Carbon Offsetting, Travel Plan

Looks like things are picking up a notch - a few new general initiatives to report on after I went for the first meeting of the Energy and Water Management steering group last week.

A policy for guidelines on e/w management and processes was agreed, including a target of cutting carbon emissions 10% for academic buildings and 5% for residential buildings by the 2009-2010. This target will be reviewed in the 08-09 academic year. Other parts of the policy have some slight revisions to it, so I will report on that later. This is also a draft policy - it still has to be approved by the rest of the university bureaucracy so it could still (hopefully not) change at a later stage. The policy includes 'an Energy Manager', and the current consultant that is employed to begin work into some monitoring systems was at the meeting too to report on his work - but the precise shape that this Energy Manager will take remains hazy at best.

A small working group to look into setting up a university-facilitated scheme for carbon offsetting for travel is being established and I'll be feeding into that - I put up my own thoughts on offsetting here a while ago. A travel plan will be developed over the next academic year to integrate and see how more sustainable forms of transport can be used and promoted. A waste reduction group will also be set up soon to devise a plan for cutting waste, improving recycling and so forth across campus - but I've yet to hear anything directly on this so I'm not quite sure what its overall remit will be.

All these elements (and these are just the highlights) are part of the university's Environmental Strategy, which will be presented to the Health, Safety and Environment committee meeting in June before again having to move through the bureaucracy to become a formal part of university policy.