In recent weeks, ideas relating to a green economy have been at play in both large and small forums in Vancouver. From internationally renowned speakers to small startups looking for advice, the green economy is percolating at an ever-more-rapid pace.
First of all, what is it? The Globe Foundation’s September report, British Columbia’s Green Economy: Securing the Work Force of Tomorrow, says B.C. has six key green sectors that contributed $15.3 billion to the province’s GDP in 2008 – 10% of the province’s GDP that year. The sectors include: green building, energy management and efficiency, clean and alternative energy, environmental protection, carbon and finance investment and green knowledge. Together, they represent 166,000 jobs in the province.
The report says the green components of the economy are growing faster than the economy as a whole – and will continue to do so over the next decade. Globe forecasts this area to be worth between $22 billion and $27 billion by 2020.
At this year’s annual BC Hydro Power Smart Forum, Thomas Homer-Dixon of the Centre for International Governance Innovation was invited to speak about progress toward a green economy. Focusing on green-energy technologies, peak oil and climate change, he said the shift to green energy and a green economy will be “as big, or bigger, than anything we’ve seen before.”
Homer-Dixon described what are called “general purpose technology transitions” – shifts in a core technology that produce a wave of change, including an enormous surge of investment, bankruptcy of entire sectors, formation of new industries and sectors, and great opportunity for profit and growth.
Such past transitions include the advent of railroads, electricity, the internal combustion engine and the personal computer. But where those entailed only a single-key technology, Homer-Dixon predicts this one will be characterized by a half-dozen or more paradigm-breaking technologies. Good reason to fasten your seatbelt and start looking hard at where your company will land in a greener, rapidly changing landscape.
Other speakers at the Forum, such as Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital CEO Wal van Lierop and the sustainability VPs of both Canadian Tire and Sears Canada made it clear that much more than talk is happening across sectors to drive, respond to and benefit from a shift to a green economy. (Many presentations are available at www.bchydro.com, including archived webcasts of several speakers.)
Across town a few weeks later, a much smaller gathering of entrepreneurs convened to ponder how to make their own “change-making” ventures grow. Ubizo, a workshop organized by business adviser Lisa Princic, owner of Changemakers Toolbox, invited entrepreneurs to examine real-time case studies and offer each other guidance. (In the interest of disclosure, I was involved as a mentor.)
While nearly half of B.C.’s green economy is in the clean energy sector and will be represented by relatively large efforts and investments, smaller ventures continue to help redefine the concept of “business as usual.”
The local companies and organizations that volunteered for self-analysis at Ubizo included: Eclipse Awards, a recognition business and sustainable business leader; Tofino’s Ocean Village Resort, now owned by green developer Robert Brown; Green Bean Baby, a “mompreneur” company producing organic cotton baby clothes; Synapse Strategies, a sustainability consultancy; EcoUrbia, a startup social enterprise hoping to catalyze sustainability actions and networks; and A Little More Good, a multi-author blog focused on social change.
Other participants, who gave feedback on the case studies, were also mostly small-business owners seeking to learn by listening.
They got what they came for in part through storytelling sessions by two of the early innovators in Vancouver’s local social change/sustainability sector: David Van Seters, founder of SPUD organic grocery home delivery, and Madeleine Shaw, the founder of Lunapads International.
These companies, launched in the 1990s, have broken through in new categories, built sales and locations beyond Vancouver and Canada and proven that values-based business can not only make a sustainable profit, but change the way we think about business and society.
Van Seters shared his “agony and ecstacy” experiences in growing a change-making business. (He said for three years SPUD lost $2 on every order, making it hard to decide whether to laugh or cry each time a new customer signed up.) He also offered tips for change-making entrepreneurs.
Shaw shared the dilemmas related to funding a company with strong values that permeate not only product, but work styles, relationships and long-term goals.
They were very different events, the BC Hydro Forum and Ubizo. Traditionally one would have perceived the events to be at opposite ends of a spectrum. They are not.
That there is convergence in the ideas, drivers, aspirations and challenges faced by big companies grappling with change and smaller do-good/feel-good ventures innovating on the edges demonstrates the magnitude of the shift underway.
A more comprehensive account of the Ubizo conference by organizer Lisa Princic will appear in BIV’s small-business section November 30.
Nina Winham ([email protected]) is principal of New Climate Strategies. www.newclimate.ca