Sustainable Business

Radar 4/6 actually corporate R&D departments and corporate venturing groups – and they have basically picked up the technologies that venture capitalists won't fund anymore because the time to market is too long and the capital required is too high". However, Le Duc says that it's Government funding that has spurred the cleantech industry over the years. "If you look at the whole cleantech landscape, all of the fundamental technologies have historically come out of defence R&D – so all of these technologies are military spend. "If you look at hybrid vehicles for example they were initially developed to be quiet behind enemy lines, solar technology was originally developed for the space programme and the internet was initially part of the Department of Defense," he adds. Le Duc says that although cheap solar panels and LEDs are available today, there is still a need for breakthrough next generation technology R&D investment "because many of the enabling technologies are not there yet – notably energy storage". "It's just too expensive. So even though solar panels are cheap, the batteries aren't, and you can't have a distributed energy revolution without proper energy storage," he says. Highlighting this issue in January, United Nations climate chief Christina Figueres urged global financial institutions to triple their investments in clean energy technology. She said $1trillion (£600bn) per year is needed to help prevent the two degree threshold. Major shipping firm Maersk Group announced a 12% reduction in CO2 emissions per container shipped in 2013, a direct result of the company's "consistent efforts to reduce fuel costs", it said. Announcing progress in its latest sustainability report, Maersk said that CO2 emissions per container have fallen by 34%compared with a 2007 baseline. It estimates that, had the reduction in 2013 not been achieved, the company's total fuel cost would have been $764m (£458m) higher. Last year's reduction was also related to Maersk Line further improving and simplifying its network of shipping services, which involved reducing overlapping service and port coverage by deploying fewer but larger vessels Click here keep up-to-date with the latest news from edie.net Shipping Maersk Group sets CO2 precedent for the shipping industry

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