Having discovered by 2002 that the planet is in big trouble with or without climate change, that our conventional energy supplies are certainly running out but that the climate is with almost certainty going to be the biggest problem of all - the best thing to do was to design and build the lowest energy building I could.

Hence Tranquillity which is rather big at 5,000 sq ft yet heats for about £60, hot water costs less than £10 and water itself is provided for less than £10 - all figures are for a year. So dramatically better than anything else, but it was designed from first principles and everything in Tranquility had to be cost effective rather than 'the flavour of the month' and had to work. Saving energy and carbon were the requirements. Installing gizmos was not. And the cost of moving to this level of efficiency is about 5½% over normal build costs - or about 6½% to reach full zero carbon. While many apparently authoritative bodies say it is impractical to reach such a performance and that it would cost an unaffordable fortune - Tranquillity has done it.

What surprised me was that nothing installed in Tranquility turned out to be conventional. Not surprising by itself as all the systems were designed and built for the project but Solar PV was rejected as was a Heat Pump of any sort, normal Solar Hot Water, and anything to do with a site or house wind turbine. These are not only very expensive and not cost effective, but they don't save carbon. Papers on these products are now on the Information section of the web site.

There is a great deal of information available on this site which is all connected in some way or another with the Environment and it is all the result of Independent research. There are no vested interests here to mis-represent reality. The leading subjects are Climate, Energy, Food & Agriculture, Timber & Forests, Water, Population and Politics - the last as we need the best decisions taken quickly which our political system seems unable to deliver. All the renewable energy options for our houses are under 'Energy'.

Everything to do with Tranquility will have the highest integrity and be totally honest, so information will include both sides of an argument. There is a huge need for information to be correct, and being right is the most important thing, so the information here will be changed if it can be shown to be wrong - or not quite right! It is intended to be a centre of excellence.

Understanding much about all these subjects allows the interactions between them to be predicted as few things in the world now operate in isolation. Taking land to produce biofuel necessarily means there is less food available in the world. It seems there are two major issues with available 'information':

• Most comes from Vested Interests which must be ignored - so disregard what the banking industry tells you about banking; the alcohol industry about alcohol, or the GM industry about GM. The first thing to do is to look for the provenance of the information.
• Or from what I will call 'mono-academics'. These are often brilliant people but so focussed on an area of expertise they cannot understand what their 'solution' to a problem in one area will do in another.

• Blogs - which are brief documents covering just the essentials. But most subjects cannot be really covered so briefly so:
• White Papers - which take a subject; develop it fully mostly with a lot of data and some argument, and lead through to a conclusion you may or may not share. But they are substantially argued and often break new ground so are many pages long but a complex subject cannot be covered briefly. Many will probably say "I thought so" when they have read them but some (mostly manufacturers) will be upset.
• Reports or Books as all the Tranquility written work will be published through this site. Both i. and ii. above are free, but there will be charges for Reports and books. The reports will contain significant amounts of data probably available nowhere else.