Roll up, roll up, for the Carbon Show

The annual ‘Carbon show’, that took place at London’s Business Design Centre this October, is a chance for industry-types and Carbon aficionados to network, mingle and promote. However, what was advertised as ‘ the leading annual event on energy efficiency and the low carbon economy’ presented a very dire image of the carbon economy. The Carbon Show shrunk to around 1/3 of its size from last year, to only having around twenty exhibitors (and last year’s event was in itself still somewhat underwhelming, with many stallholders leaving dissatisfied). The exhibitors this year included consultants, certification companies and verifiers; although really it appeared to just focus on companies with the name Carbon in them: Carbon Clear, Carbon Credentials, The Carbon Trust, Carbon Advice Group. Presentations and Seminars ran throughout the day on energy efficiency, carbon investment and green technologies. These represented companies and organisations ranging from Jaguar Land Rover to Kingfischer Plc, RBS and the Energy Saving Trust. Although informative and sometimes enjoyable, the entire show seemed marked from the very beginning by the sense of a lacklustre under-performance.

It seems that a lack of political certainty around climate change and the recession appears to have drastically impacted businesses. The Carbon Trust, one of the key sponsor’s of the event, have lost most of their government funding and are now, it appears from the waves of redundancies, struggling to establish themselves in the private sector. A further stall, TÜV NORD, a German based validation, verification and certification company, mentioned how the uncertainty of post-Kyoto agreements were hurting their business, specifically their work of verifying Joint Implementation and Clean Development Mechanism projects under the EU emission trading scheme. It wasn’t all bad news, Eco-desk, an online platform for companies to promote the measures they have taken to be sustainable in their independent operations, appeared to be on the rise and enjoying the day’s steady traffic.

Although I walked out of the event feeling depressed about my future career prospects, this smaller, more intimate carbon show was actually surprisingly quite appealing. As Karen Hayward from Carbon Leapfrog said “it is a lot smaller than last year but it lends itself to more meaningful conversations”. Indeed, the importance to maintain the spaces whereby debate can flourish, and these significant global problems can be dialogically worked out cannot be over-emphasised. Perhaps what is needed is a re-orientation; a move away from businesses and move towards a mutually beneficial environment that brings together businesses in a more academic-conference style setting. So, despite the year on year shrinking size of the event, I would recommend students to attend next years - that is if it is still running and you can avoid the steep prices.

To register: http://www.thecarbonshow.com/register/