving the work we do."

Carbon Audits – Business As Usual?

A carbon footprint measurement is the base that an emissions reduction strategy stands on. It shapes the reduction targets an organisation must reach, and helps to prioritise where in the business the greatest efforts must focus. It is often said that estimating the carbon footprint is the first step in a practical effort to reduce emissions.

So is estimating the footprint a task that is undertaken once and once only? There are many reasons to resist such a simplistic notion, say experts. “It’s pointless just doing it once,” says Jenny Harrison, Deloitte director responsible for the company’s renewable energy assurance and carbon practice. In short, a regular carbon audit may be needed. “This becomes even more important when you move onto the issue of assurance, and where emissions are independently verified,” Harrison says.

“The larger corporates are gearing up to doing footprints in this way,” observes Cindy Cahill, Deloitte's UK head of climate change and sustainability. “This is partly because of new legislation – the Companies Act 2006 specifically – and the section dealing with the material impact on the environment made by a business,” Cahill says.

Conversion factors – work in progress

Few if any organisations have the resources to carry out bespoke audits on a regular basis, so companies such as Deloitte are developing practical tools based on the best methodological guidance currently available.

This is no simple matter because the input data for spreadsheets will cover a wide range of activities, many of which have different units of measurement. “Travel can be difficult to measure,” says Cindy Cahill. “Companies will typically to use one or two travel agents, booking online. But this will usually be recorded as a pound value, not as miles travelled,” she says. Business consumption of electricity will in most cases be recorded as a pound value rather than MWh, and so it is for most business activities.

Spreadsheets must be capable of calculating the emissions caused by all the processes of a given activity, including heating and lighting, combustion in manufacturing, shipping freight, passenger travel, production of raw materials, or treatment of waste. For each source of CO2 or other greenhouse gases, these data will then be converted into the amount of carbon emitted, using documented emission factors.

Reliable and accurate conversion factors are essential for an accurate picture of the company’s footprint. “There has been a lot of discussion about conversion factors, and what they should be, how they apply to green energy supply, for example. They can differ by country. Put together it can mean having to accept a certain level of error,” Cahill says. “It’s important to be clear about the level of potential error, otherwise claims about the footprint can result in misunderstanding,” says Jenny Harrison.

Stakeholders expect high quality data

To grasp why it might be advisable to carry out regular carbon audits, it is necessary to look at the drivers for assessing an organisation’s footprint in the first place, suggests Nick Leaney, a Chartered Surveyor and director at Aardvark. Experienced in developing commercial climate change programmes, Aardvark directors worked on the steering group that set up the UK Emissions Trading Scheme in 2000 and more recently, the company conducted a greenhouse gas audit for the British Red Cross Society.

“The drivers could come from shareholders, or the wider public – as employees or as customers. I would say that 95% of our clients aren’t philanthropic, they’re concerned about regulatory issues and they’re the kind of organisations whose names are in the papers every day,” he says. “Our clients contact us because they might have a member of the board who is keen on green issues – a finance director looking at energy costs – or because it is part of their CSR objectives, for example,” says Leaney.

“There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach,” suggests Simon Miller, a senior consultant at Best Foot Forward, a consultancy that recently carried out an ecological footprint and carbon audit of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE).

“We have found that receptiveness to a clients needs are crucial. A footprint assessment for a well-known company might be of public interest and scrutinised very closely. Another company might not be so visible, and just starting out,” Miller says.

Nevertheless, there are some general principles that underpin most reputable methodologies for assessing the footprint. “Two obvious ones are the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which has been out for a few years and is quite long and discursive; and ISO14064, which is a drier document,” he says. Both of these offer guidance for measuring direct emissions from vehicles, boilers, tailpipes or chimneys, and indirect emissions from energy supplies, for example.

The changing scope of footprint measurement

“The hardest bit is the bit a business doesn’t have control over, or data about,” says Nick Leaney from Aardvark. “Then there’s the issue of the cut-off point. Few UK businesses have control over all production – most are involved in assembly and distribution – so there’s the question of where does the carbon footprint start and finish?”

Leaney’s observation about the scope of a footprint measurement points to another reason why companies that are serious about emissions reduction will carry out regular audits. Work on improving measurement is ongoing, says Simon Miller of Best Foot Forward. An important area of work is the development of PAS 2050 by the Carbon Trust, DEFRA, and the British Standards Institution (BSI), with the aim of improving measurement of emissions for products and services. This work could lay the foundation for a carbon labeling system, he says.

“It’s probably several months away. The core document is quite technical and I’d be surprised if companies took it on themselves without third party help – it has quite high data requirements,” he says.

Companies shouldn’t assume that regular carbon audits are beyond their means, suggests Nick Leaney from Aardvark. “It doesn’t have to be an expansive, long drawn out exercise. Companies can make a start by collating the data they already hold, taking an integrated business approach to measurement,” he says.

Key questions:
• What outcomes are we looking for by estimating our carbon footprint?
• Which stakeholders will be most interested in our footprint data?
• What data is contained within our regular business processes?