Your opportunity to shape UCL's new carbon reduction strategy

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UCL is consulting with students and staff on a new plan to reduce its carbon emissions, setting out a revised approach to reflect UCL's rapid growth and institutional changes. Feedback from across UCL is needed to ensure this plan is as relevant and representative as possible.

Last year UCL's Sustainability Team began a process of gathering student and staff views on how the university can improve its environmental performance. These insights have now been used to create a proposed new Carbon Management Plan for UCL. This plan will shape how UCL tackles the pressing challenge of reducing its carbon emissions well into the future. Action from students and staff now sit at the heart of the plan, so your input will be vital in making this new approach a success.

Since the 2011 Carbon Management Plan was written, UCL has made considerable progress, with many carbon-saving initiatives, ranging from sustainable construction projects, increasing the efficiency of buildings and improvements to recycling provision. However, the university needs a new plan to reflect its striking growth in academic performance and student numbers.

Degrees of Change

The proposed new plan considers the university's growth and strategic direction.  It proposes challenging but achievable carbon reduction targets that will require wide-scale changes to UCL's buildings and infrastructure, and the ways we work and study at UCL. 

The UCL Sustainability Team is embarking on an extensive consultation, accompanied by an interactive online tool, Degrees Of Change, that invites participants to create their own carbon reduction strategy for UCL using the team's own budget.

Professor Michael Arthur, UCL President & Provost, said: "Environmental sustainability is one of UCL's key values. Our research seeks to address environmental sustainability from many angles, but we also need to reduce the university's carbon emissions, both as individuals and as an institution.

"Our revised Carbon Management Plan takes into account the unprecedented growth in research activity and student numbers that UCL has experienced over the past decade, which I discussed in my recent Lunch Hour Lecture, and the significant challenges that this growth poses for carbon reduction. Against this backdrop, we want to create a low carbon university environment that is inspirational, healthy and enjoyable to inhabit.

"UCL's Carbon Management Plan relies on local action. In order for it to work for UCL, we need the feedback and participation of the whole UCL community, students and staff. We must ensure that the Carbon Management Plan is relevant to the needs of every department, that we understand your local challenges and that you are committed to the changes that we need to make. Please take the time to read the overview and to feedback your thoughts and ideas."

Useful Links

• Degrees Of Change
• Degrees of Change: student and staff share their views

Alex Green, Green UCL