Nearly 300 people registered and more than 200 came and may contribute in some way or shape in reducing energy consumption at home. What more do you want?
Well, as you know from our announcements, all lectures have been recorded by a great film team and will be made available on our YouTube channel as soon as they are ready. That way we hopefully provide our presenters contribution to a much wider audience, and keep it as a resource for students, community members and university staff. We also aim to provide more summaries and take away messages to make it easier to learn from.
Until the videos and summaries are ready to go online, we thought we share with you the photos Lucy took from speakers and audience throughout the evening.
We hope you like it!

Again, thank you to our fabulous speakers for coming, for our exibitors and of course our audience!

Stay tuned for more to come online from this event and help us share it wide and thereby decrease energy consumption of our homes.

Greetings from your
CNU event team

Dear CNU friends,

Thank you for a great year together. 2016 is coming to a close and we hope you enjoyed it!

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you!

You can find an overview of what we did since our launch on our timeline, but really it doesn’t cover half of what was achieved. We certainly shifted the bar on university carbon emissions and have introduced the very important carbon neutral vision into people’s thoughts all around our community. Our website reflects some of our progress, but our main strength is our network of visionaries - YOU. We now have 255 people signed up to our email list and we got a much bigger network when we include all our collaborators and event attendees, who all help us to protect our planet. Thank you!

This was meant to be only the November newsletter with the November open meeting minutes for your information. However, I got a bit delayed and decided to make it the final newsletter for the year (apologies if it is a bit long). We already had our Christmas social, which took place on December 14th, and I hope you enjoyed the food, drinks and company! I certainly did! Thank you!

Finally, I want to provide two short but important general notes before going into the details of the last meeting and our projects below.

Firstly, and most importantly I want to express my sincere gratitude to our CNU secretary Gwen for her tireless support for the network throughout 2016. She has been invaluable to keep us organised and make things happen over the year. Gwen now has some personal commitments to focus on, but we hope to see her again when her time allows.
Everybody counts, and as a volunteering network it is always fabulous to have such support from so many fabulous people. So thank you again to Gwen for a year of your time and passion for the carbon neutral university network.

Instead of Gwen, Lucy is now taking over her role in her own unique way - so be aware if you get her emails. ;) 

Secondly, our first open meeting in 2017 will take place on the 26th of January in Pool Seminar Room A85 in Richard Roberts building. So if you find any of the projects interesting and/ or have your own ideas on how to help the university to reduce carbon emissions, please come along. As usual, a reminder email will be sent out before the meeting and watch out for possible socials, which we will try to continue on most Thursdays.

Seasonal greetings from your CNU coordinator team
& I am looking forward to see you in 2017!

Christian


After these initial introduction paragraphs, Lucy and I have summarised the November meeting minutes and most importantly tried to add our ongoing projects at the end, so you know what is going and how to get involved. Please scroll down to the end of the email for the project overview. As usual, if anything is forgotten or if you want to communicate anything new, please send us an email, come to our next meeting or share your thoughts on our Facebook page!

Overview of open meeting on 27 November
(12 people attended this open meeting)

1. General discussion about global events and CNU articles
2. Specific news and feedback relevant for the university
   • People and Planet league table
   • Carbon Management Group meeting (4 Nov)
3. Feedback on our ‘future buildings event’ (9 Nov) was discussed
4. Discussion of ongoing/new projects and events
   

Detailed summary of meeting
Please email us if you want more detail or want to get involved in anything specifically! :-)

General discussion about global events and CNU publications- COP22 and Trump election

Firstly we discussed the COP22 meeting in Morocco, which our co-chair Rachel attended for 2 weeks and summarised in a report in the link below:
http://carbonneutralshef.weebly.com/news/our-co-chair-rachael-reports-from-the-climate-negotiations-at-cop22-in-marrakesh

The election of Donald Trump is very concerning for many reasons, Trump is sceptical that climate change is even real and denies that it is major threat. His plans include revoking Obama’s Climate action plan which includes the Paris agreement of limiting global average temperature increase below 1.5 degrees. Trump plans to cancel funding for NASA climate science and any united nations climate change programmes, furthermore he has hinted that he will cut funding to the U.S environmental protection agency. Trump also wishes to increase fossil fuel development and is encouraging personal coal use.

Our co-chair and founder Christian published an opinion piece in the local newspaper ‘The Sheffield Telegraph’. Christian tells his story on why CNU was founded, why we organised our ‘The future of buildings - a retrofit showcase’ event on Nov 9th and how we relate to our Sheffield City region. The article is available on the link below:
http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/the-big-challenge-taking-a-long-view-on-sheffield-s-climate-1-8215763

2016 People and Planet sustainability league table out - TUoS is up a a few places from 94th to 66thThe new People and Planet league table has just been released, and the University of Sheffield has climbed 28 places and are now 66th in the “2.1 class”. For a breakdown of how Sheffield’s score was calculated and our current position follow this link:
https://peopleandplanet.org/university-league-2016-tables

News from TUoS Carbon Management Group meeting
The University’s Carbon Management Group meeting took place on the 4th Nov, and our co-chairs Rachael Treharne and Christian Unger attended. We specifically asked the following question (Q), made a suggestion (S) with regards to renewable energy procurement and specifically announced our 9 November ‘The future of buildings event’ to which we want university operations teams to attend.
Q: What is the status of the sustainability strategy negotiations and integration in current University strategies, such as the Estates strategy?
Take away: We were pleased to hear that a new Estates strategy is imminent and that sustainability has become more integral (final draft was shared with us after the meeting).
S: We specifically mentioned the new NUS campaign entitled ‘Emissions impossible’, which asks Universities to go 100% renewable on electricity and could increase our image if we do. At the moment the University electricity is from mixed sources due to lower cost.
Take away: Our suggestion was taken onboard. We also learned that the University would consider procuring renewable energy if the costs are not more than 2% above competitors.

Building efficiency news (including event feedback)
We still have no response from our letter asking about sustainability criteria for the new social sciences building, but we did not directly raise this at the meeting as we were told that we should directly ask Keith Lilley about it rather than discussing it with the whole group. In general discussion during the meeting, we did however learn that the sustainability criteria for the social science buildings have been increased and they do look into achieving BREEAM outstanding for the building.

Following from the meeting, the head of estates, Keith Lilley, has suggested a possible trip to the University of St Andrews to see if we can learn something from the first carbon neutral university in the UK. It was suggested we help organising a visit together with EFM. If you are interested in the visit and would help organising, please get in touch.

We have just been made aware of a new £25 million music building which we will be keen to see being built with the environment in mind.

The future of buildings - a retrofit showcase feedback
Feedback and next steps on our ‘future buildings event’ on 9 November was generally positive. We looked at the photos taken by Lucy and looked at the feedback gathered by Adam.
You can find all photos taken by Lucy and first impressions in our first event blog poste here.
The film material recorded will be put together by our film team (Sort of Films) and further interviews are ongoing and will be compiled. This is mainly work ongoing with Dr Sofie Pelsmakers, and will progress through January and February. We still look for people who are happy to write blog posts to each speaker presentation once we have the videos available. Please let us know if you can help with that early next year. Thanks.

Please find below an overview of our ongoing and new projects discussed and worked on recently. Have a look and get in touch with the lead if you want to get involved.

Ongoing/new projects and events in progress

1. Christmas social evening organised for 14th December including food and drinks
   1. Took place as of publishing this newsletter
2. Spring ‘change’ event discussions (lead: Adam Howard)
   1. “how to bring about change in a complex situation” > important for our carbon neutral vision and how to make it happen at our university (and perhaps elsewhere)
   2. First scoping group meeting took place 12 December
   3. Second meeting 19 December
   4. Get in touch with Adam if you want to get involved
3. Climate and sustainability information video project (lead: Sarah Boddy)
   1. Collaboration with Green Impact and the BMS green impact team
   2. First meeting took place 9 December
   3. Get in touch with Sarah to get in involved
4. Event summary - buildings event videos (lead: Christian)
   1. Video review, initial blog with feedback from attendees and arranging future communications
   2. Once the full length videos are available on our Youtube in January, we need people who would like to watch and summarise findings in blog posts
   3. Get in touch with Christian if you want to help
5. Employing a student admin (lead: co-chairs Rachael and Christian)
   1. Our CNU network received funding from the University to support and extend its activities
6. St Andrews visit in discussion with EFM (contact: Christian)
   1. We have possible funding for a few people to visit the University of St Andrews, which aims to be the first carbon neutral university in the UK in 2016/2017!
   2. What questions would you have to them to help us here in Sheffield?
   3. Find out more about St Andrews online and get in touch with us with your thoughts. Would you like to go?
7. Possible food sustainability event (lead: Grantham Scholars/ Fiona)
   1. People expressed much interest about food sustainability and the university has a wealth of research on this subject
   2. Get in touch with Fiona to get involved
8. Writing a blog on reducing emissions from flying (lead: Phil Warren)
   
   1. More information about this important campaign can be found here: https://academicflyingblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/second-inpsiring-nearly-carbon-neutral-ucsb-conference-on-the-world-in-2050/
      

Dear CNU friends,

our Christmas social is coming closer and we need to get the food ordered and organised by Monday.

So if you want to come and join us on
Wednesday, Dec 14th, 5-9pm in Diamond, work room 2
please book your ticket below.

The agenda is not fixed, but the general thought is to come by and...

• say hello
• meet fellow CNU members and get to know each other
• recap the CNU year and what is to come

• eat and drink something (we will provide some food and drinks ;)
• bring some Christmas food, drinks or decoration if you want/can

• watch a movie (bring a movie, vote for one of the selection)
• chat - relax - enjoy

So if you can make it and would like to join us for a relaxed Christmas Social with food and drinks, please book your free ticket via Eventbrite (so we know how much food to order)!
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cnu-festivities-tickets-29741941949

Hope to see you next week! 
Your CNU coordinators

Just one year ago the world celebrated the adoption by 197 countries of the historic Paris Agreement, a landmark in the fight against climate change which set an aspirational goal to limit global average temperature increase to 1.5°C. The Agreement has since been ratified and become legally binding with unprecedented speed: a strong signal of political will to protect the future of our planet.
Now, one year later, governments have met in Marrakech for the 22nd Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22), to begin the complex work of translating the Paris Agreement into a comprehensive, detailed road map for climate action.
I was in Marrakech for the two weeks of discussions at COP22 with BirdLife International, with whom I’m currently completing an internship in Climate Change Policy. BirdLife are the world’s biggest conservation partnership, supporting 120 national NGOs worldwide. 
 I’ve written about what was achieved at COP22 and whether the conference lived up to the success of Paris here:
https://acce.shef.ac.uk/cop22-did-marrakech-deliver-on-climate-change/
And more specifically about the work of BirdLife and other NGOs in promoting ecosystem preservation and restoration as a means to tackle climate change here:
http://grantham.sheffield.ac.uk/impressions-from-cop22-was-this-the-cop-of-action/
In a conference dominated by the technical work needed to implement the Paris Agreement, many of the most exciting developments happened outside of the negotiating rooms. A few countries announced ambitious pledges – most remarkable of which was a commitment to reach 100% renewable energy production ‘as soon as possible’ from 47 of the poorest countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. 
However, increasingly we are also seeing real leadership in the private sector. Some major businesses committed to 100% renewable energy production during COP22, including Helvetia Insurance, and the ‘We Mean Business’ coalition highlighted over a thousand commitments to act on climate change from 471 companies. Just a few days after the US election and mid-way through the conference nearly 400 companies, from Ben and Jerry’s to Tiffany & Co, signed a letter calling on Trump to keep the US in the Paris Agreement.
We hope that the University sector, who have provided so much of the scientific background that made the Paris Agreement possible, will also play a leading role in pushing this momentum towards practical action.