Save manufacturing and we'll save the planet
January 1st 2007

Energy was one of the big news stories of 2006, and it will continue to be so throughout 2007 – and probably long after that too.

We now all have a good grip on the basics of global warming and its environmental consequences, but few seem to have thought through the economic consequences.

The environment is remarkably robust – it's put up with 100 years of abuse. But the economy is a far more fragile thing – if things go wrong for a couple of quarters recovery can take years, if not decades.

Energy information is coming at us from any number of sources.

Some encourage us to insulate our homes, drive less, install solar panels, cut air travel, reduce food miles, take the train, use cleaner fuels. Others tell us of retreating glaciers and melt icecaps, rising temperatures and potential flooding, rain forest clearance and raging bush fires.

Many of us are making adjustments to our personal lives - and that is not to be decried. But when I look at what is happening in our working lives I am less confident that enough is being done, particularly in the UK and particularly by engineers.

There are plenty of feel-good stories around: bus companies switching to fuel cell; strides being made with renewable energy sources; hospitals converting to efficient Combined Heat and Power Systems. But the question that everybody should be asking themselves is: 'Am I doing enough at work'? My worry is that engineers are not facing up to their responsibility.

And if they ignore the environment, the economy will suffer I work for Mitsubishi Electric, a major industrial controls company, so am in a good position to see the foundation work of energy efficiency projects as it happens.

Two and three years ago I would sit in our strategy meetings confidently predicting that energy related projects were going to boom. But that hasn't happened to anything like the level necessary to make a difference to global warming.

Part of my thinking was there is now plenty of encouragement to undertake efficiency initiatives: grants and loans are available, as are information and consultancy. Another part of my thinking was based on simple economics: energy has to be paid for and it's getting more expensive, so surely manufacturers would look to contain their energy costs and thus help to keep their product prices competitive.

However this does not seem to be happening, except in a relatively few isolated cases. Britain has already lost a huge chunk of its manufacturing and production to overseas competitors. In recent years this has been due to low labour rates in emerging countries, with which we cannot and should not compete. Twenty years ago, it was because we wouldn't modernise our practises or our plant.

We've not regained the losses from the 1980s, and I doubt that jobs transferred to Central Europe and Asia are on two-way journeys.

Within living memory manufacturing was our biggest economic sector. It is no longer, but it's still in the Top Ten and an important plank in the overall national economy. It brings in huge foreign revenues (most of its products being easily exportable) and employs many many many people in direct and indirect jobs.

If we let the manufacturing sector erode away we lose revenue and jobs, but we also lose the sustainability of the sector. Fewer youngsters will be attracted into the relevant professions, new products and technologies will not developed, importing manufactured goods will become steadily more attractive. Some sectors are able to recover from long periods of inactivity, manufacturing is not one of them: the skills base evaporates, the plant is dismantled never to be replaced, the support infrastructure fades away.

Our national manufacturing base needs protecting and nurturing.

One element of this is addressing energy consumption so that the products are marketable at a competitive cost.

Globally we need to protect our environment; nationally we need to protect our economy. In the past we may have thought of these two objectives as completely incompatible, but now we can see that they are in fact one and the same.

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