BUSINESS LOOKS AHEAD TO NEW ENERGY

Vision 2050; The new agenda for business
January 2010 (World Business Council for Sustainable Development)

SUMMARY
A personality trait of successful business entrepreneurs is a self-confidence that can easily become arrogance.

One of today's most interesting examples is that of the Silicon Valley titans who, having been lucky enough to have been at the right place to win big in the 1990s’ information technology and internet miracles, have set their sites on transforming the way the world generates its electricity and uses personal transportation.

In Vision 2050, the 29 corporate members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) gave their arrogance a methodical exercising by taking on nothing less ambitious than predicting the future. As the result of dialogues in 20 countries with hundreds of companies and a spectrum of experts, the Vision 2050 Project was able to create a description of a world that is approaching genuine sustainability in the year 2050 and then extrapolate the means to get to that world.

The realization of the very hopeful Vision 2050 will require basic changes in the world’s governance, economic framework, ways of doing business and human ways. Vision 2050 believes these changes to be needed and feasible but, more than that, to represent enormous opportunities. The businesses that make sustainability their strategy, the report contends, can reap huge returns.

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Vision 2050 asks 3 questions: (1) What is a sustainable world? How does today’s world get to it? What can business do to maximize the transition to a sustainable world?

The answers, in their simplest forms, are to reach the point where earth’s burgeoning population (1) lives well and (2) lives within the earth’s limits.

Living well means having access to and the ability to afford education, healthcare, mobility, the basics of food, water, energy and shelter, and consumer goods.

Living within the limits of earth’s carrying capacity means living within available natural resources and without further harm to biodiversity, climate and ecosystems.

The report offers a vision, not a plan. It invites dialogue that, its creators hope, will explain the way business can stop doing today’s business-as-usual. Improving the use of resources and materials 4-to-10 times over will cut the volume needed of those resources and materials to 1 planet’s worth, from the 2.3 planets’ worth that will result from business-as-usual.

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COMMENTARY
The vision: In 2050, some 9 billion citizens of the earth live well and within the limits of earth’s carrying capacity.

The predicted 2050 population represents a 30% increase in 4 decades. For business, that’s a lot of new customers – and new competition. But the world’s resources will be taxed and its climate will be challenged. Today’s lifestyles will be threatened.

First rule of the new world order: Money and happiness are not the same. (click thru to: Is GDP an obsolete measure of progress?)

Living well means having access to and the ability to afford education, healthcare, mobility, the basics of food, water, energy and shelter, and consumer goods.

Living within the limits of earth’s carrying capacity means living within available natural resources and without further harm to biodiversity, climate and ecosystems.

Vision 2050, based on the contributing companies’ and experts’ observations, projections and expectations, is an attempt to guide leaders of governments, businesses and civil society so they can avoid the mistakes of the past.

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The vision is of a conflict-free 2050 in which:
(1) There is diversity and interdependence, with countries and cultures remaining heterogeneously intact but with a greater awareness of the other peoples of the earth and all their dependence on it;
(2) there is a different economic reality in which growth is “decoupled” from unconstrained and unguarded destruction and consumption and rejoined to the well-being of society, the world's economies are no longer "developed or developing" but are "developed or emerging" and international perspectives are integrated;
(3) there is multi-partner governance from the global to the local levels with a mosaic of partnerships from grassroots to international organizations involved in problem solving;

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(4) markets innovate and deploy solutions through government-created frameworks that are transparent, inclusive, with internalized externalities, and expanded sustainability and, with defined targets, a level playing field and no prejudicial barriers, business is a force for delivering to consumers sustainable products that deliver better value;
(5) the preceding changes set the stage for effectively responding to climate change with New Energy, Energy Efficiency well-managed agriculture, and sustainable forestry, water management, transportation and communications, so that (a) GhGs are dramatically reduced, (b) recycling of materials, waste and pollutants is the norm. (c) the destruction of ecosystems is reversed and (d) biodiversity is enhanced in the service of a prospering society.
(6) An evolved workplace and evolved employers will serve the larger goals of living well and within the earth’s limits.

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The path: Vision 2050’s path has 9 elements, interconnected by water, food and energy, that define all the radical policy and lifestyle changes in businesses and markets needed to achieve a sustainable world.

To move down the path, the world must:
(1) address the needs of 9 billion, especially women and children, for education and economic empowerment, which will require significantly more “eco-efficient” answers;
(2) make the cost of externalities, like the greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs) of fossil fuels, part of the cost of doing business;
(3) double agricultural output to feed a 30% larger and more affluent population without adding to the burden of the earth’s land and water;
(4) stop deforestation and increase planted forests;
(5) bring GhGs to a peak by 2020 and cut them 50% below 2005 levels by 2050 through a shift to New Energy and Energy Efficiency;
(6) shift all personal transport to low-emissions or emissions-free technology;
(7) improve the use of resources and materials by 4-to-10 times to cut the volume needed of resources and materials to 1 planet’s worth from the 2.3 planets’ worth that will result from business-as-usual.

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Opportunities: Challenges to growth, urbanization, scarcity and environmental change will be the key drivers for business. The cost for needed natural resources, health and education will be ~US$ 0.5-to-1.5 trillion per year in 2020, going up to US$ 3-to-10 trillion per year in 2050, 1.5-to-4.5% of world GDP.

Opportunities will come across a broad spectrum that includes everything from “developing and maintaining low carbon, zero-waste cities and infrastructure” to “improving and managing biocapacity, ecosystems, lifestyles and livelihoods.”

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Indirect opportunities will follow in finance, information/communication technology and associated partnerships. Though risks must be confronted, “smarter systems, smarter people, smarter designs and smarter businesses” can achieved the 2050 vision.

The new agenda for leaders will necessitate a shift from thinking of climate change and limited resources as environmental problems to thinking of them as economic challenges with opportunities and costs.

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Growth and progress will only come through the use of resources that are renewable and recyclable. Business competition will be green. Leaders will seek investment opportunities in solutions to the new challenges. There will necessarily be an associated shift in regulation, markets, consumer preferences, pricing and the measurement of profits and losses.

Successful leaders will, as they do now, create cost-effective answers for what people need and want but the new answers will be based on sustainable values.

In its work, Vision 2050 found the needed knowledge, science, technologies, skills and financial resources are now available. Vision 2050 foresees new partnerships between political and social leaders that will create new partnerships between business, governments and civil society groups to formulate and maintain principles and practices of sustainability to put what is already available to its best use.

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The way forward: It comes down to the business cliché of seizing the opportunity in the crisis. If environmental, population, resource and economic challenges are gathering, those with solutions will have enormous opportunities.

Specific principles that will support seizing those opportunities:
(1) There is no simple, single path. It will be necessary to mold existing and new finance, food, forests, transport, energy and city systems into a complex foundational structure for the 21st century and the 2050 vision. It will require an awareness of what worked and what didn’t in the past, as well as external enabling conditions and enlightened leadership.

(2) Business will need to partner in a wide variety of domains, sectors and regions. Government, civil society and the public must all be equally dedicated to the vision. Delayed action is more costly action. Risks and opportunities fall into 3 categories that need further study: (a) A new business agenda, (b) new non-business priorities, and (c) new monitoring and analyis.

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The final and perhaps most important point: The journey begins now.

The 29 members of WBCSD: Accenture, Alcoa, Allianz, ArcelorMittal, The Boeing Company, Duke Energy Corporation, E.ON, Eskom, Evonik Industries, FALCK Group, Fortum Corporation, GDF SUEZ, GrupoNueva, Holcim, Infosys Technologies, Osaka Gas Co., PricewaterhouseCoopers, The Procter & Gamble Company, Rio Tinto, Royal Philips Electronics, Sony Corporation, Storebrand, Syngenta International, The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Toyota Motor Corporation, Umicore, Vattenfall, Volkswagen, Weyerhaeuser Company.

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QUOTES
- From the Vision 2050 report: “The Vision 2050 work provides a basis for interaction with other enterprises, civil society and governments about how a sustainable future can be realized. We hope to challenge companies to rethink their products, services and strategies, envisioning new opportunities that put sustainability at the center, to communicate with and motivate employees and their boards, and to develop leadership positions in the wider world. We invite governments to consider the policies and regulations needed to guide and organize society and give markets incentives to move toward sustainability, and people to make a difference in their daily lives.”

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- From the report: “In this report we’ve identified many [business opportunities] and ways in which to leverage them as the world addresses its challenges: infrastructure to build, medicine to discover, technology to develop, new strains of food to create and grow to feed a growing population…[One opportunity] trumps them all: our Vision 2050 of 9 billion people living well within the limits of one planet. While we have the world’s attention, while the global focus is on environment and economics, we can act boldly to break the unsustainable model of growth-bydepletion. By 2050, we can replace it with a model of growth based on the balanced use of renewable resources and recycling those that are not…The pathway to this sustainable world contains opportunities and risks, and will radically change the ways in which companies do business. Many companies will change and adapt, while others will be challenged to make the transition.”

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- From the report: “This report represents the first step in a 40-year journey. It is a call for further dialogue, and it is a call for action. Collaboration, conviction and courage will be required to visualize and implement the radical changes needed for long-term prosperity while succeeding in current conditions. Business leaders will want, and need, to lead toward sustainability, and we invite political and civil society leaders to join us in this challenging and exciting journey.”