Keeping Our Homes Warm in a Low CO2 World

For the last TEU Handprints Social, we invited people to join in with a discussion about keeping carbon emissions low in our homes. We had speakers do pecha-kucha presentations about their relevant interests or academic specialisms then opened the floor to questions and held a whole group discussion about points that had come up.

Speakers at this event were Councillor Maggie Chapman, Dr. Claire Haggett, Sion Lanini, Ben Miller and David Somervell. Councillor Chapman spoke about the Warm Scotland campaign focusing on steps the government could take to improve energy efficiency in homes such as grants and awareness campaigns. Dr. Haggett spoke about some Human Geography research she has done about microgeneration of energy in Newcastle, bringing up the importance of engagement with the technologies that can help us. Sion Lanini gave a short presentation about the Big Green Makeover, TEU’s ongoing project to help students in private residences green their homes, and Ben Miller spoke about the Big Switch, the inter-halls energy saving competition at Pollock Halls, the catered University residences. David Somervell also gave a presentation about Edinburgh University’s own CHP plants and how they cut carbon emissions in the University’s energy supply.

The format of pecha-kucha presentation, where each speaker is limited to 4 minutes each made the presentations accessible and encouraged greater engagement in group discussion.The breadth of the presentations allowed for a more general discussion of home energy use and allowed scope for discussion of the University level, the places where students live and spend their time.

As part of 10:10 week at Edinburgh University, Transition Edinburgh University collaborated with the University of Edinburgh and the World Development Movement Scotland to put on a panel discussion entitled ‘The Role of Civil Society after Copenhagen’. It was definitely a valid question to bring up. (more…)

The Transition Edinburgh University initiative was set up to put the Edinburgh University community on the road to transition, lowering carbon emissions and finding a community response to peak oil and climate change. TEU was set up partly as a consequence of the People & Planet campaign Go Green and partly as a consequence of the work of the Energy Manager of the University, David Somervell. (more…)

Firstly, I wish to apologise for this blog being such a late starter, and perhaps secondly for it not being about Copenhagen. I’m not there. As a blog, I intended it to document the progress of the Transition Edinburgh University (TEU) initiative, hopefully giving ideas to other People & Planet groups and whoever else stumbles upon it about ways to begin their own Transition initiatives and projects. (more…)