Blog entries from Simon McWhirter

laughter, wry smiles, contemplation and sheer bafflement

Simon McWhirter — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:48:10 +0100

Well, things looked promising as sat down for our movie shortlisting session.

Darren had made cookies and Yael had the coffee percolating (them being WWF's project leads on the Great British Refurb). We opened our home energy efficiency competition for entries back last year, and despite a cracking promotional programme that saw us get plugs from sources as varied as BAFTA, the Times and a host of film and arts colleges across the country - including one of our project partners, the URead More...

Afterthought on our webinar

Simon McWhirter — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:46:50 +0100

The premise of our televised online debate between the Energy Minister Greg Barker, Grand Designs front man Kevin McCloud and several leading industry representatives was "The Green Deal: One Year and counting".

So chosen, because for several years the GB Refurb campaign has focussed the lion's share of its energy and resource on what was first the Pay-As-You-Save concept; followed by the variable but similar election manifesto commitments by all the main parties to such a home energyRead More...

Improved quality of life anchors my job schizophrenia

Simon McWhirter — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:07:18 +0100

When filling out an application form recently I felt somewhat discombobulated when it came to the 'occupation' entry. Property developer or environmental campaigner? Environmental campaigner or property developer? They don't at first glance seem to marry particularly well. But they do, thankfully. Absolutely and utterly.

So to explain. Half my working week is spent in managing campaigns such as this, the Great British Refurb (GBR), the thrust of which is to make it easy, affordable anRead More...

Property and political pioneers across Offa's Dyke

Simon McWhirter — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:16:16 +0100

Linking up government policy and practice can oftentimes be tricky. In the home refurbishment arena, pioneering low energy retrofits are pretty few and far between across the UK and getting them promoted to an appreciative political audience is a thankless task in the high-octane circus that is the media cycle.

To try and reverse this was one of the core reasons for us teaming up with the Old Home SuperHome network. This bunch of eco-frontiersmen have bitten the bullet to do a dRead More...

Knauf visit

Simon McWhirter — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Some would say it pales in comparison to recent government revelations about civil servants getting sent on chocolate-making jollies, but recently the Great British Refurb team got to visit our sponsor Knauf Insulation's mammoth factory at Cwmbran, South Wales.

Being a bit of a geek I knew I'd enjoy it but it was seriously imprRead More...

Great British Refurb Question Time

Simon McWhirter — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:26:44 +0100

To have any chance of meeting challenging carbon reduction targets the government has set down in law we need to have done a full energy overhaul of over seven million homes across the country by 2020 (on top of continual programmes of low level work like loft and cavity wall insulation). As it stands, we’ve done about a hundred. And therein lies the scale of the challenge. One hundred to seven million in a decade. Oh, and the other 19 million homes will need to be tackled in the decadeRead More...

Manchester House Retrofit

Simon McWhirter — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:08:44 +0100

So what were the questions that they had to to answer? Do you want a house that is more comfortable, which has lower running costs and is kinder to the planet? And by the way, do you want this to be something which everyone across the country could have without having to put their hand in their pocket for cash? A pleasant proposition and one which WWF supporter Rebecca Williams was happy to say yes to in agreeing to let the Great British Refurb campaign team do an energy makeover on her houseRead More...