The Sustainability Team at University College London has received an award from UCL’s President and Provost Professor Michael Arthur for its innovative approach to academic collaboration and communicating the University’s carbon reduction challenge.
Building on research from Deputy Director of the UCL Transport Institute Dr Tom Cohen, the Sustainability Team led the development of a new interactive online tool to bring the University’s carbon reduction challenge to life.
The ‘Degrees of Change’ tool, which will be featured in a publication on participatory budgeting, enabled participants to ‘spend’ a £10m energy efficiency budget on the interventions that mattered to them, showing both the cost and carbon impact these actions would have.
Academics leading the ‘Energy Systems’ module of UCL’s BASc course also used the tool as part of their teaching, helping students to engage with the complexities of making environmental improvements in an interactive way.
Professor Andrea Sella, who nominated the Sustainability Team said:
"This nomination recognises the unusual nature of the Sustainability team. In spite of consisting of a mere six individuals, their creativity in developing projects of this kind, their deliberate work to cut across hierarchical boundaries, their persistence in embedding new ideas into both construction, research, and teaching projects, has led, in my view, to a much more profound impact on the institution."
- Find out more on the UCL website
- You can try out the online tool at this link