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B9 at No 10
B9 Shipping was delighted to be invited to attend an event in early December 2009 at 10 Downing Street to meet Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister, to showcase UK low carbon innovation and partnership.
B9 Shipping was selected as one of a very few companies to meet the PM personally and describe what activities we are undertaking to reduce carbon emissions, to create and safeguard jobs across the UK economy and to stimulate technology transfer to small island economies across the world helping to stimulate sustainable economic development.
You can see some of the press coverage generated here.
UK Trade and Investment created a film of the event which can be viewed on this link to You Tube.
As you will see from the film, Gordon Brown was supportive of the low carbon entrepreneurs in attendance and underlined opportunities arising from the green revolution. As we see it there are commercial opportunities but also wider ones where the global community is included in a sustainable development programme. It is the time for ethical business, like B9, to demonstrate that sustainable growth works for everyone.
A visit to 10 Downing Street is a great honour but it was also a great pleasure. Everyone from the Prime Minister to the cloakroom assistants were warm, welcoming, accomodating and charming. As we 'low carbon' people assembled at the gates to No 10 small children were leaving clutching balloons having been to an event hosted by Sarah Brown. Their eyes sparkling with excitment, cheeks flushed with joy they poured out thrilled with their experience. It struck me then that it was for these smaller people that we really have to engage with the challenges presented by the low carbon economy. There are stimulating inspirational engineering projects to be undertaken, profits to be enjoyed and sustainable growth to be created, but in the end it is to ensure that this planet still exists for the children of today that we must strain every sinew and explore every opportunity. At Downing Street on December 3rd one could feel the power of the collective energy of inventors, entrepreneurs and business leaders all moving towards a low carbon economy and it was tremendously inspirational to be part of it.
As I exited Downing Street myself later that evening I also felt some of the childlike pleasure I'd witnessed earlier. I didn't have a balloon - just a massive grin and a real sense of change happening.