Our Role as Sustainability Leaders
In the final episode of our "Driving Place-Based Innovation" podcast series, in partnership with the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we consider our role as sustainability leaders.
In the final episode of our "Driving Place-Based Innovation" podcast series, in partnership with the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we consider our role as sustainability leaders.
In the final episode of our "Driving Place-Based Innovation" podcast series, in partnership with the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we consider our role as sustainability leaders. Newcastle International Airport talks about its strategy to de-carbonise by 2035 and the Municipality of Middelfart shares how they became industry leaders in the green transition of European tourism.
You can listen to the episode here 👇
Newcastle International Airport is at the heart of the North East region, with the seven local authorities owning 51% of the shares and the other 49% owned by InfraBridge. The airport contributes hundreds of millions of pounds to the regional economy. The airport has a significant economic impact, directly supporting nearly two and a half thousand jobs, with a similar number across its supply chain. As the airport continues to recover from COVID-19, it will continue hiring new staff and supporting even more jobs.
The airport brings international tourists to North East England and serves local residents going on holiday. It also helps North East England's businesses to export their products through the different air services provided, including freight services operated by Federal Express. In 2007, Emirates opened a route at the airport, which helped facilitate global connectivity and support exports to Oceania.
The airport is ambitious in terms of its future plans and is doing its fifth review of the master plan outlining its vision until 2040. There is constant investment into developing the airport's facilities, with recent upgrades to the security area as well as the food and beverage offerings. There is also regular investment in technology, including the airport website and app.
The airport's ambition is to be a market leader in terms of sustainability. It aims to achieve net zero by 2035 and is also strongly involved in environmental and biodiversity initiatives as well as community relations. Sustainability and growth can support each other. The airport is serious about its decarbonisation strategy and is investing heavily in this area.
Some of the major global airlines operate from the airport and are also investing in new aircraft technologies, such as electric planes and alternative fuels, including biofuels and hydrogen. There are lots of activities, both behind the scenes and in the public domain to decarbonise flight emissions. The airport supports these efforts, but its main focus is on other major projects to decarbonise the airport itself.
Newcastle International Airport published its Net Zero 2035 strategy in January 2020, which sets out a detailed roadmap to remove scope one and two emissions from the airport's energy usage. This includes gas and electricity consumption, vehicles and all of the activities on the airport site.
This roadmap was underpinned by a detailed energy study, enabling the airport to monitor the emissions from all of its buildings and identify opportunities for renewable energy. The airport calculated the amount of investment required between now and 2035 and the annual run rate of investment.
As part of the financing for this investment, the airport secured a £15 million green loan to be spent over the next three years. This will be spent on major renewable energy projects, with the airport securing planning permission last year for a 16-megawatt solar farm on airport land, of which the first three megawatts have been installed during phase one. On sunny days, this generates sufficient energy to power the airport, although not overnight or in winter. Phase two of the solar farm, however, will look into the role of battery storage and consider alternatives to gas supply. The airport has also mapped out the next stages between now and 2035.
In terms of vehicle capacity, the airport is already operating two 100% electric airside buses that transport passengers between the terminal and the aircraft. These buses only need recharging every couple of weeks. The next batch of operational vehicles are currently being delivered to the airport.
The airport is also implementing new charging infrastructure, with some operators, such as Jet 2 planning to become fully electric. These electric vehicles will be powered by the solar farm, meaning that the airport generates the electricity it requires.
When working on sustainability initiatives, it is important to establish standards to ensure transparency and accountability. Newcastle International Airport has received the ISO 45,001 certification regarding health and safety at work.
The airport is also accredited by Airports Council International as a level two carbon-certified airport and is currently in the process of achieving level three certification. This is a rigorous system recognised by governments in terms of what airports should include in their carbon roadmaps, the structure and sequencing of it and how they involve their business partners. The airport monitors its performance against its plan and whether it is achieving its goals according to the timeline outlined. The Net Zero plan is published on Airports Council International's website, alongside the plans for airports around the world, enabling comparisons of the strategy to other similar organisations.
The airport bought land in the 1990s for usage as potential environmental mitigation. This land plays a critical role in the delivery of the net zero strategy, both in relation to tree planting and accommodating the solar farm. Without this land, it would be challenging to implement the different initiatives. However, acquiring this land has made it easier to put forward proposals that carefully consider the local environmental impacts and protect biodiversity. This also minimises the extent to which the environmental issues are visible to the local community. This approach helped to secure the planning permission by looking closely at how to manage impacts from a local environmental viewpoint.
Looking forward, it's important to maintain the pace in terms of investment. Nevertheless, it is a relatively short timeframe until 2035; most airports globally have set a target of 2050. The UK government also set a net zero target of 2050 for the country, with English airports required to reach this goal by 2040. Newcastle International Airport's plan is more ambitious than these legal mandates and is supported by its shareholders, which will help to maintain momentum in delivering the strategy over the next 12 years.
One of the biggest challenges will be finding a solution regarding gas usage and encouraging all airlines to use sustainable aviation fuels. It's important to show constant progress in improving sustainability within organisations and reflect on successes. Mitigating climate change is a journey and should also look forward to implementing the next steps. There will be moments when organisations think they have implemented all possible solutions, but there will still be plenty of opportunities to go further in terms of implementing new sustainability initiatives.
Newcastle International Airport is at the cutting edge of energy-efficient technology, such as new heat pump technologies. The airport is continuously investing in technology as a customer-facing operational business. There is a myriad of different technologies within the airport's operations, such as monitoring performance to improve the efficiency and seamlessness of passenger movements through the building and digital interactions with customers through the airport's app.
The airport's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report shows that the airport's banks set four sustainability targets relating to decarbonisation and emissions, carbon accreditation, biodiversity net gain on the airport site - including woodland planting, peatland and wildflower meadow restoration - and a score on the global infrastructure benchmarking on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance. The airport's ESG score is 98 points out of 100, with the aim to improve even further this year.
Innovation doesn't always need to be based on technology. Innovation is about doing something different and new. This occasionally involves out-of-the-box thinking and then delivering strong outcomes.
The tourism industry is composed of mostly small and micro businesses that also need to think about how to become more sustainable. All organisations face similar challenges in terms of measuring their ecological footprint and decarbonising their business to become a net positive contributor to both the environment and society.
It's important for organisations to set benchmarks and understand their carbon footprint and the different components that contribute to it, either through low-cost software or consultancy projects. After this benchmarking, look at buildings to identify the opportunities for retrofits to implement renewable energy sources. Investing in renewable energy enables businesses to decarbonise, while simultaneously insulating themselves from volatile energy markets. Thus, businesses benefit from a financial point of view as well as a sustainable one. Companies should also monitor potential grant funds that can support the initial investment in renewable energy.
Businesses should then identify if they have land available to support biodiversity or how they can implement green travel schemes. Newcastle International Airport has recently updated its employee green travel plan. With thousands of employees, the airport has a car share scheme, electric vehicle (EV) charging points and an EV salary sacrifice scheme as well as support from the Tyne and Wear metro.
The Municipality of Middelfart is a small municipality with approximately 40,000 inhabitants and has been working towards the green transition ever since it was established in 2007. Political willpower and stamina have helped the municipality achieve strong results in implementing sustainability.
From the creation of the new organisation, politicians enquired about the municipality's mission and vision. Politicians shared how together they are building bridges to the future with input from the public and private sectors as well as citizens. There was a desire to support anything that will complement the green transition as long as it delivered concrete results; not policy papers. The freedom to take action meant that the municipality launched many projects and consequently won numerous awards, such as the European Destination of Excellence. The priority was not just sustainable tourism, instead sustainable transformation of the entire economy was the main driver of action.
Building synergies between competing priorities is at the centre of decision-making in the city council, framed through a consideration of sustainability concerns and climate action. Working on tourism development, Middelfart is one of the places where visitors can go Bridgewalking and cross the bridge that connects mainland Europe to the island of Funen, the birthplace of the storyteller Hans Christian Anderson. This was a symbolic project to highlight that the municipality wants to reuse, recycle, repurpose and rethink the existing infrastructure within the area. This project was developed for the municipality's inhabitants who then invited their friends to join the experience due to their pride in the initiative.
Involving local residents is key to ensuring sustainability actions are successfully implemented. Middelfart is organising a national climate festival. Seven years ago the municipality launched the event with approximately 60 or 70 people talking about the climate in the town hall. This year, over 30,000 people are expected to participate. Sustainability is a mass movement agenda to which anyone can contribute because there is a lot of sympathy for becoming more environmentally conscious.
Residents support sustainability initiatives because the municipality is using these projects to improve residents' quality of life. The Municipality of Middelfart has approached residents about issues, such as energy savings, retrofitting houses and upgrading heating systems. This helps showcase the benefits of sustainability to individuals by focusing on consumer perspectives.
The municipality also focuses on the learning perspective and embeds climate and sustainability in schools. This has been so successful that teachers from other European countries visited Middelfart to participate in training and observe how the municipality teaches the subject.
The Municipality of Middelfart tries to embrace all aspects of sustainability. While some people might feel that climate action isn't something that they are interested in, when others take this matter seriously they tend to follow.
A lot of the municipality's success has come from the learning-by-doing approach. The organisation has worked as a climate laboratory where people can experiment and try new ideas to manage, for example, district heating and insulation. This approach provides a safe space to develop new ideas and initiatives and outlines that the only thing that people can do wrong is to not take action at all.
The Municipality of Middelfart has experimented with lots of different ideas, some of which have been successful, while others didn't achieve their goals. The most important aspects are to have stamina, curiosity and courage. Curiosity is a skill that is increasingly needed in day-to-day environments where there is rapid change and many challenges that people may not be well-equipped to manage. There is a need to have the agility and openness to run experiments and prototype different solutions to see what happens if organisations choose to go in a certain direction. With these abilities, it is possible to make considerable progress as demonstrated by the many awards received by the municipality.
Championing experimentation about sustainability and making it inherent to the destination identity, gives an opportunity to rethink what it means to be a destination. This can help attract people who want to observe sustainable initiatives for themselves. This may help other industries to flourish and benefit from outside perspectives arriving at the destination.
Facilitating change is always difficult. The Municipality of Middelfart has overcome challenges by directly taking action. Lots of organisations make speeches about sustainability. Everyone says they are becoming more sustainable, but very few are actually working on this topic. Those who do implement sustainable initiatives often do it poorly. If organisations don't start working on sustainability, then they will never be able to effectively champion it.
An important factor in overcoming challenges is taking the mindset that organisations can accomplish anything, even if they haven't tried it before. Taking the overarching view of trying to succeed with all elements of climate action and implementing multi-faced sustainability initiatives has been the destination's main strength. As a small municipality, Middelfart has the freedom to experiment and not fear failure. Failures provide an opportunity to learn from mistakes.
Technology fits into many aspects of Middelfart's sustainability strategy and different types of modern technology are used for various purposes. For example, a huge volume of emissions comes from residential gas heating systems. The municipality is working on a project called Thermonet. The concept is to use data to identify potential energy savings in private houses. The municipality won a bronze medal at the Danish Digital Awards in the Public Sector and Government - Tech Development category.
Digitalisation and technology can help the municipality to monitor its impact. The rankings from the Global Destination Sustainability Movement show that Middelfart is in the top 20 destinations in the world. Technology and data help with benchmarking and demonstrating that the destination is actually implementing sustainable transformation activities.
Having accountability and transparency behind the vision and message is fundamental to ensuring that destinations aren't perceived as greenwashing. Sometimes it isn't easy to do this because it requires the sharing of data and agreement between all organisations to facilitate this.
There are many opportunities to initiate pilot studies to test new technologies to see if certain scenarios could be addressed and reduce the environmental impact. Being a small municipality sometimes creates opportunities to be a testbed for piloting new ideas.
Innovation has given the Municipality of Middelfart the possibility to rethink itself as a local authority. This has enabled the local governmental body to go back to basics and think about co-creation, instead of just following rules and regulations. Having a limited budget is not a problem for innovation. In fact, it actually enhances the possibility to be innovative and creatively search for new solutions. If organisations have good ideas, then there will be a way of turning them into a reality.
Sustainability is a multifaceted topic that requires a coordinated approach. Organisations should create their own strategies outlining the various initiatives they plan to implement and obtain support from their partners. Lots of work occurs behind the scenes and the public only sees a fraction of the effort behind addressing environmental issues.
Enacting change is a difficult process. Organisations should showcase the progress they've made and reflect on their successes, while also actively identifying the next steps to take. Organisations should have a mindset that anything can be accomplished and avoid the fear of failure. Stamina, curiosity and courage are the three key skills to facilitating the implementation of sustainable initiatives.
To start the green transition, organisations should conduct research and monitor the composition and sources of their emissions. This will enable benchmarking and also identify the most effective uses of technology for decarbonisation and transitioning towards renewable energy sources. Organisations will also obtain the necessary insight to join industry accreditation schemes that showcase their performance compared to their competitors.
Regular investment should complement the sustainability roadmap. However, lack of budget should not be considered a problem as good ideas always find a way to receive funding. Nevertheless, it's imperative to understand the business case for sustainability and the various grants available to drive concrete action forward. Strong governance is key for organisations to go beyond the minimum rules and regulations and also maintain support from financial institutions and other investors.
To enable innovative actions to be taken, it's important to have the political willpower to drive the process and think creatively using co-creation techniques. The local community should be involved in the planning of new initiatives and synergies between projects identified to boost residents' quality of life. It is important for organisations to remain transparent and accountable in the process, which requires being open to sharing data about their performance.
Organisations can learn about sustainability by experimenting with different ideas through having the freedom to act. Prototyping ideas through becoming a testbed for pilot studies is therefore a crucial way to learn and educate younger generations as well as for sharing knowledge with industry peers.
The podcast is part of the Hospitality Innovation Tourism Supply (HITS) programme which provides targeted support, learning resources and grant funding to businesses in Northumberland, Newcastle and North Tyneside to help make their ideas a reality. The programme is funded by North of Tyne Combined Authority and delivered by NewcastleGateshead Initiative, Food and Drink North East and NBSL.
In the final episode of our "Driving Place-Based Innovation" podcast series, in partnership with the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we consider our role as sustainability leaders. Newcastle International Airport talks about its strategy to de-carbonise by 2035 and the Municipality of Middelfart shares how they became industry leaders in the green transition of European tourism.
You can listen to the episode here 👇
Newcastle International Airport is at the heart of the North East region, with the seven local authorities owning 51% of the shares and the other 49% owned by InfraBridge. The airport contributes hundreds of millions of pounds to the regional economy. The airport has a significant economic impact, directly supporting nearly two and a half thousand jobs, with a similar number across its supply chain. As the airport continues to recover from COVID-19, it will continue hiring new staff and supporting even more jobs.
The airport brings international tourists to North East England and serves local residents going on holiday. It also helps North East England's businesses to export their products through the different air services provided, including freight services operated by Federal Express. In 2007, Emirates opened a route at the airport, which helped facilitate global connectivity and support exports to Oceania.
The airport is ambitious in terms of its future plans and is doing its fifth review of the master plan outlining its vision until 2040. There is constant investment into developing the airport's facilities, with recent upgrades to the security area as well as the food and beverage offerings. There is also regular investment in technology, including the airport website and app.
The airport's ambition is to be a market leader in terms of sustainability. It aims to achieve net zero by 2035 and is also strongly involved in environmental and biodiversity initiatives as well as community relations. Sustainability and growth can support each other. The airport is serious about its decarbonisation strategy and is investing heavily in this area.
Some of the major global airlines operate from the airport and are also investing in new aircraft technologies, such as electric planes and alternative fuels, including biofuels and hydrogen. There are lots of activities, both behind the scenes and in the public domain to decarbonise flight emissions. The airport supports these efforts, but its main focus is on other major projects to decarbonise the airport itself.
Newcastle International Airport published its Net Zero 2035 strategy in January 2020, which sets out a detailed roadmap to remove scope one and two emissions from the airport's energy usage. This includes gas and electricity consumption, vehicles and all of the activities on the airport site.
This roadmap was underpinned by a detailed energy study, enabling the airport to monitor the emissions from all of its buildings and identify opportunities for renewable energy. The airport calculated the amount of investment required between now and 2035 and the annual run rate of investment.
As part of the financing for this investment, the airport secured a £15 million green loan to be spent over the next three years. This will be spent on major renewable energy projects, with the airport securing planning permission last year for a 16-megawatt solar farm on airport land, of which the first three megawatts have been installed during phase one. On sunny days, this generates sufficient energy to power the airport, although not overnight or in winter. Phase two of the solar farm, however, will look into the role of battery storage and consider alternatives to gas supply. The airport has also mapped out the next stages between now and 2035.
In terms of vehicle capacity, the airport is already operating two 100% electric airside buses that transport passengers between the terminal and the aircraft. These buses only need recharging every couple of weeks. The next batch of operational vehicles are currently being delivered to the airport.
The airport is also implementing new charging infrastructure, with some operators, such as Jet 2 planning to become fully electric. These electric vehicles will be powered by the solar farm, meaning that the airport generates the electricity it requires.
When working on sustainability initiatives, it is important to establish standards to ensure transparency and accountability. Newcastle International Airport has received the ISO 45,001 certification regarding health and safety at work.
The airport is also accredited by Airports Council International as a level two carbon-certified airport and is currently in the process of achieving level three certification. This is a rigorous system recognised by governments in terms of what airports should include in their carbon roadmaps, the structure and sequencing of it and how they involve their business partners. The airport monitors its performance against its plan and whether it is achieving its goals according to the timeline outlined. The Net Zero plan is published on Airports Council International's website, alongside the plans for airports around the world, enabling comparisons of the strategy to other similar organisations.
The airport bought land in the 1990s for usage as potential environmental mitigation. This land plays a critical role in the delivery of the net zero strategy, both in relation to tree planting and accommodating the solar farm. Without this land, it would be challenging to implement the different initiatives. However, acquiring this land has made it easier to put forward proposals that carefully consider the local environmental impacts and protect biodiversity. This also minimises the extent to which the environmental issues are visible to the local community. This approach helped to secure the planning permission by looking closely at how to manage impacts from a local environmental viewpoint.
Looking forward, it's important to maintain the pace in terms of investment. Nevertheless, it is a relatively short timeframe until 2035; most airports globally have set a target of 2050. The UK government also set a net zero target of 2050 for the country, with English airports required to reach this goal by 2040. Newcastle International Airport's plan is more ambitious than these legal mandates and is supported by its shareholders, which will help to maintain momentum in delivering the strategy over the next 12 years.
One of the biggest challenges will be finding a solution regarding gas usage and encouraging all airlines to use sustainable aviation fuels. It's important to show constant progress in improving sustainability within organisations and reflect on successes. Mitigating climate change is a journey and should also look forward to implementing the next steps. There will be moments when organisations think they have implemented all possible solutions, but there will still be plenty of opportunities to go further in terms of implementing new sustainability initiatives.
Newcastle International Airport is at the cutting edge of energy-efficient technology, such as new heat pump technologies. The airport is continuously investing in technology as a customer-facing operational business. There is a myriad of different technologies within the airport's operations, such as monitoring performance to improve the efficiency and seamlessness of passenger movements through the building and digital interactions with customers through the airport's app.
The airport's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report shows that the airport's banks set four sustainability targets relating to decarbonisation and emissions, carbon accreditation, biodiversity net gain on the airport site - including woodland planting, peatland and wildflower meadow restoration - and a score on the global infrastructure benchmarking on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance. The airport's ESG score is 98 points out of 100, with the aim to improve even further this year.
Innovation doesn't always need to be based on technology. Innovation is about doing something different and new. This occasionally involves out-of-the-box thinking and then delivering strong outcomes.
The tourism industry is composed of mostly small and micro businesses that also need to think about how to become more sustainable. All organisations face similar challenges in terms of measuring their ecological footprint and decarbonising their business to become a net positive contributor to both the environment and society.
It's important for organisations to set benchmarks and understand their carbon footprint and the different components that contribute to it, either through low-cost software or consultancy projects. After this benchmarking, look at buildings to identify the opportunities for retrofits to implement renewable energy sources. Investing in renewable energy enables businesses to decarbonise, while simultaneously insulating themselves from volatile energy markets. Thus, businesses benefit from a financial point of view as well as a sustainable one. Companies should also monitor potential grant funds that can support the initial investment in renewable energy.
Businesses should then identify if they have land available to support biodiversity or how they can implement green travel schemes. Newcastle International Airport has recently updated its employee green travel plan. With thousands of employees, the airport has a car share scheme, electric vehicle (EV) charging points and an EV salary sacrifice scheme as well as support from the Tyne and Wear metro.
The Municipality of Middelfart is a small municipality with approximately 40,000 inhabitants and has been working towards the green transition ever since it was established in 2007. Political willpower and stamina have helped the municipality achieve strong results in implementing sustainability.
From the creation of the new organisation, politicians enquired about the municipality's mission and vision. Politicians shared how together they are building bridges to the future with input from the public and private sectors as well as citizens. There was a desire to support anything that will complement the green transition as long as it delivered concrete results; not policy papers. The freedom to take action meant that the municipality launched many projects and consequently won numerous awards, such as the European Destination of Excellence. The priority was not just sustainable tourism, instead sustainable transformation of the entire economy was the main driver of action.
Building synergies between competing priorities is at the centre of decision-making in the city council, framed through a consideration of sustainability concerns and climate action. Working on tourism development, Middelfart is one of the places where visitors can go Bridgewalking and cross the bridge that connects mainland Europe to the island of Funen, the birthplace of the storyteller Hans Christian Anderson. This was a symbolic project to highlight that the municipality wants to reuse, recycle, repurpose and rethink the existing infrastructure within the area. This project was developed for the municipality's inhabitants who then invited their friends to join the experience due to their pride in the initiative.
Involving local residents is key to ensuring sustainability actions are successfully implemented. Middelfart is organising a national climate festival. Seven years ago the municipality launched the event with approximately 60 or 70 people talking about the climate in the town hall. This year, over 30,000 people are expected to participate. Sustainability is a mass movement agenda to which anyone can contribute because there is a lot of sympathy for becoming more environmentally conscious.
Residents support sustainability initiatives because the municipality is using these projects to improve residents' quality of life. The Municipality of Middelfart has approached residents about issues, such as energy savings, retrofitting houses and upgrading heating systems. This helps showcase the benefits of sustainability to individuals by focusing on consumer perspectives.
The municipality also focuses on the learning perspective and embeds climate and sustainability in schools. This has been so successful that teachers from other European countries visited Middelfart to participate in training and observe how the municipality teaches the subject.
The Municipality of Middelfart tries to embrace all aspects of sustainability. While some people might feel that climate action isn't something that they are interested in, when others take this matter seriously they tend to follow.
A lot of the municipality's success has come from the learning-by-doing approach. The organisation has worked as a climate laboratory where people can experiment and try new ideas to manage, for example, district heating and insulation. This approach provides a safe space to develop new ideas and initiatives and outlines that the only thing that people can do wrong is to not take action at all.
The Municipality of Middelfart has experimented with lots of different ideas, some of which have been successful, while others didn't achieve their goals. The most important aspects are to have stamina, curiosity and courage. Curiosity is a skill that is increasingly needed in day-to-day environments where there is rapid change and many challenges that people may not be well-equipped to manage. There is a need to have the agility and openness to run experiments and prototype different solutions to see what happens if organisations choose to go in a certain direction. With these abilities, it is possible to make considerable progress as demonstrated by the many awards received by the municipality.
Championing experimentation about sustainability and making it inherent to the destination identity, gives an opportunity to rethink what it means to be a destination. This can help attract people who want to observe sustainable initiatives for themselves. This may help other industries to flourish and benefit from outside perspectives arriving at the destination.
Facilitating change is always difficult. The Municipality of Middelfart has overcome challenges by directly taking action. Lots of organisations make speeches about sustainability. Everyone says they are becoming more sustainable, but very few are actually working on this topic. Those who do implement sustainable initiatives often do it poorly. If organisations don't start working on sustainability, then they will never be able to effectively champion it.
An important factor in overcoming challenges is taking the mindset that organisations can accomplish anything, even if they haven't tried it before. Taking the overarching view of trying to succeed with all elements of climate action and implementing multi-faced sustainability initiatives has been the destination's main strength. As a small municipality, Middelfart has the freedom to experiment and not fear failure. Failures provide an opportunity to learn from mistakes.
Technology fits into many aspects of Middelfart's sustainability strategy and different types of modern technology are used for various purposes. For example, a huge volume of emissions comes from residential gas heating systems. The municipality is working on a project called Thermonet. The concept is to use data to identify potential energy savings in private houses. The municipality won a bronze medal at the Danish Digital Awards in the Public Sector and Government - Tech Development category.
Digitalisation and technology can help the municipality to monitor its impact. The rankings from the Global Destination Sustainability Movement show that Middelfart is in the top 20 destinations in the world. Technology and data help with benchmarking and demonstrating that the destination is actually implementing sustainable transformation activities.
Having accountability and transparency behind the vision and message is fundamental to ensuring that destinations aren't perceived as greenwashing. Sometimes it isn't easy to do this because it requires the sharing of data and agreement between all organisations to facilitate this.
There are many opportunities to initiate pilot studies to test new technologies to see if certain scenarios could be addressed and reduce the environmental impact. Being a small municipality sometimes creates opportunities to be a testbed for piloting new ideas.
Innovation has given the Municipality of Middelfart the possibility to rethink itself as a local authority. This has enabled the local governmental body to go back to basics and think about co-creation, instead of just following rules and regulations. Having a limited budget is not a problem for innovation. In fact, it actually enhances the possibility to be innovative and creatively search for new solutions. If organisations have good ideas, then there will be a way of turning them into a reality.
Sustainability is a multifaceted topic that requires a coordinated approach. Organisations should create their own strategies outlining the various initiatives they plan to implement and obtain support from their partners. Lots of work occurs behind the scenes and the public only sees a fraction of the effort behind addressing environmental issues.
Enacting change is a difficult process. Organisations should showcase the progress they've made and reflect on their successes, while also actively identifying the next steps to take. Organisations should have a mindset that anything can be accomplished and avoid the fear of failure. Stamina, curiosity and courage are the three key skills to facilitating the implementation of sustainable initiatives.
To start the green transition, organisations should conduct research and monitor the composition and sources of their emissions. This will enable benchmarking and also identify the most effective uses of technology for decarbonisation and transitioning towards renewable energy sources. Organisations will also obtain the necessary insight to join industry accreditation schemes that showcase their performance compared to their competitors.
Regular investment should complement the sustainability roadmap. However, lack of budget should not be considered a problem as good ideas always find a way to receive funding. Nevertheless, it's imperative to understand the business case for sustainability and the various grants available to drive concrete action forward. Strong governance is key for organisations to go beyond the minimum rules and regulations and also maintain support from financial institutions and other investors.
To enable innovative actions to be taken, it's important to have the political willpower to drive the process and think creatively using co-creation techniques. The local community should be involved in the planning of new initiatives and synergies between projects identified to boost residents' quality of life. It is important for organisations to remain transparent and accountable in the process, which requires being open to sharing data about their performance.
Organisations can learn about sustainability by experimenting with different ideas through having the freedom to act. Prototyping ideas through becoming a testbed for pilot studies is therefore a crucial way to learn and educate younger generations as well as for sharing knowledge with industry peers.
The podcast is part of the Hospitality Innovation Tourism Supply (HITS) programme which provides targeted support, learning resources and grant funding to businesses in Northumberland, Newcastle and North Tyneside to help make their ideas a reality. The programme is funded by North of Tyne Combined Authority and delivered by NewcastleGateshead Initiative, Food and Drink North East and NBSL.
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