5 QUESTIONS

1. Please introduce yourself

I love being curious and goal orientated and am a mix of interests and experiences. I have dual British/German nationality, I've lived in Europe, Asia, and North America, while my education has criss-crossed arts, business and sciences resulting in a BEng in Materials Engineering, an MBA in Finance and an MA RCA in Industrial Design Engineering. My professional career covers Finance, Telecoms, Design and the Environmental space. I am 40, a brother, son, friend, godfather, entrepreneur, inventor, engineer, designer, boss, colleague, whistle-blower, activist, citizen, charity trustee and realistic optimist.

Perhaps serendipitously, all of this has culminated in what to me is my most important chapter - founding Carbon Diem and attracting a dedicated and capable team. Together we are nurturing a synaptic spark into a tool that has the potential to help us all understand and change our impact on the planet. Allowing us to live our lives, but to do so in a smarter and more considered way.

2. Can you shortly describe your Green Challenge entry?

Most people want to limit their impact on the world, but do not have access to the information to do so. The human contribution to climate change is a scale (behavioural?) problem, which therefore requires a scale solution. Carbon Diem's whole DNA is about scale, education through measurement and empowerment through recognising behaviour change. Our method is complex, but our solution is simple: use mobile phones to measure and inform people of their emissions from transport - automatically and effortlessly. Our goal is to change the way people make travel choices, leverage the network effect and build an unstoppable force for greenhouse gas reduction. Knowledge is power.

3. Where did you get this idea?

While at the Royal College of Art I stumbled upon the awkward and tedious tools for understanding travel emissions - manual entry carbon calculator websites. I instantly recognised a snapshot does not make a film and was fortunate enough to be able to tap into my knowledge of the mobile industry, pattern recognition and the environmental imperatives.

The eureka moment took minutes, it's the realisation and execution in the most turbulent socio-economic conditions in decades that has required every ounce of perseverance and ingenuity from our team.

4. Why do you want to contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions? Where does your drive come from?

It's less why and more a question of how much can we do to help reduce greenhouse gasses. The Carbon Diem team firmly believes in the collective power of the masses and so we strive to help others reduce their impact. By developing a software solution that is accessible to millions of people all around the world, we believe that we help everyone make informed decisions about their impact so that they can continue to live their lives, but do so responsibly and consciously. Carbon Diem's potential to make such a big contribution to the most critical of issues means that for us it is a calling, not a choice.

5. What difference will your plan make if it comes to market if you win the €500.000 Green Challenge prize?

Carpe Diem. With €500,000 we can start servicing tens of millions of consumers without having to worry about the cost of supporting the service and infrastructure. While also dramatically bringing forward our mission to open our service to the rest of world. This should translate into our ultimate objective - the fastest, most efficient and easiest to scale solution to reduce greenhouse gases.