Category: Comment

Greenwashing can cause serious reputational and financial harm to your business – but what is it, and how do you avoid it? Greenwashing is a special kind of bullshit. The phrase was coined in the 1980s to describe misleading claims about the environmental benefits of some product, service or business practice. In 2025, companies found…

What can SMEs do this year to reduce their emissions?  2025 still sounds like the future to me. 2000AD meant weird and wonderful scifi when I was a lad, and now we’re halfway from that date to the UK’s deadline for achieving net zero emissions.  The optimistic view is that we’re more or less on…

What is the role of art in achieving a sustainable economy? I always make time in November for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. With a genuinely world-class selection of new music performances on my doorstep, it’d be rude not to.  For the third year, the festival spent a day considering ‘The Current Climate’, with free…

NESO’s claim that the UK can achieve clean power by 2030 is undoubtedly bold, but it is feasible – in as much as it’s technically possible, but highly prone to political and management failures.  The newly established National Energy System Operator (NESO) has the wickedly challenging task of steering the UK’s energy providers and infrastructure…

Can behavioural nudges help drive climate resilience? That was the topic for an Interesting morning at the University of Huddersfield, based on research by Dr Jialin (Snow) Wu of the Centre for Sustainability, Responsibility, Governance and Ethics. Dr Wu studies how organisations can effectively promote environmentally-friendly behaviours by staff and customers, whether that’s encouraging workers…

The World Meteorological Organization has confirmed that global greenhouse gas emissions reached a record high last year. That shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone, but it does underline the urgency of action.  Average carbon dioxide concentration reached 420ppm in 2023 – an increase of more than half from pre-industrial levels. Along with rises in…