On 21 November 2019 the roundtable meeting of the NBCC Sustainability Forum took place at Shell in London. The main purpose of this event was to identify concrete initiatives to work on together towards a zero-carbon economy by increasing sustainable mobility.
During the (first) NBCC North Sea Neighbours Dinner 2019 the NBCC, captains of industry and public stakeholders agreed to work on several themes, incl. increasing sustainable mobility as part of their endeavours to shape the future of British-Dutch business relationship together. This roundtable served as a follow up to realise the above goals at an expert level.
The invigorating presentations by Wineke Haagsma, Director Corporate Responsibility at PwC, Simon Wyke, Principal Policy & Programme Officer at Greater London Authority, Jane Linsday-Green, UK Future Fuels Manager at Shell and Avishai Trabelsi, CEO at QuiCargo, served as food for thought for the above-mentioned purpose. Insights were shared as to the implementation of sustainable mobility at corporate level, about how London was working with businesses to realise its ambition to be a zero-carbon city by 2050, Shell’s vision concerning the future of transport and how QuiCargo’s platform contributed to less empty trucks on the roads.
NBCC Chairman, Anton Valk CBE, inspired by the above, drew up four initiatives in his concluding remarks to build on and embrace through the future activities of the Netherlands British Chamber of Commerce:
- Intensifying efforts to compliment air transportation by (the more environmentally friendly) railways on short term distances such as routes between Amsterdam & London;
- Advocating to implement “Active Travelling” in London, which implies, among others, sharing best practices with the Dutch about the use of electrical cycling;
- Supporting plans to increase the number of rapid charging posts for electric cars both in the UK & NL, a technology that Shell has expertise on;
- Encouraging the use of platforms like that of QuiCargo enabling more efficient use of cargo transport on the road by reducing the number of empty trucks.
Our special gratitude goes to QuiCargo for supporting this roundtable, Shell for providing their newly opened venue, PwC for being the strategic partner of the NBCC Sustainability Forum, and last, but not least, to all of our speakers.
We can look back at a highly substantive event. It provided a valuable input for the members of the NBCC to build on with a view to advancing future action regarding a zero-carbon economy & sustainable mobility.