Tag: Climate change

Back this week from an interesting project to help an company plan the energy transition of one of its (energy-intensive) sites.  A couple of observations: The legal certainty created by the Dutch Carbon Tax provides something very tangible to build off. Unlike the Emissions Trading System, it provides a very clear indication of the price […]

(About to be) stuck in an airport? We need more highspeed nonstop train connecting major cities now! This is my personal opinion and wish of many of us here at 4Sing. We are committed to lower our CO2 footprint – which is largely caused by travel. Hence, in the last months we all happily shifted […]

In the last decades a number of political movements have won rural voters with promises to defend local farmers against global capitalism, commonly known as “Food Populism and Politics”. This has been easy enough, as farmers perceive agricultural policy to be an existential issue, whereas the (much more numerous) consumers of food products have, until […]

If you are currently despairing, try “The ministry for the future” by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is a work of fiction that does not fall into the trap of being utopian. Each step forward is assorted with caveats, resistance, and steps back. But it suggests how a combination of human action, technology, and new thinking […]

J’ai animé un séminaire avec 50 participants super intéressants ce vendredi et samedi passé pour discuter de l’avenir d’une organisation associative en France. La vision propose de créer de la propriété intellectuelle pour le partager avec d’autres (soit en le donnant gratis, soit en établissant des organisations qui le répandissent) est une bouffée d’air fraîche […]

The Global X Network meeting in Vienna on 28 October brought together a group of researchers from the USA, Japan, Brazil, and Europe, all of whom had a great knowledge of Futures and Foresight. The theme this year was Urban Futures. The key messages from ´Mapping the Urban Future´ and on ´Ramification of Green Urban […]

It was a pleasure again being with Thomas Fohgrub and friends in Geneva, discussing possible pathways for the transition for humanitarian agencies to use renewable energy to power their operations. Click on the image below to stay tuned:

Just completed work on a “Theory of Change” for a client that is seeking to have a real impact on climate change. Having identified what the client is good at doing, and at what others in their environment are already doing well (and hence, that the client does not need to repeat), a couple of […]

Just moderated a mini-workshop on electricity supply for the European Calculator project, as part of the out-reach to co-design a model that will help decision makers judge the impact of different policy levers when trying to reach the Paris Agreement commitments on climate change. Particularly interesting to me was the bullishness of what was considered […]

In beautiful Delft to run a workshop on possible social impact of alternative Climate Change Mitigation options! Some things are obvious – no coal means unemployment in coal producing regions –  but now we need to tease out the less obvious implications for anything from gender equality to energy poverty…  Thanks EU Calc!

An interesting piece at a number of levels, as it: Is written by the President of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association. Sure, in the last decade, China has wiped out many competitors here, but the surprise is the language used – it could have come from a Western green developmentalist. A timely reminder that China […]

Thanks to Andres Veiel and Jutta Doberstein for the chance to have co-moderated a fascinating couple of sessions on “Welche Zukunft”at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. Turning the usual process on its head, we gathered headlines of future news from 250 participants who sacrificed their Saturday to look at how the future may change – […]

Excellent to have spent the last couple of days with colleagues from the South Caucuses, accompanying them on a learning journey through Germany to discover different opportunities in the green economy. The week lived from the excellent inputs received by a number of speakers, both at the seminar centre we used as a base, and […]