Putting learning into practice
Throughout the MSc in Climate Change, Management and Finance programme at the Business School, our cohort had the privilege of learning from world-renowned professors and industry experts to explore mitigation strategies for a wide range of sectors - from industry and agriculture to the built environment. My greatest takeaway was to appreciate the level of complexity when exploring solutions in these sectors and to say goodbye to the hope of a silver bullet that would save us all in the nick of time.
One of our sessions in particular strongly resonated with me and empowered me to act. It was led by The Gratham Institute’s Neil Jennings who introduced the ISM (Individual, Social, and Material) Principles of Change to help us think through the approaches to and challenges of driving behaviour change. This is interesting and timely as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report this month confirmed we’re running out of time to avert 1.5C of warming, largely because of humans and our behaviour.
We believe we need to look at net zero carbon as a responsibility but also as an investment that will pay back and make buildings healthier in the process.
While we are in desperate need of systems-level changes and strong policy to meet net zero, we also need to recognise the role that each of us can play both at home and at the various types of offices we find ourselves in after graduating from Imperial College.
Tackling behavioural change
Since graduating in 2020, I’ve been able to reconfirm that behaviour change is one of the most difficult aspects of tackling emissions in the commercial real estate sector. Despite the drastic impact of COVID and forcing us to work from home, there’s evidence that the UK is ready to get their staff back into the office, even if only for a few days each week.
Under the leadership of Ampersand Partner’s Managing Director, Greg Borel, myself alongside some other recent Imperial graduates, Nefeli Charitou and Hana Douglas, have been given the opportunity to launch the first UK-wide competition to help commercial buildings reduce energy consumption through gamification and straight forward changes in behavior.
Introducing the CUBE Competition, which is the first step occupiers, landlords and building managers can take to help them change how we behave to make energy savings in an engaging and fun way that gets all employees involved and united by a goal that will help mitigate the impact of climate change.
There is a huge opportunity to make a significant difference. Our partners have been running CUBE in France for six years, delivering energy and equivalent annual cost savings of between 12% and 55% for the likes of BNP Paribas and Orange - through simple interventions and without significant investment.
We believe we need to look at net zero carbon as a responsibility but also as an investment that will pay back and make buildings healthier in the process.
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