Plugs, insurance, credit crunch, beetles and lunch

Konstam Restaurant, near Kings Cross

Michael Pawlyn fom Exploration Architecture, with his Brompton bike

Close up of the plug chains at Konstam Restaurant

Last week was busy. I flew from meeting to meeting. Not literally I hasten to add - they were mostly in London.

I started with a meeting about insurance - I'm not a great fan of the industry. They're so inefficient and bureaucratic. Talk about excessive paper production.

I was talking to Adam Clutterbuck. He's looking at how to reduce claims for the insurance industry by investing in preventative measures. Wouldn't it be better for houses to be protected from flooding rather than sending in huge bills for ruined carpets and damaged property? This would save money for the insurance companies, hassle for householders and environmental impacts too....

From there I went on the Chair a meeting of the Food Ethics Council. Attendees included representatives from McDonalds, Unilever and Weetabix. And we were talking about whether the credit crunch was going to reduce consumption - and get people looking for better value products or whether they'd just buy cheaper goods.

Clearly, none of us are going to stop eating. So the debate for the food sector is a bit different than for other industries. An early indicator of the crunch affecting food seems to have been in the plummeting sales of organic produce. The general view, however, was that pressures on land and water were going to have an even more significant impact on food than the world economy. Either way it seems we're going to have to tighten our belts.

My first meeting the next day was about wind power. I'm a big fan of wind - apart from anything else I like seeing the whirling turbines. And I'm interested in how polarised opinion is on the issue.

Lunch was at a restaurant called Konstam, near Kings Cross. It was amazing. Suspended from the ceiling were displays made from plug chains - see photo. And the menu was equally original. It's all sourced from within the M25. I had pigeon and some rather interesting vegetarian dish.

Was being taken to lunch by Michael Pawlyn, founder of Exploration Architecture - he used to work at Grimshaws and was one of the architects involved in the Eden Project. His approach is to take ideas from nature and apply them to buildings and design. I particularly love the Water Theatre combined with a de-salination plant that was inspired by the Namibian fog-basking beetle.

Next stop was London Bridge - the offices of Blue Rubicon. They work with British Gas on Generation Green a schools and community plan encouraging green behaviour - and have asked me to work with them on this.

Down to Woking in the evening to watch the Vagina Monologues. Anthea Turner was one of the three women on stage talking about vaginas in both comical and tragic turns. It was quite a revelation. The man I went with was out-numbered by about 100 to 1 - but I thought it was much more fun to go with a date!

Had a lunch meeting the following day at SustainAbility, the company I set up with John Elkington, in 1987. It was rather shocking to discover that I hardly knew anyone there - and hadn't worked with any of those I did know.

A short walk from their to Chancery Lane, my next meeting was in the offices of London Remade. It had been organised by Kit Strange from the Resources Recovery Forum, to discuss innovative solutions for waste.

Fortunately for me, Kit was coming to the Rushlight Awards black tie dinner event in the evening. He let me come and change at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and share a taxi. I had been a judge for the overall winner of this renewable energy awards scheme that's in its second year. Novacem, a company developing a cement that actually locks up CO2 rather than releases it, won the main prize. The cement industry is close to the top of the league for its climate change impact, so Novacem's idea could make a huge difference.

The following morning, I was relieved to be heading back home. Although I have lots to do in the office it's less tiring than being out and about.

Bee in my bonnet about fuel efficiency

I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about the fuel efficiency of cars. I can’t understand why they’re not a whole lot better than they are.

With this in mind, I agreed to try out a BMW 118d. The manufacturers told me that it did 62.8 mpg. Given the size of the car – 3-door hatchback – this didn’t bowl me over but it sounded respectable.

What I liked best about it was the gizmo inside telling me how many miles to the gallon I had managed on the journeys I took. I re-set it at the beginning of most trips and kept tabs on how I was doing. My sons and I were particularly amused at managing to get 99mpg out of the car when going down the hill on the way to school.

But most of the time we were disappointed. I didn’t manage anywhere near 62.8 mpg on any journey I took – either long or short. The average was between 40-50mpg. I managed a bit more than that on a couple of long journeys. Perhaps if I’d gone 100 miles along a motorway at 50 mph, the efficiency would have soared. But for tootling around the countryside, nowhere near.

Apparently you can improve the efficiency of your car by up to 25% by driving more carefully. That means not revving the engine excessively and not accelerating or decelerating too much. I’m quite careful about this and am rather proud to get an average of about 50mpg from my Audi A3, so I don’t thing this was the problem.

Going back to BMW. The good thing is that they’re beginning to recognise that people do want low emission cars. And they’ve obviously been focused on making changes to their vehicles. In fact a survey of the top 14 car manufacturers (Transport and Environment – T&E – 2008) shows that between 2006 and 2007 BMW have improved the fuel efficiency of their cars by four times the average of other car manufacturers.

That sounds pretty good until you realise that BMW were starting from a pretty low level of efficiency. In both 2006 and 2007 their average emissions were the second worst amongst the manufacturers in the survey.

I’ve been told that I’m quite a hard task-master when it comes to judging these things. But I’m baffled by the car industry’s approach to reducing emissions. If it’s technically feasible to get 60-70mph from a medium-size car, why aren’t zillions of small cars being produced that will do 80-90mph – or even more?

Cost is the biggest driver for change in relation to efficiency – but BMW say that about a fifth of people consider the carbon footprint to be a key factor. And a huge percentage – 70% - say that the Government should be offering financial incentives for driving more efficient cars.

My children told me that I shouldn’t say anything horrid about the car we were loaned because they wanted me to try out another one – perhaps a bit bigger. But I’m afraid that I’ve had to disappoint them. Maybe another manufacturer will loan me a car when they’re certain it will exceed 70mpg down the lanes of Somerset.