Climate change infrastructure threats - UK has “competitive advantage”
In the wake of this week’s Engineering the Future report calling for a radical shake up of UK infrastructure, the CBI believes UK businesses can be positive about adapting to the challenges posed by climate change.
In the wake of this week’s Engineering the Future report calling for a radical shake up of UK infrastructure, the CBI believes UK businesses can be positive about adapting to the challenges posed by climate change.
The report, according to Matt Sheldon, CBI (Senior Policy Adviser on Climate Change), is a “broadly positive piece” showing that these challenges are “by no means insurmountable”.
“This is a growth opportunity for UK business and we were glad to see that’s how this report portrays it.”
Engineering the Future - a coalition of engineering bodies representing 450,000 engineers - outlines 20 recommendations that they believe UK businesses and regulators should take into account in order to deal with possible future impacts of climate change.
In an interconnected society like the UK, where power, ICT, water and transport are often interdependent, the authors predict potential “cascades of failure” if one area of infrastructure should fail due to events such as extreme weather.
Power stations near rivers and the coasts are at risk if flood defences are breached by a flash flood, flooding could lead to power cuts, which in turn could affect the telecommunications network, cutting internet connections, and also causing ICT equipment to fail; equipment that is often needed to restore power.
Adapting to climate change will require making infrastructure as resilient as possible and able to cope with any possible increase in extreme weather events, as well as long term effects such as rising seas, says the report.
What should businesses do?
Sheldon told Climate Action he was heartened to find that Engineering the Future’s findings mirror the CBI's own, published in a report by them in September 2010.
A “joined up” approach to dealing with the effects of climate change is an area where the engineers and the CBI are particularly in agreement.
One of report's authors, Professor Will Stewart of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, explained what this meant in practice.
“As far as the companies are concerned, I think what we’re after is a coordinated approach to issues - companies should want to talk to each other across sectors.”
Effective communication is a key factor in ensuring businesses cope with a future affected by climate change.
Sheldon highlighted existing initiatives such as ClimateWise in the insurance sector and the London Accord for the financial services as examples of good practice but believes sharing information from these types of projects and “joining them together” is really important.
“We see a role for government there as well”, he said, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), who commissioned the engineers’ report, now have a great deal of information about the risks to infrastructure.
“Publishing that in an accessible form would be of real value to businesses looking at their own vulnerabilities,” said Sheldon.
Businesses particularly need to have good relations with their communications providers.
By working together contingencies can be put in place that minimise the impact of extreme events.
“Companies need to go to their communications provider and discuss the problems with them and start to get a handle on what the communications provider’s issues are and what their limitations are and vice versa, it’s a two way street.”
But in terms of regulation, government does not need to take the lead on adaptation said Professor Stewart.
“Restrictions should be as light as possible, they should be as flexible as possible, as adaptable as possible.”
Stewart noted that regulators could also be a source of neutral expertise for businesses.
Reasons for Optimism
With such a large engineering community, the UK seems capable of tackling future infrastructure problems.
“I think the one thing that we’d like to highlight is that, as this report does, the expertise is there and the risks that we’re facing, although they’re extremely significant, we’re not going into uncharted territory,” said Sheldon.
The Met Office and university research increases the accuracy of long term forecasting available to UK businesses and gives them a “competitive advantage”, Sheldon believes.
If handled correctly, this challenge is an opportunity for growth for two reasons according to Sheldon.
“Firstly, making our infrastructure more resilient increases the attraction of the UK as a place to invest internationally and secondly we have these sources of knowledge and expertise we could sell internationally as well.”
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