4. Darren Gardner »
4.1 Introduction
The Low Carbon Economy: Transformation is here and now. I used to think the low carbon economy was about solar panels and fitting them to your house, helping our manufacturing companies diversify into renewable energy markets or possibly about developing new environmental technologies. I used to even think it was about climate change too and [...]
Read more »4.2 The high carbon economy
Until now I have never known a financial crisis or a recession. The words “credit crunch” never appeared in my vocabulary. Instead I started business life in 1996 working for Coca Cola and then for a FTSE 100 recruitment business in the middle of the dot com boom. The fees rolled in on an express [...]
Read more »4.3 The low carbon economy
Now if the High Carbon Economy has been about over consumption and living unsustainably then the Low Carbon Economy represents a massive opportunity to change the way we live. People may disagree with me about the high carbon economy and our over consumption, but the facts are that the old systems are broken, and they [...]
Read more »4.4 Social enterprise
To bring about this change, the low carbon economy requires a new entrepreneur, and a new way of doing business. Social Enterprises have been around for ages but they’ve really only just started to become trendy. I say new but we’ve been making money since time began in the private sector and kept the riches [...]
Read more »4.5 The model
There are 4 main elements to the model: The Consortium is a group of public and private organisations which can be added to at any time from within the sub-region. Consortium members are bound by a memorandum of understanding that any “low carbon” contracts will be given to the social enterprise in the case of [...]
Read more »4.6 Final thoughts
I’m really excited about all this. I’m intentional about levering venture capital and Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP) money into the city to fund “low carbon contracts”. This is making the retrofit of commercial properties and social houses possible and so discussions are already underway with our universities and registered social landlords on how we [...]
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