Procurement with Purpose Newsletter No. 2 - February 14th, 2023

The Sustainable Procurement Pledge movement continues to go from strength to strength and is recruiting an Internal Communications Director. “This is a new role and will have as a main goal to work closely with the SPP Global Office team, the Founders and the Steering Team to establish and lead communication channels with the movement’s internal community groups, including our network of global Chapters, our 10000 and growing Ambassador network, and our Volunteers”. Germany is the preferred location but it is remote working with some limited travel. The role reports to the relatively new Exec Director of the SPP, Melissa de Roquebrune – I “met” her recently on a group call and she seemed impressive! Get your application in here…

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It is possible that adoption of electric cars in the UK might be at a tipping point – and not in a good way, if you believe EVs are part of a sustainable future.  The growth in market share has slowed quite dramatically, caused perhaps by the UK government announcing introduction of an EV tax in 2025, and continuing problems over charging points, with horror stories about huge queues at busy times – if you can find a working charger at all. The target of 300,000 points by 2030 looks ambitious to say the least given current slow growth rates.

I am puzzled as to why the market hasn’t responded to the obvious demand for more charging points – presumably the operators aren’t making money, or surely there would be plenty of new points coming onstream? In the meantime, if you have an old petrol car that runs well and gets decent fuel consumption, there is a strong argument for keeping it. The “embedded carbon” in the manufacturing process for a new EV far outweighs the saving in emissions you are likely to get in terms of fuel. There are also sustainability and human rights issues around the lithium and / or cobalt that is used in battery manufacturing. Having said that, we have just traded in our somewhat ageing 17 year old Citroen C1 (it was the car in which our daughter learnt to drive, so it was a surprisingly emotional moment) for a self-charging hybrid Renault Clio. Hybrids seem a reasonable compromise at the moment.

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But what about battery manufacturing? This looks like a critical technological capability for the future, so the major manufacturing powers – the US, China and the EU – all want to make sure they have domestic supply. Joe Biden is pouring trillions of dollars into supporting green industries, leading to claims of unfair practices form other trading partners. Meanwhile, the UK is in a difficult position. Last month, Britishvolt went into administration as plans for a giga-factory to produce batteries in Northumberland fell apart. It’s hard to see why, other than the founders’ lack of experience (and a conviction in Norway for tax fraud), lack of a working product, any customers, or a factory, and stories of wasteful spending. £200 million has been blown, apparently. Now the leading bidder to buy the remnants of the business from the administrator is an Australian firm with no battery experience …. What could possibly go wrong?  Not good for the UK, which is desperately struggling for any sort of industrial vision, policy or direction.

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Don’t worry about the planet though. We have a cunning plan… launching moon dust towards the sun to reduce the heat hitting the earth and therefore global warming. No, this isn’t Elon Musk’s idea – it is from a paper this month published in PLOS Climate, in which researchers used computer modelling to explore how such a strategy might work. But as you might imagine, there are a couple of problems with this – for a start it would require massive amounts of energy and huge infrastructure on the moon, as it needs millions of tonnes of dust to be scraped up from the surface then send off towards the sun. To be fair to the authors, they do say it is not a substitute for more mundane actions here and now, but even so, we might wonder if it is really worth clever people spending their time working on such daft ideas.

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Encouraging diversity in the supply chain is another key aspect of the purpose / ESG / sustainability agenda. (Tenuous connection alert! Tenuous connection alert!) And one of the most diverse British bands of recent years is The Young Fathers. It consists of Alloysious Massaquoi, born in Liberia then moved to Edinburgh at the age of four; Kayus Bankole, who was born in Edinburgh to Nigerian parents, and spent time growing up in the USA and Nigeria; and Graham "G" Hastings who was born in Edinburgh.  They won the Mercury Music Prize back in 2014 with debut album Dead, one of the stranger jury choices of recent years. I found it a little earnest and lacking tunes; impressive but frankly not much fun to listen to.  So I initially listened to their new album Heavy Heavy without much enthusiasm, despite its good reviews – but I was blown away. It is joyful, varied and interesting, combining some African influences with rock, hip hop and Massive Attack influences. A contender already for the Mercury Prize again this year, I’d suggest. Try this track...