Eleni Michalopoulou – Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

To fly or not to fly? Towards a University of Bristol approach

Posted on November 15, 2019March 31, 2023 by janet.crompton

We’ve published a short video on air travel at the University of Bristol.

Here is a blog to accompany the video to give you more detail on the biggest issues that the university (and other similar organisations who rely on air travel) are facing as it works towards making itself carbon neutral by 2030. Caboteer Eleni Michalopoulou, who features in the video, explains more…

The effects of climate change now have almost a daily mention in the news as they become all the more frequent and evident by various studies, reports, blogs and pictures from all over the world. And as the climate crisis escalates, it was of course a matter of time before scientists pointed out the irony of flying to a conference in order to discuss the urgency and issues related to climate change. Of course, there is here an irony within the irony that led to a lot of finger pointing of scientists that do fly and a narrative of ‘unethical scientists’ that ‘don’t practice what they preach’ but we will come back to that a little later when we explore some of the reasons that people (not just scientists) fly.

I must admit that before I attended the workshop organized by the University of Bristol Sustainability Team with support from the Cabot Institute on the 10 June 2019, I had never really considered the actual facts and figures related to the aviation industry. So, I started doing some research and these are only some of the numbers I came across:

In 2018, nearly 4.4 billion passengers were carried by airlines globally, and yet it’s estimated that only one in five of the world’s population have ever flown in a plane.
Over 65.5 million jobs are supported worldwide in aviation and tourism, out of which, 10.2 million people are working directly in the aviation industry.
In 2018, domestic and international flights emitted around 895m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2), which is 2.4% of global energy-related CO2 emissions. Taking into account the significant non- CO2 climate effects of aircraft flying at altitude, the sector is responsible for an estimated 4.9% of man-made warming. Aviation emissions have doubled in the past 20 years and could more than double again by 2050 even if planes become substantially more fuel-efficient and airlines save additional carbon by optimising their operations.
If the aviation industry were a country, it would rank 20th in the world in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), and sixth in terms of carbon emissions.
Someone flying from London to New York and back generates roughly the same level of emissions as the average person in the EU does by heating their home for a whole year. and more than the average person does in a year in 56 countries of the world

On the 17 April 2019, the University of Bristol became the first university in the UK to declare a climate emergency and joined a long list of organizations and institutions across the world in the fight against climate change. This announcement came to highlight the university’s commitment to become carbon neutral by 2030.

Bike servicing and repair at the University of Bristol

As part of this efforts to accelerate action on its own climate impacts, the University is now developing a plan to address academic and other business travel and in particular air travel. The first task has been to assess the carbon footprint of the thousands of journeys made each year on University business by academics, postgraduate students and professional services staff.

Business travel emissions lie outside the scope of mandatory carbon reporting required in the higher education sector and are not included in the University’s carbon neutral goal. Nonetheless for the past few years the University has collated emissions data on flights and other forms of business travel, alongside those from energy use in buildings and the fuel used by its own vehicle fleet.

In order for the University to monitor and report carbon emissions, it uses three different ‘scopes’.

Scope 1 – Emissions are direct emissions from activities owned or controlled by the University, such as University owned vehicles and the fuel they use.
Scope 2 – Emissions are indirect emissions from electricity owned or consumed by the University that we do not own or control.
Scope 3 – Emissions are other indirect emissions that are related to the University’s activities, such as waste, water and business travel.

Analysis of these data for the business travel plan suggest that emissions from air travel have more than doubled since 2010/11 and now account for nearly one fifth of the University’s total known operational carbon footprint. This growth has occurred against a backdrop of declining emissions from the University’s estate achieved through investment, for example, in improved energy efficiency in buildings.

This was the context for the workshop on ‘Air travel: Drivers, impacts and opportunities for change’ in order to explore the most efficient way to develop a business travel plan for the University including the constraints and opportunities for managing the impacts of air travel for academic and other business reasons. The Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement, Dr Erik Lithander, was present in this workshop and highlighted the need to maintain our global impact as a leading university while managing our environmental footprint and remaining committed to our strong sustainability agenda.

One of the most interesting parts of the workshop was the discussion around the reasons behind air travel in the University of Bristol. So, what is academic and business travel usually linked to according to the most recent staff travel survey? This found the most common reasons (for business or academic travel) were to attend a conference or other forum for sharing research; take part in collaborative projects with other academic or industry partners; and go to other types of meetings on University business. Travel for fieldwork and training purposes was less frequent, followed by attending trade shows and recruitment.

Discussions during the workshop considered the reasons why flying might be the first choice over video-conferencing or other travel modes)’. The following five responses emerged from the roundtable discussions as the key determining factors in the choice of air travel over other alternatives:

Time
Costs
Technological limitations (e.g. quality of videocalls)
The importance of face-to-face interaction, and
Air travel being the default option in funding requirements or travel management companies.

I suppose when I walked into the workshop, my thinking regarding air travel was overly simplistic. I had not realized the complexity of this issue especially for an institution as big as the University of Bristol. During the discussions around the reasons behind flying, three were the reasons that really troubled me in terms of a complex problem that potentially requires a complex solution.

Time

Perhaps the most important issue is the issue of time. A direct flight from Bristol to, for instance, Edinburgh is approximately one hour while the same distance if covered by train is six hours in a best-case scenario. And while for most of us this could be an opportunity to relax and enjoy a lovely trip by train, what about cases where there are caring responsibilities involved, or even an extremely busy workload? This question brings us back to the irony of the irony that I briefly mentioned in the beginning. While climate scientists care, of course, about the environment and their own environmental footprint, in a lot of cases they have families, children, or are responsible for the care of a relative or an individual and increasing the duration of their business trip by 10 or even 20 hours might not be a realistic goal to set.

Costs

Similarly, while a direct flight from Bristol to Edinburgh can cost from £23 pounds, the train from Bristol to Edinburgh ranges between £140 and £280 pounds. Of course, for the biggest part these expenses are not covered by the individual researcher but even so, a very simple question to ask would be ‘why use a substantial amount from the budget to cover a train ticket and not use the cheap option of a plane ticket?’

Physical presence

What was perhaps discussed the most during the workshop was the culture and beliefs behind the idea that an academic’s physical presence would be much more beneficial and could better achieve the purpose of their visit (e.g. research, collaboration, securing funding, networking) rather than the e-presence of the same individual. Can our physical presence be replaced with the help of technology? Can we achieve the same goals through an e-conference than we would if we were there? What can replace a handshake?

I should at this point highlight, that I am not writing the above in defense of flying. I am writing it as a way to reflect on my own thoughts and discussions with colleagues both during the workshop but also afterwards. Afterall, if there was one thing that was evident from the IPCC report was the fact that our lifestyle would have to go through ‘unprecedented changes’ in order for our planet and the climate to have a chance. Perhaps, while a train trip might seem as an inconvenience or disruption to us right now it will be nothing compared to future “inconveniences and disruptions” of a much-deteriorated climate.

I truly believe that it is extremely courageous for the University to start quantifying and addressing its own emissions related to air travel. This effort to explore both the limitations but also the opportunities, by consulting and talking to members of staff is the University’s best bet in order to both meet its very ambitious sustainability goals but also maintain a strong global presence and agenda. Following the workshop in June, a program of wider staff engagement is due to take place continue in the autumn to help develop the University’s approach to air travel. Like many other colleagues, I look forward to the opportunity to contribute to this important response to the climate emergency.

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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Eleni Michalopoulou from the University of Bristol School of Chemistry.

Eleni Michalopoulou

The Battle for Middle Earth: Storytelling and disciplinarities

Posted on September 6, 2018April 3, 2023 by janet.crompton

The hand of Sauron. Wikimedia Commons.

** The following blog might contain some light gaming language**

When the fellowship of The Ring left Rivendell, I suppose we all thought that that was a group very well equipped to deal with Sauron. They had Legolas’ bow, Gimli’s axe, Aragorn’s sword, a wizard and four hobbitses after all. Of course, they also had Boromir but at that time they had not really sold the whole mount Doom idea to him.

In principle, and to some extent in practise, what the Fellowship formed was an interdisciplinary group. Every member of the group had quite a specific expertise and that was each fellow’s contribution to the cause. At this point I will invite you to consider every weapon offered as a different discipline.

The challenge they were facing was quite straight forward. They had to throw the One Ring in Mount Doom and destroy Sauron.

I suppose, in terms of environmental challenges, Sauron was the kind of challenge we were facing 30 or 20 years ago. A straightforward, however big, important or urgent of course, problem that had quite a (seemingly at least) straightforward solution. Perhaps a good example of this was the quite well-known phrase of dealing with greenhouse gases, the “dilution is the solution to pollution”, that is until we realized it really really wasn’t. Another good example could be plastic and recycling until of course we realized microplastics were pretty much everywhere.

I believe that our own Battle for Middle Earth is somewhat different than that of the original Fellowship’s, and we are facing a rather different enemy. So, let’s take for instance climate change.
Climate change is not Sauron. Climate change is Sauron’s older, angrier, evil(er) brother; on steroids. For the sake of this blog I will be calling him The Beast because it is sufficiently dramatic. I think the biggest problem we have with The Beast is that it has so many heads and faces; it is a much more complex problem that requires a more complex solution (or approach?).

So, let us consider something slightly different than a group of elves, humans and hobbitses.
If you are or have ever been a gamer, especially a gamer of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGS) like World of Warcraft (please do not start WoW if you are in the middle of your studies, trust me) you know that the storylines begin very much the same way.

You appear in a place by yourself, you do things in order to gain experience, learn the game and become stronger but after some levels the game becomes so difficult and complex that you need to start forming groups in order to get anything at all done and gain the required experience to reach higher levels. At this point we are still in a traditionally interdisciplinary environment which invites experts from different disciplines to form a coherent and consistent group.

When I started playing WoW and after of course, not reading the guidelines like at all, I decided I wanted to level up as a holy paladin; a healer of sorts. Naturally that was impossible. The function of the healer is to heal other members in the groups they join (called raids) so of course a healer is not equipped to do enough damage in order to gain experience and level up. I therefore had to change my function and become a retribution paladin; basically, a paladin that can do a lot of damage. So, what I had to do was change my discipline in order to address the challenge of advancing in the game.

Furthermore, if you have ever been addicted to gaming (never have I ever) then I am sure you have probably tried playing with other characters, more than just your main one. And it was those players were the absolutely stellar players. The ones that had faced the challenges and the boss fights from more than one perspective and viewpoint. That is when you really had everything you needed, you knew every trick and every strategy; every angle. That is when you were playing from a holistic perspective.

I think that what our Battle for Middle Earth requires is a Gimli with a bow, an Aragorn with an axe and a Legolas with a sword. I suppose some would describe this as crossdisciplinary approach, but in all honesty, I prefer to imagine a Gimli with a bow. And as much as I can imagine Gimli’s face if he were ever told he had to be trained to be ‘elf-savy’ even he would have to admit that this would have come in handy in several occasions!

What is very interesting is that is the challenge that must define the approach. We cannot pre-decide on an approach and tell ourselves that this is it, this is how we are doing things from now on because that is how your entire raid group gets wiped in a boss fight that required a screwdriver and you kept poking at with a hammer.

Whether an approach should be cross, trans, intra, multi, inter – disciplinary it will be decided by the challenge. And my feeling, both as a scientist but also as a gamer is that in order to defeat our very own Beast we are going to need an even greater flexibility in the approaches we take. We are going to need that deep understanding of someone who has played the game from several roles and pathways, who is equally competent in several of them and who can throw down their bow and pick up an axe in an instance.

So yes, Gimlis with bows, Wonder Women with Xena’s weapons and Captain Jack Sparrows with…well nothing, he was perfect really.

And let the games against The Beast begin!

If you are interested (or as confused as I am) about the different disciplinarities this is a good article I have found.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Eleni Michalopoulou, a Doctor of Philosophy student in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol.

Eleni Michalopoulou

Like this blog? Why not read more about our research that is related to Middle Earth:

Scientists simulate the climate of Tolkien’s Middle Earth (includes research papers written in Elvish and Dwarvish)Watch the talk by Professor Dan Lunt on Past, future, and fantasy climate change – from the mid-Cretaceous to Middle Earth

Bristol Future’s magical places: Sustainability through the eyes of the community

Posted on July 5, 2018April 4, 2023 by janet.crompton

Silba Island. Credit Wikimedia Commons.

“What is science? Why do we do it?”. I ask these questions to my students a lot, in fact, I spend a lot of time asking myself the same thing.

And of course, as much as philosophy of science has thankfully graced us with a lot of scholars, academics and researchers who have discussed, and even provided answers to these questions, sometimes, when you are buried under piles of papers, staring at your screen for hours and hours on end, it doesn’t feel very science-y, does it?

As a child I always imagined the scientist constantly surrounded by super cool things like the towers around Nicola Tesla, or Cousteau being surrounded by all those underwater wonders. Reality though, as it often does, may significantly differ from your early life expectations. I should have guessed that Ts and Cs would apply… Because there is nothing magnificent about looking for that one bug in your code that made your entire run plot the earth inside out and upside down, at least not for me.

I know for myself, I spend the biggest part of my day looking at my screen, tilting my head slightly to the right like a puppy and trying to make sense of my figures and results. There are days, the really bad days, where I just ask myself out loud “what is this even?!” or “why am I even doing this?”. Screen never answers by the way; for future reference.

And then, there are other days.

As Bristol Futures has now entered its optional unit development phase, the Sustainable Futures team and myself, had the opportunity to visit an amazing island in Croatia. The island of Silba. The purpose of our visit there was to film three Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that are working on launching an amazing initiative: project S.I.L.B.A (Sustainability Increases Life Benefits for All). This project is targeting several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) such as ‘Ethical Consumption and Production’, ‘Life Under Water’, ‘Life on Land’. The goal of the project is to create a waste free, carbon neutral island.

Our amazing cameraman Tim Osgood and myself arrived there thinking we were going to film the three founders of the three NGOs and be on our way. Little did we know about the amazing innovations and initiatives that were already well in place on the island of Silba. So, we decided to film several of the locals as well.

I don’t know what I expected to hear when I asked the locals if they knew ‘what sustainability and sustainable development was’. I guess I just was not prepared for someone like Mio.
Mio used to work in large ships, he used to work the radio. Of course, as technology developed his work wasn’t needed anymore, so he decided to go back to Silba and become a shepherd. For twenty years he has been raising goats and sheep, makes cheese (even vegan cheese from figs!) and sells it all over the world. He also makes and sells honey and olive oil; “sometimes” as he said, when the olive trees have behaved.

We are about to begin the interview; he explains to me that he hasn’t had any alcohol for the last 20 years, but he must smoke.

“Do you know what sustainable development is?”. That was my first question. In retrospect it was probably a very uninformed question.

Mio went away and brought me this very elaborate piece of metal and asked me if I knew what it was. Of course, I didn’t. He explained to me it was a device that helped him stabilize his saw while he would cut the very dry olive tree wood that he needed. All the materials he used for it he had found thrown away in different parts of the island, “this is what sustainable development is” he said.
Quite frankly, I was shocked; and a bit embarrassed.

I come from the Balkans myself. I’ve only lived in the UK and been in academia for 3 years! So how did I forget that of course the communities know what sustainable is? Of course the locals are very aware of all things sustainable, perhaps even more so than someone like myself that now deals these issues from a more theoretical point of view?

It’s funny, well not haha funny, but it is genuinely interesting how once you start dealing with a subject, an issue, a challenge theoretically, how fast and how subtly you can lose contact with what is actually happening out there.

And even the word ‘sustainability’, with all its complexity and definitions (oh the definitions), frameworks and literature, goals and targets, had perhaps slightly lost its meaning until Mio picked up that pile of metals and showed it to me. That’s what it was. Right there. Tangible if slightly scruffy looking.

He either read my face or my mind, so he started talking again and saved me from my own thoughts.
He explained to me the big issues the community of the island is dealing with; water shortage, growing numbers of tourists every year, infrastructure and land use.

“Do you think science can help you? Help this island?” I asked him.

And Mio held my hand and explained to me that what he wants from science, and scientists is to help him solve his problems, his real, everyday problems, and then he can solve the problems of his island; “we can do this, we can clean the island, we dealt with worst issues than plastics on our beaches, but first, first we need water all year round”.

So there you have it; that 70 year old shepherd had just defined both sustainability and science. Right there, in a 20-minute interview.

I came back to the UK feeling better. Better about the piles of papers, the effort, the staring at my screen, the bugs in my code and my screen not answering back; it all didn’t seem like such a big problem anymore.

Because that’s it, that’s what we do. We help Mio, help his island. And there is no better feeling than that.

And I guess this is why I am so very much in love with Bristol Futures at the University of Bristol, for giving us the opportunity to explore those issues, those communities, and ourselves.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Eleni Michalopoulou, a Doctor of Philosophy student in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol.

Eleni Michalopoulou

APPCCG & DECC: Presenting the Global Calculator

Posted on December 14, 2015April 12, 2023 by janet.crompton

I recently had the great pleasure of being part of the Global Calculator presentation that took place in Parliament and was organized by Policy Connect.

In the background of the Paris talks and with more and more voices being raised demanding action to be taken against climate change, it is clear that the Global Calculator is a very ambitious project with a very demanding audience: all of us!

So what is the Global Calculator? By 2050, the global population is expected to grow from 7 billion today to 10 billion, and the global economy is expected to triple in size. This is the backdrop against which we are presented with the challenge of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by half of today’s levels by 2050 in order to meet our international commitments to restrict the global mean temperature to 2°C. Leading scientists from over ten organizations came together and built a model of the world’s energy, land, food and climate systems to 2050. The team built the Global Calculator to model what lifestyle is physically possible for the world’s population – from kilometres travelled per person to calorie consumption and diet – and the energy, materials and land requirements to satisfy all of this. The climate impacts of different pathways are also illustrated by linking the model to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate science. The model has been tested with experts from more than 150 organisations around the world. Uniquely, you can use it yourself – the model, its methodology and assumptions are all published.

What is absolutely amazing about this project is the response it has received with more than 20,000 results (or ‘pathways’ as the experts called them)which have already been submitted by individuals!

The enthusiastic panel consisted of: Laura Aylett, Policy Analyst from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Simon Harrison, Manager from the Group Strategic Development, Grahame Buss, Principal Researcher of Shell and Dr Jeremy Wood from Imperial College London.

Ms Aylett, who presented the software and its uses also noted that in the beginning, it was only a UK Calculator that was developed but more and more countries became interested in this project that they all started developing their own Calculators and this was what resulted in the Global Calculator. That remark was seconded heartedly by Mr Harrison who referred to the software as “UK’s gift to the world”.

A very interesting presentation was that of Mr Buss from Shell who have as a company also submitted two official pathways, one called Mountains and one called Oceans, trying to reach the emissions goal set by the software.

Finally Dr Woods who was one of the leading scientists developing the Calculator presented us with some more technical information and details about how the model was developed and the challenge of keeping it simple but also effective and functional.

In all it was an absolutely fantastic experience, extremely informative that I would like to conclude with the final words of Dr Wood’s presentation:

“The time to act is now”

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Eleni Michalopoulou, a PhD student in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol.

Eleni blogs on a recent meeting of the All Party Parliament Climate Change Group.