What is 'Peak' Performance?

I was in the gym this morning, lifting heavy weights - mainly using my legs - and I started to question why I was doing it. Turns out it's because in 10 weeks' time, I am embarking on a charity fundraising solo mountaineering challenge, undertaking the infamous GR20 on Corsica. 180 miles of relentless ascent and descent, often 6,000ft a day - up and down - for 15 consecutive days, each day trekking and climbing for 6 or 7 hours, carrying around 25kg of kit. Sleeping - or trying to - on a thin mat in a tent on rocky ground each night. Maybe sub-zero temperatures at night and 30 degrees during the day. I'm raising money for Trauma Breakthrough , a charity close to my heart, based in my hometown of Bath, UK. 1 in 5 people in the UK - children and adults - will experience debilitating trauma in their lives and the NHS offers no support for these people. I have experienced such trauma in my life, but I have been lucky enough to have the resource to pay for the help I needed. The people in most need of support though, don't have that luxury.

I am a renewable energy developer and have been for 15 years. I've secured investment to develop renewables on a number of occasions and the end-to-end business plan from inception to exit has required a lot of thought - often with help from people who are far more clever than me. So, with carbon footprint and the LCOE of this expedition in mind, I thought it might be useful to seek advice from the combined might of the LinkedIn community, if only to salve my own conscience as I stand in line to board an A320 Airbus in June....

So, my headline proposition is that, in the round, despite flying to and from Corsica from the UK, my endeavour is likely to be carbon negative and I invite comment from your big scientific brains. There a couple of big brains I would be particularly keen to hear from... Gareth Miller Michael Liebreich Ben Watts Jan Rosenow Please share this post so I can reach a definitive position before I book those flights. Here's my highly researched and deeply scientific review thus far....

• George Monbiot (who appears not to be part of the LinkedIn community) says the two most impactful actions we can take as individuals in society are to stop flying and switch to a plant-based diet. Well, I was vegan for the 3 years between 2012 and 2015. That's got to have saved a tonne (maybe literally) of methane, right? And between 2020 and 2024, I've only taken 3 short haul return flights, primarily because I can't afford long haul ones. So, quite a small footprint there? Incidentally, when I tried to find George on LinkedIn, the nearest alternative it offered me was a guy called Matt Prescott - hi Matt, I've sent you a connection request!
• While I am no longer vegan, it's quite likely I may have to eat only foraged nuts and berries during the trek, as there are no shops, cafes, restaurants or even a Subway anywhere en route. Just mountain refuges, some of which might serve a platter of local food. Corsica is famous for its pork and goat's cheese, produced from free-roaming mountain boar and goats. While these animals do, I am sure, emit a certain amount of methane, the energy consumed to provide their feed and transport them from ''farm to fork'' is presumably miniscule compared to a steak bought from Morrisons?
• I will be carrying a 5W portable solar panel to charge my 'phone and emergency GPS rescue device. While I don't normally carry the latter in everyday life, my working assumption based on a highly bankable PVSyst analysis of my intended route, is that I will be saving at least a couple of grams of CO2 as a result of not charging these devices using any fossil-fuel backed power generation?
• Further, I intend to absolutely avoid falling off the mountain at any point along the route, avoiding an expensive and highly polluting helicopter and road rescue to the nearest (Climate) ER and thereby offsetting considerable, unnecessary carbon emissions?
• In the event I reach my fundraising target of GBP18,000, I will help Trauma Breakthrough support around 20 individuals in their recovery from debilitating trauma. There is no link to carbon savings that I can think of here, but I had to get this in somewhere and I am open to analysis from others on this point?
• Most sections of the route involve a 6 or 7 hour day (not including the lunch of nuts and berries), with maybe 6,000ft of ascent and descent. I weigh 90kg and I'll be carrying a 25kg pack. According to my maths (Grade C at GCSE), I'll be expending around 2000kj per hour, with a power output of around 550 watts per hour. Not only does this mean I'll probably weigh about 50kg by the time I've finished, it means I will be actually generating energy instead of consuming it - 550watts x 6hours x 15days = 50,000watts or 0.05MW. That's more than the combined output of all the solar farms I have developed currently waiting for a grid connection! I'm open to challenge on these assumptions, but you'll have to be a smart analyst to convince me otherwise.
• I won't be driving, watching TV, buying any processed food, washing, brushing my teeth with an electric tootbrush, using a cotton bud (plastic or bamboo) or flushing a toilet for 15 days. For commercial and confidentiality reasons, I can't share the very complicated and bespoke energy model I have developed to quantify the energy and resources I will save as a result of avoiding these harmful activities for the duration of the trek, but trust me when I say they are immense and, if you weren't convinced of my carbon negativity by the highly robust analysis in the above six bullet points, you surely must be now?

If, rather than commenting on this article, you would prefer to simply donate to this incredibly important cause, you may do so here:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/owens-gr20-challenge?utm_medium=fundraising&utm_content=page%2Fowens-gr20-challenge&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=pfp-share