You can trust Kevin to help save energy

KEVIN Houston is the kind of London barrow-boy who, you feel, would be able to sell snow to the Innuit, sand to Arabs, and jellied eels to unwary American tourists.

• Kevin is on a mission to help firms save on energy

The 59-year-old, who has spent a lifetime in sales with global corporations, is a man knows a good pitch when he hears it.

Which is why when he first watched An Inconvenent Truth, Al Gore's film on climate change, his life radically changed. And it's also why he is now perhaps the perfect man to sell the rather unsexy message of "carbon management" to the masses.

"That film had an enormous impact on me," he says. "Of course I knew about global warming and climate change but I hadn't really engaged with the subject intellectually. I was flying everywhere, had a big car, I was completely oblivious. I remember John Prescott talking about Kyoto but that was about it. I watched Gore's film one night at home about five years ago and it made me wake up. It shocked me, I thought 'How have I missed this?'

"I was working with IBM as a management consultant at the time and there was an interest in energy efficiency there because of the oil prices and then I read an article about a carbon management course at Edinburgh University and I thought that's what I want to do.

"My kids thought I was mad. They were just leaving university and here I was considering giving up a well-paid job and going back. I think they thought it was some kind of midlife crisis, that I would turn up at some point with an 18-year-old Swiss blonde on my arm," he laughs.

Crisis or not, following his epiphany, he packed in his high-flying career - "my carbon footprint was enormous with all the travelling" - and enrolled on the university's groundbreaking MSc course, immersing himself in the world of global warming, climate science and economics.

At this point most people - even those who thought Gore's documentary on global warming was a triumph - would see their interest in carbon disappear as quickly as the ozone layer. After all, battling with how to pay gas and electricity bills and moaning as the price of petrol at the pump continues to rise, is the closest most of us really get to thinking about energy - although laying more loft insulation and filling the cavity walls of our homes has been on the increase thanks to Scottish Government grants.

Houston is all too well aware of that, and although he believes we all could do much to reduce our individual consumption of energy and reduce our carbon footprints (he used to drive a Toyota Land Cruiser which does just 30 miles to the gallon, but no longer owns a car) his target is big business and Edinburgh institutions.

Running a spin-off university company called Carbon Masters, Houston is on the warpath to get them to realise just how costly wasting energy is about to get, when the Government's carbon tax kicks in next year.

His company has already estimated that Edinburgh Airport, for instance, will have a 187,000 carbon bill on top of its 2.3 million energy bill while Edinbugh University will be forking out around 900,000 on top of the 11m it pays for gas and electric. Similarly Edinburgh City Council could be facing a bill of 1m in carbon tax - its energy costs are around 12m - and the Royal Bank of Scotland, nationally, could be asked to pay 5m for its use of 66m worth of energy every year.

"All of those figures are estimates but based on the published energy bills of the institutions," says Kevin. "You can see how much money they could save by getting their energy bills down. The carbon tax is going to be set at 12 per tonne and it soon adds up.

"People have said the government will make Britain less competitive with this tax but if you look at Germany, it's a more productive country and also more energy efficient. In the long run this tax should be saving companies money. But in Lothian there are only 43 companies registered on the Carbon Reduction Commitment list, 27 private sector, 16 public sector. There are too many not yet thinking about what happens when this tax comes in next year."

Houston is well aware of the climate sceptics, but is uninterested in debating the existence of global warming. "I have seen enough of the science," he says matter-of-factly. "Whether you're a climate change believer or denier, the fact is that most politicians now accept it's an issue and something needs to be done.

"And the UK and Scotland are ahead of the curve on that. Thankfully there doesn't seem to be any major difference in opinion between this government and the last one. This won't go away. If we don't get our emissions down then the long-term prognosis is not good.

"So our mission is to help companies and institutions reduce their carbon dioxide emissions and manage energy better. From July they will have to report their carbon emissions then from next year start paying the tax.

"We have developed a programme which helps them get an accurate picture of their emissions, including six greenhouse gases, but we also help them look at their overall carbon footprint in terms of staff travel and moving to low-carbon technology and so on."

The other argument against UK companies bothering about their emissions is that the growing economies of China and India are proving far more problematic.

"Beijing and Delhi are always mentioned when it comes to whether or not we should worry when you look at what's happening over there. There's also the debate about whether or not we should be investing in them and giving them new technologies which might help with their emissions.

"But this is a global problem. We can't just think about what we're doing in isolation. And China is already investing more in renewables than the United States and Europe put together. There's 500 million people in India with no electric light, to give them that is a massive generation of power, so do we help or not? Do we leave people in poverty or help them out of it? The whole energy question gets into capitalism and socialism, it's the nexus of it all."

Without a doubt it's a hot political issue, However, Houston believes that Scotland is blazing a trail when it comes to carbon management.

"The Scottish Government just seems to get it. A move to a low-carbon economy is the best opportunity for Scotland since the Enlightenment. Everything is in place here. There's real expertise in the universities and there's fantastic natural resources in terms of wind and wave energies. "There's a huge opportunity for Scotland to become a ‘carbon valley' and to lead the world on this."

He adds: "When I left university with my chemistry degree the orthodox science was that we were heading for another ice age, not that the world was heating up. Green issues were around, but nobody took them seriously as they couldn't square the circle when it came to the environment and shareholders. Now it's different. Energy costs are rising, so ways to reduce those, and to reduce the carbon expended all make good economic sense."

He points to one of his firm's clients in Northern Ireland as an example. A sawmill, it had plenty of waste product as well as high energy costs. "It's now using its sawdust to produce biomass which is now powering the plant," he says. "Of course not all businesses can do that, but there are many ways they can move to low- carbon technolgies."

Biomass is a obviously one of the potential energies of the future, but the planned plant in Leith has proved extremely controversial, with fears about its size, its impact on the health of residents and whether it's as "green" as is claimed. "In prinicple I think biomass is a good idea," says Houston. "But it doesn't make a lot of sense if what's being burned is being shipped across the world, in diesel tankers which have massive carbon emissions."

Although Houston himself has no form of personal transport these days he uses the council's City Car Club when he needs to drive anywhere, and when business does mean a flight abroad, he offsets the carbon through a company which invests in projects reducing emissions in developing countries. "We have got to practice what we preach," he laughs.

His kids too have finally accepted his new role in life. "I took them around the world with my jobs before and we also lived in Turkey and Germany, but it's only now they think I'm doing something cool."

No doubt he hopes things can only get cooler.

CITY IS INDUSTRY CAPITAL

EDINBURGH has become a hotspot for renewable energy companies and environmental consultancies in recent years after the Scottish Government set a target of generating 50 per cent of electricity in Scotland from renewable sources by 2020 - the most progressive and ambitious target of its kind in Europe.

The city is strategically located to the five offshore wind farm sites in the Firth of Forth - construction of which is expected to begin in 2014 - and is also home to some of the largest renewable energy companies.

Wind Prospect Developments (a subsidiary of French utility company EDF) is here as is the German wind turbine manufacturer REpower, the American Wind Energy (Services) and the hydrogen fuel cell company Logan Energy. The world's first silent, building-mountable wind turbine was invented by Renewable Devices, which is based at the Bush Estate.

Leith Harbour has been identified as the best location in Scotland for an offshore wind turbine integrated manufacturing facility.

New wave technologies are also being developed in Edinburgh such as the wave power generator used in the world's first commercial wave farm by Pelamis Wave Power from Leith, and the world's largest operational hydro-electric wave energy converter by Aquamarine Power, based in Elder Street.

And Napier University has already made a biofuel from the waste products of the Glenkinchie distillery.