Resilience from Diversification

Access to Sustainable Power is the Challenge of Our Time, but when clean power sources are diversified it promises more stability for our future.

The past century has been plagued with conflicts fueled by the want or need of fossil fuels. From the attack on Pearl Harbour more than 70 years ago, to the occasional collapse of a government brought on by the inability to manage the import or export of fossil fuels. Just recently in Sri Lanka, the rising global fuel costs for oil precipitated the bankruptcy of a once thriving economy.

I recently came back from vacation in Malawi a land-locked country of 19 million that surrounds Lake Malawi. Like many countries today, Malawi struggles to provide basic services to a large number of its people. Clean running water, waste disposal, electricity and the infrastructure needed to provide these services are not yet developed.

During my week there, the gas pumps at every station stopped pumping. The government simply ran out of foreign currency to buy imported fuel. This was not the first time either. The same thing happened in January.

In countries like Malawi, it is the people that need to be resilient because access to affordable and steady power simply is not. There is always a tipping point though where resilience can’t be maintained. When fuel runs out at gas stations in Malawi, black market fuel smuggled into the country quickly appears but at double the price. Very quickly the industies all cut back on using power, people run out of savings, and livelihoods shrivel.

Sadly, Malawi’s most used local source of power is its shrinking forests. All of its trees are being cut down to make charcoal for heating and cooking. Some of this is additionally exported to get foreign currency needed for the gas. At night in the regional capital of Blantyre my throat would itch from soot as a result of all the charcoal stoves. It is completely understandable why this is happening. Fossil fuels, oil and gas and other

commodities are not locally available. Like Sri Lanka and many other countries in the world, these fossil fuel power sources must be imported. The forest resources do not have to be imported yet, but sadly it is disappearing faster than it can grow back.

Development Challenges for a Resilient Future

Malawi and countries in the global south are often rich in a variety of clean energy raw materials. Sunlight is plentiful, water bodies with rivers and windy valleys or windy off-shore areas with shallow coastlines can often be found in the developing world in some combination. Some countries even have geo-thermal resources (the same power which ignites volcanos) like Kenya and Indonesia. That said we live in a world where when you win - you win more, and when you lose? Well, you can end up in a hole too deep to dig yourself out.

To harness sunlight in Malawi, it will take capital and know-how requiring foreign currency and technology from other countries. In other words this needs foreign direct investment. A large advantage over similar investments of fossil fuel drilling or digging is that once the investement is made the power could come from local sunlight which is a far more stable natural resource. This allows the local power system on the whole to be massively more resilient. Maybe even the remaining forests could be saved, because power generation happens on the spot with solar power systems.

Moving Money

Enter the world of carbon offsets Projects involving solar, wind and hydroelectric power projects are everywhere these days and quickly multiplying. Some people criticize carbon offsets because they believe that companies that buy them are not planning to really clean up their own processes. Most of the business community as well as myself, feel that carbon offset projects are critical to reconstruct the power infrastructure of our planet. The case of Malawi clearly shows where without some outside funding (via carbon offset projects), countries will struggle to transition to cleaner more resilient sources for power.

Where Malawi sits 13 degrees south of the equator, Thailand sits 15 degrees north. Thailand is starting to shed its dependency on imported fossil fuels by switching to solar. Siam Solar Energy 1* is an example of one project receiving funds from companies looking to mitigate their carbon emissions. It is currently generating up to 148,000 MWh of clean energy per year. Thailand is currently Asia’s second largest oil importer. It is 80% reliant on fossil fuels for its energy needs. Therefore home generated solar power will play a leading role in decreasing that over the years to come. Getting that done quicker is always better and carbon offset funding is helping that happen today.

Spending on a needed clean energy transition not only provides for a cleaner future; it also provides a more resilient energy mix for the country’s people and business. Here are the steps I list for clients interested in getting green by using carbon offsets:

1. Understand the amount of emissions your processes generate

2. Collectively discuss and decide what region of the world you ideally would like to develop

3. Collectively discuss what general offset type you are interested in. Is it:

a. Protecting and increasing forests, mangroves or other carbon sink areas?

b. Developing sustainable energy power that replaces fossil fuel power like solar, wind, or other green energy project?

c. Community energy transition projects – these reduce emissions by switching high emission power sources used by a community to a more efficient cleaner power source (eg. switching a community to use more efficient cookstoves)?

4. Reach out to partners that offer legitimate options and start offsetting!

5. Inform your stakeholders of your actions.

If your company is not already involved with carbon offsets to mitigate your current emissions, then there are companies that can help. There are even websites where you can purchase carbon offsets as an individual or small business. I will be using one to mitigate my trip to Malawi. Offsets are a way to invest for change – so be a change maker!

* Siam Solar Energy 1 is a project that bundles 10 solar power plants across the provinces of Kanchanaburi and Suphanburi (central Thailand). These PV (photovoltaic) systems use the latest technology to generate electricity and provide it to the grid. Annually this is currently providing 148,00 MWh.

Eating Into Our Future

Agricultural Emissions - What is happening? What More Can be Done?

As the global population hits 8 billion people and growing, there will always be the question of how long can the Earth support humanity? We all need food to survive and that for most takes talking about the emissions associated with food production “off the table”. That would be a mistake though. Some in the agriculture industry are making changes to be more sustainable and what they are doing can show a way forward for our future. Additionally, we logistics professionals can also make an impact.

First let’s look at the agriculture sector on the whole. Combined with forestry and land clearing, this sector emits nearly a quarter of all green house gasses. There are many studies that can raise this amount or slightly lower it depending on what is put into the sector and what is not, but we can see that it is significant. It is even larger than the emissions from our own transportation sector.

I am fortunate that I myself work with agriculture sector companies through my work with South Pole (a leading sustainability company). As the logistics expert, I work on different projects with South Pole as needed. South Pole helps major MNCs with figuring out their green house gas emissions as well as provides them with solutions to reduce or mitigate them.

There are two areas of concern when it comes to the agriculture sector. One is what is happening on the farm, and another area is how our need for food and timber changes wilderness into pasture or farmland. The driver of both is our demand for particular foods. 8 billion people are now pressing for something to eat and agriculture is working to deliver that, but at a cost to our planet’s future. Let’s start with the farm; this is where our current food is produced after all and the agricultural yields here impacts how much land is grabbed from our wild spaces.

Down on the Farm

I spoke to a contact of South Pole, who works a lot with the agriculture side of things. She provided me with some main emission sources in that sector as well as what some companies are concentrating their reductions work on.

Main sources are:

· Enteric fermentation of ruminant livestock during digestion. It is belched out or passed out via the large intestive.

· Manure management (in dairies and piggeries)

· Rice cultivation

· Fertiliser use

Below is a breakdown of these from the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations 2018)

What’s a Farmer to do?

When you look at crops and livestock top emission countries, it is unsurprisingly countries that produce most of the world’s food. They are the most populated countries as well. Progress therefore on these emissions reduction actions are vital.

Four common initiatives to reduce green house gasses happening now are:

1. soil carbon sequestration schemes

2. tree planting

3. animal effluent management (e.g. covering a waste pond from a dairy or piggery and flaring captured methane or turning it into biogas)

4. controlled burning of Savannas in the early dry season to prevent greater emissions from late season wildfires (Savanna Burning method)

More solutions are coming out which is encouraging, but there is really a whole lot more to be done on the farm which scnientists are working on. Furthermore, until the yeilds and logistics behind agriculture can keep up with consumer demands, the second largest category of this sector’s emissions continues to grow unabated.

Saving our Forests

Emissions from tearing down forests (our carbon bank and CO2 hungry plant life) is amazingly high (43% of the sector’s total emissions in 2018).

The driver behind deforestation is largely due to farm and pasture lands growth. When this is done, all of the stored carbon in the forests are released. These emissions are classified by FAO as “agricultural land use” emissions. In 2018 Indonesia was the top emitter of agricultural land use emissions in the world because of the destruction (by draining or fire) of peat lands associated with oil palm cultivation.

With global populations continuing to grow and the yeilds on existing farms not keeping pace. Emissions from robbing our planet’s lush forests is a major concern for all of us.

Who can do what with land is largely the responsibility of governments who are the overall managers. Industry and civil society have a large impact on whether land is protected from deforestation or not because policy and enforcement are driven by these blocks. That said, there are tangible initiatives that can be done which can make small impacts on the overall agriculture sector emission numbers.

How to Reduce Emissions Outside the Farm

Most of us may be off the farm, but we are not out of the system for the sheer fact that we all consume food. So what emission reduction initiatives can be done when you are a sustainable logistics leader?

1. Support efforts to reduce food waste. Logisticians already do this, but in many parts of the world it is not uncommon to have over 20% of food spoiled before it ever reaches the table. Our industry has to support transport innovation and business development for our rural communities here in Southeast Asia (especially small holder communities). This will further reduce waste prior to market and further increase rural incomes.

2. For your company sponsored food events, have a plan for left overs and try to select low emission food offerrings. All food is not equal (look at the top farm emissions source above), through reducing employee consumption of high emission foods, you can set an example for your company’s culture.

3. Get your workforce educated on the need for healthy biodiversity (Sustainability Goal #15) in your area. Most people today are separated from nature from birth. We live only in people adapted environs, so there is no understanding of just how dependent we are on nature. At DHL I created a “ranger program” to do that, where my team provided community members an understanding about local plants, animals and their importance through nature walks. Programs like these indirectly influence that greater discussion regarding wilderness protection.

These are just three initiatives. Please let me know how your company is “greening” up our connection with food. I’m always looking for more solutions, so please continue to engage with our LogiSYM community when you can make time. Together we can stop eating away our future. But as you can see, it will take innovative work and some food choice management.

The Emissions of Work

How to Make a Green Working Culture

In this month’s Green Corridor I wanted to talk about the emissions of society physically going to work. In working out the carbon footprint of businesses that I have dealings with, there is always a section in Scope 3 emissions for the staff getting to work. For businesses, the added activity of driving across town or flying out to visit clients creates even larger amounts of emissions.

When we as individuals are going to and from work, we experience physically the emitting of greenhouse gasses by our transportation sector. We can see the exhaust coming out of tailpipes from cars and trucks. We can hear the jet engines overhead. We can smell the pollution while walking near our busy roadways (sometimes covering our faces). We can touc

h it when wiping soot from our eyes and skin.

So what if everything was different? What if technology came into the picture that allowed for far less moving about in fossil fuel burning transport? The recent pandemic offered a historic opportunity to see what a dramatic change in workspace cultures could have for our planet.

Researchers at University of Warwick, U.K. were able to take the emission numbers from pre-COVID 2019 (over 17.4 million tons of Green House Gas) and compare them to the emissions when work at home became the norm in 2020. The reduction to emissions generated was tremendous which should come as no surprise. For 2 IT companies in the Warwick study commuter emissions were actually reduced up to 97% during the year of 2020.

But even when it has been proven that productivity and worker output was not impacted by where people worked, there are bosses that want people to get back to the office. Why?

The mind-set challenge for all businesses today is to recognise the following:

1. That commuter and business travel miles are a significant source of planet damaging GHG emissions.

2. There are work life balance advantages to working remotely.

3. Working remotely was proven to be as productive as working in offices thanks to the remote working technology in place today.

4. There are cost savings when office space is reduced as a result of staff working remotely.

Many jobs require people to be at their workplace. In the USA for example it is estimated that 57% of the workforce is considered as “front-line” meaning that they would need to commute a fairly significant amount, with little opportunity to use IT in order to work remotely.

In these situations, interventions for companies that want to reduce commuter and business travel carbon emissions:

1. Continue to keep air business travel to a minimum and track it closely

2. Keep remote working as part of your business culture

3. Stagger work hours to allow that employees are not stuck in traffic congestion. This reduces emissions and un-necessary stress.

4. For sales staff that travel to clients – lease electric transport in place of ICE transport either for your employees directly or for car services you are using

5. Incentiviz

e public transport use amongst staff to reduce commuting emissions

Working in offices for set hours is not an activity that has been around for thousands of years. Only early industrialization made set hours for work a standard for efficient manufacturing. We have an opportunity now to reset what will be the working culture for our post-industrial workforces. Let’s make sure the reduction of emissions is primary to what work culture we make going forward.