The University’s Climate Action Team is seeking bids for small grants from the new Net Zero Carbon Campus Fund to help staff and students to reduce carbon emissions in their departments or across campus.

Up to £5,000 will be awarded this academic year thanks to the Alumni Fund and all types of projects will be considered, including equipment, research, influencing behaviour, communications campaigns and delivering infrastructure; as long as the project contributes to reducing the carbon emissions of the University.

The team is especially interested in projects that address those areas of our activities which have the greatest contribution to our carbon footprint – this includes, international travel, lab and IT equipment, the embodied carbon in new buildings and refurbishments, and our energy use on campus.

Peter Phelps, the Climate Action Project Lead, said:

Our carbon emissions come from every area of our activity across the University. The Climate Action Team is therefore working with staff and students to understand what a net zero carbon campus looks like and develop roadmaps to plan out how we transition towards this."

We also recognise that solutions to our carbon reduction challenges will come from many different areas of the University. This is why we are launching a Net Zero Carbon Campus Fund (NZCC Fund), with funding from the Alumni Fund, which has two aims. Firstly, to support our staff and students to find solutions to reducing our emissions, and secondly to further engage our community on carbon reduction and stimulate discussion about how we can all play a part."

I hope that we’ll have lots of interesting bids coming forward and encourage anyone with an idea to submit an application.

Applying to the Fund is straightforward using the application form at the bottom of the page, and applications will be reviewed on a monthly rolling basis. The fund is open to ALL staff and students, and projects can apply for any amount up to £1,000.

The team is keen to grant small amounts of money that will make a difference and to support experimental ideas that can be piloted in a small way, enabling wider learning opportunities.

In 2019 the University declared a Climate Emergency and committed to 11 Climate Action Framework Principles to guide our response, including being Net Zero Carbon by 2040.