Coursework 1 –
Emissions Forecasting: Your brief is to choose a sector of the economy and forecast how you think
it will have changed by 2050, and why.
This could be housing, energy, transport, construction, agriculture, manufacturing, telecommunications,
tourism, or any other sector which you have a particular interest in. You do not need to cover the sector
in its entirety if you feel there is a specific issue that you want to explore in detail. You may cover the
sector from a local, national or international perspective, but generally, the more focussed the scope of
your coverage is the better your work will be. You should cover the current greenhouse gas emissions
and forecast how and why you think these will change by 2050. You can do this quantitatively,
qualitatively, or a mix of both. You should cover how you think it will have changed or want it to
change by 2050, why, and what will be needed to achieve those changes. You can be as optimistic or
pessimistic as you like, but explain why and support your arguments with lots of evidence.
You might also want to comment on how realistic or not you think your vision of the future is, and
what the alternatives might be. Think about what technologies are around now and what might be
available by 2050, and don’t forget that different technologies take different lengths of time to be
adopted, and may be adopted at different rates in different parts of the world. Also think about influences
such as resource constraints, human behaviour, and politics. You do not need to address all of these and
you may propose changes that are more or less radical, but keep your arguments grounded in evidence
from suitably authoritative sources, whether that evidence is about what is needed, what is possible,
what is realistic, or what a worst-case scenario would look like.
The word limit is 2000 words, plus or minus 10%, and excluding references. References should be listed
at the end in the standard GCU style or another standard academic format (see the recorded lecture and
slides on referencing and the links therein).