CIBSE President's Blog

At the University of Sheffield we are exploiting the opportunity to reconnect people to their resource use . Climate change science is slowly being increasingly accepted, but it has to be used in the right way. Rewards and incentives get our staff and students into good habits, not scare tactics. It means we can develop staff and graduates who understand and are prepared for the future’s challenges. In the process, we get them more involved in our University’s work, taking students out of the “student bubble” and showing everyone their potential impact. The following three case studies of behaviour change campaigns, all focused on switching off, taught us valuable lessons: The Arts Tower Blackout proved the potential impact of behaviour change. The iconic Arts Tower, visible for miles, was refurbished only 2 years ago with new energy efficient technology. We, with 26 staff and student volunteers, recorded which office equipment was unnecessarily left on one weekend and switched it...

I certainly believe in the value of positive debate and I am sure we all have a conscience that can drive us to create and enhance a better world. There is a saying that for evil to prosper all that is needed is for good people to say nothing and it must be time for us to start speaking up. The rate of change in the world is accelerating and so are the harmful greenhouse gases we emit and the global carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. We have seen the 400ppm level exceeded in measurement in both Hawaii and the Arctic in the last year. With these levels of greenhouse gases, it is no surprise that we experience greater extremes of climate change. George Adams stated in his president’s blog that climate change is occurring even more quickly than predicted and that we must respond accordingly. One way is to learn how to do “More with Less”, I am currently working on a project for WRAP and CIBSE on resource efficient building services . It is no good saying we want or need ...

CIBSE President George Adams opened up his blog with a debate around the opportunities presented by climate change challenges and whether we could grasp them through behavioural change (see post below - Fri 28 June).   This week, guest blogger Susie Diamond gives her response to the  Energy Engineering Conscience debate… The first challenge here is grasping the implications of climate change – I'm just going to focus on the UK here. We are confident that the climate is changing, but how? UK climate seems likely to become more volatile, with greater temperature peaks and troughs, higher floods, and longer droughts, but as my 5-year-old asked on the way to school one day: “The people on the weather: do they really know or are they just guessing?” I had to try and explain about educated guesses. Adapting to the unknown is implicitly tricky. Our first tactic must be mitigation to lessen the damage – closing the embarrassing performance gap between what we as a construction ...