At King’s we choose to address the climate and nature crises in the round, by changing what we teach, thinking about how our research can make a bigger contribution, by becoming net-zero and by becoming recognised as a place for conversations about transitions to sustainability. To achieve all this, we need to work together. Our new motto is ‘making change together’, with all our students and staff collaborating to make changes. This is a long and difficult journey. We need to have our eyes on the long-term, taking purposeful steps to achieve the big goals we have set ourselves.
On education, our headline goal is to give all King’s undergraduates some exposure to learning about sustainability. This will include curricular, extra-curricular and voluntary educational experiences. We have dedicated educational programmes and courses in many Faculties already, with new ones being introduced. But we need to do more. Our objective is that all students graduate with some understanding of sustainability challenges, seeing these as integral to their lives and work, and feeling confident that they can make a difference. We know that most of our students want this and that employers expect it. We have agreed that Education for Sustainability (EfS) at King’s will aim to be ‘organic’ – affecting all curricula – rather than a ‘bolt on’. But we understand that many teachers will find this challenging and confusing at first. To inform and encourage teachers, we have started work on supporting ‘climate literacy’. Working with King’s Academy, we are developing guidance and training materials, case studies and workshops. We are launching a new EfS Fund for staff to try out new ways of integrating climate and sustainability into teaching. King’s Academy will also be integrating climate and sustainability into its induction and training programmes for new academics.
On research, our goal is a four-fold increase in climate and sustainability-related external funding by 2029. Currently this is about £6-7M a year, representing less than 3% of King’s total research income. Again, our strategy is to grow research across all our Faculties, focusing on ambitious and impactful, multidisciplinary research. The College has made a substantial investment to achieve this, including about £4M to support a KCS Seed Fund and new senior academic appointments. The first two rounds of the seed fund have been awarded, with a broad range of fascinating new research supported, including work on digital health and sustainability, modelling cryogenic fluids for hydrogen-powered aviation, and the politics of energy transitions in West Africa. We are already seeing larger and more collaborative bids being developed in the climate and sustainability space, with a doubling in requested value in the year ending July 2023, compared with the year before. We have also started defining the research fields where we aim to bring senior researchers to King’s as part of our growth effort, looking forward to a new multidisciplinary research institute.
King’s also has a responsibility to act in a way that is consistent with a safe climate and to meet our objective of becoming net-zero. In 2022-23 all our operations as a university were directly responsible for about 25,000 tonnes of carbon emissions (Scope 1 and 2). That is over 0.5 tonnes of carbon for every student and staff member of the College. Our indirect emissions were far greater. We have made substantial progress since our first Carbon Management Plan in 2006 – more than halving direct emissions – but there is clearly still a long way to go. In the past 6 months we have formed a new Net Zero Operations Forum, bringing together all the many people across King’s Directorates with responsibility for energy, waste and water. Active networks like the Climate Action Network and the Sustainability Champions network are also crucial to awareness-raising and innovative initiatives right across the university – from our labs to our sports fields. Again, our emphasis is on setting ambitious targets and fostering collaboration across the College to work towards greater sustainability. We have developed a new Sustainable Travel Policy which will encourage and enable more sustainable travel choices – business flights being our fourth largest source of carbon emissions.
At the beginning of this new commitment to sustainability at King’s, we are building on strong foundations. We have world-leading research on climate change and wildfires, have convened major public events, like the COP28 Outcomes Summit, our amazing colleagues at King’s Food have won prizes, and King’s ranked number 5 in the 2023/24 People & Planet University League for sustainability. So we are on the right track but need to redouble our efforts, by making change together!