Burden or

Challenge?

From Low-carbon

to High-carbon

Economy

Last year a national organization of

businesses organized for the f irst time a

conference on the ‘low-carbon economy’.

They invited me to tell them something about

the development of the circular economy.

Walking around during the conference

listening to some of the speeches and

discussions it struck me that not many

happy faces were to be seen in the crowd

Of course the theme is serious climate

change can be felt everywhere nowadays

drought hurricanes excessive rain as

general examples but what motivates people

towards change

Ive been working on increasing sustainability

all my life and saw this happen before In the

worst case it results in denial or minimal

responses In my opinion the economy is

the driver of change sometimes because of

increased regulation but mostly because of

increased prof its. So, for me, and you, the key

question is: how can businesses create prof it

based on the ‘use’ of carbon?

Every time the businesspeople were

told during this LowCarbon Economy

Conference you should minimize your CO2

emissions with x in 2030 and xx in 2050

they nodded but showed no expression

of trust or action Low Carbon feels as a

burden was my observation The complexity

of the problem and the given solution gives

the entrepreneurs a feeling of insecurity

partly because the connected language is

not familiar and partly because the impact

on production and business is anticipated

as downgrading No one feels happy with a

downgrading ambition This ambiguity hit the

crowd hard