Greenlines: Issue 36

GreenlinesGreen Impact is backGreen Impact is back and it is set to be bigger and better than last year!!!

Last year 14 departments signed up to take part in the nationally recognised accreditation scheme. Originally developed by the NUS for Student Unions in 2008, Green Impact has made a big splash in universities, with over 50 taking part last year.

Green Impact University of Cambridge 2013-2014 will launch on 10 September at the Environment and Energy Coordinator event. Get involved by registering a team online: www.greenimpact.org.uk/cambridge.

Green Impact can nationally claim 20,000 actions a year that staff and student have taken to make their departments greener. The actions range from ensuring light switches are labelled and swapping disposable cups with reusable ones, to embedding environmental inductions into their workplaces. All of these actions work to push forward the sustainability movement from the grass roots level.

Teams sign up to an online workbook which lists a number of criteria for improving the sustainability of a workplace, and cover all aspects of sustainability, from energy and waste to biodiversity. The Environment and Energy Section support the teams as they progress through the simple, clear and easy steps towards recognised awards and targets.

The Environment and Energy Section will recruit volunteers from the large pool of students who are interested in the sustainability of the University, who then audit teams at the end of the process to ensure that everything is on course and give suggestions on how to improve. Students receive auditing training, accredited by the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), and get professional experience conducting environmental audits on participating departments.

Last year’s auditing was a great experience for both departments and auditors, with teams getting a chance to showcase their work to a very interested and impressed audience and auditors gaining valuable work experience. All

survey respondant said they found the programme rewarding, with over 40% of people saying it was very rewarding.

Professor Jeremy Sanders, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Affairs, Chair of the Environmental Strategy Committee, endorsed the scheme saying: “I am grateful to all the staff and students who take part in Green Impact activities, because by doing so you set a good example to all of us, reminding us and challenging us to do better, and thereby directly working to reduce the environmental impact of the University of Cambridge.”

This year we are opening Green Impact up so that Colleges can take part. Colleges face many of the same

Issue number 36, August 2013 ISBN: 2048-2442 (Online) NOW MONTHLY

Inside this issue: Green Impact 1-2 Environment and Energy Coordinator Network 2 Living Lab interns 3 Scottish and Southern Electric win contract 4 British Heart Foundation collection 4

The sustainability newsletter for the University

www.admin.cam.ac.uk/environment : [email protected]

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We have established a new network of departmental Environment and Energy Coordinators and are holding a welcome event on 10 September.

The old Energy Champion and Department Environmental Coordinator networks have been bought together to create a new network with a clearly defined purpose and which is appropriately supported with resources from within the Environment and Energy Section.

Jeremy Sanders, Pro-V-C for Institutional Affairs, has written to Heads of Departments asking them to nominate a representative for the network. So far, we have over 70 members of the new network.

Each Environment and Energy Coordinator will act as a champion

for environmental issues within their departments and as a point of contact between the Environment and Energy Section and departmental staff, students and senior management.

The person will be responsible for coordinating environmental activity within their Department but may also be part of a larger departmental Environmental Committee or Green Impact team.

We are looking to have full representation from across all 150 departments, with many larger departments potentially choosing to have two or more representatives.

The ideal candidate would be someone with an interest in environment and energy issues

and the drive to help implement change. Specialist knowledge of is not essential but individuals should be willing and interested to undertake the role.

If you are interested in joining the new, active network of Environment and Energy Coordinators please contact [email protected] and someone will be happy to speak to you.

Greenlines Issue number 36, August 2013 Page 2


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Environment and Energy Coordinator network

challenges as departments, but have the additional challenge of being open 24-7.

23 of the 31 colleges are signed up to another NUS programme, Student Switch Off which engages students to take small

actions such as covering their saucepan when they boil water. This scheme sits very well with Green Impact, which tries to embed practices at an institutional level and make it easier for staff and students to make the sustainable choice.

The colleges involvement makes this year’s Green Impact richer as we gain more examples of best practice. Both departments and colleges face many of the same challenges so this year we have more people coming up with different solutions to the same problem.

Green Impact is a vibrant scheme aimed at celebrating and recognising environmental achievements whilst also supporting and encouraging University staff and students to further improve their environmental performance. By making the process simple and fun and adding a competitive element the scheme engages a wide audience in environmental issues at the University and encourages staff and students to take ownership of their own impacts.

Want to find out more about Green Impact? Speak to Leila McElvenney on

[email protected].

http://www.greenimpact.org.uk/cambridge



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Katie Hagemann, IARU internMy six weeks at Cambridge flew by, but I really enjoyed my time with the team this summer and helping explore ways to make the University’s most energy-intensive buildings more efficient. Specifically I looked at when it makes sense from an environmental perspective to upgrade to more energy-efficient equipment before it actually fails or breaks. In some cases the switch is easy to justify and the payback period is relatively short; however, for certain products that take quite a bit of energy, materials, and water to produce (such as IT equipment) it may actually be bad from an environmental perspective to purchase unnecessary equipment. Now I am back in the States to finish the last year of my Masters program at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, but will stay in touch to keep sharing updates on the work going on at Cambridge with our labs and energy team back at Yale.

Sophus zu - ErmgassenI’m a final year undergraduate at Fitzwilliam College, studying Biological Natural Sciences and specialising in Ecology and Conservation.

I have been working as a summer intern in the Environment and Energy Section on environmental behaviour change. As a University, over 15% of the electricity we use is wasted – it is consumed through leaving equipment on when not in use, or using equipment in a sub-optimal way. We can therefore reduce the University’s carbon emissions by over 10% just by getting the members of the University to be more thoughtful about our energy use – without any difference to our quality of life. I’m looking at both the

psychological theory behind changing people’s behaviour and their environmental awareness, combined with researching projects that have been set up at other higher education establishments around the world, and seeing how we can apply them to this University.

Ivelina GrozevaHaving recently completed my MSc Degree in Architecture at the ETH Zurich I was eager to undertake the challenging opportunity to review the Sustainable Design Guidelines for the University of Cambridge.

During my IARU Internship I was able to gain an insight into the practical implementation of sustainability issues, I had the chance to meet the people responsible for the built environment of the University of Cambridge and develop a knowledge of what the new framework could look like to hopefully facilitate the sustainable future of the University’s Estate.

My IARU Internship has been a very valuable experience working in a pleasant atmosphere and I sincerely hope my findings and my recommendations will contribute to a sounder and better environment for the University of Cambridge.

Tom NorrisMy time this summer as an intern in the environment and energy section has been a great insight into environmental policy and the running of the University. The main focus of my internship project is on building energy performance – analysing the data we collect from across the University estate and suggesting improvements we could make in our energy and monitoring strategies.

I have been looking into the benefits of fine grain electricity monitoring as a means of detecting unnecessary energy cost/wastage and how this could be implemented cheaply and effectively. Some home-grown research projects using Raspberry Pi’s (small Linux -based computers) have been installed in the Computer Labs over the past few years with ECRP funding, which if proved effective could be rolled

out across the University over the next few years enabling better analysis of occupant power use and building base loads. Another area of interest is how energy targets are set for the buildings and whether estimates made by designers and consultants during construction need to be reassessed more frequently.

I’m heading into my final year reading architecture at Pembroke College with a focus on sustainable design solutions.

Living Lab interns Meet the Living Lab interns who have been enhancing their studies by using the University estate to test and research real-world environmental problems. The projects are all designed to improve the sustainability of the University

Almost 15 tonnes of Cambridge students’ unwanted items were collected by colleges this summer in a British Heart Foundation (BHF) fund-raising campaign. Since May Week, departing students in participating colleges have been purging their rooms and closets of a huge variety of items and filling a total of 1,713 bags for the charity’s collection campaign.

Much of the haul, which included Kindles and designer label clothing, will be sold in BHF shops. BHF are expected to raise at least £20,500, and as much as £34,000, which will, in part, go to Addenbrooke’s Hospital for crucial medical research.

Newnham and St. John’s College were amongst the most prolific, together collecting over 500 bags. An estimated £1,750 of furniture and electrical goods was also collected across Cambridge.

But all is not lost for newly arriving

Cambridge students as some items, for instance crockery and cutlery, will be made available to them through the charity’s Cambridge store. In addition, all students receive a 15% discount at the BHF’s Cambridge store.

This is the first year that the British Heart Foundation have run their campaign at Cambridge, and they collaborated with Cambridge City Council and the University’s Environment and Energy Section to do so.

This summer’s collection is almost double the 7.5 tonnes which is typically collected in other universities first year, which means that BHF’s campaign here may be called a resounding success.

Heart researchers in Cambridge have recently been awarded prestigious grants of more than £3.7million by the British Heart Foundation, part of a new

multi-million pound boost for UK heart research.

Departments are welcome to take part in BHF ‘Great British Bag-athon’, and fill bags full of unwanted goods, starting in September. Departments wanting to take part should contact Julie, our regional contact: Julie Paffett [email protected] Website: http://bag-athon.bhf.org.uk/.

Fifteen tonnes of unwanted goods salvaged for research


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Scottish and Southern Electric win electricity contractLast year the University of Cambridge spent £12 million on electricity, so as contract renewals go, the utilities bill it is a big one.

So when the University was due to re-tender for its electricity contract it caused a bit of a stir.

Due to the dynamic nature of the energy markets a decision about which offer to accept needs to be made the afternoon of receiving the quotes, otherwise the suppliers may withdraw their prices.

Therefore upon receiving the quotes from the energy companies, all members of the Energy Procurement Working Group, which includes representatives from Estate Management, Central Procurement Services, Finance Division, need to be on high alert, ready to read and respond to the emails in order to decide and accept an offer before 15.30 on the same day.

The process, led by Energy Manager Paul Hasley from the Environment and Energy Section, was undertaken earlier this month and as of 1 October 2013 the University of Cambridge will have a new electricity contract with Scottish and Southern Electricity (SSE) for the next 24 months.

Twenty per cent of the University’s energy will be coming from SSE’s range of renewable sources. Their “green mix” is made up in majority by on-shore and off-shore wind, but also includes waste, biomass, hydroelectric and landfill gas.

This 20% will be an addition to the onsite renewables Cambridge currently has, all new buildings are required to have onsite reenewables to meet 10% of their energy needs.

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Greenlines: Issue 36