GHGs – Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

We’ve got lots of media trained climate change experts. If you need an expert for an interview, here is a list of our experts you can approach. All media enquiries should be made via Victoria Tagg, our dedicated Media and PR Manager at the University of Bristol.

Email victoria.tagg@bristol.ac.uk or call +44 (0)117 428 2489.

Climate change / climate emergency / climate science / climate-induced disasters

Dr Eunice Lo – expert in changes in extreme weather events such as heatwaves and cold spells, and how these changes translate to negative health outcomes including illnesses and deaths. Follow on Twitter/X @EuniceLoClimate.

Professor Daniela Schmidt – expert in the causes and effects of climate change on marine systems. Dani is also a Lead Author on the IPCC reports.

Dr Katerina Michalides – expert in drylands, drought and desertification and helping East African rural communities to adapt to droughts and future climate change. Follow on Twitter/X @_kmichaelides.

Professor Dann Mitchell – expert in how climate change alters the atmospheric circulation, extreme events, and impacts on human health. Dann is also a Met Office Chair. Follow on Twitter/X @ClimateDann.

Professor Dan Lunt – expert on past climate change, with a focus on understanding how and why climate has changed in the past and what we can learn about the future from the past. Dan is also a Lead Author on IPCC AR6. Follow on Twitter/X @ClimateSamwell.

Professor Jonathan Bamber – expert on the impact of melting land ice on sea level rise (SLR) and the response of the ocean to changes in freshwater forcing. Follow on Twitter/X @jlbamber

Professor Paul Bates CBE – expert in the science of flooding, risk and reducing threats to life and economic losses worldwide. Follow on Twitter/X @paul_d_bates

Dr Matt Palmer – expert in sea level and ocean heat content at the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Bristol. Follow on Twitter/X @mpclimate.

Professor Guy Howard – expertise in building resilience and supporting adaptation in water systems, sanitation, health care facilities, and housing. Expert in wider infrastructure resilience assessment.

Net Zero / Energy / Renewables

Dr Caitlin Robinson – expert on energy poverty and energy justice and also in mapping ambient vulnerabilities in UK cities. Caitlin will be virtually attending COP28. Follow on Twitter/X @CaitHRobin.

Professor Philip Taylor – Expert in net zero, energy systems, energy storage, utilities, electric power distribution. Also Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Bristol. Follow on Twitter/X @rolyatlihp.

Dr Colin Nolden – expert in sustainable energy policy, regulation and business models and interactions with secondary markets such as carbon markets and other sectors such as mobility. Colin will be in attendance in the Blue Zone at COP28 during week 2.

Professor Charl Faul – expert in novel functional materials for sustainable energy applications e.g. in CO2 capture and conversion and energy storage devices. Follow on Twitter/X @Charl_FJ_Faul.

Climate finance / Loss and damage

Dr Rachel James – Expert in climate finance, damage, loss and decision making. Also has expertise in African climate systems and contemporary and future climate change. Follow on Twitter/X @_RachelJames.

Dr Katharina Richter – expert in decolonial environmental politics and equitable development in times of climate crises. Also an expert on degrowth and Buen Vivir, two alternatives to growth-based development from the Global North and South. Katarina will be virtually attending COP28. @DrKatRichter.

Climate justice

Dr Alix Dietzel – climate justice and climate policy expert. Focusing on the global and local scale and interested in how just the response to climate change is and how we can ensure a just transition. Alix will be in attendance in the Blue Zone at COP28 during week 1. Follow on Twitter/X @alixdietzel.

Dr Ed Atkins – expert on environmental and energy policy, politics and governance and how they must be equitable and inclusive. Also interested in local politics of climate change policies and energy generation and consumption. Follow on Twitter/X @edatkins_.

Dr Karen Tucker – expert on colonial politics of knowledge that shape encounters with indigenous knowledges, bodies and natures, and the decolonial practices that can reveal and remake them. Karen will be in attending the Blue Zone of COP28 in week 2.

Climate change and health

Dr Dan O’Hare – expert in climate anxiety and educational psychologist. Follow on Twitter/X @edpsydan.

Professor Guy Howard – expert in influence of climate change on infectious water-related disease, including waterborne disease and vector-borne disease.

Professor Rachael Gooberman-Hill – expert in health research, including long-term health conditions and design of ways to support and improve health. @EBIBristol (this account is only monitored in office hours).

Youth, children, education and skills

Dr Dan O’Hare – expert in climate anxiety in children and educational psychologist. Follow on Twitter/X @edpsydan.

Dr Camilla Morelli – expert in how children and young people imagine the future, asking what are the key challenges they face towards the adulthoods they desire and implementing impact strategies to make these desires attainable. Follow on Twitter/X @DrCamiMorelli.

Dr Helen Thomas-Hughes – expert in engaging, empowering, and inspiring diverse student bodies as collaborative environmental change makers. Also Lead of the Cabot Institute’s MScR in Global Environmental Challenges. Follow on Twitter/X @Researchhelen.

Professor Daniela Schmidt – expert in the causes and effects of climate change on marine systems. Dani is also a Lead Author on the IPCC reports. Also part of the Waves of Change project with Dr Camilla Morelli, looking at the intersection of social, economic and climatic impacts on young people’s lives and futures around the world.

Climate activism / Extinction Rebellion

Dr Oscar Berglund – expert on climate change activism and particularly Extinction Rebellion (XR) and the use of civil disobedience. Follow on Twitter @berglund_oscar.

Land / Nature / Food

Dr Jo House – expert on land and climate interactions, including emissions of carbon dioxide from land use change (e.g. deforestation), climate mitigation potential from the land (e.g. afforestation, bioenergy), and implications of science for policy. Previously Government Office for Science’s Head of Climate Advice. Follow on Twitter @Drjohouse.

Professor Steve Simpson – expert marine biology and fish ecology, with particular interests in the behaviour of coral reef fishes, bioacoustics, effects of climate change on marine ecosystems, conservation and management. Follow on Twitter/X @DrSteveSimpson.

Dr Taro Takahashi – expert on farming, livestock production systems as well as programme evaluation and general equilibrium modelling of pasture and livestock-based economies.

Dr Maria Paula Escobar-Tello – expert on tensions and intersections between livestock farming and the environment.

Air pollution / Greenhouse gases

Dr Aoife Grant – expert in greenhouse gases and methane. Set up a monitoring station at Glasgow for COP26 to record emissions.

Professor Matt Rigby – expert on sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and ozone depleting substances. Follow on Twitter @TheOtherMRigby.

Professor Guy Howard – expert in contribution of waste and wastewater systems to methane emissions in low- and middle-income countries

Plastic and the environment

Dr Charlotte Lloyd – expert on the fate of chemicals in the terrestrial environment, including plastics, bioplastics and agricultural wastes. Follow on Twitter @DrCharlLloyd.

Cabot Institute for the Environment at COP28

We will have three media trained academics in attendance at the Blue Zone at COP28. These are: Dr Alix Dietzel (week 1), Dr Colin Nolden (week 2) and Dr Karen Tucker (week 2). We will also have two academics attending virtually: Dr Caitlin Robinson and Dr Katharina Richter.

Read more about COP on our website at https://bristol.ac.uk/cabot/what-we-do/projects/cop/
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This blog was written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Communications and Engagement Officer at the Cabot Institute for the Environment. Follow on Twitter @Enviro_Mand and @cabotinstitute.

Watch our Cabot Conversations – 10 conversations between 2 experts on a climate change issue, all whilst an artist listens in the background and interprets the conversation into a beautiful piece of art in real time. Find out more at bristol.ac.uk/cabot/conversations.

‘Noise’ is the Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which have resulted from fossil-fuel-powered economic growth which is measured as GDP for particular territories. In Figure 1, ‘noise’ is the area below the green line to the left of the vertical dotted line (historical) and below the blue line to the right of the vertical dotted line (projected). ‘Silence’ is the reduction of fossil-fuel use and the mitigation of carbon emissions. In Figure 1, ‘silence’ is the green shaded area above the blue line and below the dotted blue line to the right of the vertical dotted line.

Figure 1

To ensure that we maintain atmospheric GHG emission concentrations conducive to human habitation and the ecosystems that support us, we need to assign less value to ‘noise’ (burning fossil fuels) and more value to ‘silence’ (GHG emission mitigations). Creating a system which assigns value to ‘silences’ by turning them into investable resources requires an effort sharing mechanism to establish demand and organizational capacity alongside accurate measuring, reporting and verification for supply.

Organizational capacity for supplying ‘silences’ depends on the ability of organizations to create, trade and accumulate GHG emission mitigations. Due to the intangible nature of such ‘silences’, turning GHG emissions mitigations into investable sources requires their assetization as quasi-private goods with well-defined and delineated quasi-property rights. As preservations of the intangible commodity of stable atmospheric GHG concentrations through the reduction of pollution, such rights need to protect investment by ensuring that these private goods are definable, identifiable and capable of assumption by third parties. Such rights also require enforcement and protection against political and regulatory risk.

Commodifying GHG emission mitigations as quasi-private goods by assetizing them with well-defined and delineated quasi-property rights therefore provides the basis for the supply of ‘silences’. Rather than ‘internalising’ the cost of stabilising or reducing atmospheric GHG concentrations, this approach assigns value to GHG emission mitigations. Yet, if we want to avoid climate catastrophe according to the most recent IPCC 1.5C report and the UNDP Emissions Gap Report, GHG emission mitigations also require concretization on the demand-side. There are several examples of GHG emission mitigation and energy demand reduction assetization that can help illustrate how such systems of demand and supply can function.

Similar to GHG emission mitigations, energy demand reductions also represent the reduction of an intangible commodity vis-à-vis a baseline. While stable atmospheric GHG emission levels are the intangible commodity in the case of the former, in the case of the latter the intangible commodity is energy supply which fuels economic growth. Both require the assetization of mitgations/reduction to create ‘tangibility’, which provides the basis for assigning value. To illustrate, energy demand reductions are absent on domestic and corporate accounts and subsequently undervalued vis-à-vis increases in revenues.

Market-based instruments that succeed in setting and enforcing targets and creating systems of demand, however, can create ‘tangibility’. Energy demand reductions, for example, are assetized as white certificates representing equal units of energy savings (negawatts) in white certificate markets. Similarly, demand-side response enables the assetization of short-term shifts in energy (non-)use (flexiwatts) to benefit from flexibility and balancing markets. Carbon emission mitigations are assetized under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs).

Crucially, these examples shift the emphasis from the cost of pollution and the need to ‘internalise’ this cost or from turning pollution into a quasi-private good through Emissions Trading Schemes (ETS) towards the positive pricing of energy demand reductions and carbon emission mitigations. Positive pricing turns their respective reduction and mitigation itself into a quasi-private good by turning ‘silences’ into investable resources.

The main technical difficulty of establishing such systems lies in the definition of baselines and measuring, reporting and verification vis-à-vis these baselines. The difficulties inherent in this approach are well documented but improved sensing technology, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), and distributed ledgers promise greatly improved granularity and automated time-stamping of all aspects of energy (non-)use at sub-second intervals. If structures of demand are clearly identified through target-driven market-based instruments and supply is facilitated through the assetization of ‘silences’ as quasi-private goods with clearly defined and enforced quasi-property rights, a clear incentive also exists to ensure that MRV structures are improved accordingly.

Key to the implementation of such target-driven market-based instruments are mechanisms to ensure that efforts are shared among organisations, sectors or countries, depending on the scale of implementation. Arguably, one of the reasons why the CDM failed in many aspects was because of the difficulty of proving additionality. This concept was supposed to ensure that only projects that could prove their viability based on the availability of funds derived from the supply, trade and accumulation of CERs would be eligible for CDM registration.

The difficulty of proving additionally increases cost and complexity. To ensure that new mechanisms no longer require this distinction, a dynamic attribution of efforts is required. A mechanism to dynamically share efforts can also help address rebound effects inherent in energy efficiency and energy demand reduction efforts. Key is the target-driven nature of associated market-based instruments and the equitable distribution of the rebound through a dynamic mechanism which shares any rebounds (i.e. increases in carbon emissions) equitably among organisations, sectors or countries. With an appropriate effort-sharing mechanism in place, the demand and supply of ‘silences’ can be aligned with targets aiming to maintain atmospheric GHG emission concentrations in line with levels conducive to human habitation and the ecosystems that support us.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Colin Nolden, a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow in sustainable city business models. The blog has been reposted with kind permission of World Sustainable Energy Days. If you would like to read more on this topic, you can read Colin’s research paper here.

Colin Nolden

Tag: GHGs

Collecting silences