What's the Money Group? The Money Group runs the following promotional activities for Transition Town High Wycombe: The local Money initiative Business Liaison ESCO = Energy Service Companies Local economic & prosperity issues Monetary reform and debt escape
The current Money Group consists of: Would you like to help with these ideas? Do you have further ideas or would you like to join this group? Then please contact us by clicking
Oxford Instruments brings innovation to energy saving High Wycombe based Oxford Instruments is celebrating energy savings well above expectations after implementing a systematic energy management plan. Oxford Instruments is a leading supplier of innovative hi-tech tools and systems for industry and research. A year ago the electricity bill at the High Wycombe site increased by a massive 40% due to changes in the charging scheme introduced by the supplier. Coupled with the deteriorating economic situation, the Company decided to take action to reduce the costs of running the business. Oxford Instruments set up an Energy Saving Team and carried out an energy survey for the site. As a result it set a 10% reduction target for the coming year and started to implement a range of measures including: • Obtaining half hourly data from its supplier to analyse consumption in more detail. • Introducing a department pilot night time switch off for lighting and equipment. This was soon rolled out to rest of company with an awareness campaign for all staff. • Labelling of light switches so that only those needed are turned on. • Fitting printers and vending machines with automatic timers. • Adjusting the building management system timings to only run 12 hours a day and shut off at weekends. • Shutting down all non essential equipment for the Christmas break. • Removing excessive lights and fitting sensors in meeting rooms and offices. • IT taking central control of PCs, setting monitor shut off time at 10 minutes, and hard drives after 30 minutes of inactivity. • Reducing site voltage from 243V to 237V. • Displaying energy use graphs so all staff could see the effect of the measures. The massive impact of the measures became clear after the monitoring data was compared to the previous year. Oxford Instruments has achieved annual savings of £112,000 based on a total spend of less than £5,000! This is well ahead of the original target to reduce electricity consumption by 10% within 12 months – in fact nearly 40% lower. The CO2 savings are estimated at 302 tonnes. Oxford Instruments attributes its success to a team centred approach to cost management and not through remote planning, budgeting and unilateral control. It is now embarking on additional measures requiring investment, confident that further savings are well within reach. Oxford Instruments has two other sites in Oxford and Bristol and similar energy saving initiatives have been put in place based on the success in High Wycombe. Forwarded to us by Jim Bradley at Oxford Instruments. From an article in the free CEAC Newsletter 39. CEAC, the Corporate Environmental Advice Centre, has been providing environmental advice to businesses since 1997. Based in High Wycombe, CEAC employs an experienced team who together can offer a broad skills base to clients. CEAC Kelvin House 1 Totteridge Avenue High Wycombe Bucks HP13 6XG T: 01494 527564 E: contact@ceac.co.uk W: www.ceac.co.uk High Wycombe's Businesses in Transition  All the evidence we have proves to us that the last 200 years of cheap and abundant fossil fuels have supplied the energy for the generation of a highly mobile, complex, well-fed, inter-connected and inter-dependent industrialised societies. It has lead to amazing economic growth, an explosion in population and damage to our atmosphere. That period is about to come to an end. It is not sustainable. We have over-shot. Everything is about to change. High complexity equals high fragility. ‘Big’ and distant will break down. Small and local will last. Hence we need to rebuild resilience into our Business Community through a process of ‘relocalisation’.
The only alternative is to collapse. The Business Community is the solution. The future is bright for those who accept this paradigm change. We have just 20 years to bring about this dramatic shift. In this future energy and food will be highly priced and highly prized. Everyone will be trying to generate as much of their own as possible and rely upon the ingenuity of the Business community for their basic economic needs & security. This is a step-change from where we are today. Few Businessmen or women even think beyond the next Financial Year let alone know build a sustainable local Business less reliant upon long distance transport or high energy product systems. We have a lot of work ahead. You cannot wait for someone else to do it for you because it is US who have to change. It cannot be imposed and there are no acceptable alternatives. Accept it. Join. This page is dedicated to the Businesses of High Wycombe. The visionaries, the entrepreneurs, the shop keep, the farmer, the technologist, the financier, the recycler, the biofuel specialist... we need you all. Are you a Business in Transition? What are you doing to change? Are you expanding into Renewable Energy or Local Food? Do you install condensing boilers, biomass systems, solar panels, Photovoltaics, wind turbines or ground heat pumps? Do you invest in low energy solutions? Do you work in permaculture, preserving legacy seeds for future sale, provide organic growing solutions, grow biomass products or supply allotment owners? Are you a Business cutting your energy usage, reducing your transport needs, investing in local infrastructure or persuading employees to use local transport? If so, get YOUR Business's name HERE. Tell us what you are doing. We'll feature photo's, interviews and an outline of your Business and its plans. Join the future. The Federation of Small Businesses 
 In January 2009 the Federation of Small Business's "Keep Trade Local" Campaign came to High Wycombe. It is intended to promote the use of local services. The FSB has already worked with the Business Associations in Burnham, Stone, Wendover and Great Missenden and this year are moving on to Chesham, Amersham, Wycombe, Buckingham and Princes Risborough. If you would like your community to get involved contact L Walton Associates on 01494 864431 for a chat. You can E:Mail them directly by clicking
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The FSB is a not-for-profit organisation promoting and protecting small business. They command strong political support with David Cameron being there at the Parliamentary launch of the "Keep Trade Local" Campaign last year (pictured here).  The Campaign is interesting in that it coincides with the Transition philosophy on Business. Trade that relies upon long distance transport of goods will be very vulnerable. Hence we need to support local Business. The assumption by the FSB is that Local Busines is Small Business. However the choice of the word "local" is very positive. A local Business need not always be that small but if they employ local people providing local goods  and local services to the local community then they are a strong business.
In future the Transition Team intend on providing Oil Dependency Auditing and Training to Local Business to help them Transition. We wish to extend our thanks to FSB Member "Krofire Enterprises Ltd" in the preparation of this article on the work of the FSB and its campaign. Krofire is a local service company and part of the Transition Town High Wycombe Partnership. Learn more about the FSB at www.fsb.org.uk. Read the Keep Trade Local Manifesto here. The Converging Challenges of the 21st Century As we enter the twilight years of the first decade of this new Century we become witness to a unique convergence of events. Richard Heinberg calls it "Peak Everything". James Howard Kunstler calls it the "Long Emergency". The New Economics Foundation calls it a "Perfect Storm" or the "triple crunch". World changing events our coming together of such enormity that they only get considered in isolation: Peak Carbon Source (aka "Peak Oil") Peak Carbon Sink (aka "Climate Change") Peak Money (aka "Credit Crunch")
As we juggle with these concepts we may take some time to think about what links them. What emerges is this: 1970's - the end of the Gold Standard, ie, the petrodollar is no longer limited in supply ...followed by a 40 year unprecedented and unsustainable Credit Bubble ...causing accelerated and unsustainable depletion of natural resources, ie, Oil ...causing accelerated and unsustainable release of Carbon
 Although continued Economic & Population Growth would inevitably have lead to Peak Oil and Climate Change it is clear that there has been a hidden economic undercurrent. Once this emerged we could start to paint a new picture - a unified theory of depletion in which Money and Natural Capital became the same thing. We will run out of Fossil Fuels. We will run out of places to put our waste. This will stop our economies. This will effect our money. If we don't apply the brakes it is the natural order of things that all bubbles burst. Our failure to see this coming has largely been down to a division between the different people who could see only their own small part of the puzzle:
Economists theorized that economic problems are part of natural cycles that right themselves Environmentalists theorized that saving the "planet" required stopping a million individual problems Peak Oilers theorized that we faced an unstoppable problem resulting in societal collapse
Economists weren't interested in Peak Oil or Climate Change. They saw it as a Carbon-pricing problem therefore self adjusting. Peak Oilers weren't interested in Economics or Climate Change because they saw Peak Oil as a far more immediate problem. Environmentalists thought that Peak Oil was just an human economic problem, a distraction and irrelevance - or worse: a good thing. All these views are flawed. Time for a change. We now have a fresh opportunity to join the dots and talk to each other. The economy needs resource and the environment. The environment and resource is a victim of the economy. The economy is not a fringe aspect. It is central. Both problem and solution. The economy is at the whim of the finite biosystem of which it is a subsystem. The man-made economy will always finally fall victim to the natural economy. Economics has been based on flawed assumption that it was decoupled from the environment. Resource depletion effects the environment and the economy. Everything is linked to everything else and most of the solutions, to one problem, solve all the other problems too. Failure to join the dots will lead to piecemeal solutions that just make all the other problems far worse. An example: Peak Oil is not just a problem of running out of Gas. It halts economic growth, which halts the money supply, that causes an unending depression. When an economy collapses it no longer has the money to invest in the low-carbon future it needs in order to build a sustainable future. If we get the economics wrong then no one will be able to pay mortgages so nobody will have a house. In short - meltdown. We simply run out of money to keep the economy going. We will have nothing - no money, no oil and Climate Change will be the least of our worries as we slash & burn anything to keep warm and feed ourselves.  So, can economics be the solution? Not as we have it currently engineered. If we rework our economics then we can weather the perfect storm and take our foot off the accelerator. With the right economics we will save our homes. The right economics will decarbonise our society such that we avert Climate Change disaster. The right economics will divert resources away from problem-causing to problem-solving. In brief - stop buying oil and start buying wind turbines. Free markets will work if they are genuinely free and responding to the right signals. Free markets can't fight wars. Free markets didn't stop the collapse of any previous Empire. We need better free markets and better institutions.
In July 2008 the New Economics Foundation and the New Green Deal Group launched a bold new plan to rescue the Economy from the brink of collapse whilst addressing Peak Oil and Climate Change. A perfect synergy was born for the first time. Go see at www.neweconomics.org Time for a new deal. | 
