What if...?

Institute for the Future - Global Sustainability Futures Map

stuart — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:42:13 +0000

The Institute for the Future has a talent for producing these rather fetching visualisations of their futures work. This one maps out the driving forces (as they see them) underpinning sustainability over the coming decade. I quite like the idea of a ‘planatery markup language: PNL‘. Its available in pdf to download.

A Green New Deal

stuart — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:20:21 +0000

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 [...]

Hello Rufus Team!!

stuart — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:23:14 +0000

Many thanks to the Rufus Team in Sunderland for their time this morning and showing me their 1962 Vespa which has pride of place in the corner of their office. Nice touch!.

Eco Towns & The Aarhus Convention

stuart — Mon, 26 May 2008 08:16:54 +0000

In our recent Housing Futures work for the Construction Products Association, we investigated in some depth the potential trajectory of development for eco-homes and eco-towns in the UK. Personally, I think we’re more likely to see eco-homes long before we see eco-towns. For me, the latter represent a policy idea from a government that appears to [...]

“Talking Ourselves Into a Recession” or sticking our heads in the sand?

stuart — Sun, 25 May 2008 07:27:07 +0000

Back in January 08 I was asked to take part in a debate as part of the BURA annual conference. Now I was given the unenviable task of assessing the impact of the ‘credit crunch’ on the regeneration industry. I tried to make my presentation as upbeat as possible, but even at this stage some of the [...]

Constructing Excellence Dinner & Manchester

stuart — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:40:15 +0000

Im writing this post from the bar of the City Inn in Manchester (which I recommend). The City is bracing itself for an influx of football supporters for the UEFA cup final and most of these will be from Glasgow!! Hello to all of those that I met at the Constructing Excellence Dinner in Newcastle on [...]

The Future of the SME

stuart — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:51:29 +0000

A while back (2005) I contributed a chapter to this book which was edited by my esteemed colleague Leigh Sear. In the chapter I argued that all SME’s are ‘born global’ or at least have the potential to operate globally without having to be particularly large. This was primarily due to information technologies helping lower the [...]

Back By Popular Demand

stuart — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:32:49 +0000

Here we go then back into the blogging fray. For the past 6 months or so I’ve been so busy that thought of keeping a daily blog was just a step too far. That’s not to say that I haven’t seen a lot that I would have liked to blog about. So, now that things are a [...]

New Blog

Ian — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:36:54 +0000

Hi All Thought you might be interested in my new Blog - which contains some of my ideas on idea generation, enterprise, spotting opportunities, innovation and that sort of stuff. You can find it at: http://www.treepax.com/blog Some of it contains reprints of some of the articles I have already posted in this Blog but it is growing daily. Ian Moore

Cost of Contents and Supplies

Paul — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:46:47 +0000

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 [...]

Energy Costs

Paul — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:28:11 +0000

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 CO2 per kWh or per £. There is a lot of this information available from the GHG Protocol [...]

Splitting Strands

Paul — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 12:59:18 +0000

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 [...]

Carbon Footprint Calculators

Paul — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:33:34 +0000

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 [...]

Responsibility and Boundaries

Paul — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:29:18 +0000

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 [...]

What is the Carbon Footprint?

Paul — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:11:16 +0000

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. [...]