If it were a small market town, the University of Edinburgh’s campaign to transform the lifestyles, travel habits and consumption of its entire population into one of the greenest and most climate-savvy in Britain would have made headlines.
In what may be one of the UK’s quietest green revolutions, over the next few months, every one of its 25,700 students and 10,400 employees will be confronted with a significant personal challenge — cutting their flights, meat consumption, energy bills and driving by at least a 10th in under a year.
With a population of 36,000, the university is equivalent in size to a small town. At a conservative estimate, this “town” emits at least 350,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent each year. The campaign is straying well beyond the traditional interests of academics and university administrators into uncomfortable areas, such as the heavy reliance on air travel by researchers and students.
The university is one of scores of educational institutions across the UK that have joined the 10:10 climate campaign to make a 10 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions next year. Many aim to make deep cuts in their energy use to meet the target; many hope to exceed it.
City University in London has pledged a 15 percent cut and wants to save 1,000 tonnes a year with a new combined cooling, heat and power (CCHP) plant. Bristol University, too, will cut its emissions by 15 percent spending £2 million (US$3.3 million) next year on energy efficiency. St Peter’s College, Oxford, is aiming at a 20 percent cut in two years.
However, Edinburgh believes its policies are the most radical. Last week, its initiative was given a significant boost when it won £339,000 from the Scottish government’s climate challenge fund to employ six staff for 16 months to conduct an exhaustive study of its carbon emissions and then champion lasting cuts in emissions.
“It’s a short, sharp opportunity for us to harness the community’s capacity for change,” said David Somervell, Edinburgh’s sustainability adviser.
The six staff will run its carbon reduction campaign, called “Transition Edinburgh University” (TEU), named after the global Transition network, which aims to increase sustainability at a community level. It is a campaign officially sanctioned by the university principal, Timothy O’Shea, and overseen by its vice-principal for sustainability, Mary Bownes.
Edinburgh has already cut its energy use by 31 percent since 1990, despite trebling in size. It already has the highly efficient CCHP plants now being installed by other 10:10 signatories and it is gutting its 1960s buildings and refitting them with double-glazed windows, sensor-activated lighting and insulated cladding. Its newest building, housing the psychology, philosophy, language science and computing departments, uses state-of-the-art, low-carbon technology, earning an “excellent” rating for energy efficiency.
That was relatively easy though, Somervell said. The university’s own energy use — its heating, lighting, academic travel and small vehicle fleet — accounts for just under a sixth of the community’s carbon dioxide emissions. Targeting the lifestyles of students and academics is a far tougher task — the campaign is effectively probing into the private lives of 36,000 people.
Preliminary research into the lifestyles of Edinburgh’s mostly British-born first-years threw up a challenging discovery. Lured by cheap flights, domestic air travel is now routine, even for freshers.
The university’s transition team surveyed freshers who had moved into the Pollock halls of residence, which provides housing for 2,000 students south of the city center. They were questioned about issues such as their food bills, meat-eating, leisure spending, commuting and book costs. They were also asked to list the flights taken this year.
Perhaps naively, the form only gave them space for eight one-way journeys. For many, the list of flights spilled over on to the back of the form.
Somervell’s team knows the university paid for nearly 7,000 flights in 2007-2008 to conferences and meeting research partners, resulting in 95 percent of its own “internal” travel-related emissions, and nearly 5,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
An exhaustive 96-page study of the university’s total climate impact and its strategies for tackling it, called “Footprints and Handprints,” estimated that its 7,500 overseas students produced five times as much just on their flights home, or 25,855 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Per capita, this is 11 times higher than the average British student. It also equals half of Edinburgh’s total “institutional” emissions.
It raises a conundrum for universities trying to significantly cut climate emissions. Facing a 15 percent reduction in future funding, institutions such as Edinburgh feel intense pressure to increase overseas student numbers to increase revenue, influence and prestige.
The Higher Education Statistics Agency estimates there were 390,000 overseas students in the UK in 2007-2008. Using Edinburgh’s estimate that every foreign student flies home twice a year, that produces 1.34 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
Somervell plans to test these figures and all the other carbon emissions data in “Footprints and Handprints,” in a major survey of all students and staff next month. Despite this conflict in objectives, he believes that the carbon burden from overseas students can be absorbed by other measures to tackle emissions.
Ric Lander, an environment and development master’s graduate from Edinburgh, and one of the paid coordinators of TEU whose salary is covered by the Scottish government’s climate challenge grant, said foreign students were vigorous activists in the low-carbon campaign and the university’s People and Planet society, which has helped drive the campaign. The initiative is defined by its international outlook.
“Often they’re the boldest people with an interesting perspective,” Lander said.
Next year’s campaign will ask students to make their digs more energy efficient and greener — it has 20 volunteers running a “Big Green Makeover” campaign for student flats; encouraging lower meat or meat-free diets; funding energy-saving competitions between halls of residence; promoting car sharing; getting students to swap flights for trains; asking academics to install video-conferencing suites to “meet” foreign colleagues on screen; and promoting re-use of discarded duvets and household goods at campus “swap shops.”
Facing rising energy prices, a worsening climate, potential taxes on carbon emissions and cuts in central government spending, reducing carbon dioxide emissions increases Edinburgh’s resilience and demonstrates social responsibility, Somervell argued.
“It’s about positioning and future-proofing the university as an institution and reducing future risk. It’s about ensuring we’ve a strategy for our continuance,” he said.
Taiwan’s fall would be “a disaster for American interests,” US President Donald Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy Elbridge Colby said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday last week, as he warned of the “dramatic deterioration of military balance” in the western Pacific. The Republic of China (Taiwan) is indeed facing a unique and acute threat from the Chinese Communist Party’s rising military adventurism, which is why Taiwan has been bolstering its defenses. As US Senator Tom Cotton rightly pointed out in the same hearing, “[although] Taiwan’s defense spending is still inadequate ... [it] has been trending upwards
The first Donald Trump term was a boon for Taiwan. The administration regularized the arms sales process and enhanced bilateral ties. Taipei will not be so fortunate the second time around. Given recent events, Taiwan must proceed with the assumption that it cannot count on the United States to defend it — diplomatically or militarily — during the next four years. Early indications suggested otherwise. The nomination of Marco Rubio as US Secretary of State and the appointment of Mike Waltz as the national security advisor, both of whom have expressed full-throated support for Taiwan in the past, raised hopes that
There is nothing the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) could do to stop the tsunami-like mass recall campaign. KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) reportedly said the party does not exclude the option of conditionally proposing a no-confidence vote against the premier, which the party later denied. Did an “actuary” like Chu finally come around to thinking it should get tough with the ruling party? The KMT says the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is leading a minority government with only a 40 percent share of the vote. It has said that the DPP is out of touch with the electorate, has proposed a bloated
In an eloquently written piece published on Sunday, French-Taiwanese education and policy consultant Ninon Godefroy presents an interesting take on the Taiwanese character, as viewed from the eyes of an — at least partial — outsider. She muses that the non-assuming and quiet efficiency of a particularly Taiwanese approach to life and work is behind the global success stories of two very different Taiwanese institutions: Din Tai Fung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). Godefroy said that it is this “humble” approach that endears the nation to visitors, over and above any big ticket attractions that other countries may have
RSS