Sustainability

Sustainability efforts are at the heart of the Department’s mission, driving initiatives and activities that align with global environmental priorities. The Department is an active participant in the Faculty of Engineering Sustainability Committee and plays a key role in supporting Sustainable Imperial, the institution-wide strategy tackling the pressing challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

As home to world-leading experts in Civil and Environmental engineering, we recognise both the challenges and opportunities in building a sustainable future. While the sector is a major contributor to global carbon emissions, it also has immense potential to drive transformative change and help achieve net-zero targets.

With buildings and construction responsible for approximately 37% of global energy-related carbon emissions (UNEP, 2022), the urgency for bold innovation and visionary leadership in sustainable practices has never been greater. Visit our research pages to find out more about how our research is contributing to achieving net-zero and developing more sustainable engineering practices.

Our vision is to lead the way in organisational sustainability at the University—setting an example and inspiring others, especially in higher education, to minimise their environmental impact. Read on for key highlights of our recent sustainability efforts and achievements.

Green Impact Team

The Department proudly participates in Imperial’s ‘Green Impact’ initiative. Green Impact is a UN award-winning programme, which has been tailored to align with Imperial’s Sustainability Strategy 2021-2026 and goal to achieve Net Zero by 2040.

The Civil and Environmental Engineering Green Impact team was awarded Gold for its impactful contributions to sustainability in 2024, and also received a Special ‘Environmental Improvement’ award for its “Bin the Bin” Initiative.

Sustainability Committee 

The Sustainability Committee is a dedicated team of staff committed to driving meaningful change and embedding sustainable practices within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

The Sustainability Committee, through its Chair and Faculty Sustainability Group representative, reports to the Head of Department and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, the latter through the Faculty of Engineering Sustainability Committee. Each Department in the Faculty is represented on this Faculty Committee. 

What we do

The Committee’s vision is to be a proactive and committed partner in improving environmental sustainability in the Department and College in line with its sustainability strategy. Goals and activities include:

• Working with colleagues in CEE and across Imperial to achieve the Vision of the University’s Sustainability Strategy.
• Conducting work consistent with the Guiding Principles of this Strategy
• Meeting quarterly to keep updated on sustainability matters in CEE and across College, and to discuss and plan future work. 
• Curating a database of historical and current resource (including energy, water, waste, etc.) use and emissions by CEE, with aims to have these data disaggregated by activity type (Structures Laboratory operations, office work, lectures, etc.) and to quantify CEE’s carbon footprint.
• Designing and implementing measures to reduce CEE’s environmental impact notably its carbon footprint, and to quantitatively track the effects of these measures.
• Maintaining a CEE Sustainability Committee Teams channel to share relevant resources and for informal discussion.