Creating visuals for policy impact: our client’s perspective

Our Communications Manager Anna Lodge spoke to Janet Salem, Programme Officer, Sustainable Consumption and Production with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. As our main contact within UNEP, Janet has had first-hand experience of collaborating with our creative team. So we thought we would ask Janet about this experience…

Look at the Earth - it is beautiful and empowering

Looking at the Earth can be an empowering experience: it can alter our sense of relationship with it and our role in protecting it. Earth Day is a celebration of the Earth but also of historic and continuing efforts to look after it. So this is a good moment to reflect on the importance of really engaging with the Earth

In the dark

Earth Hour launched in Sydney in 2007 with backing from the city’s mayor. Inspired by this, San Francisco held "Lights Out" a few moths later. By 2008 there was participation from all continents with many landmark buildings around the world turning off non-essential lighting including the Sydney Opera House and the Empire State Building and participation has continued to increase year on year. In 2009, The United Nations observed Earth Hour at its Headquarters in New York and at other UN facilities around the world including the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) offices in Nairobi, Kenya.

How do you sell low carbon?

How do you sell low or zero carbon products and services? As more and more companies are putting serious effort into developing products and services for the low-carbon future they face a communications challenge with consumers or B2B customers. How do you get across the benefits of low-carbon in a way that works?

Now there is a solution... an augmented reality app that reveals actual volumes of CO2 through a smart-phone or tablet screen

Using visuals for decisions

In the USA at the end of January, the Senate approved construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to transport oil from the Canadian tar sands to the Gulf coast. While the House of Representatives has already approved a version of the bill, President Obama has said he will veto it. Now the Environmental Protection Agency has informed to the State Department that the pipeline would cause a significant increase in carbon emissions.

Trees are not just for Christmas

Trees store carbon. Our jumbo-sized Christmas Tree is based on a single Sitka Spruce, grown commercially in the UK. Over a typical 40-year life the tree will capture and store 742 kg of carbon dioxide. So we thought it would be fun to show that happening - admittedly with a touch of Christmas magic!

There's a lot resting on Lima: The 2 degrees challenge

There is a clear aim for leaders this December at Lima. But the reality is that this is a shared challenge. Every person, company, organisation on this planet needs to see this challenge and relate world emissions, to temperature rises and their own potential to contribute to the solution

WANTED: Bristol-based designer with flair for data

We are looking for a creative and numerate graphic designer with a flair for 2d / 3d data visualisation to join us in our Stokes Croft, Bristol office. The position would suit a design graduate or perhaps freelance / junior designer with some commercial experience and an interest in the environment.

Shell's CCS campaign

Shell and their creative agency JWT asked Carbon Visuals to provide dimensional reference sketches and methodology checking for the company’s visual campaign on Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS).

The campaign, run by Shell with images by JWT, highlights the amount of CO2 - one million tonnes per year - that could be captured from the Peterhead Power Station and transported by pipeline offshore for long-term storage deep under the North Sea.

The title of this blog post was changed at the request of JWT in March 2015. Carbon Visuals also complied with a request to remove copies of the posters and a photograph of the Forth Bridge poster in situ in a London Underground Station

World fossil fuel use, carbon emissions & CCS

The opportunity to create a film to show the world’s CO2 emissions in real-time has been a long-held dream. We wondered if this was the moment when we were approached by WBCSD to make a film to show the necessity of Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS).

Our film would have to clearly articulate the role of CCS in keeping global warming below 2° C threshold, as well as showing that renewables, though growing fast, are not growing as fast as global energy demand. We would also need an introduction to the scale of the problem in terms of global fossil fuel usage and of course carbon emissions!

The story of the story ...of trees

You may have guessed we’re all rather enthusiastic about sustainable alternatives to carbon-hungry living. So to visualise the Story of Trees was a dream ticket. What followed brought Wood for Good and Carbon Visuals teams together for a highly creative and surprisingly intricate story.