2009 Projects
Our World in 2050
This is one day STEM enrichment activity aimed at Year 8 (12-13 year olds) focused on the topics of adaptation to climate change and sustainability. This initiative has been designed to meet the new Key Stage 3 of the National Curriculum from Sept 2008 and to engage a more diverse range of pupils in thinking about engineering careers at a relatively early age. It was successfully piloted in 2008 by the environment theme in collaboration with the Institution Western Region at Penair School in Cornwall and was expanded in the 2008/09 academic years to include 10 secondary schools in eight Institution regions.
Learn more about Our World in 2050.
Cooling the Planet
A competition based on teams of the Institution’s young members making initial technical assessments of the engineering feasibility of potential ‘geo-engineering’ and ‘mitigation’ approaches to global warming. The activity was a two-stage competition with heats at the regional level in December 2008 followed by a final at the Institution's Birdcage Walk HQ on the afternoon of 5 March 2009. The output from the activity informed the Institution's environmental policy and government lobbying activities, including Climate change: have we lost the battle? and Geo-engineering: giving us time to act and catalysed a public/political debate around alternative approaches to cooling the planet.
Learn more about the Cooling the Planet Finals.
FUTURENET
In 2008 the Institution worked with the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to shape the UK national research agenda for the EPSRC 'Adaptation and Resilience to a Changing Climate' (ARCC) programme, with particular focus on the 'Transport Systems and Infrastructure' and 'Built Environment' areas.
The Institution is a key stakeholder in Adaptation and Resilience in a Changing Climate (ARCC) which brings together research projects in the area of buildings and infrastructure systems, including transport and water resource systems in the urban environment. Working with other key stakeholder partners, including Network Rail, the Highways Agency and WSP Group in a Birmingham-based research consortia, the Institution has helped to steer the technical content of the transport adaptation component of the ARCC programme: ‘Future Resilient Transport Networks’ (FUTURENET).
This work aims to provide practical tools and methodologies for use by a wide range of transport professionals responsible for delivering a well adapted and resilient UK transport network through to the end of the current century.
So significant is transport to the overall programme that FUTURENET alone has been awarded nearly £1.5million - a quarter of ARCC’s total budget. The Institution is proud to be the sole learned society involved in this invaluable project which will champion UK innovation and cutting edge research into climate change adaptation.
The launch event for ARCC took place in Birmingham on 5 May 2009. For more details about the launch event, click here.
Institution Environment Reports
Following on from the success of the Energy from Waste report, in 2009 the environment theme will be delivering three major ground-breaking reports:
Climate Change: Adapting to the Inevitable?
A report that combines specially commissioned climate modelling work from the University of East Anglia, the broad international engineering knowledge of ARUP and the professional insight and technical expertise of the Institution to focus on an engineering response to long-term adaptation needs.
Read the Adaptation Report.
Geo-Engineering: giving us time to act
This report argues that geo-engineering could be another potential component in our approach to climate change that could provide the world with extra time to decarbonise the global economy.
Read the Geo-engineering report.
Mitigation, Adaptation and Geo-engineering: have we lost the battle?
With only four decades to go, the UK is already losing the climate change mitigation battle. The greenhouse gas emission targets set by the Government require a rate of reduction that has never been achieved by even the most progressive nations in the world. The Institution’s report, Climate Change: have we lost the battle? argues that if the UK is realistically going to reach an outcome equivalent to a reduction of 80% by 2050, we need to start mapping out an alternative solution using all engineering methods possible and not only relying on mitigation.
Read the Climate Change report.