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Greening Events II

by JISC's Green ICT Programme

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Heppie Curtis, researcher on the JISC funded Greening Events II project at the University of Bristol describes the findings of the first part of the project

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The Greening Events I project was a scoping investigation into how to reduce the negative sustainability impacts of planned academically related events whilst simultaneously maximizing the benefits that could be gained from them. The Greening Events II project was conceived to quantify some of the effects both when hosting events and also attending them. Given that typically the majority of the footprint of an event is in the attendee’s travel to that event, we needed to start by quantifying the carbon footprint of the travel associated with UoB employees attending events. Then we intended to reduce that carbon footprint, by changing people’s travel behaviors Finally, in this presentation I will talk about what open research questions we are hoping to tackle.
As it transpires, though our definition of event was broad: namely “The prearranged meeting of two or more people, not including teaching or lecturing”, the travel data available was not fine grained enough to pin point only the travel related to events so we did a broader. However, we did complete a scope III assessment of the UoB’s business travel in line with HEFCE’s guidelines.
The university actually travels pretty sustainability. Most trips are between large urban centers – University – University, with the most frequent destination being London and hence people tend to take the train. And that choice is a reasoned one. The most important factor in peoples minds when making the travel choice tends to be cost. Driving to London involves a parking and potentially congestion charges and hence it is not economically advantageous. Conversely car use is optimal if four people are traveling to the same conference in Aberystwyth, or a large amount of equipment needs to be carried, or if you are conducting a legacy meeting in the deepest darkest countryside. There are an awful lot of taxi journeys to and from stations but the combined carbon footprint associated with these is low compared to the footprint that is associated with say flying… In essence we found that people are very thoughtful about how they travel, even if this tends to be in terms of cost rather than environment. As it happens there is some correlation between cost and carbon foot print, so you do get ‘eco efficiency’ wins. So given that the utility of the events and meetings attended is high, there was there was little to be gained by the University by dinking with number of taxis people catch. Which led us to alternatives to travel…..
The UoB produces a biannual travel to work survey that has the benefit: Of being well established Of having an excellent response rate Of already containing a section on business travel So we decided to capitalize on that good work to confirm some of the things we found from the financial data, expand our knowledge where the financial data was lacking, for example why people were travelling and what they found hard, and also to ask about people attitudes towards and usage of virtual meeting technologies. We were surprised to find that only 54% of respondents said they traveled as part of their jobs as it is build into the job specification of every job grade at the University. What was not surprising was that the largest set of respondents said they travelled infrequently and that most of this travel was for research reasons. Finally the top three concerns when it came to booking travel were convenience, speed and cost. Which is good news for us as these are all things that it is believed that alternatives to travel can address. As a side note, even in the paper travel survey where ‘concerns for the environment’ was present as an option for selection, it was not high on the priority list and in personal interviews where there was not prompt at all it was not even mentioned.
When it came to asking about virtual meeting usage we were initially pleased to have found that over 50% of the respondents had attended at least one virtual meeting in the last year. So people are being exposed to it and are doing it. What we do not know is how many of those people initiated the meeting or why they did not necessarily have more of them. Other reasons stated for not choosing to attend virtual meetings were: Suitability – quote Lack of facilities/lack of knowledge Other attendees, Other people not technically competent, not sure how other people would take the suggestion, no facilities at the remote site, or just a lack of interest. Time was stated as a reason. The time involved in setting up the call and dealing with virtual meeting follow up tipped the balance in favour of travel often. Or just the time involved in learning new processes for setting up the meeting or to understand/install and new technology like Skype. Finally, in some cases people just prefer face to face meetings…..although this is not universally true. The other encouraging piece of information that came out of the travel to work survey was that the vast majority of people both thought that they could replace some of their future meetings with virtual technologies and also would want to try and replace those meetings. For both questions the smallest group of respondents answered in the negative as opposed to yes or ‘unsure’.
This is our plan for promoting alternatives to travel. First, based on whether people indicated they would be interested in further research on the Travel to Work Survey, and also on their suitability we are selecting departments that might most benefit. So for example the school of arts tend ot host events that lend themselves very much to alternative technologies, such as talks about an artifact, or Community and Social Medicine/Geographical sciences/Physiology and Pharmacology – had a large number of survey respondents interesting in participating in further research Sustainability – wanted to be involved in the process as they are the ones who are likely to continue to promote the services after the project is finished.
Most of the impact is in the end users machine, local network and part of what we are calling the access grid. These are the bits of the system that are in that in the control of the end user. This was quite a surprise for us as it is easy to think that all the power hungry servers that drive the network are going to consume a lot of energy….

Greening Events II Presentation Transcript

Greening Events IIVideo Conferencing and Alternatives toTravel at the University of BristolHeppie Curtis
Greening Events II Project• Quantify• Reduce• Research
Business Travel CarbonFootprint
Business Mileage Distance
Alternatives to Travel Travel to Work Survey• 54% of respondents travel as part of their job• 40.9% of respondents travel less than six times a year• 63% of travel is for conferences or research collaborations• Top concerns when planning travel: • Convenience - 58% • Speed – 49.1% • Cost – 47.0%
Alternatives to Travel Travel to work survey• 54.1% attended virtual meetings in 2011• 73% of non attendees “Were never asked”• Other reasons: • Suitability – “Can’t administer an anesthetic remotely” • Lack of facilities/lack of knowledge • Other attendees • Time • Prefer face to face
Promoting Alternatives to Travel• Target Departments• Initial survey• Workshops• Interventions • Web presence for UoB Facilities • Poster Campaign • Skype Installation • Supporting Materials• Follow up survey• Analysis of travel data.
Further Research• The environmental impact of virtual meetings.
Further Research• The environmental impact of virtual meetings• Carbon Footprint of Coming to Warwick 10.117kg• Carbon Footprint of Remote Attending 0.3303kg
Further Research• Rebound Phenomena • Time spent? • Money spent? • Encouraging uptake?• What effect does using virtual meeting technologies have on travel• Use of travel time?

Greening Events II

by JISC's Green ICT Programme

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Greening Events II Presentation Transcript

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