Enda going to DCE @ Aarhus University

Enda will be visiting the Danish Centre for Environment and Energy at Aarhus University on Wednesday 23^rd until Friday 25^th January to work with Danish colleagues on the delivery of outputs from our European Commission Framework Contract providing services to support the Review of the Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution.

Air Pollution 2013 Call for Papers

AQMRC are delighted to be the co-organisers of the 21^st meeting of the International Conference on Modelling, Monitoring and Management of Air Pollution.

Organised by: Wessex Institute of Technology, UK University of the West of England, UK University of Siena, Italy Sponsored by: WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment; International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning To learn more about the Wessex Institute of Technology please click here. Papers presented at the previous conference in this series can be downloaded here. View full details about the conference objectives, topics and submission requirements online at: http://www.wessex.ac.uk/air2013?e=4-34665

The International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning Presenters at Air Pollution 2013 will be invited to submit an extended version of their paper to the International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning, edited by the Wessex Institute. This International Journal is an interdisciplinary journal covering the subjects of environmental design and planning, environmental management, spatial planning, environmental planning, environmental management and sustainable development in an integrated way as well as in accordance with the principles of sustainability.

Abstract Submission

Submit an abstract online at: http://www.wessex.ac.uk/air2013?e=4-34665 or contact the Conference Secretariat below.

Conference Topics

Air pollution modelling Monitoring and measuring Air quality management Indoor air pollution Aerosols and particles Emission studies Air pollution chemistry Source identification Global and regional studies Exposure and health effects Economics of air pollution control Policy and legislation Case studies Innovative technologies

Conference Secretariat

Rebecca Lawrence Wessex Institute of Technology, Ashurst Lodge, Ashurst, Southampton, SO40 7AA Telephone: 44 (0) 238 029 3223 Fax: 44 (0) 238 029 2853 Email: rlawrence@wessex.ac.uk Please circulate this announcement to colleagues who may be interested in this conference. They can subscribe by emailing enquiries@wessex.ac.uk with 'Subscribe - Air Pollution 2013' as the subject line. Follow us on: Facebook Twitter Blogger

Email Policy

We endeavour to email you information relevant to your field. However, if you are now specialising in another field and wish to receive news relevant to this area, or if you no longer wish to be included in this list please email: enquiries@wessex.ac.uk

 

 

Energy Conferences and Workshops in New Zealand

In February, Tim has been invited to participate in the International Energy Authority Demand Side Management programme (http://www.ieadsm.org/)  Task XXIV workshop in Wellington, New Zealand.  He will be helping organise part of the workshop based around the Four Dimensions of Behaviour (4DB) Framework developed as part of his current ESRC funding in partnership with Charlie Wilson at the Tyndall Centre at UEA.

Whilst he is there he will be attending the Energy Conference 2013, organised by The National Energy Research Institute and Victoria University of Wellington and entitled: Energy at the Crossroads: Energy Innovation for a Sustainable Society. http://www.theenergyconference.org.nz/

He will be presenting an oral paper entitled “Which Types of Interventions Work the Best in Changing Domestic Energy Using Behaviours?” based on the work that UWE undertook in partnership with RAND Europe and the Tyndall Centre at UEA for the Department of Environment and Climate Change.  This work has now been published as part of DECC’s Energy Efficiency Strategy
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/tackling/saving_energy/what_doing/eedo/eedo.aspx

 http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/tackling-climate-change/saving-energy-co2/6921-what-works-in-changing-energyusing-behaviours-in-.pdf

He will also be presenting a poster on his current ESRC funded work entitled “Improving Opportunities for Energy Reduction from 'Behaviour Change' through the Use of Multiple Models and a Better Characterisation of Behaviour”.

DECC and Social Science - Bridging the Gap Workshop

On 19^th December, Tim attended a workshop organised by DECC and hosted by the UCL Energy Institute to bring together academics from the social sciences, with members of the social research and customer insight teams at DECC.  The workshop stems from Tim’s 2010 Fellowship based in the DECC, as well as work undertaken for DECC in partnership with RAND EUROPE and the Tyndall Centre at UEA over the summer of 2012. 

 

All in all, the workshop was seen as being a very successful and important step forward in improving the mutual understanding between academics and the policy realm.   However, it was also clear that it was a small step in a much longer path towards allowing the social sciences to significantly shape whatever pathway we find ourselves on towards meeting the 2050 climate goals.

Seasons Greeting from all at the

Air Quality Management Resource Centre

The Mismanagement of Air Quality - Invited Presentation, Southampton University’s Centre for Environmental Science

On December 12^th 2012 Jim Longhurst was delighted to deliver the first Christmas lecture for Southampton University’s Centre for Environmental Science. Jim took a deliberately polemical position is his talk contrasting the successful review and assessment process with the action planning process in local air quality management. He described how the review and assessment of local air quality had been successful in identifying areas of air quality objective exceedence and in so doing had delineated a new geography of air pollution. He contrasted this with the failure of the action planning process to revoke air quality management areas. He reviewed the variety of evidence from official sources indicating the scale and magnitude of the health effects arising from exposure to adverse concentrations of air pollution and asked why we had arrived at a position where the policy intent and the process of remediation were misaligned. He explored whether this was a political failing and described the situation as the mismanagement of air quality.

Funding success for 2050 Low Carbon Bristol public engagement project

Rose's 2050 Low Carbon Bristol public engagement project is gaining momentum as more funding is secured to support communication activities and a further research bid.

Rose was the 2012 winner of the IES 'John Rose Award', to communicate the result of postgraduate research to the general public. Rose commissioned local street artist Andy Council to produce two visual representations of the future low carbon scenarios for Bristol from her PhD research. 

Scenario X (left) and Scenario Y (right)
©Andy Council 2012

Rose will be using these images as the basis of a public consultation and 'Dialogue' with the public, using an app from local digital democracy company Delib, and has now secured additional support and £2000 funding from the Green Capital Partnership's Community Challenge Fund to design and build some new interactive webpages as part of their redesigned website. 

Rose also yesterday secured a further £3500 of HEAT@UWE bidding funding, to support the development of a bid for external funding for an interdisciplinary research project. This will allow Rose to extend this initial phase of communication and engagement work into a larger and research project.

Danish Workshop

On 28th November, Tim will be helping run a stakeholder workshop at the Danish Centre for Environment and Energy in Roskilde, Denmark ad part of UWE's work to support the review of the Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution.

Tim in EU Meetings

On Tuesday 27th November, Tim will be in Brussels attending meetings with DG-ENV for UWE's projects on ozone and stakeholder recommendations.

'Air as a common good' paper published

AQMRC, UWE is pleased to announce the publication of a paper co-authored by members of the Faculties of Environment and Technology and Business and Law, and led by Dr Mark Everard. 'Air as a common good' has just been published online in the Journal of Environmental Science and Policy and can be found at:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2012.04.008. The paper explores the ecosystem services of air alongside its legal status and discusses how an ecosystem approach could improve management of air.

Europe's air story told in pictures

European Environment Agency (EEA)
www.eea.europa.eu

Air is a tricky subject to photograph, but this challenge has proved to be a source of inspiration for the winners of photo storycompetition ‘ImaginAIR’, organised by the European Environment Agency (EEA).

Read more ...

What works in energy saving?

DECC has just published a new report on 'what works in changing energy behaviours in the home?' http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/tackling-climate-change/saving-energy-co2/6921-what-works-in-changing-energyusing-behaviours-in-.pdf

The report is from a project that Tim Chatterton undertook with RAND Europe and Charlie Wilson from the University of East Anglia.

It forms part of the wider evidence base for DECC's new Energy Efficiency Strategy http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/tackling/saving_energy/what_doing/eedo/eedo.aspx#

Jim chairs international expert panel in Portugal

The Environment and Global Changes Panel of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) met in Lisbon between the 7^th and  9^th of November 2012. The international expert panel, chaired by Jim Longhurst, evaluated 341 research proposals and made recommendations for funding to FCT.  

 

FCT Panel Members

Back row, left to right: Joel Knoery, Sabine Kleinsteuber, Christian Kjær, Alastair Grant, James Longhurst, Jürgen P. Kropp, Ingvar Brandt, José Miguel Rodríguez Maroto, Vincent O'Flaherty. Front row, left to right: Matt Bentley, Mara Silva, Georgina Mace, Ariana Zeka, Maryse Labriet, Lídia Ferreira, Jose Maria Baldasano Recio, Darren Reynolds, Petros Samaras.

 

Mo receives IAQM Ian McCrae Travel Award

One of our recently completed PhD students, Dr Mofoluso Fagbeja, has just been awarded the IAQM McCrae Travel Award.

The award is for a paper presentation at the 2013 American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland USA in March.

The paper is titled, "A subjective assessment of the suitability of SCIAMACHY total column CO measurements to interpolate reliable concentration estimates over a low-latitude region."

Congratualtions, Mo!

Tim at Behaviour, Energy and Climate Change in Sacramento

Tim is currently attending the BECC conference in Sacramento, California this week. He will be presenting the work that he has been doing with DECC, Defra and DfTon multi-model approaches to energy behaviour, and running a workshop for practitioners on the 'Four Dimensions of Behaviour' (4DB) framework that he has been developing with Charlie Wilson at UEA. The workshop "When is a behaviour not (simply) a behaviour?" Will take examples brought by participants and use the novel 4x5 framework tool to examine the key characteristics of each behaviour and explore how they differ and how different models and tools for understanding them and devising interventions might be more or less applicable.

ImaginAIR - vote for your favourite photostory

The ImaginAIR competition - launched in September 2012 - asked Europeans to tell their story of air through three photographs and a short paragraph. Here are the finalists from the competition. Our external jury will select five thematic winners, but you get to choose the public vote winner. Vote for your favourites before 14 November 2012 to determine which photo story should win the ImaginAIR Public Choice Award. The photostory that receives the most votes will win the award. Become a member of our public jury. The decision is in your hands.
Vote for your favourites now

Jim Longhurst to Chair the Environment and Global Change Panel as part of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) 2012 evaluation process

The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) is the public research-funding agency which selects and distributes research funds for a wide range of scientific fields of research. FCT places high importance on the international peer-review evaluation process as a critical element to ensure credibility and quality in all its activities.   FCT has established six high-level panels of leading field scientists to take part in the 2012 evaluation process and selection of the best applications.

The Board of Directors of FCT have invited Professor Jim Longhurst to chair the Environment and Global Change panel in the 2012 evaluation process. The Environment and Global Change panel will consider some 335 proposals in four sub themes:

• Global Environmental Change

• Sustainable Management of Resources
• Environmental Technologies
• Environmental Modelling and Assessment
 

For further information on the work of FCT see http://www.fct.pt/

AQMRC Port Talbot Report providing advice to Ministers

The 2009 report by AQMRC for the Welsh Government reviewing air pollution in Neath Port Talbot continues to be of importance.  The report is currently linked to the front page of the Welsh Government air quality website, described as "Advice to the Welsh Ministers on further measures to pinpoint the sources of particulate matter." 

Visualising Bristol's low carbon futures: John Rose Award public engagement project underway

Thanks to the 2012 John Rose Award grant from the Institution of Environmental Sciences and support from Bristol City Council, Rose's low carbon Bristol public engagement art project is under way.
Rose's PhD research consulted a large group of key local stakeholders about how Bristol might meet it's 80% carbon reduction target in 2050, producing 2 different scenarios for the city. To communicate the results in an engaging way to the Bristol public, Rose is working with local street artist Andy Council to produce visual interpretations of these two difference scenarios. The public will then be able to submit their thoughts and ideas on Bristol's low carbon future through local digital democracy company Delib's 'Dialogue app'.
The first sketches of the two scenarios have been finished, with the final images coming soon. Watch this space for the opportunity to have your say!

"Scenario X": a globalised, high-tech big-tech, 'low carbon business as usual' future

"Scenario Y": a re-localised, high-tech small-tech, 'resilient restructured community' future

AQMRC rolls out carbon support package for green SMEs

AQMRC have been working with South West SMEs on a range of carbon related business support activities through the Environmental Technologies iNet. Rose has been working one-on-one with selected companies to estimate the carbon emissions embedded in their products through lifecycle analysis and embedded carbon footprinting methods. This will help those companies with environmentally friendly products to capitalise on their green credentials, by being able to show commitment to environmental reporting and sustainability in their manufacturing and operations, as well as identify opportunities to further reduce their environmental impact and develop a carbon management strategy. It will also help emerging companies in meeting ever more stringent obligations placed on suppliers by major purchasers, themselves under increasing pressure to report environmental impacts.

For example, the results from one carbon assessment of an innovative new version of a product found that it:

• is responsible for 82% less carbon than the traditional product

• lasts four times as long as the traditional product, escalating the carbon saving to 95%

• has a transportation carbon impact of 97% less than the traditional product

• avoids 9.8 kg/CO₂e through the use of recycled materials

In addition to one-on-one support Rose, Enda and the Environmental iNet team also ran a two-day workshop on the carbon assessment of products, including lifecycle analysis, business incentives for reporting emissions, and ensuring legitimate 'green claims'. Businesses that attended varied from construction, biocrops, high-tech engineering to a zoo, but all went away with a bespoke lifecycle analysis carbon assessment inventory and toolkit and a framework for calculating the emissions from their products. 

The workshop was very popular and fully subscribed so will be running again soon – watch this space.