What's the Money Group?
The Money Group runs
the following promotional activities for Transition Town High Wycombe:
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The local Money initiative
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Business Liaison
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ESCO = Energy Service Companies
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Local economic & prosperity
issues
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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
.
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:
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Peak Carbon Source (aka "Peak Oil")
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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:
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1970's - the end of the Gold Standard,
ie, the petrodollar is no longer limited in supply
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...followed by a 40 year unprecedented
and unsustainable Credit Bubble
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...causing accelerated and unsustainable
depletion of natural resources, ie, Oil
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...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. |
