Ambition and Excellence case study - Glasgow Green
As a university we have a responsibility to be research-led, and scientists from our own institution and around the world are telling us on climate action: act now, and act seriously.
When Glasgow City Council launched their commitment to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2030, as an institution we were keen to support them, recognising the potential contribution we could have to the goal as a large organisation in the city. When the team was consulting with the university community on the sustainability strategy, Glasgow Green, staff and students responded strongly with a clear message to do more, faster, to get to net zero.
“Net zero” means that while we will reduce our carbon emissions, we recognise that it won’t be possible to completely stop all our carbon-producing activity by 2030. Instead, we will need to ‘offset’ some, paying for projects like tree planting and restoring peatland that will take the same amount of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that we will continue to produce. 
Despite the challenge of roughly halving our carbon emissions over the next decade, the Sustainability team are embracing this ambitious target. We’ve seen progress on de-carbonising our electricity use as the national supply gets ‘greener’; the carbon intensity of our electricity is about half what it was 10 years ago, and this is expected to continue. A major priority is identifying other ways to heat our buildings, and we’re now looking at how we can replace gas-fired boiler heating systems. This is a particular challenge because we have such a large estate with many different types of buildings which will need different kinds of insulation and heating. We also have listed buildings and other specific needs like needing to maintain lab conditions.
Our sustainability ambitions also take into account our desire for excellence elsewhere. For example: while we want to cut our emissions from business travel – particularly flying, as it creates much more carbon – we still want to support colleagues to build valuable networks at important stages of their careers, which might involve some travel. As a result, the business travel guidance developed in collaboration by the Sustainability team and academic colleagues covers high-carbon travel that will have development benefits for earlier career researchers.
Getting to net zero by 2030, and continuing to decarbonise beyond, is work that extends beyond our Sustainability and Estates teams; we need the whole university community to act with urgency if this is going to be achieved.
There are lots of ways for colleagues and students to get involved: from exploring different options for commuting on the days you’re working from campus, to understanding more about these issues with a free course. There are also resources for lab-based teams to assess their carbon emissions and get recommendations. Students can also get involved in GUEST.