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Durham is a Sustainability Institution of the Year finalist in Green Gown Awards 2024

27 August 2024
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We have been shortlisted as a finalist for the Sustainability Institution of the Year category award in this year's UK & Ireland Green Gown Awards for our project entitled Turning Sustainability Ambition into Action, which recognises our continued efforts to deliver on our sustainability ambition.

What are the Green Gown Awards?

The Green Gown Awards recognise the exceptional sustainability initiatives being undertaken by universities and colleges in the UK & Ireland. There are 14 categories, each with a distinctive set of criteria against which the University’s performance is measured.

How does the University support sustainability?

Sustainability has many facets and comprises a wide range of our activities at Durham University, from how we manage our estate and operations, to our research, teaching and curriculum development. We strive to be sustainable and global, which includes finding new ways of developing partnerships, and considering how we travel, locally, nationally and internationally. Everything we do as a large organisation will inevitably affect the environment and we aim to minimise that impact and account for it in our activities.

Managing our environmental impact is critical to address the triple crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. We aim to reduce our own emissions and to support others in doing so, through research and collaboration. Our Estates teams work hard to ensure that we can protect wildlife and enhance biodiversity, and the University promotes and actively invests in research and teaching on environmental sustainability and the UN SDGs, and to equip the next generation of green graduates with the skills they need in a rapidly changing world.

How does our Sustainability Ambition Statement (SAS) benefit those on campus and in the local area?

Our Sustainability Ambition Statement outlines the University's intentions to drive sustainability through our operations, curriculum and research, including ambitious net zero targets for scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and to achieve biodiversity net gain. We are also working to create a culture where all staff and students can play a part to deliver our mission in the most sustainable way possible. The Ambition Statement sets clear goals and provides a timeline for achieving these, and we are building our community around our commitments that seek to preserve the planet for future generations.

Further to this, Durham has shown its continued commitment to excellence in sustainability research by allocating £18m from the Strategic Research Fund to 4 large-scale, interdisciplinary sustainability research projects.

How are students involved in our work to enhance sustainability at Durham?

Our engagement with students is key to our sustainability work to equip each cohort with skills they can use in a changing world. This helps to prepare our graduates for life after university and contributing to sustainability in a positive way. The student voice is important in how the University delivers its education and student participation is a key driver in helping us to do more to respond to climate change.

Students engage with sustainability through student groups and societies such as the Durham Climate Society, EcoDU, or the Natural History Society, or by being an environment representative for their College. They can also sign up to the My Greenspace movement, which includes logging sustainable actions in their everyday life, volunteering, visiting our annual Greenspace Festival to engage with some of our partners in delivering sustainability, taking the online sustainability training modules, enjoying our natural assets such as the Botanic Garden or Great High Wood. They can also engage in research projects that impact on sustainability around the world, including learning about climate change diplomacy at the international level, for example, in the Centre for Sustainable Development Law and Policy.

What are some of our sustainability highlights from recent years?

Climate change and biodiversity loss have driven a lot of our sustainability work in recent years. This includes refurbishing James Barber House, part of Hatfield College, to be our lowest carbon building including insulation, powered in part by solar panels and heated by heat pumps. This building demonstrates the kind of actions we need to take to minimise emissions over the coming years. We also took big steps forward by installing thousands of solar panels across our estate. At Maiden Castle, Stephenson College, Josephine Butler College, Collingwood College and Hatfield College, we have installed over 525 kW of solar panels that will help power our activities as we reduce emissions up to 2035. We have also replaced over 20 diesel vans that used to service our estate with electric vehicles, minimising our impact on air quality in Durham City and reducing the amount of diesel we burn to service our estate.

We rolled out a Carbon Costed Menus project across our Colleges in collaboration with Durham County Council with potential to impact on sustainable diets for over 6000 students each year across the University. In terms of our biodiversity strategy, we have delivered on a wide range of actions by converting 9 hectares of grassland to annually mown meadow, with substantial increases in plant richness (including creating new sites for Common Spotted, Bee, Marsh and Fragrant Orchids), planting out thousands of self-grown native wildflower plants including two locally extinct wetland species, Skullcap and Water-Horehound, altered land management has attracted Buzzards to breed in Durham City for the first time in at least 200 years, achieving Platinum Hedgehog Friendly Campus Award 2024 and completing a full biodiversity net gain account of 1000 land parcels across our estate. All of this was recognised in our first-class award in the People and Planet rankings for Academic Year 2022/2023.

We have ambitious sustainability goals at Durham, which upcoming projects will deliver the biggest impact in the coming years?

To achieve net zero, we need to reduce the emissions linked to heating our buildings. During winter and spring 2023 we worked with consultants to set out the strategic approach to decarbonising heat across most of the University campus. This strategy outlines how we would reach our net zero target and reduce emissions by about 8,000 tCO2 per year if delivered in full. Alongside this, Professional Services Staff across the University will be moving into our lowest emissions non-residential building in 2025 called Boldon House. This is another exemplar project that outlines the steps we need to take across the built environment to respond to climate change.

In terms of biodiversity, we are working to protect and enhance our ancient woodlands, as well as restore and create new wetlands around the University estate. This will include installing deer fencing, creating new ponds, and propagating and reintroducing native plant species. We will also be adding more native wildflowers to our annually mown grasslands.

What does it mean to be shortlisted in the Sustainability Institution of the Year category for the Green Gown Awards 2024?

Being a finalist in the Sustainability Institution of the Year category celebrates all we have achieved so far and gives us the impetus to do more, to build on the actions already taken and reiterate our commitment to delivering our vision and objectives recognising a strategic, whole-institution commitment to sustainability. We cannot rest; sustainability and climate change are interlinked and complex challenges that we can only address if we are all working together, across generations and nations. Global challenges must unite and not divide, and our institution is determined to play a key role in the cooperation, collaboration and knowledge sharing that sustainability requires.

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