Essay 05: Taking the fight to climate change – on time and on budget
Climate change isn’t just a scientific problem or a political challenge – it’s also a management issue. And there’s a lot project management can do to address the threats it poses.
It is hard to find any evidence of an SPA for climate change, at either national or international levels
December 2015 saw virtually all the world’s nations sign an agreement, now ratified as legally binding, to limit the rise in the Earth’s ambient temperature to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and preferably to just 1.5°C. Positive though this was, there was almost nothing on how countries planned to achieve this target, nor was there any requirement to monitor and report progress in achieving this goal.
Roughly 25% of OECD countries’ GDPs is delivered by projects. Developed in the US defence-aerospace sectors in the 1950s and 1960s, project management was initially largely sheltered from environmental issues. Over the years, however, there have been many examples of projects being knocked off course by environmental issues. In the 1990s, sustainability became mainstream practice. Now the focus is shifting to the more existential crisis of climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculates there is only a 50% chance of hitting the 2°C rise by 2030. To achieve this, everyone will have to cut CO2 emissions: six to four billion tonnes for developed countries – essentially halving their emissions; 15 to eight billion tonnes for developed countries. And of course things do not suddenly stabilise at 2030; we shall have to continue monitoring emission rates and, in fact, tighten targets further, to zero and into negative emissions. How can project management help in this? We can begin with the management of the overall effort, at national and international levels.
First, it can bring greater focus and drive through the creation of a ‘Single Point of Accountability’ (SPA). This is the place where all actions relevant to achieving a project’s objectives are focused. It is hard to find any evidence of an SPA for climate change, at either national or international levels.
A second fundamental support practice in project management is a PMO – a project or programme management office. At a minimum, this is the function that keeps information on the progress of projects being worked on, but it also acts as the keeper of best practices in the enterprise. Here, too, there is hardly anyone who has such a function for addressing climate change. The possibility exists, surely, for a pre-formed PMO to be prepared at the UN level down to help countries get started.
Climate change actions can be divided between those aimed at mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, such as replacing ‘dirty’ power generation plants such as coal, with clean ones such as gas or renewables, and those addressed at adapting facilities to the consequences of climate change, such as flood management. Much, maybe the majority, of mitigation projects addressing carbon emissions are doing so on a business-as-usual basis – such as developing electric vehicles – possibly boosted by ‘change projects’ that focus additionally on behaviour and people skills.
At the other end of the mitigation spectrum, project management has a role in big R&D projects, particularly in the energy sector, notably carbon capture and storage (CCS) and nuclear fusion. Many are investing a lot of hope in CCS, but there are technical, commercial and managerial issues, and so far CCS is not commercially viable. Hopes for fusion rest on a giant global project in France, Iter, which is late and over budget. We are still decades away from operational fusion.
Nuclear fission is really an adaptation technology. It is dirtier than fusion but is seen by most as a core response for meeting climate change goals. Yet the technological challenges are enormous: it is very, very expensive and, managerially, of world-class difficulty. The tortured negotiations between Électricité de France and the UK Government to build Hinkley Point C is proof of how complex the issues are.
Currently, we don’t have a plan for addressing climate change in the UK. We do have the National Adaptation Programme and a National Infrastructure Delivery Plan, but they are weak – little more than lists of risks and responsibilities. There is not the energy and drive needed to address the urgent challenges of climate change.
Project Management can, and is, contributing significantly in responding to climate change effectively. In doing so, it is revealing several areas of new development and promise in the discipline. That’s fortunate because climate change isn’t just a scientific problem or political challenge – it’s also a management issue. Project management integrates the work of other disciplines to deliver managed change effectively. And that’s what we need right now.
Professor Peter Morris was Head of the School of Construction & Project Management until August 2012. He is well-known as a leading authority on project management.
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