August 2020 – Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

Capturing the value of community energy

Posted on August 26, 2020April 4, 2023 by janet.crompton

Energise Sussex Coast and South East London Community Energy are set to benefit from a new business collaboration led by Colin Nolden and supported by PhD students Peter Thomas and Daniela Rossade. This is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council with match funding provided by Community Energy South from SGN. In total, £80,000 has been made available from the Economic and Social Research Council Impact Accelerator Account to launch six new Accelerating Business Collaborations involving the Universities of Bath, Exeter and Bristol. This funding aims to increase capacity and capability of early career researchers and PhD students to collaborate with the private sector. Match funding from SGN (formerly Scotia Gas Network) provided by Community Energy South for this particular project will free up time and allow Energise Sussex Coast and South East London Community Energy to provide the necessary company data and co-develop appropriate data analysis and management methodologies.

The Capturing the value of community energy project evolved out of the Bristol Poverty Institute (BPI) interdisciplinary webinar on Energy and Fuel Poverty and Sustainable Solutions on 14 May 2020. At this event Colin highlighted the difficulty of establishing self-sustaining fuel-poverty alleviation business models, despite huge savings on energy bills and invaluable support for some of the most marginalised segments of society. Peter also presented his PhD project, which investigates the energy needs and priorities of refugee communities. With the help of Ruth Welters from Research and Enterprise Development and Lauren Winch from BPI, Colin built up his team and concretised his project for this successful grant application.

The two business collaborators Energise Sussex Coast (ESC) and South East London Community Energy (SELCE) are non-profit social enterprises that seek to act co-operatively to tackle the climate crisis and energy injustice through community owned renewable energy and energy savings schemes. Both have won multiple awards for their approach to energy generation, energy saving and fuel poverty alleviation.

However, both are also highly dependent on grants from energy companies such as SGN with complicated and highly variable reporting procedures. This business collaboration will involve the analysis of their company data (eight years for ESC, ten years for SELCE) to take stock of what fuel poverty advice and energy saving action works and what does not, and to grasp any multiplier effects associated with engaging in renewable energy trading activities alongside more charitable fuel poverty alleviation work.

Benefits for ESC and SELCE include the co-production of a database to help them establish what has and has not worked in the past, and where to target their efforts moving forward. This is particularly relevant in the context of future fuel-poverty alleviation funding bids. With a better understanding of what works, they will be able to write better bids and target their advice more effectively, thus improving the efficiency of the sector more broadly.

It will also help identify new value streams, such as those resulting from lower energy bills. Rather than creating dependents, this provides the foundation for business model innovation through consortium building and economies of scale where possible, while improving targeted face-to-face advice where necessary. It will also explore socially distant approaches where face-to-face advice and engagement is no longer possible.

With a better understanding how and where value is created, ESC and SLECE, together with other non-profit enterprises, can establish a platform cooperative while creating self-renewing databases which enable more targeted energy saving and fuel poverty advice in future. Such data also facilitates application for larger pots of money such as Horizon2020, and the establishment of a fuel poverty ecosystem in partnership with local authorities and other organisations capable of empowering people instead of creating dependents. This additional reporting will capture a wider range of value and codify it to be submitted as written evidence to the Cabinet Office and Treasury at national level, while also acting as a dynamic database for inclusive economy institutions and community energy organisations at regional and local level.

People

Dr Colin Nolden is a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow based on the Law School, University of Bristol, researching sustainable energy governance at the intersection of demand, mobility, communities, and climate change. Alongside his appointment at the University of Bristol, Colin works as a Researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. He is also a non-executive director of Community Energy South and a member of the Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Peter Thomas is a University of Bristol Engineering PhD student and member of the Cabot Institute for the Environment investigating access to energy in humanitarian relief by combining insights from engineering, social sciences, and anthropology.

Daniela Rossade is a University of Bristol Engineering PhD student investigating the transition to renewable energy on the remote island of Saint Helena and the influence of renewable microgrids on electricity access and energy poverty.

Partner Companies

Energise Sussex Coast Ltd

South East London Community Energy Ltd

Community Energy South

Contact

For more information on the project contact: Dr Colin Nolden colin.nolden@bristol.ac.uk

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This blog is written by Dr Colin Nolden, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Bristol Law School and Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Colin Nolden

IncrEdible! How to save money and reduce waste

Posted on August 26, 2020March 31, 2023 by janet.crompton

The new academic year is a chance to get to grips with managing your student loan and kitchen cupboards. Over lockdown the UK wasted a third less food than we usually would. This is brilliant, as normally over 4.5 million tonnes of edible food is wasted from UK homes every year. For students, it’s even higher. The average cost of food waste per student per week is approximately £5.25 – that’s about £273 per year! It’s not just our bank accounts that are affected by food waste – it’s our planet too.

The process of growing, making, distributing, storing and cooking our food uses masses of energy, fuel and water. It generates 30% of the world’s CO₂ greenhouse gas emissions. The same amount of CO₂ as 4.6 million return flights from London to Perth, Australia! So it makes sense to keep as much food out of the bin as possible, start wasting less and saving more.

Start the new term with some food waste busting, budget cutting, environment loving habits! Here’s five easy ways to reduce food waste from your kitchen.

Conquer the cupboard!

Before you head to the shops, check what’s in your cupboards, fridge and freezer. Make a list and stick to it! Supermarket deals are designed to get you to spend more, and often student accommodation has limited storage space.

Chill the fridge out!

Turn your fridge temperature down to between 0 and 5°C to keep food fresher for longer. Having it too cold can actually spoil some foods!

Freezy does it!

Make the most of your freezer! You can freeze more than you think. Try bulk cooking things like chilli or stews and freeze some portions for when you’re feeling lazy. Check out the Love Food Hate Waste A-Z of Food Storage to double check anything.

Defrost like a boss!

Once you know what’s in the freezer, it just takes a bit of forward planning to save money and avoid a last-minute dash to the shops or Deliveroo.

Use it or lose it!

Get creative with your meal ideas and find ingredient swaps, recipe ideas and leftover hacks on the Love Food Hate Waste website. These are sure to impress your new friends and save you money!

For more information contact sustainability-estates@bristol.ac.uk

The University of Bristol’s Sustainability Team are making a sustainable university, by managing our precious resources, maintaining our sustainable standards and minding our impact on our communities.

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This blog is written by Emma Lewins and Anya Kaufman, Sustainability Interns at the University of Bristol.

Learning lessons from the past to inform the future

Posted on August 24, 2020April 4, 2023 by janet.crompton

A fairly recent blog post on the EGU blog site reiterated the compelling comparison between the current COVID-19 crisis and the ongoing climate emergency, focusing on extreme events such as hurricanes, heatwaves and severe rainfall-related flooding, all of which are likely to get worse as the climate warms (Langendijk & Osman 2020). This comparison has been made by us Climate Scientists since the COVID-19 crisis began; both the virus and the disastrous impacts of anthropogenic climate change were (and indeed are) predictable but little was done in the ways of preparedness, both were (and are still being) underestimated by those in power despite warnings from science, and both are global in extent and therefore require united action. Another comparison is that both are being intensively, and urgently, researched across the world by many centres of excellence. We don’t have all the answers yet for either, but progress is being made on both.

When it comes to understanding our climate, there are several approaches; these are, of course, not mutually exclusive. We can focus on present-day climate variability, to understand the physical mechanisms behind our current climate; examples include, but are not limited to, ocean-atmosphere interactions, land-atmosphere feedbacks, or extreme events (see Williams et al. 2008, Williams & Kniveton 2012 or Williams et al. 2012, as well as work from many others).

Alternatively, we can use our current understanding of the physical mechanisms driving current climate to make projections of the future, either globally or regionally. State-of-the-art General Circulation Models (GCMs) can provide projections of future climate under various scenarios of socio-economic development, including but not limited to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Williams 2017).

A third approach is to focus on climates during the deep (i.e. geological) past, using tools to determine past climate such as ice cores, tree rings and carbon dating. Unlike the historical period, which usually includes the past in which there are human observations or documents, the deep past usually refers to the prehistoric era and includes timescales ranging from thousands of years ago (ka) to millions of years ago (Ma). Understanding past climate changes and mechanisms is highly important in improving our projections of possible future climate change (e.g. Haywood et al. 2016, Otto-Bliesner et al. 2017, Kageyama et al. 2018, and many others).

One reason for looking at the deep past is that it provides an opportunity to use our GCMs to simulate climate scenarios very different to today, and compare these to scenarios based on past.

These days I am primarily focusing on the latter approach, and am involved in almost all of the palaeoclimate scenarios coming out of UK’s physical climate model, called HadGEM3-GC3.1. These focus on different times in the past, such as the mid-Holocene (MH, ~6 ka), the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ~26.5 ka), the Last Interglacial (LIG, ~127 ka), the mid-Pliocene Warm Period (Pliocene, ~3.3 Ma) and the Early Eocene Climate Optimum / Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (EECO / PETM, collectively referred to here as the Eocene, ~50-55 Ma). All of these have been (or are being) conducted under the auspices of the 6th phase of the Coupled Modelling Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) and 4th phase of the Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP4).

Figure 1: Calendar adjusted 1.5 m air temperature climatology differences, mid-Holocene and last interglacial simulations from the UK’s physical climate model, relative to the preindustrial era: a-c) mid Holocene – preindustrial; d-f) last interglacial – preindustrial. Top row: Annual; Middle row: Northern Hemisphere summer (June-August); Bottom row: Northern Hemisphere winter (December-February). Stippling shows statistical significance (as calculated by a Student’s T-test) at the 99% level. Taken from Williams et al. (2020).

These five periods are of particular interest to the above projects for a number of different reasons. Before these are discussed, however, the fundamentals of deep past climate change need to be briefly introduced. In short, climate changes in the geological past (i.e. without human influence) can either be internal to the planet (e.g. volcanic eruptions, oceanic CO2 release) or external to the planet (e.g. changes in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun). Arguably, it is changes to the amount of incoming solar radiation (known as insolation) that is the primary driver behind all long-term climate change. Theories for long-term climate change, such as the beginning and ending of ice ages, began to be proposed during the 1800s. However, it wasn’t until 1913 that the Serbian mathematician, Milutin Milankovitch, developed our modern day understanding of glacial cycles. In short, Milankovitch identified three interacting cycles concerning the Earth’s position relative to the Sun: a) Eccentricity, in which the Earth’s orbit around the Sun changes from being more or less circular on a period of 100-400 ka; b) Obliquity, in which the Earth’s axis changes from being more or less tilted towards the Sun on a period of ~41 ka; and c) Precession, in which the Earth’s polar regions appear to ‘wobble’ around the axis (like a spinning top coming to its end) on a period of ~19-24 ka. All of these three cycles not only change the overall amount of insolation received by the planet, and therefore its average temperature, but also where the most energy is received; this ultimately determines the strength and timing of our seasons.

With this background in mind, and returning to the paleoclimate scenarios mentioned above, the MH and the LIG collectively represent a ‘warm climate’ state. During these periods the Earth’s axis was tilted slightly more towards the Sun, resulting in an increase in Northern Hemisphere insolation (because of the larger landmasses here relative to the Southern Hemisphere). This caused much warmer Northern Hemisphere summers and enhanced African, Asian and South American monsoons (Kageyama et al. 2018). The increase in temperatures can be seen in Figure 1, where clearly the largest increases relative to the preindustrial era (PI) are in the Northern Hemisphere during June-August (Williams et al. 2020). By comparing model simulations to palaeoclimate reconstructions during these periods, the models’ ability to simulate these climates can be tested and this therefore assesses our confidence in future projections of climate change; which, as mentioned above, may result in more rainfall extremes and enhanced monsoons.

In contrast, the LGM represents a ‘cold climate’ state which, although unlikely to return as a result of increasing anthropogenic GHG emissions, nevertheless provides a well-documented climatic period during which to test the models. Going back further in time, the Pliocene is the most recent time in the geological past when CO2 levels were roughly equivalent to today, and was a time when global annual mean temperatures were 1.8-3.6°C higher than today (Haywood et al. 2016). See Figure 2 for the increases in sea surface temperature (SST) during the Pliocene, relative to today. This annual mean temperature increase is clearly much higher than the current target, as specified by the Paris Agreement, of keeping warming below 1.5°C (at most 2°C) by the end of 2100. Importantly, the CO2 increases and subsequent warming during the Pliocene occurred over timescales of thousands to millions of years, whereas anthropogenic GHG emissions have caused a similar increase in CO2 (from ~280 parts per million (ppmv) during the PI to just over 400 ppmv today) in under 300 years. The Pliocene, therefore, provides an excellent analogy for what our climate might be like in the (possibly near) future.

Finally, going back even further, the Eocene is the most recent time in the past that was characterised by very high CO2 concentrations, twice or more than that of today at >800-1000 ppmv; this resulted in temperatures ~5°C higher than today in the tropics and ~20°C higher than today at high latitudes (Lunt et al. 2012, Lunt et al. 2017). The reason the Eocene is highly relevant, and of concern, is that these CO2 concentrations are roughly equivalent to those projected to occur by the end of 2100, if the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario, also known as the ‘Business-as-usual’ scenario, which was used in the most recent IPCC report (IPCC 2014), becomes reality. The Eocene, therefore, provides an excellent albeit concerning analogy for what the worse-case scenario could be like in the future, if action is not taken.

Figure 2: 1.5 m air temperature climatology differences, Pliocene simulation from the UK’s physical climate model, relative to the preindustrial era.

Understanding the climate, how it has changed in the past and how it might change in the future is a complex task and subject to various interrelated approaches. One of these approaches, the concept of using the past to inform the future (e.g. Braconnot et al. 2011), has been described here. Just like in the case of COVID-19, it is our responsibility as Climate Scientists to work together across approaches and disciplines, as well as reliably communicating the science to governments, policymakers and the general public, in order to mitigate the crisis as much as possible.

References

Braconnot, P., Harrison, S. P., Otto-Bliesner, B, et al. (2011). ‘The palaeoclimate modelling intercomparison project contribution to CMIP5’. CLIVAR Exchanges Newsletter. 56: 15-19

Haywood, A. M., Dowsett, H. J., Dolan, A. M. et al. (2016). ‘The Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP) Phase 2: scientific objectives and experimental design’. Climate of the Past. 12: 663-675

IPCC (2014). ‘Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC. Geneva, Switzerland, 151 pp

Kageyama, M., Braconnot, P., Harrison, S. P. et al. (2018). ‘The PMIP4 contribution to CMIP6 – Part 1: Overview and over-arching analysis plan’. Geoscientific Model Development. 11: 1033-1057

Langendijk, G. S. & Osman, M. (2020). ‘Hurricane COVID-19: What can COVID-19 tell us about tackling climate change?’. EGU Blogs: Climate. https://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/cl/2020/04/16/corona-2/. Accessed 24/7/20

Lunt, D. J., Dunkley-Jones, T., Heinemann, M. et al. (2012). ‘A model–data comparison for a multi-model ensemble of early Eocene atmosphere–ocean simulations: EoMIP’. Climate of the Past. 8: 1717-1736

Lunt, D. J., Huber, M., Anagnostou, E. et al. (2017). ‘The DeepMIP contribution to PMIP4: experimental design for model simulations of the EECO, PETM, and pre-PETM (version 1.0)’. Geoscientific Model Development. 10: 889-901

Otto-Bliesner, B. L., Braconnot, P., Harrison, S. P. et al. (2017). ‘The PMIP4 contribution to CMIP6 – Part 2: Two interglacials, scientific objective and experimental design for Holocene and Last Interglacial simulations’. Geoscientific Model Development. 10: 3979-4003

Williams, C. J. R., Kniveton, D. R. & Layberry, R. (2008). ‘Influence of South Atlantic sea surface temperatures on rainfall variability and extremes over southern Africa’. Journal of Climate. 21: 6498-6520

Williams, C. J. R., Allan, R. P. & Kniveton, D. R. (2012). ‘Diagnosing atmosphere-land feedbacks in CMIP5 climate models’. Environmental Research Letters. 7 (4)

Williams, C. J. R. & Kniveton, D. R. (2012). ‘Atmosphere-land surface interactions and their influence on extreme rainfall and potential abrupt climate change over southern Africa’. Climatic Change. 112 (3-4): 981-996

Williams, C. J. R. (2017). ‘Climate change in Chile: an analysis of state-of-the-art observations, satellite-derived estimates and climate model simulations’. Journal of Earth Science & Climatic Change. 8 (5): 1-11

Williams, C. J. R., Guarino, M-V., Capron, E. (2020). ‘CMIP6/PMIP4 simulations of the mid-Holocene and Last Interglacial using HadGEM3: comparison to the pre-industrial era, previous model versions, and proxy data’. Climate of the Past. Accepted

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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Dr Charles Williams, a climate scientist within the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. His research focusses on deep time to understand how climate has behaved in the warmer worlds experienced during the early Eocene and mid-Pliocene (ca. 50 – 3 Mio years ago). This blog was reposted with kind permission from Charles. View the original blog on the EGU blog site.

Dr Charles Williams

Coronavirus: have we already missed the opportunity to build a better world?

Posted on August 17, 2020April 4, 2023 by janet.crompton

Many people like to say that the coronavirus is teaching us a lesson, as if the pandemic were a kind of morality play that should lead to a change in our behaviour. It shows us that we can make big shifts quickly if we want to. That we can build back better. That social inequality is starkly revealed at times of crisis. That there is a “magic money tree”. The idea that crisis leads to change was also common during the financial crunch over a decade ago, but that didn’t produce any lasting transformations. So will post-COVID life be any different?

At the start of lockdown, in the middle of the anxiety and confusion, I started to notice that I was enjoying myself. I was cooking and gardening more; the air was cleaner, my city was quieter and I was spending more time with my partner. Lots of people started to write about the idea that there should be #NoGoingBack. It seemed that we had taken a deep collective breath, and then started to think about coronavirus as a stimulus to encourage us to think how we might address other big issues – climate, inequality, racism and so on.

Being an academic, I decided to put together a quick and dirty book on what life might look like after the crisis. I persuaded various activists and academics to write short pieces on working at home, money, leadership and lots of other topics. The idea was to show that the world could change if we wanted it to. The book is out now, but it already feels, only four months after I imagined it, like the document of a lost time. The city noises are back, and jet trails are beginning to scar the sky. Has the moment been lost?

The second lesson of coronavirus, it seems, is just how stubborn the old structures are. Wanting the world to be different does not translate into making it so. Slogans do not produce change when power, habits and infrastructure remain substantially the same. So what can we learn now about crisis and making enduring change?

Aerial view of beach with sun umbrellas. — Getting back to ‘normal’.
Alex Blăjan/Unsplash, FAL

Think about holidays in Spain and Portugal. Sunny beaches, cold drinks and cheap food. For many people, getting back to normal means going back to what they had before, and they don’t want to hear some killjoy – whether a head of state or spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, telling them that they can’t have it. To add to the problem, there are thousands of jobs at stake in the various industries that take people on holiday – manufacturing and servicing planes, working in airports and hotels, selling duty free, aviation fuel and tourist special lunches.

The world that we live in now has a kind of stickiness to it, both in terms of the expectations of people and the infrastructure that already exists and that reinforces those expectations. The pre-COVID world was sculpted by flows of money and trade, motorways and shipping containers. As we gradually begin to stir from lockdown, these channels are already waiting, ready to be refilled with people and things.

In the social sciences, people often refer to “path dependency”, the idea that our history constrains our present choices. If we have cities that are organised around large numbers of people commuting into the centre, or houses and flats that don’t have workspaces, then it is going to be difficult for large numbers of people to work at home. If you have to park your car on the street, then charging an electric one means running a cable on the pavement. If our pensions funds rely on oil companies making huge profits, then encouraging investment in green technologies is going to be an uphill struggle.

Wind turbines on a green hillside. — A hill we need to climb.
Appolinary Kalashnikova/Unsplash, FAL

No wonder then that it is easier for most people to assume that the future will be like the past because the shape of the present limits how we can think about things to come. This is what worries me most about my book. I think it might be pushing against a door that is already closing. And the people who are pushing it are not stupid or evil, just politicians, businesses and ordinary people who all want to go back to what they had.

If lesson one of coronavirus is that things can change, and lesson two is that they easily slip back again, then lesson three must be about the importance of presenting images of the future that motivate people to imagine change. It is clear that we can’t carry on as we are and need to stop doing things that we were doing, but just saying that is a really bad way to encourage people to change.

Instead, we need to imagine futures which are just as exciting and fulfilling as the high speed, high consumption, high carbon ones we must leave behind. We need to give people good reasons to jump the tracks because it is much easier just to slide back to what you know. So let’s imagine the city quieter, and the air cleaner, less need to fight with traffic jams and more time to spend with family and friends. That seems like a good start to learning from COVID-19.

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This blog was written by Martin Parker, Professor of Organisation Studies, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Martin Parker

For humanity to thrive, we need engineers who can lead with a conscience

Posted on August 10, 2020April 4, 2023 by janet.crompton

Dr Hadi Abulrub argues the key to facing environmental challenges lies in intelligent manufacturing, smart infrastructure, sustainable energy and engineering modelling.

Creativity and innovation have been the drivers of social, economic and cultural progress for millennia. The Industrial Revolution accelerated our capacities and there has been exponential growth ever since – in the products and services we use to enhance our lives as much as the number of people across the world for whom these tools have become indispensable.

But have the costs been worth it?

Judging by the state of the world, the answer is no. We live in turbulent times, resulting in large part from our over-reliance on the Earth’s resources. And the stakes are high, especially in the context of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a mere ten years remain to meet the ambitious task of setting the world on a more viable path for the sake of our collective prosperity.

How can we fulfil the complex needs of a growing population in a way that can both extend the lifespan of the finite resources that remain, and ensure the prosperity of future generations?

Conscience over convenience

Responsible consumption and production is the focus of the UN’s 9th SDG which highlights the scale and urgency of the challenge: the acceleration of worldwide material consumption has led to the over-extraction and degradation of environmental resources. According to the UN, in 1990 some 8.1 tons of natural resources were used to satisfy a person’s need, while in 2015, almost 12 tons of resources were extracted per person.

As the SDGs emphasise, the only way through is via inclusive industrialisation and innovation, sustainable economic growth, affordable energy and sustainable management of the Earth’s resources.

Recent years have seen an exceptional rise in our environmental consciousness, with consumers making more discerning choices about what and how much they buy and who they buy from. The growth of the sharing economy is further evidence of this shift in mindset towards a value-based economy, where people are increasingly looking to rent, recycle and reuse.

Corporations are responding in a similar vein. Whereas once the linear model of extraction, manufacture, distribution, consumption and disposal reigned supreme, more companies now realise that the resulting material waste and environmental damage is neither justifiable nor sustainable.

The circular economy

There is hope in the emerging model of closed-loop manufacturing and production, where there is a longer-term view focused on ensuring lasting quality and performance. Waste is being designed out of the process, with a greater focus on resource. For instance, the Belfast-based lighting manufacturer Lumenstream is using service-based business models to disrupt the industry with a servitised approach.

Servitisation means that goods are lent to customers in such a way that the company maintains full ownership of its products, from manufacture through to repair, to recycling. The company, the customer and the product are part of one interdependent ecosystem. The customer receives all the benefit without the need to worry about the physical product itself.

Liberation and leadership

One of the effects of the digitised world has been the accelerated march towards automation. According to research carried out by the McKinsey Global Institute, about half the activities people are paid for, which equates to almost $15 trillion in wages in the global economy, could be automated by around 2055.

Some argue this signals the redundancy of the human workforce. Is that really true? Are we not capable and intelligent enough to see things differently?

After all, how we respond, and whether the economy, the planet and people suffer or thrive will depend on a radical shift in our thinking. Building a more sustainable economy will require us to reimagine the world, while applying some creative problem-solving, logical thinking, and socio-cultural and emotional intelligence – qualities that are the sole preserve of human ingenuity.

As researchers, educators and scientists, engineering a brighter future has to be our focus.

This is why at the University of Bristol, we’re committed to supporting the future leaders in the engineering sector who will take the helm in intelligent manufacturing, smart infrastructure, sustainable energy and engineering modelling.

Redefining our humanity

This shift in awareness is something that I see on a daily basis, in the perspectives of the students who join us and in the way they view the challenges we face – in an educational setting and in a global context.

The so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution is already underway, which is concerned with maximising human health and wellbeing, facilitating interconnectivity and safeguarding our shared planet. These are the concerns of students who are seeking to make a difference in the world by developing the skills they need to become active agents for progressive change.

It’s this conscientious spirit, combined with entrepreneurial drive that has the potential to come up with a solution to the complex needs of a global society.

The next generation will effectively be responsible for redefining our humanity in a digitised world. It’s an immense challenge – and a tremendous opportunity to influence our collective future.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Hadi Abulrub, from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Bristol. Hadi is also the Programme Director of the new MSc in Engineering with Management, designed for graduates who wish to lead in the new era of engineering and technology. This blog was reposted from the Faculty of Engineering blog. View the original post.

Hadi Abulrub

Energy use and demand in a (post) COVID-19 world

Posted on August 6, 2020April 16, 2023 by janet.crompton

Keeping tabs on energy use is crucial for any individual, organisation or energy network. Energy usage affects our bills, what we choose to power (or not) and how we think about saving energy for a more sustainable future for our planet. We no longer want to rely on polluting fossil fuels for energy, we need cleaner and more sustainable solutions, and both technologies and behaviours need to be in the mix.

It seems the COVID-19 crisis may be a good time to evaluate our energy usage, especially since we assume that we are using less energy because we’re not all doing/consuming as much. We brought together a bunch of our researchers from different disciplines across the University of Bristol to have a group think about how we might change our energy usage and demand during and post COVID-19. Here’s a summary of what was discussed.

Has COVID-19 reduced our energy supply and demand?

You may have noticed in the previous paragraph that I mentioned that we assume that we are using less energy during this COVID-19 crisis. We’re not travelling or commuting as much; we’re not in our work buildings using lots of energy for heating, cooling, lighting, making cups of coffee; and for those of us who work in offices, we’re not all sat around computers all day, especially those that have been furloughed. So what actually is the collective impact of our reduced transport, cessation of business and working from home, doing to our energy supply and demand?

John Brenton, the University of Bristol’s Sustainability Manager spoke on the University’s experience during lockdown. During this COVID-19 crisis so far, UK electricity consumption has fallen by 19% and this percentage reduction has also been seen at the University of Bristol too. Thing is, when there is reduced demand for electricity, fossil fuels become cheaper. It makes us ask the question, could this be a disincentive to investing in renewables? John also pointed out that COVID-19 has shrunk further an already shrinking energy market (which was already shrinking due to energy saving).

Even though electricity consumption has gone down by almost 20%, we are still emitting greenhouse gases, though not so much from our commute to school and work, but with the data we are using, now that a lot of us are home all day. Professor Chris Preist, Professor of Sustainability & Computer Systems, Department of Computer Science, said if we continue to embrace these new ways of working, we are going to replace the traffic jam with the data centre. Of global emissions today, 2% to 3% are made up through input of digital technology. Though the direct emissions of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) are an issue and need to be addressed, they have a different impact than aviation. Digital tech is more egalitarian and a little technology is used by more people, than the much fewer privileged people who fly for example.

The systemic changes in society to homeworking can also increase our emissions far more than the digital tech itself, for example, people tend to live further away from work if they are allowed to work from home. Who needs to live in the city when you don’t have an office any more or you don’t have to come in to work very often? You may as well live where you want. You could even live abroad, but those few times you may need to come into the office, you would be travelling further and if abroad you may still have to fly in which would mean that your emissions would be huge, even though you are no longer commuting all year.

Are there positive changes and how might these be continued post-COVID-19?

Chris shared that most people and companies are now considering remote working as standard post-lockdown, which will reduce commuting and potentially improve emissions. Two thirds of UK adults will work from home more often and the benefits of this are that when people do go into work, they will likely be hot desking, this means companies will require less space and can reduce carbon emissions. Working from home will lead to a reduction of traffic on the roads.

We are video conferencing so much more, in fact Netflix agreed to reduce the resolution of their programmes in order to provide more capacity for home working and the ensuing video calls. But how does videoconferencing compare to our cars? One hour of video conferencing is equivalent to driving 500 metres in your car.

COVID-19 has also shown that a dramatic change in policy can be rapidly put in place, so this can be relevant in replicating for rolling out sustainability and energy initiatives.

What are the implications for social justice?

Dr Ed Atkins, who works on environmental and energy policy, politics and governance in the School of Geographical Sciences, spoke on the politics of a just transition. Changes to energy grids have been driven by collapsing demand and a lack of profitability in fossil fuels. Any investment post-COVID-19 will shape the infrastructure of the future, whether it will be clean or fossil intensive. Unfortunately many economic actors are using the COVID-19 crisis to roll back environmental regulations and stimulate investment by the taxpayer into fossil-intensive industry and economic policies.

Although many politicians are calling for a green recovery, which is positive, none of the current policies incorporate a just transition. A just transition would include job guarantee schemes and a rapid investment into green infrastructure as well as social justice and equity. A just transition would also account for the fact that not everyone can work from home, not everyone has a comfortable home to work in or the technology required to do so.

So what do we need to consider? Caroline Bird, who studies the cross-sectoral issues of environmental sustainability and energy in the Department of Computer Science, said that homeworking doesn’t work for everyone and often doesn’t work for the poorly paid. It doesn’t work well for the most vulnerable or least resilient in our society and community support is often needed here. We need to consider how we will educate everyone for a low carbon future. The government needs to take up the mantle and lead and pay for this. Policy change is possible, but we need to consider loss of interest and changing messages from the government that can lead to confusion.

We also need to consider rapid action to reduce the impact of COVID-19 and rapid action to reduce economic harm. But this is where the justice side of things is not well considered.

Can we imagine radical transformations as we emerge from lockdown?

Professor Dale Southerton, Professor in Sociology of Consumption and Organisation, in the Department of Management, initially raised some provocative questions: what has changed and what has remained and/or endured during COVID-19? And respectively, what will endure post-COVID-19? What has become the ‘new normal’ with regards to energy usage and consumption? Our routines and habits underpin our new normality and these routines and habits constitute demand – which is in opposition to how economists define demand. But how do the norms/normality come to be?

For example, how did the fridge freezer in our kitchen become normal? Because of the fridge freezer, it changed the design of our kitchens, we changed how we shopped, moving from small and regular local shopping trips to big weekly shops at supermarkets, all because we could store more fresh food. This drove us to embrace cars much more, as we needed the boot space to transport our fresh goods home and supermarkets were placed outside of local shopping areas so cars were needed to access them. All this together moves to the ‘normality’.

So then, what radical transformations have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic? We’ve seen more of us move to homeworking, with face to face interactions taking place via video call. Our food distribution systems have changed somewhat away from going regularly to the supermarket or dining out to buying produce online and receiving deliveries, and embracing takeaway culture much more. In a relatively short period of time we have re-imagined how to work and made it happen. However, the material infrastructure and cultural and social elements still need to evolve and change (which includes how the changes might affect our mental health, how we discipline our time at home, etc).

Caroline said that there are lots of other things we could be doing to decarbonise our energy use during and post-COVID-19, such as:

Creating good staff with good knowledge. To do that we need to support their mental health, give them education and development opportunities, and strengthen the fragility of the supply chain they might work in.
Educating everyone about low carbon and energy efficiency. To do this we need to consider what skills are needed, which of those are transferable, which skills will take more time to develop and what training programmes are needed for individuals.
Developing policies which don’t allow resistance from developers, or poor workmanship of properties, which can have co-benefits to health and social justice. A better planned housing estate, home and national infrastructure will improve social justice and energy savings enormously.

The only thing stopping us is bureaucracy and policy. It’s up to us to challenge the pre-COVID-19 status quo and demand fairer and cleaner energy. You can do this by writing to your local MP, share information on social media and with your friends and take part in activism. We could have a positive new future if we get it right.

View the slides from this workshop.

Follow the speakers on Twitter:

Dr Ed Atkins @edatkins_

Caroline Bird @CarolineB293

Professor Chris Preist @ChrisPreist

John Brenton @UoBris_Sust

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This blog was written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Cabot Institute Coordinator @Enviro_Mand. With thanks to Ruzanna Chitchyan for chairing the discussion panel and taking the notes.

Amanda Woodman-Hardy