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!
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!
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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. ;)
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!
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!
Meeting minutes and CNU project updates
Overview of open meeting on 27 November
(12 people attended this open meeting)
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.
(12 people attended this open meeting)
- General discussion about global events and CNU articles
- Specific news and feedback relevant for the university
- People and Planet league table
- Carbon Management Group meeting (4 Nov)
- Feedback on our ‘future buildings event’ (9 Nov) was discussed
- 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.
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.
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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
Ongoing/new projects and events in progress
- Christmas social evening organised for 14th December including food and drinks
- Took place as of publishing this newsletter
- Spring ‘change’ event discussions (lead: Adam Howard)
- “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)
- First scoping group meeting took place 12 December
- Second meeting 19 December
- Get in touch with Adam if you want to get involved
- Climate and sustainability information video project (lead: Sarah Boddy)
- Collaboration with Green Impact and the BMS green impact team
- First meeting took place 9 December
- Get in touch with Sarah to get in involved
- Event summary - buildings event videos (lead: Christian)
- Video review, initial blog with feedback from attendees and arranging future communications
- 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
- Get in touch with Christian if you want to help
- Employing a student admin (lead: co-chairs Rachael and Christian)
- Our CNU network received funding from the University to support and extend its activities
- St Andrews visit in discussion with EFM (contact: Christian)
- 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!
- What questions would you have to them to help us here in Sheffield?
- Find out more about St Andrews online and get in touch with us with your thoughts. Would you like to go?
- Possible food sustainability event (lead: Grantham Scholars/ Fiona)
- People expressed much interest about food sustainability and the university has a wealth of research on this subject
- Get in touch with Fiona to get involved
- Writing a blog on reducing emissions from flying (lead: Phil Warren)
- 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/
- 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/
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