Category Archives: Carbon

Sustainable innovations: designing the homes of the future in the _OME

Completed in June 2021, the _OME is the flagship research and showcasing facility of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE), an innovative research partnership set up between Newcastle and Northumbria Universities. With funding from Research England, the HBBE combines expertise in biosciences, design, architecture, and engineering to advance cutting edge research on biotechnology. As part of this, the team, now made up of nearly seventy researchers and support staff (HBBE, 2022), are constantly testing ways to improve the health and sustainability of our homes by researching everything from controlling the spread of pathogens to innovating on sustainable technologies. This diverse and hugely beneficial work is centred on the state of the art _OME facility, so how exactly are these exciting projects designing the living spaces of the future?

Image: a front elevation showing the interior spaces of the _OME and their uses, including the experimental apartment, biotechnology laboratory, and testing/showcasing spaces for new technologies. Credit: Armand Agraviador.

Located on Devonshire walk, next to the Great North Museum: Hancock and the Devonshire and Drummond buildings, the _OME houses an in-house experimental apartment, accompanying laboratory, and display space for innovative materials and technologies. The HBBE’s research is organised into four key themes and utilises concepts including the genome, biomes, and home, hence the name: _OME. The four research themes being undertaken in the facility touch on a variety of repurposed, improved, and novel technologies and practices to lower carbon footprints and keep us healthy by design. So what do they all involve?

Theme 1: Building Metabolism

The first theme focusses on building-wide methods to achieve a higher degree of sustainable self-sufficiency by creating an artificial ‘metabolism’ in the structure and systems of the house itself. Practical examples of how this metabolism works include generating renewable electricity on site via solar panels on the building’s roof and utilising greywater to lower water use by, for example, reusing water from sinks or the shower to flush the toilet. Additionally, other technologies being woven into this metabolism include rainwater harvesting from the roof gutters and developing waste handling systems within homes that can deal with waste on site and even generate heat and other useful resources from it! When combined, these technologies could work to maintain a living space with a fraction of the energy and water requirements of a standard home, helping to save on both carbon and bills!

Theme 2: Living Construction

The construction sector is a major emitter of carbon globally and commonly used materials including steel and concrete require an awful lot of energy to produce (Wang and Ramakrishnan, 2021), leading to homes with high embodied emissions. Thankfully, lower carbon materials, including cross-laminated timber, are becoming more commonly used (Ahmed et al., 2024), but researchers at the HBBE are looking to advance construction even further by developing intelligent materials. The focus of this research sits squarely on bio-materials, including biominerals, biopolymers, and hygromorphs, which promise not only to lower embodied emission further, but also to offer other advantages. One exciting potential feature of these biomaterials would be to respond to certain stimuli and regrow their structures when damaged – creating self-repairing buildings! These innovations would further add to the construction sector’s arsenal of sustainable building techniques, giving architects more tools to create buildings that are good for both people and planet.

Image: a view of the side and main façade of the _OME laboratory, exhibition space, and experimental apartment. The apartment is located in the central upper floor section, behind the large opening for natural light. Credit: Professor Ben Bridgens.

Theme 3: Microbial Environments

The third theme touches on the _OME’s creation mid-way through the Covid 19 pandemic. Here, research teams are designing homes to better support healthy microbiomes and passively reduce the spread of illnesses, including pandemics. Proposed technologies for achieving this include smart ventilation, antimicrobial materials, and advanced microbiome monitoring systems to better understand what’s going on in the home. Not only will these innovations improve people’s health, but they could also reduce the environmental costs of dealing with illnesses and epidemics (see our sustainable medicine blog here) by creating environments that are far better at handling these issues by design.

Theme 4: Responsible Interactions

As seen previously, the HBBE is working on a variety of innovative technologies, but implementation of these isn’t always smooth sailing. To help ease biotechnologies’ transition from research to widespread use, therefore, researchers are investigating a variety of potential potholes, from accessibility concerns to unintended environmental effects. Additionally, ensuring these new technologies can seamlessly integrate with existing practices and standards, and making sure that people are culturally on board to accept innovations such as biomaterials, remains an important challenge. The _OME is major part of the solution here, as novel technologies can be tested out in the living laboratory and new materials can be shown off to unsure potential adopters, helping to tackle challenges before they become significant issues.

Thank you to the amazing HBBE team for their innovative work and their dedication to improving the sustainability of our built environment. Upon its completion in 2021, the _OME joined a series of Living Labs associated with Newcastle University across campus and elsewhere. These facilities look to continually generate high quality research and data as part of their site’s design (often while being used for a variety of other useful purposes) and you can learn more about them here. Additionally, further information on the HBBE’s activities, including its publications and additional research groups, can be found here. If you’d like to find out more about sustainability at Newcastle University, you can explore our website and other pieces in this blog, and sign up to our newsletter here.

References

Ahmed, S., Dharmapalan, V., and Jin, Z. (2024) ‘A Subject Review on the Use of Mass Timber in the US Construction Industry’, Construction Research Congress 2024: Sustainability, Resilience, Infrastructure Systems, and Materials Design in Construction. pp. 287-295.

Dixon, T., Connaughton, J., Green, S., (eds) (2018) Sustainable Futures in the Built Environment to 2050: A Foresight Approach to Construction and Development. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.

Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE) (2022) Annual Report 2022. URL: http://bbe.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/HBBE_2022_Annual-Report.pdf (accessed 29.08.24).

Wang, X., and Ramakrishnan, S. (2021) Environmental Sustainability in Building Design and Construction. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

International Sustainability: how our university’s global operations are responding to global challenges

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We in the Sustainability Team do a lot of work alongside colleagues across the University to maintain and improve the sustainability of both our beautiful Newcastle city centre campus and our additional, specialist facilities across the North East. Another vital aspect of our university’s operations, however, are our many international connections. These ties include not only our thousands of wonderful international students, but also our overseas research and teaching communities: Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia, and Newcastle University in Singapore.

These connections and facilities generate a wealth of ideas and relationships, helping our university to achieve its aims of pioneering research and cutting-edge education. Maintaining these links and facilities also presents unique challenges in the field of sustainability, though, and so, in this blog, we’ll look at the projects, programmes, and innovations being implemented to maintain our global network sustainably.

Image: A member of the International Welcome Team greets new international students arriving at Newcastle Airport. Credit: Chris Bishop.

CABie

The Climate Action Barometer for international education (CABie) is a large scale, continually rolling study being run by the International Education Sustainability Group (IESG). The study has a variety of aims and foci, but its key objectives include:

Gathering data on higher education institutions’ approaches to climate action in their international operations,
Contextualising and contrasting different policy approaches and practices, and
Sharing insights, creating resources, and tracking results to help inform and drive decision-making in a community of higher education providers with international portfolios.

These objectives cover a range of operations and aspects of higher education, from student and staff engagement to assessing the emissions of international programmes and how these can be reduced through methods such as incentives and careful planning of teaching.

To learn from this collaborative exercise and contribute our own insights and work, Newcastle University have signed up to be part of the Founders’ Group for CABie in the UK. As part of this so far, we in the Sustainability Team have attended meetings to help shape the study and we have provided interviews, survey responses, and University data to add more depth to the research. The Autumn will bring the first fruits of this work, as IESG convene the group again to present the research’s findings so far and create a space for ourselves and our fellow founding universities to discuss ideas and action plans based on the data. This exciting work should provide a useful foundation of considered, data-driven proposals for reducing the environmental impacts of our international operations and we look forward to contributing to it further in future.

Singapore

The University’s operations in Singapore centre on Naval, Electrical, Chemical, and Mechanical Engineering, and our colleagues in the country have developed an impressive hub of research and teaching expertise with their work. Based across two campuses and a research institute, Newcastle University in Singapore offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in partnership with the Singapore Institute of Technology. Additionally, our strong industrial connections in the region help to apply the research and teaching we carry out to provide practical insights across a variety of sectors.

As part of the work that’s being done in Singapore, our colleagues have maintained a strong focus on the environment in a variety of ways. Initially, specific foci on renewable infrastructure and environmental design in the Electrical and Chemical Engineering departments respectively help to catalyse progress in these areas. Meanwhile, for colleagues working in Marine technology and engineering, climate change, alternative fuels, and offshore renewable energy structures all constitute important research themes in their work. Finally, events focused on sustainability are regularly run across the departments on topics including data, entrepreneurship, and sustainability, and water security and sustainable development. These events and research themes are contributing substantially to environmental research across a variety of engineering sectors and are helping establish Newcastle University in Singapore as a leader in sustainability expertise in the region.

Image: Members of the NUMed community in discussion in front of the arches of the Bell Building. Credit: Choi Chee Seng.

Malaysia

Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia (NUMed Malaysia) is a purpose-built medical school in southern Johor State. The campus offers a range of high quality undergraduate and masters programmes in medicine and biomedical sciences and has expanded and developed over more than a decade to become one of Malaysia’s leading medical education providers. As this development has taken place, NUMed Malaysia has also been working on enhancing the sustainability of its operations.

Here, the school’s Environment and Sustainability Campus Committee works hard to implement and maintain environmental projects across their beautiful, green campus and this work is supported by a range of other sustainability commitments. For instance, NUMed Malaysia was one of the first organisations to sign up to both the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education and the British Malaysian Chamber of Commerce Climate Pledge. Additionally, the school has built on these memberships to put climate awareness at the very centre of their campus with their Eco Lounge project. The opening of the lounge was accompanied by talks given by senior colleagues on the importance of sustainability in medicine (a topic also discussed in this blog) and the space now offers students an important hub in which to relax and learn more about the climate and its impacts on Malaysia. These different projects and commitments are combining in NUMed Malaysia to help equip a new generation of doctors and nurses not only with expert medical knowledge, but also a wider awareness of medicine’s unneglectable relationship with our changing climate.

This wide variety of sustainability work being undertaken by teams across all three countries highlights our shared dedication to sustainability as part of the wider Newcastle University community. A huge thank you to the brilliant teams and interested colleagues in both Malaysia and Singapore for helping to drive this work in their own operations. If you want to find out more about how the University manages its environmental impacts here in Newcastle, you can explore our website here, or sign up to our Sustainability Network newsletter by emailing us in the team.

Redeveloping sustainably: supporting the community at Castle Leazes

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As works progress on redeveloping the University’s vast Castle Leazes student accommodation, sustainability is being considered at every step. Examples of this work include plans for Biodiversity Net Gain on the site and the decision to deconstruct the halls rather than demolishing them to reuse and recycle as many of the buildings’ materials as possible. Amongst these efforts, the Accommodation Team has been doing some incredible work to ensure that the hall’s furnishings are being sustainably reused rather than thrown away.

Image: A visual of the redevelopment of Castle Leazes student accommodation. The project will preserve existing habitats where possible and create further new ones to ensure that the site achieves a biodiversity net gain. Credit: Newcastle University.

A sustainable Legacy

Castle Leazes Halls is one of the University’s largest and oldest halls of residence, with over 1000 student bedrooms across the site, and so the volume of furniture that needed to be reused was enormous. This prohibited colleagues’ usual route of reusing items within the University due to a simple lack of sufficient demand, so colleagues in Accommodation worked hard to organise a mass donation of items to other organisations across the region. Utilising the City of Sanctuary network, a variety of charitable, public, and non-profit organisations were invited to pick out what they needed from the accommodation’s stock, resulting in thousands of items being reused.

Included in this list of benefitting organisations were schools, The People’s Kitchen, and even the City Library. Additionally, Urban Green also attended the site to accept donations of hundreds of pounds worth of plants which will now be replanted in parks throughout the city. The teams that came out to collect items were hugely appreciative of the donations and many left messages of gratitude for our wonderful accommodation colleagues:

“I just wanted to say thank you for all your help and donations, it is really appreciated and our schools in the NEAT Academy Trust will really benefit from what we have collected over the last few days.”

“The People’s Kitchen are massively appreciative for everything. We’ll send you through an update of what we’ve managed to do with the equipment but we’re very excited about the difference it’s going to make.”

“On behalf of the Cadets of Northumbria ACF, I would like to thank you and your team for all the fantastic furniture for our new Cadet Rest Area. I was in Otterburn during its first use at the weekend and I can tell you, the Cadets absolutely loved it. This is the first time in the history of NACF that they have had a proper kitted out rest area where they can truly relax, so it is amazing for them.”

Image: Chairs, tables, and other items from Castle Leazes are pictured in situ in their new home. Credit: Northumbria Army Cadets.

Image: Sofas and bean bags from Castle Leazes are pictured in situ in their new home. Credit: St Paul’s Church of England Primary School.

A massive thank you to Helen Davis and the entire Accommodation Team for their hard work organising this amazing donation project. In addition to the dedication of the teams involved, this work highlights the incredible co-benefits that sustainability and the circular economy can bring to projects and communities.

If you want to learn more about sustainability at our University, you can explore a variety of subject areas on our website, in our Climate Action Plan, and on this blog. Additionally, sign up to the Sustainability Network newsletter for a monthly summary of the environmental work happening in our organisation.

Combining energy and sustainability: upgrading Newcastle University’s Merz Court Energy Centre

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Heating and powering our campus is one of the University’s largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions and so work to improve the efficiency of these systems is very effective at reducing our institution’s impact on the environment.

To this end, a major project the University is currently undertaking is the installation of a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant in Merz Court’s Energy Centre. This new infrastructure has required the work of a variety of University teams alongside multiple external companies to plan this major energy upgrade and coordinate its installation. Now, as the completion of the project is coming into view, this blog will explore how CHP systems work, and how the University’s new power plant is set to save significant emissions for years to come!

Video: A timelapse of the night-time delivery and craning of the CHP unit into the underground Merz Court Energy centre.

What impact will this have?

Combined heat and power or ‘cogeneration’ plants increase efficiencies by utilising the waste heat generated when creating electricity to warm buildings. These systems are especially effective when hooked up to district heating networks – where one energy centre powers multiple buildings. So, when different teams were coming together to plan the power supply for the newly refurbished Stephenson Building, an upgrade to our existing district heating network centred in Merz Court fit the bill nicely.

Now, after lots of hard work from many colleagues across the University, the new 27-tonne CHP engine has been successfully installed in Merz Court’s Energy Centre! On top of the improved efficiencies of cogeneration systems, the University’s new CHP uses greener biofuel to generate its heat and electricity – greatly reducing carbon emissions as compared to conventional systems.

Additionally, the CHP’s impact on carbon savings will be further reinforced as Merz Court Energy Centre’s district heating is connected to a whole swathe of the campus, including the:

Henry Daysh Building,
Stephenson Building,
King Edward VII Building,
Percy Building,
Old Library Building,
And Merz Court itself!

Across these buildings, the CHP’s lower carbon factor energy will pull down our campus’s carbon emissions by thousands of tonnes a year. Additionally, after recent progress, the first batch of biofuel has now been delivered and we’re happy to announce that the new system will be generating power for the next heating season!

Image: The entrance to Newcastle University’s School of Electrical and Electronic engineering housed in Merz Court above the newly upgraded Energy Centre. Credit: Chris Bishop.

Find out more

Many thanks to all the teams involved in delivering the various stages of this project. If you’re interested in finding out more about the University’s power system and how we’re reducing emissions, explore our energy and carbon webpages. Additionally, this blog has information on the University’s renewable power projects and research and our institution-wide, accredited Energy Management System. Finally, the University’s Energy Policy can be found here, and you can get involved with a variety of sustainability programmes and groups across the University as either a student or a colleague.

Solar power on campus: Harnessing renewable energy to power our university.

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Why is renewable energy important?

As attested in UN Sustainable Development Goal 7, ensuring that our power is being generated renewably is a vital part of meeting climate goals, whether national, international, or across individual organisations (White, 2024). Here at Newcastle University, lighting accounts for around 20% of our energy use alone, but electricity is also used to power many building’s heating, cooling, and ventilation systems, our fleet of electric vehicles, our PCs, server banks, lab equipment, and more. With so much of the University drawing on electrical power, therefore, generating renewable energy on campus can have a huge impact on reducing the emissions of our facilities and operations. One technology that has proven invaluable in our efforts to increase local renewable energy production is solar power.

Image: A view of the Frederick Douglass Centre’s solar system with the Catalyst, Core, Lumen, and Spark buildings in the background. Credit: Author.

What’s happening at our university?

Solar Photovoltaics (PV) have been producing power since the 19^th Century but have only really become commonplace in the last few decades as lowering costs and improving efficiencies have made the technology increasingly commercially viable (Mulvaney, 2019). One of the chief benefits of solar PV is its versatility. Solar arrays can produce power wherever there is good access to daylight (a full explanation of how solar PV works can be found in this blog) and can be deployed on building rooftops to easily integrate power production into dense urban environments (Hayat et al., 2019). This adaptability has allowed the University to install solar arrays on a wide variety of buildings across our city centre campus, and these systems generate power right where it’s needed most.

Image: Maps of the University’s city centre estates. University owned buildings have a thicker border around them, those highlighted in solid yellow have solar power systems installed, and those highlighted with yellow stripes have solar systems currently under construction. Credit: Author.

As the above maps show, solar arrays have been installed across campus including on buildings such as the Henry Daysh, Great North Museum Hancock, the Catalyst, and every block of the Park View Student Village. Our teams are also continually working to expand the amount of solar power we generate at the University and we’re currently constructing a new system on top of the Philip Robinson Library. Additionally, as we add new arrays, we’re constantly looking to expand their capacity and our recently finished Sports Centre system, now the largest at the University, generates as much power in under 2 days as an average UK household consumes in a year! Elsewhere, arrays have been designed to meet the entire daytime power demands of buildings – such as in our Frederick Douglass Centre, who’s generation data can be seen below.

Image: A graphic displaying the amount of energy at the University’s Frederick Douglass Centre that is being pulled from the grid vs from the building’s solar array in the early afternoon of 13.05.2024 (note: all values are estimates). Credit: Author.

A combined approach

The effects of the University’s solar power arrays are already being felt across our organisation. In addition to the savings on energy bills these systems are creating, the University is also saving tens of thousands of kilograms of CO2e across our facilities. Following these successes, we’ll continue to install new solar PV systems across our campus and beyond while working to complement these projects with other renewable and low carbon infrastructure initiatives. Examples of these complimentary improvements include:

Our low carbon factor combined heating and power engine in the Merz Court Energy Centre which utilises biofuel to provide electricity and hot water with a high degree of efficiency and a far lower comparative carbon footprint.
Projects to link the district heating networks we have across our city centre campus, improving efficiencies and reliability as systems help to pick up each other’s slack and can optimise over a wider area.
Our long-term campus-wide LED works to replace all indoor room lighting across our organisation with energy efficient LEDs. We’re now well over halfway through this decade long project!
The energy supply deal we’ve struck with The Energy Consortium to supply our buildings and facilities with zero carbon power from the grid.

Image: Solar panels on top of the Henry Daysh Building with other University buildings, including the Bedson and Armstrong Buildings, as well as St James’s Park, visible in the background. Credit: Charlotte Robson.

Many thanks to Irene Dumistrascu-Podogrocki and Luke Whittaker for helping with this blog and enormous thanks also to colleagues from the various teams, including projects and improvements, that are working hard alongside ourselves to bring renewable and low-carbon power to our campus. If you’re interested in finding out more, our website has further information on carbon and energy, we have blogs on our energy management system and wind power at the University, and the Sustainability Network gives regular updates on our projects and work across campus.

References

Hayat, M.B., Ali, D., Monyake, K.C., Alagha, L., Ahmed, N. (2019) ‘Solar energy – A look into power generation, challenges, and a solar-powered future’, International Journal of Energy Research. 43 (3). pp. 1049–1067.

Mulvaney, D. (2019) Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice. 1st ed. Oakland, California: University of California Press.

White, J.K. (2024) The Truth About Energy: Our Fossil-Fuel Addiction and the Transition to Renewables. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Seeds of Change: Innovating for Sustainable Agriculture

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Agriculture is a vast and vital industry that provides livelihoods for hundreds of millions and food for billions across our planet. Similar to other sectors, however, agriculture’s expansion and industrialisation have increased its impact on the environment to unsustainable levels (Alam and Rukhsana, 2023), especially regarding greenhouse gas emissions and the biodiversity crisis. As a result, work is now crucially needed to adopt new technologies and alternative practices to ensure that the world’s five billion hectares of farmland can store carbon and provide quality habitats as well as feeding us. To get an idea of the challenges facing sustainable agriculture and how they might be overcome, I’ve spoken to researchers from Newcastle University’s own School of Natural and Environmental Sciences.

Hay bales at Newcastle University’s Cockle Park Farm. Credit: Matt Horne.

Sustainability challenges

Implementing sustainable practices into farming is a complicated and difficult process for a variety of reasons. Postgraduate researcher Sophia Long points to cost, and a lack of resources, technology, education, and training as key concerns that are affecting different farms in different ways and slowing down agriculture’s progress towards sustainable practice. Additionally, she notes that many sustainable innovations, including novel machinery and new chemistry and crop varieties, require an adjustment period to be implemented, further delaying change.

Despite these challenges, however, there is optimism in the sector and Dr David George, a reader in Precision Agronomy here at the University, referred to the recent updates to the Sustainable Farming Incentive as a key element of this positivity. On top of this, the development of carbon and biodiversity markets, inclusion of sustainable best practice as a feature of trade shows and magazines, and recognition of the importance of sustainable management by farmers themselves are all good signs of an improving outlook for sustainable agriculture.

Research and innovations

Newcastle University has a variety of innovative facilities focused on agricultural production, teaching, and research and this infrastructure is being used to develop the skills, technologies, and practices needed to support agriculture’s transition towards sustainability. These specialist facilities include Newcastle University Farms (NU Farms), which hold around 800 hectares of land spread over three sites (Nafferton, Ouston, and Cockle Park), and a series of vertical farm units, growth room facilities, and a food and consumer research facility on central campus. Some of the sustainable innovations, highlighted by Sophia and David, that are currently being developed at these sites include:

The development of automated systems and disease sensors in the Vertical Farm units to reduce the need for fertiliser, transport, and water when producing crops whilst improving their quality.
Research on the soil microbiome to improve the sustainability of disease management through the development of novel cultural and chemical control plans.
Trials of different tillage practices at NU Farms, including ploughing, minimum-tillage, and direct-drilling, to gather data on crop performance and carbon release (from the soil) for each of these practices.
Spore sampling technology, which is being explored at NU Farms in conjunction with biopesticides and biostimulants to reduce the use of conventional synthetic chemistry and thereby improve crop health and slow the build-up of pesticide resistance.
Scattering silicate rock dust over crop fields for their ability to enhance carbon and nutrient capture in the soil, both sequestering greenhouse gases and improving crop growth (Skov et al. 2024).
Remote imaging and sensing for pest/disease detection and environmental monitoring to help boost soil, crop, and animal health. This technology could be used in conjunction with the increasingly precise and automated application of crop inputs, which is also being researched at our university.
Methods to engage farmers in overcoming barriers to ‘Regenerative Agriculture‘ in the north of England through machinery solutions.

A tree-lined field with sheep at Newcastle University’s Cockle Park Farm. Credit: Matt Horne.

The future of farming

Sustainability is increasingly becoming the focus of agriculture’s future (Onuabuchi Munonye and Chinelo Eze, 2022) and a range of new technologies are lining up to support this. Across the Agriculture department, NU Farms, and the researchers I spoke to, however, it was stressed that co-benefits must be at the heart of change to ensure that the future of agriculture is truly sustainable. Specifically, change in the agricultural sector must support farmers’ incomes and resilience as well as the natural environment. Here, four key areas are central to a holistically sustainable future for farming:

Technology: Drones and sensors for data, automated and precision machinery, new crop inputs, land use practices, and further technologies are all improving the efficiency and reducing the environmental impacts of crop and livestock rearing for each unique farm.
Biodiversity: Research, education, and stewardship schemes are helping farmers to support and improve the agroecological systems on their land, yielding enhanced natural pest control and soil fertility and combatting pesticide and fertiliser use.
Adaptation: Changes in pest, disease, and extreme/unseasonal weather stresses will force farmers to adapt their crop rotations and water, disease, and pest management practices. Here, plant breeding, education, and community engagement will all be vital tools to pre-emptively future-proof agricultural production against the impacts of climate change.
Income: Many farms here in the UK are under intense financial pressure and even being forced out of business, harming livelihoods, rural culture and knowledge, and impacting the UK’s food security and resilience. Produce prices must reflect the tenuous financial situation for farmers and more transparency from distributors (such as supermarkets) would help consumers to gain a more well-rounded view of the food system they rely upon.

Overall, Dr George summarises the features of a sustainable future for farming as a “good balance of environmental, animal welfare and food production outputs that co-delivers for natural capital gain / net zero and food security, supported by simple yet flexible policy and clear, connected, consolidated and collaborative knowledge sharing”.

A huge thank you to Sophia, David, and everyone else who offered their time and expertise for this piece. If you want to find out more about sustainable agriculture then have a look at the links and references below and you can learn about biodiversity on campus here. Finally, if you’re looking for updates about sustainability at our university, you can sign up to the Sustainability Network.

Links and references

NU Farms research webpage

Regenerative agriculture initiative funded by Newcastle University

NU Farms Impact Statement

Press Office article on enhanced rock weathering

Alam, A., and Rukhsana (2023) ‘Climate Change Impact, Agriculture, and Society: An Overview’. Alam. A., and Rukhsana (eds) Climate Change, Agriculture and Society: Approaches Toward Sustainability. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-28251-5

Onuabuchi Munonye, J., and Chinelo Eze, G. (2022) ‘The Concept of Sustainable Agriculture’. Filho, W. L., Kovaleva, M., and Popkova, E. (eds) Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-98617-9

Skov, K., Wardman, J., Healey, M., McBride, A., Bierowiec, T., Cooper, J., Edeh, I., George, D., Kelland, M. E., Mann, J., Manning, D., Murphy, M. J., Pape, R., Teh, Y. A., Turner, W., Wade, P., and Liu, X. (2024). Initial agronomic benefits of enhanced weathering using basalt: A study of spring oat in a temperate climate. PLOS ONE, 19 (3). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295031

2023: A year in sustainability

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2023 was a busy year for us in the Sustainability Team! We launched projects, ran events, helped the University to score highly in prestigious league tables, and welcomed new team members to continue and expand our work.

Delivering a sustainable Newcastle University is complex and multi-faceted work and requires a great deal of coordination and involvement between teams, colleagues, and students across the University. These efforts have led to sustainability improvements throughout our organisation, making our campus and community better for people and planet in a range of ways – read on for an overview of everything we’ve achieved together!

Image: An aerial shot of campus, featuring the Stephenson and Merz buildings in the foreground. Credit: Elemental Photography

Awards and accreditations

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a key priority for our university and so we were honoured to have contributed to the achievement of some exceptional scores in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. In the rankings, which are judged against the SDGs, Newcastle University placed top 25 in the world and 4^th in the UK – a submission which takes a huge effort from our team and colleagues across the University!

That’s not all, however. We also kept our ISO 14001 and ISO 50001 accreditations for our Environmental Management System and Energy Management System, respectively. These technical accreditations reflect the care we put into our high-quality processes for managing the environmental impact of the University’s operations and we’ve now held both accreditations for almost a decade running.

Finally, 10 more labs gained Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) accreditation last year (including 5 at gold level!), doubling the size of our community of environmentally certified labs! If you work in a lab and are interested in joining LEAF, check out the information on our website.

Projects

We began several big projects with our colleagues last year, starting with the next phase of the University’s campus-wide solar photovoltaics (PV) project. This two-year programme will install solar PV panels on 32 academic buildings and accommodation sites, adding to our already expansive renewables network and reducing expected CO₂e emissions by over 380 tonnes a year.

Additionally, we also began the installation of a biofuel combined heat and power (CHP) plant in Merz Court’s Energy Centre. This system uses greener biofuel to generate electricity while also harnessing waste heat to warm up our buildings – greatly reducing carbon emissions as compared to gas systems. These improvements will have a substantial impact as the Energy Centre provides district heating to a whole swathe of the campus, including the: Henry Daysh, Cassie, Stephenson, King Edward VII, Percy, and Old Library Buildings, plus, of course, Merz Court itself!

Image: An aerial shot of the Armstrong Building with the Old Quad, King’s Quad, and Student Forum visible. Credit: Elemental Photography

Engagement and events

Last year was a busy one for sustainability engagement too! Firstly, in January we launched our Sustainability Network to keep colleagues and students up to date on all things sustainability at our university. This community has now grown to 256 members and you can join them here. Additionally, speaking of mailing lists, our ongoing Furniture Reuse project hit 700 members!

Secondly, we’ve been working on this Sustainability blog throughout the year. We posted 30 blogs in all, offering updates, tips, and information on everything from wind power at the University to sustainable hacks around the house.

Finally, 2023 saw a whole range of events with environmentalism at their core, including:

Sustainability Week – five days of sessions covering green infrastructure, climate anxiety and more,
A Veganuary Bake sale to raise funds for biodiversity charities,
Spudfest – a festival offering free food and dedicated to highlighting innovative agricultural research,
Leave Newcastle Happy – our joint campaign with the City Council and Northumbria University to ensure that waste from the student move-out in summer is dealt with responsibly,
The Dr Bike project, launched last summer to support active commuting to campus. In eleven sessions the project has managed to rehome 50 second-hand bikes and helped over 200 people with advice, resources, and repairs!

The team

We’ve seen some exciting changes to the team this last year. Firstly, Melissa Stephenson, previously a Sustainability Officer, became the University’s new Waste Manager – a vital role in the University that she’s quickly got the hang of! Additionally, our team has grown to a total of ten sustainability professionals with the appointment of:

An Assistant Sustainability Officer – Charlotte Robson,
A Sustainability Communications Placement – Evan Bromage,
And two Sustainability Officers – Phoebe Sowerby and Jordan Heeley!

Thank you so much to everyone who got involved with sustainability last year, we couldn’t have done it without you! 2024 will bring fresh challenges and opportunities as we draw ever closer to our 2030 Net Zero target, so stay informed with this blog, the Sustainability Network, and our website and let’s make this year just as good as the last!

Sustainable Medicine: keeping our planet and ourselves healthy

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As seen in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, sustainability is a major concern across all aspects of society due both to the far-reaching challenges of climate change and the impacts that modern life has on environment. Having said this, our attention can sometimes focus on certain aspects of society (such as the fossil fuel industry) more than others and one area where sustainability can be missed at times is healthcare (Sherman et al. 2020). So, to gain a better idea of the challenges and opportunities sustainability can bring to this critical service, I’ve spoken to a range of current students, societies, and academics involved with medicine at Newcastle University.

Image: The main entrance to the University’s Faculty of Medical Sciences. Credit: Chris Bishop.

Why is sustainability important in medicine?

As Nuala Murray from the University’s Sustainable Medics Society points out, sustainability and medicine are very relevant to one another for a variety of reasons. Initially, the changing climate is creating a range of novel and dangerous challenges for healthcare practitioners globally, from spreading zones of regional diseases to dealing with the fallout of worsening extreme weather events (Abbasi et al., 2023). On the other hand, the provision of healthcare itself is a resource intensive process, with the NHS making up around 4% of the UK’s total emissions profile alone (NHS, 2020). This makes healthcare a centre of both adaptation and mitigation in the fight against climate change, underlining the importance of sustainability in healthcare provision. Positively, examples are appearing of key bodies in the sector recognising this reality. For instance, Newcastle NHS Trust were the first NHS trust to issue a Climate Emergency statement (in collaboration with Newcastle University), our NU Med Malaysian Campus has invested in a permanent Eco Lounge, and our own Medical School has a dedicated Sustainable Medicine Lead.

Challenges and opportunities

The medical training, practice, and research provided by our University is vital, but it needs a variety of specific resources to function properly and this can make improving medical sustainability a challenge. I spoke to Oak Taylor, one of our medical students, to get a better idea of how this looks in practice. She pointed out, for instance, that many items, including protective equipment and syringes, are single use by necessity to ensure quality standards and avoid spreading infection. Additionally, she noted that many of the anaesthetic gases that are critical for operations are also very polluting. Despite these challenges, however, there are still lots of opportunities to improve sustainability in medicine. So, while ambulances can’t be electric due to the need to refuel quickly, medicine delivery vans can be electrified, and while front-line protective equipment will need changing regularly, equipment used during training can often be reused. Additionally, many of these steps come with other, additional benefits, such as improvements to air quality from using electric vehicles or boosting patient satisfaction by greening hospital grounds.

Here at Newcastle University’s medical, dental, and research facilities, a variety of projects are being carried out to implement more environmentally sound practice. For instance, our previously mentioned Sustainable Medicine Lead, Hugh Alberti, has been working throughout the School of Medicine to introduce sustainable healthcare teaching to the curriculum. This has led to a range of impressive initiatives, including all final year students completing sustainable quality improvement projects as part of their final GP placements – that’s 370 tailored sustainability projects being written for GP surgeries throughout Newcastle every year! Meanwhile, our Sustainable Medics Society run regular conferences on sustainable medicine and are currently working on a project to make lab sessions for clinical skills modules more sustainable by reducing plastic waste. Finally, lots of medical labs, including core labs used by a variety of different teams, have received Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) accreditation – with several operating at ‘Gold’, the highest level of the standard currently available!

Image: a student operating medical equipment. Credit: John Donoghue.

What next?

This range of initiatives is having a tangible effect by both directly improving environmental outcomes and ensuring that sustainability is established as an important consideration in the minds of current and future medical practitioners. Our medical students, teachers, and researchers aren’t done yet, though! Ambitions for the future include further improving the University’s already impressive Planetary Health Report score, and further reducing the use of single use items in medical teaching.

Many thanks again to Nuala, Hugh, Oak, and everyone else who generously contributed their time for this piece. If you want even more information on sustainability in healthcare, have a look at the references and resources below. Additionally, if you’re looking for steps you can take yourself, get started by having a look at our recent Sustainability Newsletter for advice on how to sustainably dispose of medications!

References and further reading

Abbasi, K., Ali, P., Barbour, V., Benfield, T., Bibbins-Domingo, K., Hancocks, S., Horton, R., Laybourn-Langton, L., Mash, R., and Sahni, P., et al. (2023) ‘Time to treat the climate and nature crisis as on indivisible global health emergency’, British Medical Journal. 383. p. 2355.

Andrews, E., Pearson, D., Kelly, C., Stroud, L., and Rivas Perez, M. (2013) ‘Carbon footprint of patient journeys through primary care’, British Journal of General Practice. September.

Gillam, S., and Barna, S. (2011) ‘Sustainable general practice: another challenge for trainers’, Education for Primary Care. 22 (1). 7-10.

NHS England and NHS Improvement (2020) Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ National Health Service – July 2022 Update. Skipton House, London.

Pencheon, D., and Wight, J. (2020) ‘Making healthcare and health systems net zero’, British Medical Journal. 368.

Sherman, J. D., Thiel, C., MacNeill, A., Eckelman, M. J., Dubrow, R., Hopf, H., Lagasse, R., Bialowitz, J., Costello, A., Forbes, M., et al. (2020) ‘The Green Print: Advancement of Environmental Sustainability in Healthcare’, Resources, Conservation and Recycling. Volume 161.

Catching the Tailwinds: Wind power and the green energy transition at Newcastle University

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What is Wind Power?

Wind power is a renewable source of energy that harnesses the kinetic force of natural air flows. To do this, turbine blades are angled so that the passing winds push against them and transfer their energy into rotational movement. This movement then drives a generator that transforms the kinetic energy into electrical power. Similar processes, minus the last step, have been utilised for millennia for purposes including milling grain, pumping water, and, in their simplest form, navigating oceans. Since the 1970s, however, the technology’s potential to generate electricity at scale has led to a gradual modern resurgence of wind power as a useful tool in the global transition towards cleaner and greener energy (Chiras, 2010). To understand how Newcastle University is responding and contributing to this transition, I’ve drawn on the expertise of Professor of Offshore Engineering, Zhiqiang Hu, to explore some of the exciting projects in progress across our organisation.

Image: Turbines at the Port of Blyth. Credit: Graeme Peacock.

The University’s wind research and collaborations

Our University has a range of talented researchers working across a variety of wind power technologies and among of the most promising of these is offshore wind generation. Placing wind turbines offshore (sometimes a long way out at sea!) allows them to be far larger than their land-based siblings which boosts generation capacity while avoiding taking up precious space on land. As a result, the offshore wind industry is developing quickly as an important way to meet the global demand for decarbonisation. This is creating a wealth of challenges and opportunities for those working in the sector and Newcastle University has a strong position within this dynamic landscape thanks to two key factors.

Firstly, the University has attracted attention from a variety of leading energy and engineering companies thanks to both our wealth of specialist knowledge and the forward-looking approach to sustainability that we take throughout our institution. Our researchers are working on a variety of cutting-edge themes, specialising particularly in the strength and integrity of wind turbines, their operation and maintenance, and developing ways to store their excess generation as hydrogen! Meanwhile, to help power this research, the University has entered a long-term deal to acquire wind power from Statkraft – a major European wind power supplier.

Secondly, the North-East is also a busy place for offshore wind power industrially, due both to the region’s existing maritime infrastructure and the vast wind farm being developed at nearby Dogger Bank in the North Sea. This wind farm, projected to be the largest in the world, has created a strong local offshore wind power supply chain, further attracting investment and collaboration with leading companies eager to work with local centres of expertise such as our University. These factors have led to a variety of exciting projects collaborating with industry including:

Professor Hu’s work to collaborate with colleagues and companies, including ORE Catapult, Hywind Scotland, and Equinor, to develop technologies (including using AI (Chen et al., 2021)) that will help maintain floating wind turbines at sea.
The University’s Hydrodynamics Laboratories in the Armstrong Building have been working with Balmoral to develop their HexDefence technology to avoid scouring issues at the base of offshore turbines (read more about scouring here (Zhang et al., 2023)).
Newcastle University’s Marine Zero PhD Centre has been supporting TechnipFMC on a project to develop dynamic cable monitoring technology to ensure that power gets back to land safely from the turbines out at sea.

Image: Turbines in the Black Forest above Freiburg. Credit: author.

Impact beyond the University

The varied partnerships and research projects underway at our University are creating opportunities and positive change within our organisation, but the work that’s being done here is having impacts far beyond the streets of our campus. Here, the University’s work contributes to positively impacting the emissions profile of the entire North East, proving the possibilities of decarbonising UK higher education, and providing vital knowledge that will contribute to the global green energy transition!

Enormous thanks to Professor Hu for the expert insight he provided for this article, you can see more of his work here. Finally, to stay fully up to date on sustainability news across our University, keep checking our regular blogs and contact us at the Sustainability Team to be added to our monthly newsletter!

References

Chen, P., Jia, C., Ng, C., and Hu, Z. (2021) ‘Application of SADA method on full-scale measurement data for dynamic responses prediction of Hywind floating wind turbines’, Ocean Engineering. Volume 239.

Chiras, D. (2010) Wind power basics: a green energy guide. New York: New Society Publishers.

Zhang, F., Chen, X., Yan, J., and Gao, X. (2023) ‘Countermeasures for local scour around offshore wind turbine monopile foundations: A review’, Applied Ocean Research. Volume 141.

Planning sustainably at Newcastle University

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Image: Members of the University community walk through the greenery-framed arches of King’s Gate. Credit: John Donoghue.

The University’s lovely Planning Team are responsible for designing and delivering our campus’s impressive variety of beautiful and cutting-edge spaces, both indoor and outdoor. This work has a major role to play in the environmental commitments of our institution and so we decided to have a chat with our friends in Planning to see how they’re incorporating sustainability into their practice. Here’s what we learnt.

How Planning works

One of the main functions of the Planning Team is to receive and solve Space and Project Requests (SPRs) which are sent to them by colleagues all across the University. These requests might involve the creation of a new teaching space for a growing department, for instance, or perhaps the conversion of a room to provide specialist resources. For each request, the Planning Team devises solutions to provide for the requester’s varied needs and maximise the potential of the spaces involved. As part of this process, our planners pay close attention to the sustainability of each project throughout its conception and delivery in a number of impactful ways.

Image: the newly renovated Herschel Learning Lab in the Herschel Building. Credit: John Donoghue.

Sustainable practice

Importantly, following the Carbon Literacy Training that some members of the team undertook, the Planning Team have developed a “carbon conscious methodology” for their work which incorporates a range of sustainable approaches and complements the environmental guidance written into the University’s procurement framework. These methods range from limiting hard landscaping and protecting green areas where possible, to considering how spaces can be designed in a versatile manner to accommodate several uses at different times. Additionally, when delivering on SPRs, the team considers sustainability from the very outset by conducting their own research to ensure the necessity of each request. This evaluation is then followed by a consideration of how existing spaces and features can be reused to lengthen their life – similar to repairing clothes instead of buying new!

Where items are no longer needed or replaced, however, the team puts the responsibility for dealing with the unwanted furnishings on the requester, to ensure that simply throwing items away is never the easiest option. Thanks to this, these items are then either reused somewhere else in the University (via our furniture reuse list, for example!) or are disposed of responsibly by contractors such as the wonderful people at RightGreen. As if this wasn’t enough already, the team are also full of ideas for how their planning can become even more sustainable in future!

Image: Flowers and greenery in the Old Quad. Credit: Charlotte Robson.

Sustainable futures

Core to these aspirations is a holistic view of the planning process. This involves taking moments to pause and consider the sustainability of each aspect of a project, for instance, and considering the full lifecycle of each space including how it can be reused and/or returned to nature at the end of its lifespan. One of their ideas for putting this into practice is adapting University College London’s Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF), which Newcastle University uses, to allow those submitting SPRs for a variety of spaces to gain accreditation for environmentally friendly reuse and refurbishment. These ideas build on the amazing suite of sustainable policies our planning team already utilises to offer an exciting vision of what the future of Planning could look like at Newcastle University.

So, next time you’re on our brilliant campus, whether you’re enjoying our labs, lecture theatres, historic buildings, or green spaces, take a moment to appreciate the hard work our amazing planners do to bring these high-quality spaces to us in as sustainable a manner as possible. Finally, if you want to learn more, please do check out the information on their blog also!