What if…?

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) publishes some good ideas and often some bad ideas (or should that be unworkable rather than bad?).

However, the latest notion from the self-styled ‘think and do tank’ is very interesting.

They propose a ‘Green New Deal’ akin to Roosevelts New Deal implemented in the US during the 1930’s depression. Full details of their proposals (and who drafted them) can be found here.

There main proposals include;

• “Massive investment in renewable energy and wider environmental transformation in the UK, leading to,
• The creation of thousands of new green collar jobs
• Reining in reckless aspects of the finance sector – but making low-cost capital available to fund the UK’s green economic shift
• Building a new alliance between environmentalists, industry, agriculture, and unions to put the interests of the real economy ahead of those of footloose finance”

All interesting stuff I think, but as always how its implemented would be the challenge. Setting aside the alarmist (but possibly true) 100 months to live stuff, it’s an interesting contribution to a wider debate.

Are we going to sleepwalk into the abyss always doing things the way we have always done them or are we prepared to change?

Bloomberg news this morning had an analyst on who was talking not about recession but about depression, just like the 1930’s. So perhaps a New Deal will be required.

For this strand the idea was to calculate the supply chain for the contents and supplies in the off, like a lifecycle assessment. However the enormity of this task soon became apparent, and instead I decided on one example, paper.
Wood Holmes uses Reflex paper, from Australia, which goes through a supplier in Newcastle. For the supply chain, I had to fill in the gaps between these two points. The Newcastle supplier informed us that they got the paper from another supplier in the UK, and I presumed the paper was shipped from Australia, and after checking the global shipping lanes found out the route was through the Suez Canal to Portsmouth, then the paper was transported in a van to the North East. A very long way to travel.
It was possible to calculate the transport emissions, again using values supplied by the GHG Protocol Initiative, but not the manufacturing emissions. The final value for the amount of CO2 emitted for the Wood Holmes group’s annual paper usage is (4668.3 + Y) kg of CO2. Y is the emissions from the manufacturing process. This figure does not take into account any carbon emitted during the disposal of the paper.
This is an estimation, calculated in an afternoon, a true, accurate life-cycle assessment of this nature takes 4-5 man months to complete.
This example brings the problem of responsibility and boundaries into the equation, exactly how much of these emissions are you responsible for if you use the paper?

The calculations for this strand were the most straightforward, simply obtaining the electricity and gas usage for a year from old bills, and then multiplying these by a conversion factor that has the units of kg of CO_2­ per kWh or per £. There is a lot of this information available from the GHG Protocol Initiative, and for any gaps in the information, I used the calculators I talked about in the Carbon Footprint Calculators blog.
From the bills for the electricity consumption, there was enough information to cover the 18 months or so that the Wood Holmes group have resided in Cale Cross House. With the 6 quarterly bills, I obtained an average value for the number of kWh used in a quarter, and then a year, and multiplied this value by the average emission of CO2 per kWh in the UK over the last five years to get an annual carbon footprint of 7759.55 kg of CO2.
When calculating the gas I planned to use the same method but the charge is included in the rent, so I contacted the building manager, the letting company, and the supplier but only bill I could find was for the year 03/04, giving the amount of gas used in £’s. I used the Carbon Footprint Company calculator and also the calculator from Style Will Save Us to a value for CO2 emitted per £. The final footprint was 3554.00 kg of CO2, so the total carbon footprint from the energy costs is 11,313.5 kg of CO2.

So that the calculations for this project are easier, I am going to divide the total carbon footprint into more manageable chunks;
1. Running costs of the business - Energy costs
- Cost of contents and Supplies
- Building Costs
2. The movement of Employees - Business Travel
- Commuting
The strands have been divided up this way so that there is no or very little overlap between them, and there is no interference between any two of them.
Splitting up the footprints into these strands will help to overcome any obstacles that I may encounter in these calculations; it will help me to isolate these problems. Some of these strands will be less straightforward than others, for instance the emissions from the costs of contents and supplies.
For the cost of contents and supplies, I hope to draw up a supply chain and calculate the emissions included in it from there, however this may prove and lengthy task, as each individual item will require a supply chain. These are referred to by many people as the emissions embodied by the lifecycle of the object. Does anybody have any alternative suggestions for a method?

I am trying to produce a carbon calculator for a business, but there are plenty of ‘personal’ carbon calculators available for individual use. It has taken a while to go through them all, here all the results from the better one’s in ascending order, starting with number 9;
9. Climate Crisis – 0.95 tonnes of CO₂/year
8. Safe Climate – 2.34 tonnes
7. Style Will Save Us – 6.3 tonnes
6. Carbon Neutral Company – 6.4 tonnes
5. C Level – 5 tonnes
4. WWF Calculator – 8.12 tonnes (2.3 planets)
3. Act on CO2 Calculator (DEFRA) – 5.44 tonnes
2. Carbon Footprint Company – 10.84 tonnes
1. Zero Footprint – 11.8 tonnes
I have ranked these calculators on the amount of information they take into account, the better calculators all take slightly longer to complete but in my opinion give a better result. The reason there is such a variation in the answers maybe because of the emission factor used, also the number of different factors that are taken into account that contribute towards the footprint.
The problem with these personal calculators is they all take different things into account, into different levels of detail, and they all have different average values. If the government were to introduce personal carbon credits, what level of detail would they have to include for everybody to get an accurate representation?
If they aimed for a complete carbon footprint the level of detail for this calculator would have to be astronomical to take into account all the different factors that determine someone’s personal emissions. The same type of calculator may be needed for a business which may prove just as complicated, if not more so.
These decisions parallel those necessary in the Wood Holmes calculation as I have to determine what to take into account, what contributes towards the carbon footprint for a company, to make my own ‘calculator’.

Getting down to the fine detail of the company’s footprint, the problem that immediately becomes apparent is determining how much carbon your company is actually responsible for?

I have posed this question to many Government departments, NGOs, and private orgs with limited success. Defra referred me to a paper on their website, which outlines the ‘polluter pays principle’.

The problem with this principle is raised by the issue of ‘demand’ – as the actions of the company contribute the ‘demand’ for a number of CO₂ emissions yet the company may not be the direct polluter:

For example, when a company orders paper produced in Australia rather than the UK isn’t the company responsible for a proportion of the emissions associated with this supply chain? The polluter pays principle places the carbon cost at the feet of the supplier – but consumer demand supports the emissions.

The principle is also a way to shift the blame of the emissions that are a result of the UK’s demand to other countries in light of the Kyoto Protocol. As in this country there is diminished manufacturing, this reduces our footprint as the production emissions from other countries are not taken into account.

The question is, is it possible to standardize legislation for a company’s responsibility to any carbon emissions it produces?

What is a Carbon Footprint?
This definition below is from the Carbon Footprint Company (Company’s definition);
‘1. The primary footprint is a measure of our direct emissions of CO₂ from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy consumption and transportation (e.g car and plane).’
Immediately we can see that issues of ‘definition’ and ‘boundary’ are problem areas. E.g. where is the ‘domestic’ boundary drawn? And how much of a plane’s emissions are the responsibility of the individual passenger.
‘2. The secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO₂ emissions from the whole lifecycle of products we use – those associated with their manufacture and breakdown.’
From this definition the problems continue. For example the production of a computer involves thousands upon thousands of small parts, do the emissions associated with the supply chains have to be included for all these little pieces?
Therefore we may conclude, the calculation of the carbon footprint is going to be a subjective issue rather than objective figure suggested in the media.
Throughout this project, this issue will become clearer with help and guidelines from policy makers for this topic, i.e. government agencies (Defra), NGO’s, private companies etc, and any input you may have on this topic would be gratefully appreciated!

So in the spirit of practicing what you preach - we have decided to have a go at becoming carbon neutral.

Now despite there being a plethora or advice, online calculators and guidance, we suspect that this task is not as easy as it sounds.

The main problems we anticipate are;

1) Defining where our footprint starts and ends. What are we responsible for?

2) Making sure that the approach we adopt aligns with other peoples approaches

To help us in this task we have invited Chris to become and honorary employee. His role is to work it all out from scratch. He will be supported by Sam (the newest recruit to the firm).

Chris and Sam will update their trials and tribulations of getting this done to this site.

Feel free to pass any constructive comments.

So the big news yesterday and today is The Stern Report on Climate Change. You can read the full report (all 27 Chapters) on the Treasury Website. The What If? Project is working on providing our own interpretation of the implications which we will publish soon.

In the meantime, if you have read all of the offline news medias take on Stern, have a look at William Connellys blog; Stoat. He provides an amusing critique of some of the submissions to Stern from various stakeholders.

So onto Wikis. This article on Internet.com explains how someone has predicted that 50% of US enterprises will be using wikis by 2009. The article concludes with the following statements;

Companies should avoid the temptation to be overly controlling, noted Jotspot CEO Joe Kraus.

“You want to be restrictive when it comes to keeping information inside the four walls of the company. Within the company, you want to be more liberal than not,” he told internetnews.com.

Wikis also help address another problem companies have struggled with for years, which is how to collect and retain knowledge that is in people’s heads or in unstructured documents like e-mail.

Previous so-called knowledge-management solutions have foundered because people are loathe to spend time thanklessly regurgitating their experiences into some knowledge repository for the good of the company.

Wikis, on the other hand, are a more natural way for people to explain their thought processes and get kudos along the way.

“Wikis provide a social incentive to share knowledge,” Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield told internetnews.com. “People don’t like filling in forms, but they enjoy telling stories about their day.”

Now, these guys would say that wouldn’t they! However, there is a large amount of truth in this, as anyone with 5 seconds experience with intranets or KM projects will testify to!. Internal Comms departments that don’t get this beware!!

Footnote: A day after I posted this. Google bought Jotspot for a squllion dollars or something…..

In the past on this blog I have discussed virtual worlds and the exchange therein of ‘real’ currency. Second Life, which is one of the most prominent of these virtual worlds, has its own currency, the Linden dollar. These are the lists of jobs/businesses that people are running in the virtual world, which in many cases provide them income in the non-virtual world (the Linden dollar is exchangable for real world currency). Stuff like this really gets me thinking.

Meanwhile over on the Cognitive Edge blog an interesting debate about Value Networks, which is worth reading. Dave mentions the work of Aubrey Meyer on personal carbon rationing in his opening which is interesting. Keen readers of What If?, will know that we referenced a book by Mayer Hillman on this blog and in our Environmental Futures workshops back in April which covered this very subject.

Finally, it seems that web 2.0 might become the new front in warfare according to this article on Silicon.com.

Interesting article on todays Environment Guardian site about the State of California deciding to sue motor manufacturers. Interesting stuff. It  throws up a whole load of questions and the Guardian quite rightly compares this battle to that of those fought against tobacco etc.

I say quite rightly, because we can envisage a whole set of future scenarios which are similar to those played out in tobacco. For example, at what stage were motor firms aware that their products were having a detrimental effect.? If it can be proved it was as far back as the 1970’s then does the compensation get backdated?

Likewise, given that most transport scientists would accept that building more roads ultimately leads to more car journeys, how culpable in all of this are the planners, politicians and governments who built the roads?

Finally, as car users (and most people are) how culpable are we? If you buy a large 4×4 to drive your kids to school in 2006, are you not more aware of the potential damage you mat be causing?

Cases like this open up a huge number of What If? Questions.

From a personal point of view I traded down to a smaller car (both in engine size and body size) last year. Most days I use the Metro to get to work, and some days I use a combination. I feel as if I am doing my bit but I have never tried to calculate my CO2 footprint yet. (perhaps Nick will do it for me!). Anecdotally, I sense that more people are using public transport but having said that, Newcastle Central Motorway is always packed from 3.00pm onwards.

All this probably means some sharp corrections are coming.!

Yes, after what seems like an age we are back. Sorry for the break in transmission, we got waylaid on some other matters. Now back to What If?

Just to recap, you will recall that we piloted a series of events on Environmental Futures. The purpose of these was really to explore some creative ideas about sustainable development.

Anyway, around that time I had just finished reading an excellent book by Mayer Hillman entitled How We Can Save the Planet in which he builds a stongh argument for each person to have a personal carbon allowance.

Now David Milliband has raised the idea in a speech last week. You can also see more on the Milliband Blog and lots of response to the proposals.

Don’t expect it to happen soon but don’t say the What If? team didn’t warn you.!

So despite many attempts on our part to get ‘regeneration futures’ off the ground, it seems like the regen industry is finally coming around to some of the ideas.

First off New Start Magazine this week has an article about the ‘demographic timebomb‘ and how that might affect regeneration projects. We are already working on this issue with several clients, most of whom first started to consider the implications of this through ‘futures’ work of one type or another.

Welcome regeneration world.!!!

Secondly, BURA have as one of their main conference themes this year “Scenario Planning”. They are advertising it as a “new idea” for regeneration, and state they are about produce a body of work that will integrate scenario thinking into regeneration practice.

So it seems like ’scenario planning’ and futures thinking is now flavour of the regen month. We shall see………:)

It is with great sadness that I bring you news on the potential demise of one of the key components of my early scientific working life - the nitrogen dioxide diffusion tube.

Yes these humble little things, that I spent hours labelling and sending out to Local Councils the length and breadth of the UK are to be phased out by DEFRA. Or so says the consultation document on the UK Air Quality Strategy.

They were orginally devised as a cheap method to estimate air pollution before you sent in expensive, but more accurate, monitoring kit. They grew in popularity and most Local Authorities have used them at one time or another.

It seems that they have been superceded by sophisticated monitoring and computer models. I guess it’s progress. Lets hope those using the models know what they are doing?!!

Try this, I met Robert Holdway on Tuesday (a fellow Industrial design graduate from Newcastle poly), he works for www.Giraffeinnovation.com, yes they can see further. He has been involved in a project called www.weeeman.org which was sponsored by the RSA and has produced a sulpture out of our electrical products waste. They explain it much better on the site. Anyway try out the ecological footprint tool on the site and see how big yours is and who ever you work for.