What, then, should this sustainable future look like? Also here in Belgium/Flanders.

 

Industry and business in general will increasingly evolve towards sustainability, as it increasingly focuses on integrating and improving the eco-efficiency of production processes and products. Eco-efficiency in this context does not mean less, but different. Production processes will be reconsidered so that applications which today still emit CO2 in their life cycle and require energy from fossil fuel, will supply energy in the future. Typical examples of this are not only the current low-energy houses, but houses which will supply net energy to the electricity grid over and above their own energy use. The cost of energy and the supply of natural gas or petroleum for heating and cooling of buildings will largely fall away. In summer the incoming solar heat will be stored so that these houses will remain cool and pleasant in summer without the use of expensive and energy-intensive air conditioning, and this heat will be stored in the ground. Afterwards, in winter, the stored heat will be recovered and will heat these same buildings. For such an approach one only needs a simple circulation pump, of the type that is already being used with central heating boilers, although the use of “high” temperature radiators (water of 40º to 60º) will be excluded. Underfloor heating on the ground floor as well as on other floors will become standard. Such underfloor heating is “low” temperature heating (20º to 30º), which is compatible with recovered ground heat. In addition, the buildings will supply energy to the electricity grid through the large-scale installation of PV panels, small wind turbines, biogas installations linked to mini-CHP, combined heat and power, etc... These systems will generate enough electricity for domestic use (mainly lighting) and for charging the electric cars in the garage or the driveway. The surplus of generated electricity will be injected into the electricity grid.

 

Cars and transport will be or become electric. Alreadly, we are seeing the introduction of hybrid cars by Toyota, Lexus, Renault, etc… For automobile manufacturers these cars form the logical transition and stepping stone to fully electric cars. If car batteries today can already guarantee enough capacity for an action radius of at least 400 km, then these cars would not only ensure much cheaper and more energy-efficient transport, but also greater comfort and ease of use. As a matter of fact, hybrid and electric cars were the first reliable cars. Only after the availability of cheap fuel on a mass scale since the 1940-50s did car manufacturers begin to rely more on combustion engines.

 

There are, in fact, few other alternatives for passenger and goods transport in the offing. Only hydrogen is mentioned in this regard, but less and less. To this day hydrogen can hardly be produced sustainably. It is largely produced, directly or indirectly, on the basis of that same finite and expensive petroleum.  At present sustainable hydrogen production would involve splitting water electrolytically with the necessary electricity coming from sustainable energy, wind turbines, PV panels. It is clear that, when one has the choice of propelling cars either electrically or via a detour (from electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity [via fuel cells in cars]), direct electric propulsion of transport is the cheapest and most effective way. In the distant future it is hoped that hydrogen could be produced directly from water and solar rays. However, this still requires much research and no certainty exists that it will be successful. What is gradually becoming a realistic use of hydrogen as energy carrier, though, is the production of hydrogen from the mud and sludge of water treatment installations by “cultivating” specific hydrogen-producing bacteria. The hydrogen thus produced can supply enough energy to drive domestic water treatment installations, which currently entail a high energy cost. In this way such water treatment installations can become self-sustaining and profitable entities which contribute to sustainable living in urban areas.

 

In this context it is clear that sustainable energy will be electricity. At present electricity in itself is not yet sustainable because of its production by means of gas and coal power stations, nuclear power stations, etc… Solar panels, wind turbines, hydro-electric power stations, bio-gas power stations, deep geo-thermal power stations all supply sustainable energy and do so in the form of electricity, either linked to the production of heat and therefore CHP or combined heat and power, or otherwise. The fusion reactors of the future, too, will supply electricity. Sustainable energy will therefore be electric. Such a conclusion also has implications for the distribution of electricity. It means that the transport of the future will require charging points alongside roads, motorways and in car parks. These charging points will withdraw relatively large quantities of power from the grid in short spaces of time, not so much individually but through the aggregate of the millions of passenger cars and trucks that drive on our roads every day. This involves a rethink of the electricity grid and attention being given to the stability of this grid. 

 

Attention to grid stability will also be dictated by the many, small and large power stations that will exist. Every wind turbine, every PV panel, in fact every house can supply a net contribution to the grid and possibly also withdraw energy from it. The current electricity grid is not adapted to or designed for such use and distribution. It is extremely well equipped to ensure the supply of power from a limited number of large production points (power stations) to all houses and to industry, not to inject electricity coming from these houses and industry into the grid. Here lies the first major but unavoidable technological challenge.

 

Transport, passenger vehicles and trucks will withdraw power, but for most of the day and night these vehicles, including trucks, are actually parked next to the road, in car parks or at home. If they are then connected to the grid, these same vehicles can make a significant contribution to grid stability and even supply power to the grid. Electric cars do not only store electricity in their batteries when parked, but can also contribute to the stabilisation of the electricity grid by making electricity stored in the battery available during times of peak demand on the grid. This integration will require new software and hardware components linking up with the numerous new products and processes that need to be designed.

 

Such product and process renewal will extend to all branches of industry, e.g. also the chemical industry with sustainable chemistry, through the integration of the metallurgical industry and energy storage, rather than as energy guzzler. Examples of this, which will be realised in the short term, are the use of residual heat from blast-furnace plants and foundries so that other nearby industries or housing complexes do not need to install or maintain their own heating systems. Residual heat cycles can already be set up quickly, whereby residues of heat from factories or houses are distributed or stored for later use (storage) or consumed by another user (distribution). Thus, the heat from one production process (e.g. blast furnaces or the chemical industry) can be used, for example, to heat conservatories or houses. Heat (summer heat) can also be temporarily stored in the ground and recovered, often with a high rate of efficiency, in winter.

 

Products will be drastically redrawn and redesigned, e.g. reusable or biodegradable carpet and floor covering, buildings which will warm and cool themselves, roads which supply heat to the environment and will therefore remain ice-free and maintenance-free, windows that will clean themselves and thereby supply energy to the environment, etc... Products could be developed in such a way that they are optimally recyclable or biodegradable. In this way the energy contained in the material will be optimally used during incineration or composting. Recycling will then relieve industry from having to find new sources. In this context it should be noted that most metals, iron and aluminium can actually be recycled an indefinite number of time. Designing cars with a view to their practically complete recycling will ensure new material flows. In a growing automobile market new iron and steel are always required to make the steel plates from which cars are built. But when the market is stable and cars can be recycled, iron mines will be situated on the roads, in the garages and on scrapheaps. The iron processing industry would therefore revert from the places where iron is currently mined to the places where iron is consumed. Such recycling would thus set in motion a rethink of production processes as well as of the business concept itself.

 

In the 50s and 60s of the previous century Belgium could have set up a perfectly recyclable telephone system. After all, one could not buy telephones but had to rent them from the state monopoly RTT [Public Department of Telegraphy and Telephony]. With the appearance of telephones which one could simply buy and connect, telephone rental largely disappeared and a market for disposable telephones was created. If one wants to recycle these optimally, and in Flanders we are good at this with the separate collection and treatment of waste, a recycling system (Recupel), plus a regulatory framework to stimulate or enforce such recycling, is needed. It makes no sense to market a recyclable book such as “Cradle to Cradle Remaking the Way We Make Things” – a book that specifically deals with setting up recycling cycles and radical rethinking of products – only to find that no recycling cycle exists for such books and that it ultimately ends up on a rubbish dump – if it is incinerated it would probably yield the highest energy contribution – while normal books are recyclable and are already recycled in large numbers.

 

This is an exciting future, which will be feasible if we commit to the necessary investments and obligations. Increasingly scarce resources will also stimulate this about-turn, alongside regulation by government. 

A few examples:

 

The regulatory framework is broader than the setting up or enforcing of recycling cycles. The innovation of the last hundred years has continually been guided, controlled and directed by a regulatory framework. At the end of the nineteenth century, after the invention of the combustion engine and the automobile, cars were being built all over the world, also in Belgium (Minerva). Since 1903, with the first manned aeroplane flight or rather aeroplane hop of the Wright brothers, aeroplanes have been built all over the world. These cars and aeroplanes were driven and flown without official approval, certificates of airworthiness, insurance certificates, driving or flying licences, traffic lights, air traffic control towers, etc… They were built by dozens of companies and small businesses in practically all Western countries. Today only a limited number of large automobile manufacturers still exist worldwide. The aircraft construction industry is even more duopolistic, namely with Boeing and Airbus.

 

In this process road transport became regulated by a string of certificates and regulations, amongst others the European norms for engines. Typical of this was the striving for a quantifying figure, in Flanders and Belgium for example the Ecoscore, indicating how the car relates to a number of environmental and energy norms such as CO2 emission, NOx emission, noise, etc… The advantage of such a “figure” is the high degree of regulation which becomes possible as a result, not only in terms of e.g. a green car tax system but also in terms of the introduction of new models on the market. Already today the Flemish government specifies a minimum ecoscore for its commercial vehicles. By systematically increasing this minimum ecoscore over time, manufacturers will be forced to adapt to increasingly stringent environmental and energy norms, failing which their vehicles will not sell or sell less. A similar regulatory system which stimulates market introduction can be found in dozens of other examples such as the EPB (Energy Performance Decree) for the rental and sale of houses, K-values [heat transmission rates] of houses, etc…

 

Also part of this regulatory framework are certificates of airworthiness for aeroplanes, flying licences for pilots, international agreements around the use of airspace (Eurocontrol, FAA, CAA), international rules for the maintenance of aeroplanes (JAR) and all other aspects of civil aviation. A similar regulatory framework is to be found in the very extensive screening of new medication before it can be sold on the market. Today one would typically allow for an overall development cycle of about 15 years for a new medicine and a development cost of about 900 million Euro. It is clear that, while 100 years ago cars and aeroplanes could still be manufactured by artisans, today this is no longer possible. While 50 years ago Dr. Janssen in de Kempen stood at the cradle of Janssen Pharmaceuticals, testifying to his insight and innovation in healing processes, today this is no longer possible. And this applies not only to very prevalent diseases, but also to specific illnesses affecting only a few hundred or a few thousand people on a world scale.

 

Regulation also plays an increasing role in other fields and places additional pressure on innovation and renewal. In Belgium, the beer country par excellence, there are fewer and fewer breweries, and not only as a result of globalisation. The number of traditional bakeries is diminishing. The number of outlets of pharmacies, the training of medical doctors, the establishments of physiotherapists, etc, are being regulated. Centralised enterprises, in such disparate sectors as beer breweries, clinics, bakeries, automobile manufacturers, aerocraft manufacturers, pharmaceutical industries, etc, can more easily comply with environmental demands, and make the necessary investments in innovation and product development, thanks to rather than in spite of their size.

 

All these examples underline two elements:  never before has so much innovation taken place in companies, but the road to market introduction is steadily becoming longer due to the regulatory framework and the impact of innovation on health care, the environment and energy. This trend will continue further. The market introduction of new technologies that use energy or raw materials in an unplanned way are discouraged from the outset. On the contrary, meeting norms and raising these norms will give rise to innovation and market introductions that increasingly meet the criteria of sustainable development and eco-efficiency.

 

In this setting of norms one recognises a trajectory, moving from awareness making to knowledge development, to the establishment of norms, and to the gradual finetuning and adapting of those norms.   An example of such a trajectory is REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and limitations of Chemical substances). After the “unbridled” introduction of a batch of new materials in the 1950s and 1960s, including plastics, a process of awareness making arose around the impact of for example PVC, phthalates, so-called softening agents, bromides, CFCs in these materials or in the environment in general. CFCs are a well-known example, whereby these gases were at first considered ideal due to their high inertia—they hardly react with other known substances—while today they are prohibited worldwide due to this same characteristic. This is becaue CFCs gradually drifted to the top of the atmosphere where, under the influence of UV-light, they disintegrated and were partly responsible for the reduction of atmospheric ozone. Softening agents, too, are a good example. Already in the 1970s and 1980s softening agents were prohibited in Japan in plastic bags used for drips, blood bags, etc, the content of which would come into contact with human internal fluids such as blood, serum, etc. The logic behind this was that these softening agents were released in the fluid during the sterilisation of these plastic bags, subsequently to be injected with the fluid into the human body. At that time this immediately posed an immense import barrier for similar plastic bags from abroad because at the time not a single other Western country besides Japan saw a problem with softening agents in such plastics. At present these softening agents are banned worldwide from products that come into contact with human blood and fluids, mainly due to the precautionary principle, and so the commercial advantage for Japan has largely disappeared.

 

Here one sees a second element: such setting of norms can overtly or inherently create a significant commercial advantage. Let us go back to REACH for a moment. At present this only involves the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemical substances. A next step is obviously the registration and evaluation of the production processes themselves as well as the evaluation, not just the authorisation, of these substances and processes.

 

Both the above elements are regarded as rather inconvenient by big business. They give rise to costs over and above the already existing production costs. Locations are sought where cheap production is possible, which is understandable in the current economic model. As a result, industry and production are transferred to low-wage countries. But the criteria mentioned above only take account of the technological elements. However, sustainable production also relates to the social component. If the eco-efficiency, or the ‘sustainability’ evaluation of a product or process, were to take into account the labour costs, the existence or otherwise of a labour consultative model, social benefits for employees, etc, then technologically equivalent products and processes which emanate from Western countries would have a clear advantage. The calculation and processing of these parameters should be “simple” and reasonably straightforward. On this basis, companies and large multinationals with employee participation, and better pay and employment conditions should be able to sell their products more easily. Multinationals and their employees would gain significantly with such an approach. It would increase pressure in developing countries to catch up quickly not only on a technological but also on a social level. Once multinationals understand these benefits they will become supporters of such an approach, rather than, as in the case of REACH, delaying the process as much as possible. Conversely, countries such as the United Kingdom,which expect little or no social dimension from the European Commission, could easily become obstructive. However, it is clear that the advantage of such an approach, provided there is an unambiguous definition which can be certified and validated, will, through the known principles of competition and free trade, provide strong leverage to implement sustainable business practices in the non-Western world.

 

In this connection special mention of Belgium and Flanders is appropriate. It should be clear that stricter regulation will increasingly discourage small, medium-sized and start-up enterprises. If energy is sustainable, the local aspect of production and consumption will be taken out of the sustainability evaluation and multionationals will be better structured and equipped, also because of employee participation, to capitalise on sustainability. Flanders therefore increasingly needs big Flemish multinationals that anchor sustainable production in Flanders.

 

Also the cost of innovation, to suddenly comply with the high sustainability criteria, will discourage the marketing of new products and will disadvantage start-up, small and medium-sized enterprises. As in the pharmaceutical industry at present, more money and resources than ever before will be spent on innovation, but there will be less and less renewal. The entire process willl therefore lead to a “rigidification” of economic inequality over a period of several decades, to the benefit of the “West” or the countries which are economically the strongest and most developed at the time. The evolution to sustainability is, in other words, not a race to social equality, but a race to the maintenance and stabilisation of economic inequality, to the benefit of the strongest parties of the time, which at present include the big multinationals and the Western world as a whole.