‘It can’t be business as usual’

BY REBECCA POOLE

THE University of Lincoln is committed to driving research into developing ways to improve the environment, in line with the Sustainable Innovation pathway of the Lincoln Climate Action Plan.

“I think there’s recognition that we can’t just continue business as usual and expect to meet the deliverables set out in the Climate Action Plan (CAP),” explained Rebecca Mills, Head of Sustainability at University of Lincoln.

“It’s going to require us to rethink systems, to change our ways of working, develop new technology, invest in research to develop new products that really can result in wider system change.”

At the beginning of Lincoln Climate Commission’s journey, Rebecca was the university representative and played a role in founding the group alongside colleagues from the university such as Andrew Kythreotis, and Kate Bell from City of Lincoln Council.

“I’ve been sitting on the Lincoln Climate Commission and supporting the development of the Climate Action Plan, which has been predominantly driven by Kate and colleagues from the City of Lincoln Council, but the university is definitely committed to supporting its development.”

The university has set out its own Sustainability Strategy 2027 which means that embedding sustainability into research is now being applied. Rebecca explained that net-zero is one part of the strategy, but that it is also being used as a core research theme

“Embedding sustainability within our research is one of the core themes, so ‘net-zero’ is the simple way to describe that, but actually it has a wider remit than just focussing on carbon emissions because we’ve not only declared a climate emergency as a university, but also a climate and ecological emergency.

“We are quite actively involved with the decarbonisation of the Humber industrial cluster, but also for example, at Riseholme our Lincoln institute for Agri-food technology works very closely within the agricultural sector to develop innovative solutions to decrease the environmental and carbon impact of farming.”

The university’s Riseholme campus is leading collaborative research between the university, SAGA Robotics, and Berry Gardens Ltd to use new autonomous systems, such as high-speed picking robots. to increase productivity growth, improve food safety, and reduce the environmental impact of soft fruit production, for example with strawberries. This project is supported and funded by UK Research and Innovative UK.

Objectives of the Sustainable Innovation pathway of the CAP include developing Lincoln as a Green Innovation Centre through researching eco-friendly and energy saving technologies.

The Riseholme Strawberry Research and Trial Site has been an ongoing project for a couple of years, making a positive impact towards Sustainable Innovation, and the community through collaborative projects and community involvement to generate social value.

For example, since the start of the pandemic, the strawberries that have been grown are donated to Mint Lane Café to support the valuable community work it does.

“There’s a lot of varied projects and each one will have different benefits, some will be more skewed towards specifically reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and all of them will ultimately lead to that if they are aligned with net-zero.”

The university is currently working to develop its own net-zero roadmap, with aims to make the institution greener.

“We’ve set a target ourselves to be net-zero by 2040, and that includes all scopes of emissions which is quite challenging, as it also includes our supply chain, student commuting, business travel, all of our indirect emissions.

“We’re working with a consultancy to put an action plan together for us and we’re hoping to publish that at the end of this summer.”

To read the Lincoln Climate Action Plan in full, visit www.lincolnclimate.org.uk