Prince Charles Backs IBM’s ‘Start’ Green Summit

While Prince Charles embarks on a controversial five-day tour of Britain to promote sustainable living, IBM is working with the Prince’s Start charity to put on a summit promoting green technology.

IBM’s Summit at Start is a nine-day summit covering sustainability, starting on Wednesday at Lancaster House in London, with the Prince of Wales’ environmental Start Initiative. The summit, announced in June will discuss technology and political issues in society, aiming to promote a sustainable approach.

Charles’ green train slammed

Prince Charles will spend the next five days travelling round the UK on the biodiesel-fueled Royal Train – a round trip for nine people, whose cost has raised the hackles of green campaigners.

“We admire Prince Charles’s passion for the sustainability agenda,” said the Green Party. “His support for progressive projects such as cutting fuel bills by installing solar panels is laudable. But when people are facing cuts in public services, the idea of a private train costing £90,000 more than ordinary first class tickets might seem a bit insensitive.”

The green credentials of the train’s bio-fuel were also slammed by Benny Peiser of Liverpool John Moores University, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, who pointed out that Prince Charles’ carbon footprint is 100 times that of the average UK citizen, and his train’s bio-fuel diverts agricultural land away from food to growing fuel. “We have millions of people starving around the world and bio-fuels are pushing up the price of food.”

During the train ride, the Prince will appear at the IBM summit in London – and IBM spokespeople gave details of the timetable at a press conference in London as he set out on Monday.

IBM Summit – debate, not details

The Summit ties in heavily with IBM’s Smarter Planet marketing, and contains days on obvious areas where technology overlaps with sustainability: in particular smart cities, smart energy and smart transport. However, there are no answers spelt out in the agenda, as it is about “discussion and debate,” designed to get businesses on board a green agenda, said IBM’s UK chief executive Stephen Leonard.

“People have said that capitalism and sustainability don’t go hand in hand,” said Leonard. “We fundamentally disagree. Appealing to the conscience of organisations is not having enough impact – we will appeal to their enlightened self-interest.” Green moves give “tangible benefits,” he said.

Water is included in the day on energy, because they interlock, said Luq Niazi, an executive partner in IBM’s Global Business Services. “Water supply uses fifty percent of the UK’s energy, and energy generation uses fifty percent of the UK’s water,” he said.

The energy and transport debates will focus more on the kind of policy issues which will help deal with this sort of efficiency issue, and only get to comparatively concrete issues like smart grids and smart meters later in the day, said Niazi.

The summit also includes a day on how business analytics can be used to improve efficiency. For instance, in an age of austerity, few new roads will be built, said Jamie Houghton, IBM’s global leader for transport. The transport day of the summit, chaired by Minister for Transport Philip Hammond, will instead hear that the Highways Agency will have to deliver better information to enable people to time journeys and use the existing road network better.