Trying to travel as sustainably as possible by Ryan Neal

Over the past few years, I’ve been making a concerted effort to reduce my carbon footprint. I’ve replaced my meat and dairy diet with a vegan one and I swap my car keys for a travel pass wherever I can. My kitchen cupboards are full of environmentally friendly products, and my supermarket commute is now …

COP26: how we can all take action to tackle climate change

COP26 has begun. Countries have come together to commit to new carbon reduction targets to secure global net zero by 2050 and keep 1.5 degrees within reach. To do this, global carbon emissions need to reduce by 50% by 2030. The message of the conference is clear: We must act now, and act together. This …

Reducing the University’s carbon emissions

At the end of 2020 we were pleased to announce that the University had achieved significant reductions in energy use and carbon emissions over the last 10 years. In 2019/20 alone, our scope 1 (mainly gas and other fuels) and scope 2 (purchased electricity) carbon dioxide emissions reduced by 10% or 4,386 tonnes from 2018/19. Overall, there has been a …

Transport: We are already late to the party

David Grant is a Professor of Materials in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham. He is also Director of the University of Nottingham’s Beacon in Propulsion Futures: a cross faculty initiative integrating over 100 researchers from different disciplines.   To quote Bob Dylan “the times they are a changin’ ” and perhaps …

The Challenge Ahead

The entire University was forced to adapt quickly to Covid-19, and everyone rose to the challenge. We have now moved into the ‘recovery phase’; our Energy team are working hard to reopen buildings, so that we can welcome back staff and students to campus. This new phase presents a fresh challenge, that we must all …

Renewable Technology on Campus

This summer, the Estates Development Framework (EDF) was published; its role is to provide direction for future University development and management by setting core goals. The overall theme of the EDF is ‘evolution without a carbon footprint’, and you can read it here.   To support the vision of the EDF, and to support the University’s …

Energy- A Universal Challenge?

A guest post by Ben Robinson, a PhD student within the Food, Water, Waste Research Group. Ben discusses his recent work in Nepal and the social, environmental and economic intersections he found there.  Energy and sustainability are like peanut butter and jam, fish and chips or eggs and bacon (for you bacon lovers out there), they …

Some Sustainable Listening

Our Student Communications and Engagement Assistant, Meg, is a podcast enthusiast. Here, she introduces a new feature to our newsletters:   It is embarrassing how many times my sentences start with, ‘so I was listening to this podcast…’, and it generally results in an eye roll from my friends. I think podcasts are a great …

Carbon emissions – they don’t all come from buildings you know …

The University’s Director of Sustainability, Andy Nolan, writes “One of my responsibilities is to ensure we are able to monitor our carbon emissions and to be able to communicate this effectively. As you might expect, we have been able to establish the emissions we generate from consuming electricity and gas in our buildings quite easily …