I agree that the notion of a post carbon economy is vague as stated and suspect that very few of the community partners and researchers are thinking of focusing on that theme.
We need to know who is committed to this theme before we start developing the proposal.
Then we need some operational definitions. I'd suggest that we should have a few pages circulated before we meet again.
Our previous proposals were judged to be weak on research design. This may be the major hurdle to winning a full grant in this case as well.