PowerSwitch

I've been asked to speak to a group of 100 businessmen and women about going carbon neutral. Any thoughts?

I'm also booking an appointment to go talk to my MP about ff depletion. He says he's already seen crude awakening, and would be happy to talk about the issue.

Is it me or is the world waking up?

You could frame the peak oil issue in terms of risk management. You could focus on the business resilience side of things. In Transition Towns, they are doing work on Oil Vulnerability Auditing with John (?) Snowden at Liverpool University.

Definitely waking up, but will it be out of bed, with slippers and dressing-gown on before the Four Riders of the Apocalypse knock on the door?

Adam,

It is Simon Snowden, have his details if you email/call me.

Talked to Duncan Law at TT brixton and he is trying to get simon to do a similar analysis for Lambeth Council.

Cheers

Tom

I've been asked to speak to a group of 100 businessmen and women about going carbon neutral. Any thoughts?

Surely being carbon neutral simply means that no excess carbon is created?

Coal power stations with CO2 sequestration would fit ... BUT ... carbon neutrality STILL allows use of fossil fuels.

The title of the talk may have already locked you into talking about the wrong topic!

Yes, you should talk about going carbon negative. Who wants to be merely neutral?

Here's how to do it.

brasso wrote:I've been asked to speak to a group of 100 businessmen and women about going carbon neutral. Any thoughts?

I'm also booking an appointment to go talk to my MP about ff depletion. He says he's already seen crude awakening, and would be happy to talk about the issue.

Is it me or is the world waking up?

Nice one brasso

As a business folk myself I can guarantee most of them won't be interested unless it directly affects their businesses some time soon. From where I see it, I would stay away from the whole global warming side of things and concentrate on the running out of our own gas and oil, the likely sinking pound (which has even been confirmed as the goal by Mervyn King tonight) and hence more expensive fuel /electric / heating, general global competition for supplies etc.

In a nutshell, energy is going to get expensive so those businesses that have planned ahead will be in a better position. In addition, those businesses that can help their customers solve the problems they will face will do better.

To use ourselves as an example, we're an IT company and we offer lower energy solutions - we don't always sell them as that as customers aren't always interested - and we're looking at more ways to do that so that when the customer demand does really take off, we're positioned properly to take advantage. But we haven't had to become hippies to do it, and we haven't stopped doing what we do. So we're in today's world but we've got a big eye on tomorrow's world.

Hope that helps!

Save fuel first, it's the cheapest thing they can do. Heat reclaim. Avoid air conditioning, it's a design fault in a building. Insulate buildings. Use smaller buildings. Make efficiency gains. Reduce travel of people and goods. Avoid road and air travel. Work from home. Encourage employees to walk, cycle or car share if they can't work from home. There are loads of car share schemes starting up.

Once all the efficiency gains have been carried out then start thinking about carbon neutral power. Offsite and onsite wind, pv, combined heat and power (CHP), waste and biomass heat & power, passive and active solar heating.

I would avoid heat pumps including ground source heat pumps (GSHP) in view of Chris Vernon's post http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/vie ... ight=cliff
unless there is waste process heat to be reclaimed.

Heat pumps work at a Coefficient of Performance (COP) of 4 maximum, that's 1 unit of electricity in, 4 units of heat out. That's their maximum and is achieved with a warm source and a cool output e.g. warm earth at 12 to 15 deg C as a source and underfloor heating at 30 to 45 deg C output. If you have a cold source and a hot output e.g. freezing air and a radiator heating system at 70 deg C the COP could be as low as 2. As electricity is generated at about 33% efficiency, at a COP of less than 3, it's more efficient to burn the gas at the factory rather than the power station. Hence a process heat source can increase the efficiency of a heat pump, but not above 4.

You can emphasise energy vulnerability to Russia: they cut off gas supplies at the slightest provocation. And British Council offices in Russia have been provoking them sorely recently.

Emphasise that buying carbon credits DOES NOT work. Unless, of course, it's buying into Terra Preta technology (glad to see the word's getting round). The usual con of planting trees will only sequester carbon for about 100 years if you're lucky. Carbon needs to be sequestered for thousands, not hundreds of years.

Enjoy your presentation.

(Some of) the people who are listening to you are going to have to go back to their bosses, and in the worst cases their Landlords, and put their case. So give them a hand by talking a little bit about Procurement (as well as direct savings, natch). That is, many big businesses, and all councils, housing associations, bits of HMG etc, now have "Corporate Social Responsibility" policies and the like which demand procurement from ethical/environmental firms.

There is ISO 14000 (which has a sequel ISO14064 about how to do a Carbon Footprint). Sorry this is all very bureaucratic and much less fun than Kenneal's building work but both are necessary.

I agree that Carbon Offsets are not the way to go since that DEFRA study that found that only one firm met its Gold Standard (and damn if I can remember who!). But that needn't preclude things like sending a donation/bunch of guys on 'teambuilding' to someone like Trees For Life (planting up the Scottish Forest), not for offsetting purposes but for something interesting to put in the Annual Report.

Good luck and enjoy it!

I believe only Climate Care met the Gold Standard - but I think even they are 'selling foreward' as it were - the schemes are still being developed in the most part I think. Climate Care are staffed by some really knowledgeable environmentalists and the founder Mike Mason has spent thousands and has never and will never draw a wage. I'm not keen on offsetting but Climate Care are a pretty ethical bunch. The Carbon Neutral company are a bunch of marketing muppets who have jumped on the bandwagon believing they have found the next dot.com - I saw two of them pitch to a client, and omigod.... what a pair of Tamaras in pashminas, watching them gape like goldfish over the scientific questions was hilarious!!!!!!!!!!! But then I am prone to misanthropy on occasion

Many thanks for everyone who's contributed, it's given me plenty to go at. If I'm not more active it's because I'm more of a lurker than a poster.

Take it easy!