Smart and Decarbonised University Campuses

Our webinar on Smart and Decarbonised University Campuses brought together Estates and Sustainability Directors and Managers from across the ERA partnership to discuss best practice in sustainable campuses.

Towards Smart and Decarbonised University Campuses

This webinar, which took place on Monday 6th July, aimed to explore best practice in the development of smart and decarbonised university campuses.

This online event brought together university and research institute estates and facilities staff with academics and industry working in this area to hear more about the current and future plans for university campuses in terms of the smart and decarbonised energy agendas.

It included topics such as integration of renewables and novel technologies (including solar, hydrogen, fuel cells, heat pumps, etc.), energy storage, maintenance, replacement of energy infrastructure, energy efficiency and use of smart and responsive technologies, A specific focus will be on living lab opportunities in the energy area and the discussion will consider collaborative options for future developments. The event was planned as the first in a process to allow best practice exchange between participants and to identify potential areas of mutual interest.

This session will allow a conversation both between the various estate managers, but also participating research academics with interests in the area. Key questions we will try to explore in the roundtable include:

• What targets does your institution have at present and how challenging are they for you to meet both financially and technically?
• Are there benefits/opportunities of working at scale?
• Which technologies are available now or in the future for use on campuses to meet low carbon targets?
• How do you balance retro-fitting and maintenance issues with new buildings and technologies?
• What are the funding opportunities to support low carbon campus redevelopment in future?
• Are there opportunities to consider joint procurement across campuses?

The programme for the event is detailed on the other side of this webpage.

The video and presentation for the session can be downloaded below:

View the video recording for the event here

Download the presentation for the event here

Programme for the Smart and Decarbonised University Campuses webinar, Monday 6th July 2020, 2pm to 4pm

Time	Speaker	Topic
2.00 - 2.05pm	Faye McAnulla, Programme Director, Energy Research Accelerator	Introductions
2.05 - 2.15pm	Trevor Payne, Director of Estates, University of Birmingham	The challenge of campus energy provision and decarbonisation
2.15 - 2.25pm	Professor Martin Freer, Director of ERA	Overview of ERA and activities related to decarbonising campuses
2.25 - 2.30pm	Gerard Davies, Senior Portfolio Manager, EPSRC	EPSRC support for decarbonisation
2.30 - 3.15pm	Estates and sustainability case studies
2.30 - 2.37pm	Andrew Bryers, Energy and Sustainability Manager, Aston University	Decarbonising the Aston Campus
2.37 - 2.44pm	Ash Hulme, Head of Engineering Planning, Keele University	The Keele Campus Smart Energy Network Demonstrator and HyDeploy
2.44 - 2.53pm	Prof David Elmes, University of Warwick	Why adopting a Smart Local Energy System is not just for Christmas!
2.54 - 3pm	Andy Nolan, Estates Manager, University of Nottingham	Towards a smart and decarbonised University of Nottingham campus
3.00 - 3.07pm	Jo Shields, Head of Sustainability, Loughborough University	Sustainability at Loughborough
3.07 - 3.15pm	Daniel Crow, Head of Estates and Facilities, British Geological Survey	Decarbonising the BGS campus
3.15 - 3.55pm	Faye McAnulla, Programme Director, ERA	Q+A session
3.55 - 4.00pm	Professor Martin Freer, ERA Director	Closing remarks

Universities across the UK are implementing initiatives to ensure they achieve net-zero

The climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.”
Greta Thunberg

Want to get involved in the discussion?

If you would like to get involved in the discussion and further events about Smart and Decarbonised University Campuses, please contact us on enquiries@era.ac.uk

Smart and Decarbonised University Campuses