Green Living: Happy new year

What lies ahead for green issues in the coming 10 years? Will this be the decade when real environmental change is made, or will we carry on regardless and hope for the best?

Canary Wharf will be a very different place in 2020. We'll have had the Olympics, and perhaps even a World Cup. Crossrail should be in full swing and getting to Heathrow should be almost as easy as getting to City Airport. There are probably three reasons why the next decade will also be remembered as the greenest yet.

Firstly, there's self interest. The government will make it easier for all of us to sell electricity we generate back to the grid. So solar panels will be more than green window dressing - they'll make financial sense.

Green mortgages to allow homeowners to borrow money for renovations which improve insulation and heating efficiency also fall in to this category.

Secondly, there could be a flurry of technological breakthroughs which make greener choices more accessible. Electric cars are little more than glorified golf buggies. This is almost entirely down to battery issues.

Solve the battery problem, and the electric car is back on the road. If you could drive for 250 miles between charge and keep up on the motorway for a fraction of the cost of petrol, green fleets of company cars would be no brainers.

Finally, there's the fear factor. Unfortunately I believe that this decade will be one in which we see real climate disasters, which already threaten many parts of the developing world, strike closer to home.

Let's hope the changes we need to make come quickly enough to avert the worst of the effects.

- Do you or your company have an environmentally friendly product or service you'd like featured in this column? Let us know by contacting Seventeen, a sustainable alternative for your event management needs, at andrew@seventeenevents.co.uk.