Positive action on climate change and sustainability

[Daftasabroom]

So I've been thinking for a while that there is too much negative news around climate change and sustainability. Whether that's Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion gluing themselves to things, or various MN posters either denying the science or our power as individuals to change the world.

As an antidote I'd like to offer up a thread encouraging meaningful things we can do as individuals, communities and companies to address the climate challenges we face.

So first up is a link to Innovate UK grant funding calls HERE

So I'll tag a few previous posters to get things moving:
@MissyCooperismyShero
@workwoes123
@MarshaBradyo
@mjf981
@WanderingFruitWonderer
@CherryGenoa
@MintyFreshOne
@NotMeNoNo
@pashmina696

Thanks @Daftasabroom . Great idea for a thread, and thank you for tagging me.
I've been feeling a bit (a lot!) of despair about the climate crisis lately, especially in light of the current government. So it's wonderful to have a positive discussion.
On an individual level, there's all the obvious stuff - reducing or eliminating flying and driving; going vegan as much as possible; buying second-hand clothes where possible etc (all the usual!) On a community level... I've been thinking about this recently funnily enough. We need everyone, or almost everyone, on board, if we're serious about tackling climate change. Capitalism and individualism have been a catastrophe for the planet. Somehow we need to foster a strong community spirit again to face the challenges ahead. There have been a number of community gardening and food growing projects springing up recently, which is wonderful. That's the kind of thing we need masses more of.

So moving on a step from IUK grants, one of the key sector specific organisations funded by IUK is the Aerospace Technology Institute. Last year the ATI ran a project called FLyZero which aimed to develop concepts and roadmaps for the development of net zero aircraft. The project pulled together a wide range of industrial, academic and research organisations.

The home page for the project is here
The publicly available reports are here
The sustainability report is here

FlyZero was hugely ambitious yet equally realistic and demonstrated how we can reach net zero without a massive sacrifice in living standards.

@WanderingFruitWonderer Community level efforts are incredibly important and equally undervalued, just developing a sustainability plan for your local sports club or Scouts group is no small feat. A wildflower margin round the edge of a field is great but what to about heating and hot water is harder. It may be that there are grants available but finding them and applying takes effort.

One of the aspects of sustainability is that it's an incredibly diverse landscape with many many different organisations trying to provide (paid for) services, but there are also some great charities and not for profit organisations. Principle among them is the Green House Gas Protocol. The GHGP provides a structure for undertaking sustainability studies.

The main site is here

A really great first step would be to take the Corporate Standard Training it is aimed at business professionals, it's free, doesn't take up too much time, and many of principles apply to small businesses, clubs, communities, even households and individuals.

@Daftasabroom thank you for all this. Very informative, and you clearly know your stuff.

This is great news - Zero Avia

@Warmwesterly
@aynsleyredder
@WanderingFruitWonderer
@pippinsleftleg

Re Carbon Accounting - follow on from this thread. In my mind carbon accounting is little different from financial accounting, right down to independent audits, but with a slightly different approach and very different terminology. Fundamentally though a very transferable skill for any accountant types out there.

Carbon accounting is going to increasingly feature in the annual cycle of business admin - I suspect in time it will become mandatory much the same as Companies House returns with different levels for different sizes of organisation. I'll try here to post links to the most relevant sites, along with free or low cost training courses I think are worthwhile.

Wikipedia is a great place to start: Carbon Accounting
It's important to understand emissions scopes: Deloitte have a really good explanation. The fact that the big consultancies are getting in on this tells you something.
An LCA assesses emissions at product level
And what could be more up an accountants street than Carbon Taxes!

I'll update and add more later!

@xogossipgirlxo is this of any interest?

Great idea for a thread. I try and keep stubbornly optimistic (following Christiana Figueres' lead) but it is tough.
Also there are so many different things that need fixing.
I am currently focusing on engaging friends, family and colleagues in meaningful conversations about flying, meat eating and biodiversity.

@bluejelly I wouldn't worry too much about flying or to a certain extent meat there's a lot of misinformation out there. Biodiversity is a really big deal IMO but isn't the biggest influence on climate change.

Interesting. I thought the science around eating beef in particular and emissions caused by flying was clear?

The science is pretty well understood, the PR around the science is pretty crap. Air travel accounts for slightly more than 2% of GHG emissions. There is still a great deal of research to do around emissions of water (from burning fossil fuels) and condensation forming on the particulate emissions, and from aerodynamic effects. Science exists at different levels, so we can say with 100% confidence that burning x amount of kerosene under specific conditions releases y amount of CO2. What we can't necessarily do is predict what conditions an airplane might encounter over its life let alone an individual flight.

One of the biggest things an individual can do to combat climate change is give up eating meat and dairy. The science on this is crystal clear. You trying to greenwash us, OP? 🤔

"I wouldn't worry too much about flying"... er, you what? That's a very weird take for a thread about taking positive action on climate change.

Aviation may be only about 2.5% of global emissions (if we ignore the non-CO2 impacts of water vapour etc that you mention). But that's because the vast majority of people in the world don't actually fly! For wealthier Europeans with higher emissions air travel and car journeys together are responsible for about 30-40% of their carbon footprint. For poorer Europeans, home heating is the biggest contributor to their (smaller) carbon footprints. (Data from Oxfam) If you take a couple of return European flights that can easily add up to more than the average annual emissions of someone from one of the poorest countries.

Again the figures from Oxfam don't account for the non-CO2 impacts of aviation. These aren't talked about much, but they are very significant. Basically water vapour and other particles emitted constantly at high altitude add to the warming atmospheric blanket around the earth. They differ from CO2 in that they aren't going to hang around permanently, but they keep getting topped up. Estimates vary, but it seems to be well accepted that they could double aviation's climate warming impact and I've also seen estimates that they could triple it.

So flying is effectively at least twice as bad for your climate footprint as you might think from all the standard measures. What it's hard to do is calculate this very precisely for any individual flight because it depends on lots of factors, much harder to calculate than x amount of fuel burned = y amount of CO2.

Sorry this is all a bit techy but it's the sort of stuff that shouldn't be just handwaved away.

Nope, the biggest thing individuals or households can do is sign up to a green energy tariff and drive less. Simple.

@PurpleParrotfish aviation is massively on the front foot to decarbonise. See my post re zeroavia.

Seriously, your gas boiler and leccy generation is generating 20x whatever you or your neighbours flights might do.

Who do you think has been green washed? (It isn't me)

@PurpleParrotfish is right. I’m confused as to how you can possibly argue that people should not worry about flights.

@PurpleParrotfish @RockyOfTheRovers I'll reply in more detail in due course but why do you think aviation is so important? What contribution do you think aviation makes to GHG emissions?

Hi All, I really don't want this to become a negative thread but can we just put this to bed: aviation is responsible for around 2% of GHG emissions, outside of this power generation, heat (gas), and land transport are responsible for over 70% of emissions.

If you could halve one of these, which would you choose?

@RockyOfTheRovers how much do you think aviation adds to GHG emissions?

@Daftasabroom if people want to cut their carbon footprint why are you so keen that they don't think about maybe flying less? It's not about the % of global emissions it's about the % of people's own personal footprint. For some people reducing flying is a really easy win on cutting emissions. If you’re relatively well off and taking multiple flights / flying long haul, it’s a no brainer.

Also @Daftasabroom I notice that right from the start of the thread you were keen to share examples of how the carbon impact of aviation might be reduced - maybe you work in this sector? However I’m concerned that there’s quite a lot of greenwash overstating the potential of electric / hydrogen etc flight. A campaign group called Stay Grounded did a lot of research into this. stay-grounded.org/get-information/#greenwashing

Obviously you might say they’re just campaigners with an axe to grind! But it seems persuasive that there is a very big difference between managing to power a very small plane over short distances, and being able to generate enough low carbon fuel to decarbonise the entire aviation industry - a massive challenge which will compete with resources needed to decarbonise other sectors like industry and shipping.

So while it’s great this research is happening, it’s not going to have much of an impact unfortunately in the short term and the short term is exactly when we need to cut emissions fast. It’s worrying the government is taking this technology as a reason to decide that they don’t need to e.g. control airport expansion, so in the short term, emissions from flying carry on going up.

Oh and please don't take me arguing that we should be concerned about emissions from flying as not agreeing with you that as a country we urgently need to tackle the emissions from heating our homes! With you on that one.