| As the U.K.’s leading research institute
on climate science and the impacts of global climate change,
The University of East Anglia,
or UEA, created the Community
Carbon Reduction Project (CRed) in order
to tackle the challenge of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
CRed’s focus is on the community – through
partnerships and new ways of thinking – to create innovation
and ambition. CRed’s goal – a 60% reduction by
2025 – will
be reached by creating a model at the local level – a “bottom
up” approach – in order to initiate and motivate
regional, national, and global change, even as state-level
governments provide the investments in research, economic incentives
and
regulatory requirements needed to make local efforts feasible.
This bottom up approach necessitates cooperation, innovation,
and partnerships between individuals, organizations, communities,
businesses, and local governments. These partnerships between
local actors have the capability to initiate real change within
the system to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
While the English government is providing strong national
incentives for movement towards technologies that are carbon
neutral (i.e., fuel whose production absorbs as much carbon
as is released during burning for energy), there was recognition
that the root cause of carbon dioxide emissions was the design
of communities and the choices individuals make daily when
living in those communities. As the CRed program
states on their web site:
“We have already started to build the CRed community.
Members include representatives from many sections of our community:
schools, businesses (small and large), local authorities, hospitals,
community groups, individuals and organisations. In fact anyone
and everyone who participates in Norfolk life can join in!
The CRed team is working with partners to estimate how much
CO2 they are responsible for, and in partnership, identifying
where and how to reduce emissions in the short, medium and
long term. However, ultimately you will decide what will work
best for you. Some partners will wish to participate during
the working day. Others participate in the home. Some are changing
the way they travel. Some are looking at every aspect of their
activities; others at a single aspect. Only you can decide
how you wish to participate. Building the community, defining
targets and commitments and ways of reaching them will continue
for the next two years. After this period we will be ready
to take on the 60% challenge by 2025. And the world will have
noticed.”
Note that the CRed project tightened the goal of the national
government, calling for the 60% reduction in their community
by 2025.
By summer 2004, CRed encompassed the City of Norwich, with
more than a thousand pledges to reduce carbon dioxide emissions,
along with substantive plans as to how those pledges would
be met (this number is now in excess of 1,800). In that summer,
8 students from UNC-Chapel Hill attended the Carolina Environmental
Program (CEP) field site in International
Energy Policy and Environmental Assessment located at
the University of Cambridge. For their semester, team-based
project (required of all environmental majors at
Carolina), the students approached the City of Cambridge for
ideas on projects that would benefit that community. The City
proposed that the students help them develop plans to become
a CRed partner (the first outside Norwich), and suggested working
with the City and the University of Cambridge. The student
team began that project, which will continue in the summers
of 2005 and 2006.
The first student team then brought this idea of a CRed partnership back
to the Town of Chapel Hill, where the Town Council will in September on
becoming the first U.S.-based CRed site.
At the same time, the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill began to consider becoming a CRed site. The
students, faculty and staff of the CEP serve as a resource
to the campus and town in deciding how they will meet the CRed
goals.
To become an official partner in CRed, it is necessary to
establish a goal of carbon dioxide reduction and to develop
a plan outlining the actions a partner intends to pursue in
reaching that goal. This should include actions that spread
the burden of change equitably across individuals and institutions,
and across the specific sectors of transportation, residential,
commercial, and industrial/institutional. Ideally, these measures
would include a suite of policy options, including voluntary
change, tax incentives, mandatory limits, public investment
in technology, etc. After the partner develops a plan, a pledge
is sent to CRed . The
pledge carries with it no punitive consequences if the goals
are not met;
it is instead a declaration to the local community, the state
of North Carolina, the nation and the world that carbon reduction
is a serious goal and that major steps will be taken to meet
this goal. It is expected that progress towards the pledge
goals will be monitored periodically.
The CRed site maintains a number of tools that are useful
in establishing a set of policies. This includes a Carbon
Indicator that will
help you in calculating the carbon dioxide emissions associated
with specific activities, and to find those activities that
offer the greatest potential for reduction in emissions.
For
more information on these tools, or to learn more about the
CRed program in England, contact Marcus Armes, CRed Liaison
Officer, on 01603-593140 or by e-mail at marcus.armes@uea.ac.uk.
For more information on the CRed program at UNC-Chapel Hill,
contact Brian Naess
on 919-966-9925 or by e-mail at naess@unc.edu. |
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