Dr. Matt Watson: "Two Degrees"
Thanks to the Grantham Centre for publishing these videos online. Below are the full recordings of all the talks from the event on November 3rd detailed in the previous blog post. Please take a look, shae the videos, and get inspired! Dr. Matt Watson: "Two Degrees" Linda McAvan MEP: The Politics of Climate Change and COP21 Mike Berners-Lee: "How can a University help with Climate Change and Sustainability" Prof. Fionn Stevenson: University of Sheffield Carbon Challenge
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“A Local Solution to the Global Climate Crisis” - An event organised by the CNU network (03/11/15)10/11/2015 Overview The goal of this event was to inform people about current data, politics and ideas surrounding climate change, and to present the case for a carbon neutral university. The event was organised by members of the CNU network. It was sponsored by the Think Ahead programme within the University and CO2Chem, a network that connects academics and businesses in the pursuit of capturing and utilising carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The schedule for the event consisted of two keynote speakers, Linda McAvan MEP (Member of the European Parliament) for Yorkshire and the Humber, and Mike Berners-Lee, author and leading expert in carbon footprinting. The were also shorter talks from representatives within the University, senior lecturer in Human Geography Dr. Matt Watson, head of the School of Architecture and CNU member Prof. Fionn Stevenson, and CNU co-chair and co-founder Chris Rosslowe. Below we outline some of the content of these talks and what we learned. A full amateur audio recording with accompanying slides can be found here, and also a full timeline of the tweets around the event can be found here. The event was also recorded professionally, and this will be freely available online shortly. During the intermission there was a networking session with stalls ran by representatives from various local volunteer organisations as well as the CNU subgroups. There were representatives from People and Planet, Frack Free South Yorkshire, Sheffield Renewables, Sheffield Climate Alliance, Greenpeace, CO2Chem, Engineers Without Borders, friends of the earth Sheffield, the Grantham Centre, NUS Green Impact and Science in Policy. The Talks:17:35 – 17:45: Dr. Matt Watson The University of Sheffield's Dr. Matt Watson explained some of the recent history and current scientific projections for human driven (anthopogenic) climate change. Firstly, we were told that the last 3 decades are the warmest since 1850 and the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are the highest in 800,000 years, and the majority of these are anthropogenic in source. Generally the agreed global target proposed by scientists is to limit the average global temperature increase to 2°C by 2100 compared to a pre-industrial baseline. . Watson discussed the reasoning behind this 2°C target. Firstly, it was deemed in 2011 as an achievable target if suitable actions were taken. Secondly, this rise should limit the damage to what is deemed “acceptable” levels. However, there is some concern amongst scientists that it is already too late for the 2°C target, or that the fallout from such a rise would be far from “acceptable”. The scale of the problem was well summed up by the estimate made in 2011 that we could globally emit only 1000Gt (gigatonnes) of CO2 into the atmosphere if we are to avoid a greater than 2°C rise by the end of the century. Since then we have already produced 150Gt. Based on these numbers 80% of fossil fuel reserves that companies have already bought the rights to would need to stay in the ground. We were also informed that the proposals tabled by countries in the run up to the COP21 meeting of world leaders in Paris next month are unprecedented in scale to cut emissions. However, there is general scientific consensus that these still do not go far enough. This point leads onto the following talk by Linda McAvan. 17:45 – 18:20: Linda McAvan MEP Linda McAvan is a Labour politician and one of the 6 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) for Yorkshire and the Humber. She has a great deal of experience with EU politics and an issue high on her agenda is climate change, and the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris. First, we got an insight into the history of these global climate change meetings and what we can learn from their successes and failures. The first COP meeting took place in 1995 in Kyoto, which led to the signing of the Kyoto agreement in 1997. However, following the US elections in 1998 the US congress opted to pull out of the agreement, as did many other countries, and the resulting impact of the agreement was greatly reduced. Since then, emerging economies such as Brazil, China and India have developed rapidly, and become some of the worlds largest emitters of CO2. This had to be taken into account at the Copenhagen climate change meeting in 2009. However, only the EU came out with emissions targets backed by legislation and a burden sharing mechanism between all EU countries. The meeting had a top down approach, with the UN attempting to impose emissions targets onto the different nations, which led to disagreement and the breakdown of talks. The economic downturn meant that the US was unwilling to put itself at an economic disadvantage by cutting emissions more than the growing economies emerging in the east and South America. Moreover, many of these developing countries argue that they have the right to burn fossil fuels for longer to help grow their economies, just as the developed nations did, since they are relatively new to the game. Looking forward to the COP21 in Paris, the approach this time involves individual countries or economic regions (like the EU) submitting proposals prior to the meeting that they agree can be met. It is hoped from this basis negotiations can be struck that lead to global agreement backed by legislation that will bind future governments to the plan. Linda McAvan was optimistic overall about this approach, and hopes that the outcome of the meetings will be a positive one. However, as already noted, the problem with this approach is that, while the proposals are unprecedented in scale, they may already be too little too late. 18:20 – 18:30: Chris Rosslowe Chris Rosslowe is a post-doctoral research in Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield and is co-founder and co-chair of the Carbon Neutral University Network. He revealed some of the motivations for starting the network. First, of course, the motivation for starting the network was made clear by Dr Matt Watson, and the startling numbers that indicate something needs to change. More specifically though, as an institution of learning, the University has an onus to lead the way for society in the battle against climate change. Especially as our University does a great deal of cutting edge research on renewable energy technologies, energy efficient design and sustainable societies. In his words “if we don't do it ourselves, how on earth can we expect everyone else in society to”. This presentation was followed by a short introduction to one of the event sponsors CO2Chem, an EPSRC funded initiative. CO2Chem is an international network of academics of business leaders looking into the challenge of utilising CO2 from the atmosphere to decouple the growth of society and the growth of carbon emissions. 19:00 – 19:40: Mike Berners-Lee Mike Berners-Lee is a world leading expert in carbon emissions and author of “How Bad Are Bananas: The Carbon Footprint of Everything” and “The Burning Question”. He is the director of Small World Consulting, a spin-off company of the University of Lancaster that focusses on communicating the importance of the climate change issue and advising organisations on what they can do. His talk began with a big picture look at humankind's effect on the world, and one of the biggest symptoms of this impact is climate change. He first showed that the global annual carbon emissions follow an exponential curve closely, and despite recent efforts there has been no deviation from this trend in the last decade. A very striking point he made was that so far in human history, improved efficiency has not resulted in reducing emissions, but rather it has increased the amount we are able to use as shown by the strong feedback implied by the exponential relation. Similarly, renewable energy has not impacted emissions, but rather supplemented the existing energy supply allowing us to utilise more. Thus, any potential solution will involve changing people's behaviour as well as reducing fossil fuel dependence. However, Mike was keen to point out that the outlook was not necessarily bleak, and in fact one of the key take away messages was that people should try to live, and enjoy living, a low carbon lifestyle. If we can show that this kind of lifestyle is actually better, and not a pain or a struggle, then it may be possible for it to be taken on by the majority. However, the energy extraction, combustion and utilisation network is incredibly difficult to slow down, which he visualised with the image of three carriages of a runaway train. Following on from this he also addressed the issue of the global food network, and in particular the waste in the system. Startling figures were presented that demonstrated that on average we grow 6000 calories of grain per person per day globally, and yet we still find that there is not quite enough to go around. Finally, he had some practical advice for Universities and individuals concerned about reducing emissions and creating a sustainable future. We have shared this slide below: 19:40 – 19:55: Prof. Fionn Stevenson To conclude the event, Professor Fionn Stevenson, head of the school of architecture at Sheffield, focussed on what our University is doing, where we have failed, and what we can change. This talk was put together by several members of the CNU network, including Professor Stevenson, and much of the information was acquired through the research of the CNU network. Firstly, we were introduced to the University's energy strategy and carbon management plan. The targets set in these documents concerned scope 1 (direct emissions from fleet vehicles and on-site gas and oil) and scope 2 (indirect emissions from electricity usage and district heating network) emissions. These targets were based on those imposed by HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) and say that these emissions need to be cut by approximately 40% compared to a 2005 baseline. The largest contribution to these cuts outlined in the Energy strategy is the installation of several renewable energy sources, the bulk of which (7.5MW) coming from on-site wind turbines. Professor Stevenson then presented the latest figures for UoS emissions and showed that we are still some way off this target with only 5 years remaining, having only achieved a <5% reduction since 2005. Moreover, she showed that according to the emission reductions league table compiled by Brite Green, we are currently 84th of 127 Universities in the UK. As with all the talks though, it was not a message of blame and guilt, just an acknowledgement that more needs to be done, and that there is a lot we can do as a University. We have a great opportunity in the next 12 months to make sure that sustainability and carbon savings are high on the agenda for the University and Departmental strategies, as these are being renewed. In particular, she highlighted that the biggest savings we can make are from the campus buildings, and a challenge we must meet is being able to grow as a University without growing our carbon footprint. Not only this but we should ensure that any new buildings are sustainable enough to last far into the future. University policy needs to change to reflect this, and it is a challenge that can only be tackled with dedicated staff or departments for sustainability, so that these issues cannot be swept under the rug. What now? Now is the time to act! It is still not too late, we are at a unique time in human history where it is still possible to take action and prevent future disaster.
So please, join the network, engage with people to spread the word, and help us hold your University and local politicians to account. Hopefully we will see you at the Climate rally in Sheffield on November 28th in the run up to COP21! On 24/09/2015 our member Stephen Folkes attended the SCEnAT+ Launch event at Microsoft in London. SCEnAT+ stands for the most recent version of the Supply Chain Environmental Analysis Tool, developed through collaboration between AREC (Advanced Resource Efficiency Centre) at the University of Sheffield and a number of other bodies whose representatives spoke at the launch. The tool provides information, projections and suggests interventions to improve supply chain performance in a number of qualititive and quantitative measures. The tool represents a change in attitude in the way we see supply chains and the remarkable impact that cloud computing has on analysis and data retrieval. Speakers from Microsoft, Shaping Cloud, Northern Powerhouse and DBL Logistics joined Professor Lenny Koh in providing an outline of the joined efforts taking place in work at AREC, and an overview of the capabilities, use and potential impact of SCEnAT+. Drawing on each of their involvement attendees were excited to see the potential SCEnat+ has in assisting a range of business types and was most evident in a case study given by David Clarkson (Managing Director of DBL Logistics). The case study showed how SCEnAT+ was able to analyse and output areas for improvement or intervention in the DBL Logistics supply chain that were similar to those identified by the company through other means. Shaping Cloud developed SCEnAT+ on Microsoft Azure, a cloud platform, with the aim of allowing businesses to be “More Efficient (and) More Productive” (Mike Davies, Microsoft). Cloud computing allows the transfer and analysis of enormous databases of information in much shorter amounts of time than conventional computing and provides a reactive and interactive user space. Shaping Cloud have done an impressive job of maximising the abilities of SCEnAT+ and have provided fantastic support for all the questions and developments Prof. Lenny Koh and her team looked to make. SCEnAT+ includes, but is not limited to, the following capabilities:
The event was a great success and CNU is excited to investigate the use of SCEnAT+ in analysing and supporting intervention in the University of Sheffield itself! On Wednesday three of our members met with Paul Blomfield MP for Sheffield Central. Paul was very receptive to our carbon neutral vision and firmly believes that we have a powerful argument. He gave us some useful advice on how to build a strong network and how to achieve lasting change. Along with some practical advice on who to contact and the best ways to work with local authorities. We are delighted to say that he agreed to pledge his support for our network. (From left to right) Andrew Merson, Paul Jarman, Paul Blomfield, and Liam Hardy. We know he will be a key champion of our vision and are excited to have him on board for our future events. Our base of champions is building along with the momentum of our network. Watch this space!
Firstly, a big thank you to everyone who showed up to any of the start-up meetings for the CNU working groups over the last couple of weeks! As mentioned in previous blog posts, in order to investigate specific ideas to reduce the University's carbon footprint we had decided to host meetings on particular topics. These meetings took place between July 6th and July 14th, and formed the basis of working groups focussing on these topics:
Behaviour Change (06/07/15)
Buildings and Energy Efficiency (07/07/15)
Lobbying the University (08/07/15)
Renewable and Self-Generation Energy Solutions (09/07/15)
Knowledge Exchange (14/07/15)
The next set of working group meetings will be arranged shortly, and will take place sometime in early August. If you'd like to get involved with any of the above ideas, or you have some of your own, please drop us an e-mail! On Monday 6th July, two of us were invited to a meeting of the Carbon Management Group (CMG) to introduce the CNU network, and learn more about their operations. This group meets once every three months and is tasked with implementing the University’s energy strategy; with the aim of 43% carbon reductions by 2020. As we’re all too aware, no plan beyond 2020 exists, save for a fuzzy commitment to an 80% reduction by 2050, in-line with the Climate Act 2008. In attendance were the University chief financial officer Bob Rabone (chair), Pro-VC for research Prof. Richard Jones, Prof. Martin Mayfield from mechanical engineering, Energy manager Phil Riley and Steven Ward from Estates (later joined by head of estates Keith Lilley), Somer Finlay (Internal Communications Officer, corporate affairs), and Karen Longden (Head of E&FM Finance Team). Listening in was Mathew Billson of Energy 2050. Student representation in this group is limited to the Students’ Union development officer, who sadly wasn’t in attendance due to the change-over period. Before our slot - which was at the top of the meeting agenda proper - a few matters from previous meetings were discussed. Of particular interest to us were plans for a new website, detailing the University’s carbon-reducing efforts. Also the Estates had been contacting other UK Universities, to create a picture of ‘who’s doing what’ regarding emissions reductions. It seems bizarrely late in the day to be doing this, considering the energy strategy is three years old, but seeking inspiration is a positive move. A sense of rivalry was also apparent in the room, with jokes exchanged about outdoing Manchester, which can never hurt. The impressive performance of Lancaster University was noted, and it was revealed that Bob Rabone has visited their facilities. The presentation we made to the group can be seen here. We kicked-off by reminding the group of the global carbon budget, emphasising that in order to have a good chance of limiting global warming to 2C, the globe must be carbon neutral by 2040 (10 years prior to that magic 80% target of ours). We argued even this may not be enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change, with over 100 nations now calling for an international agreement to limit warming to 1.5C. According to climate experts, this would require global carbon neutrality 10-20 years prior to the 2C scenario, reinforcing our vision of a carbon neutral university by 2025. We then turned to the University’s progress (or lack of) towards the 2020 target. A recent report by sustainability consultants Brite Green states that our emissions rose 28% from 2005 to 2013, placing us a woeful 120/126 of English Universities. However, Phil Riley brought it to our attention that the 2005 baseline adopted by Brite green (34,000 tCO2) was incorrect, and a revised figure (43,000 tCO2) has been submitted to HEFCE - putting us at a 2% reduction in 2013. The situation isn’t as bad as we thought, but without doubt the University is not on track to meet its target. We moved on to the wind farm proposal we’ve been developing. It seems clear that the University wants/needs to own any self-generation to ensure its carbon can be offset. However, financing such an endeavour may not be too difficult, as Bob Rabone referred to favourable conditions to borrowing money (likely better than most wind farm developers). We know from previous correspondence with Steven Ward and Phil Riley that the new AMRC2 (Factory 2050) site has wind power potential, but we're waiting on the details. We wrapped up our presentation with 4 clear requests of the CMG: that they accept our help towards achieving the 2020 target, they seek advice on how to reduce emissions by 100%, they adopt a carbon neutral target and plan to execute it, and they agree to assess/review proposals submitted by our group. Head of Estates Keith Lilley arrived shortly after our presentation, and contributed to the discussion. He was quick to jump to the defense of his colleagues in the room - reminding everyone that by certain metrics the University are reducing emissions (when measured per person, or square meter of building space, for example), and campus expansions make reductions in real terms difficult. In this context, he was keen to frame our relatively constant emissions as a success. We countered that these (seemingly endless) expansions don’t need to come at a carbon cost. With careful design it is possible to make new buildings carbon neutral from the outset, and they absolutely should be. Indeed, this is likely much cheaper than retrofitting old buildings. You only need to look as far as the Diamond, which far from serving as a “major contribution to our determination to reduce our carbon footprint” - as stated on the University website - actually represents an astonishing missed opportunity for truly carbon neutral development. Richard Jones was very forthcoming and approved of our drive to harness more expertise from in-house academics, and emphasised the importance of getting academics to think more critically about the emissions associated with their work. We of course agreed, and suggested that more granular metering on a group or departmental basis would allow the more research-intensive departments to realise their impact. As soon as this is available, an on-campus carbon trading system could be established. Finally, we were thanked and asked to leave for the remainder of the meeting. We believe a decision on whether or not to have permanent CNU representation on the CMG was made, but we are yet to be informed of the outcome. Should we be invited back in 3 months time, we’ll surely have plenty of progress to report. Let’s hope the same can be said for the Carbon Management Group. Chris Rosslowe As many of you will have noticed, we have arranged the first informal meetings of the network's subgroups to take place in the week beginning 6th July. These will provide a chance for everybody interested in a particular aspect of the carbon neutral challenge to get to know eachother and to discuss ideas that the group may choose to pursue further.
We also hope that potential subgroup leaders/spokespeople may emerge from these meetings who would be able to feed back to the network steering committee. The are 4 meetings scheduled, the facebook events for which are lnked to below: "Behaviour Change" Subgroup meeting - 5pm, Mon. 6th July "Energy Efficiency" Subgroup meeting - 5pm, Tue. 7th July "Lobbying the University" Subgroup meeting - 5pm, Wed. 8th July "Self-generation" Subgroup meeting - 5pm, Thu. 9th July These all will be held upstairs in the Uni Arms, so food and drink will be available for anybody who wants it. These meetings are for anyone who has an interest in the subjects being discussed, regardless of expertise, so don't worry if you do not already have fixed ideas on the subjects being discussed. The scope of the discussions should be pretty wide and the group titles are also up for debate, so there is no set agenda from the outset. If you would like any more information about a particular meeting, please post your question to the wall of the event on facebook, via the links above. The University of Sheffield Engineering Symposium is a multi-disciplinary one day conference with a focus on Engineering solutions. Several parallel sessions ran on themes as varied from biotechnology to robotics, We were invited to contribute a poster and a flash presentation in the "Efficient Technological Solutions for Tomorrow's Society" session. Andreas giving a 3-minute presentation about the network. Christian standing with the poster. It proved to be a good exercise in presenting our message clearly and succinctly. Hopefully we'll get more opportunities like this to spread the word further! If you want to see the presentation or the poster, they can be downloaded from the links below:
It should be noted that the graph depicting wind farm costs and savings is only an estimate, it does not include any potential interest rates incurred or speculation about future energy prices.
15 people attended the meeting with a good spread of representation from undergraduates, post-grads and staff members.
Background To begin, we tried to get everyone up to speed with the work of the CNU network so far and the aims for the future. The core group has existed for just over a year and has written two open papers detailing the main ideas that have come from all the hard work so far. The first can currently be found under the 'papers' section of this website, the second will be up shortly. In that year we learnt a lot about the infrastructure in place at the University and which channels are the most promising for getting our message through. Plus, many important links have been made with experts and other groups at the University and in the surrounding area. Since the launch event the network has grown quickly and it is important that we keep the momentum up. We believe the strength of the network lies in it's focussed goal, to achieve carbon neutrality in the University's scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2025. Due to this specific goal we have been able to propose potential strategies that the University could adopt in order to make this a reality. While the goal of 2025 may sound ambitious, we feel it is necessary since scientific estimates suggest that, in order to avoid a potentially catastrophic 2°C rise in global temperatures, the entire planet would need to be carbon neutral by 2040. For this to be feasible, we think that institutions with a wealth of relevant expertise and knowledge, such as our University, should be leading the way. Practical Matters After this introduction, we moved on to discussing the ideas for potential sub-groups of the network that would focus on specific aspects of the carbon neutral challenge. 4 sub-groups were discussed:
Next, members were elected for the following positions:
Finally, we have an upcoming presentation on Wednesday 24th June at the University of Sheffield Engineering Symposium (USES 2015) where Andreas will give a talk and Chris R will be presenting a poster. Several other network members offered to help with preparation of the poster and presentation so hopefully this will provide an exciting opportunity for the network to gather even more support. We also have a meeting with the Carbon Management group of the University next month to present our goal and propose specific ideas. Thus, preparations for this will need to be discussed at the next network meeting. Descriptions of the duties for each steering committee role are listed below: Cochair (x2):
Secretary:
Publicity & Social Media officer:
Knowledge Exchange officer:
Laymember:
We present here some of the slides from the speakers at our launch event. Some non-essential images have been removed to reduce the file sizes in order to meet requirements dictated by our site hosting service.
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December 2019
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