One of the clear messages from my Let’s Talk discussions with staff colleagues last session was a strong interest in developing a coherent, distinctive and ambitious plan for our organisational sustainability and our external positioning on how to address climate change challenges.

The evident climate anxiety of younger people must be addressed, but there is a paucity of real advice on where actions need to be focused. Our University is a charitable body and not a campaigning entity, however I believe we should be setting clear and informed messages. Keen readers of our Strategy 2025, will note that Environmental Sustainability is one of our Strategic Performance Indicator (SPIs) – page 25. It is now timely to develop further this SPI, connecting into our entire operation and recognising our role as global leaders.  It goes without saying we will comply with local regulations in all of our locations, but our task is to articulate much more than this.

So, we have four clear actions:

  1. Define the targets and timeline for decarbonisation for our whole University, demonstrating leadership in adoption of visible flagship initiatives that relate to campus infrastructure and behaviours. This will be for all our campus locations and will enable us to be ambitious by drawing on connectivity to sustainable energy generation capacity.
  2. Advocate the positive impacts of personal action such as recycling, mode of travel, energy saving behaviours etc., while recognising that these, whilst helpful, will not fully address the global challenge.
  3. Articulate key priorities that are of critical importance. As a global University our role is to focus on what needs to be done to address the actual challenge, not incremental matters that will have limited impact on a global scale.  We must face the reality of the scale of global change that is required.
  4. Demonstrate and quantify the potential global impact of the radical innovations in research and policy being developed by our academic staff (in areas such as aviation fuels, green logistics, geoenergy, sustainable buildings, fisheries etc.). In this way, will we demonstrate our leadership and the value of our research.

So how will we do this? The answer needs to be collaboratively together. This is something that touches all our lives and is important to staff, students, alumni and our collaborating community. Over the next few months, dialogues with interested staff are being organised through our new “Watt Forum” dialogues.  Some discussions have already been held in Dubai and Malaysia, and an Edinburgh Forum will be held on Friday 25 September.

Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer, Associate Principal (Global Sustainability), will lead a team to develop the four objectives working with stakeholders across all our campus locations and connecting with our University Infrastructure Committee. A series of policy dialogues will be developed based at Panmure House to illustrate the importance of key priorities that will address climate change challenges on a global and equitable basis. More details will be available on a dedicated web site. We will be seeing engagement of our whole community through this process and if you wish to register your personal interest you can also email SustainableFutures@hw.ac.uk.  


Richard A. Williams
Principal and Vice-Chancellor