A radical approach to a low carbon future

Dr Boardman came to Oxford thanks to a senior executive at the electricity generating company Powergen, who offered to fund a fellowship in energy efficiency at St Hilda’s. The idea was to promote research that would improve the quality of the evidence used by policy-makers in making decisions on energy conservation. She had just completed a PhD on fuel poverty at the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University: the post was tailor-made for her. From the moment she arrived in Oxford her approach has been to combine rigorous data-gathering with practical application – and she began with the University itself. From the day of her interview at St Hilda’s, when she spent the night in a room overlooking the river heated solely by an on-peak electric fire, she found that Oxford’s own building stock left almost everything to be desired in its energy efficiency.

Soon afterwards the University set up an environment panel, and with Dr Boardman as a member it established a set of ‘quite powerful principles’ that guide the way the University’s buildings are managed. The Estates Directorate now employs three officers with responsibility for sustainable transport, energy and water conservation, and waste management. The biggest change the University has made, with advice from the Panel and some campaigning by Oxford students, has been to purchase its electricity exclusively from a renewable source (Scottish hydroelectricity): Oxford is now the third largest purchaser of green electricity in the UK. ‘If you’ve got to reduce emissions,’ says Dr Boardman, ‘the easiest way of doing it is to go for green electricity.’ There is still much to do. Daniel Curtis from Lower Carbon Futures is currently working on how to reduce the University’s carbon footprint in relation to IT – questioning, for example, the need for equipment to be left running at night and over the weekend.

Dr Boardman is pleased that the environment has become more central to the University’s priorities, but she has also noticed another change in attitudes that she thinks is at least as significant. ‘I got the feeling when I came here that applied research was looked down on’, she says. ‘All undergraduate degrees had to be pure: anything like energy was unacceptable because it was applied. I think the University has modernised its understanding of what academic institutions should be doing – there’s even talk of including energy in undergraduate degrees. I think the success of the energy group within ECI has had an impact, and made people within the University feel pleased that it is showing that applied research with practical connotations is important.’

It must have helped that the multidisciplinary MSc in Environmental Change and Management, which has been run by Dr Boardman’s husband Dr John Boardman since its launch in 1994, is the most popular in the University, with 200 applicants every year for 32 places. While many graduates have gone on to positions in government, industry and NGOs all over the world, exposure to Brenda Boardman’s brand of practical commitment has also inspired many to join her as doctoral students. Rebecca White, who works on managing carbon emissions in the food supply chain and wrote the briefing paper for the labelling workshop, says ‘Having seen how Brenda’s work has been received, I have a sense that people in government listen – and as a student I certainly aspire to be ableto do the same.’ Philip Mann, who spent several years after his Msc working for the European Commission and as a research assistant to Dr Boardman, is now doing his own research for a doctorate on energy and emissions in developing countries. ‘As well as her commitment to what she is doing, she is an incredibly creative thinker’, he says. ‘And she has a huge dose of humanity and support that you don’t always see in a team leader.’

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