COIN Meeting in Oxford

A very interesting meeting organisaed by COIN in Oxford Town Hall on April 4th.

I particularly liked the emergent way the meeting was organised with themes and leadership emerging from the participants.

I learned a lot about the importance of commitments being made by many local councils. Many have signed the Nottingham Declaration. Woking has a particularly good account of what they are doing. Also the very practical Go Zero initiative in Chew Magna, where people are running cars on chip fat, contributing to carbon offset funds and linking to communities in India. In the discussions about whether people were better motivated by ethical or economic considerations, one suggestion was for a reduction in council tax in return for carbon-aware households. Michelle Shipworth (now at Reading University) was there and has a detailed paper on Motivating Home Energy Action.