{"id":7526,"date":"2019-07-22T06:55:35","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T06:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7526"},"modified":"2019-07-22T06:55:35","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T06:55:35","slug":"trees-on-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2019\/07\/22\/trees-on-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Trees on campus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here's a message sent by Jamie Agombar<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, the Head of Sustainability at NUS to the EAUC Member list last week. \u00a0It shows a level of ambition for universities that those responsible for guiding the sector [eg, the Office for Students] have yet to catch up with.<\/p>\n

Given all the exciting stuff happening with university carbon targets at the moment, and following a chat with colleagues at Lincoln yesterday, we hatched an idea. \u00a0In the short to medium term, to meet net zero, there is going to be a need for some offsetting for carbon that cannot otherwise be quickly reduced or stopped, such as international students\u2019 travel. \u00a0We wonder if there is scope to develop a tree planting scheme for some campuses as a way to offset the carbon<\/strong> and restore UK biodiversity. \u00a0I know quite a few universities, like Lancaster, Surrey, Keele, have big tracts of land that are routinely rented out to farmers, the is potential for these to become a wonderful university forest of native trees, managed for biodiversity and recreation, planted by students. \u00a0It might be that the carbon offsetting payments can cover the lost lease payments from farmers. \u00a0There is also the chance to work with a large land owner like the RSPB or Woodland Trust on their land. \u00a0We might be able to make it a gold standard accredited offset scheme somehow if we do it nationally.<\/em><\/p>\n

The second idea relates to repurposing uni endowments away from shares in transnational corporations to new owned renewable assets through a uni-specific investment fund<\/strong>. \u00a0Our divest-invest campaign, with P&P, has led to a half of all universities\u00a0agreeing to divest from fossil fuel companies, but many universities\u00a0have just divested from a pot of shares with fossil feels in it to reinvest in a new pot without them, but still the likes of BA, Tesco, Amazon, etc. \u00a0Clearly that is not progressive re the climate emergency, and we may end up eternally running divestment campaigns on various issues unless something changes. \u00a0Our FoIs a few years back showed that \u00a33bn of UK university endowments in listed equities, that would be a lot of new renewables! \u00a0A uni-specific investment fund would allow universities\u00a0to transfer their money out of pots of listed equities to direct investments in new owned renewables. \u00a0This will help to build the new renewables we urgently need, give a decent return on investment comparable to shares (~6-8%), and provide alumni teams with something new and interesting to fund by way of adding new money to endowments. \u00a0It may, or may not, give universities\u00a0carbon credits from the electricity generated, still to figure that one out. \u00a0Thanks to those of you who have helped shape this idea so far. NUS has developed, with Foresight, a renewables investment company, a concept note for an initial \u00a3100m fund<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Happily, NUS is engaging with the Office for Students<\/em> to help them regain the level of commitment to sustainability that HEFCE once had, and to nudge the Office<\/em>\u00a0into a much needed leadership role. \u00a0Though it might need more of a shove ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here's a message sent by Jamie Agombar, the Head of Sustainability at NUS to the EAUC Member list last week. \u00a0It shows a level of ambition for universities that those responsible for guiding the sector [eg, the Office for Students]...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}