What will Higher Education look like in a 2050 -80% +2c 450ppm world?

The story of emissions

Our various drives towards efficiency in general may have multiple motivations. It may be that we want to save money (use less), increase productivity (produce more), reduce carbon emissions (lower our negative impact) or more usually, it is a combination of these and other influencing factors. For universities, a significant driving factor is the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme.

Last year, the UK Climate Change Act set out

A legally binding target of at least an 80 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, to be achieved through action in the UK and abroad. Also a reduction in emissions of at least 34 percent by 2020. Both these targets are against a 1990 baseline.

The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme will be introduced in April 2010 and is “central to the UK’s strategy for improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.” Very simply put, the CRC is a tool to encourage energy efficiency through a ‘cap and trade’ market mechanism. Central to the scheme is a League Table which will not only serve as a basis for recycling carbon credits, but will provide a publicly available ranking of energy efficiency performance. The scheme therefore creates two drivers toward energy efficiency in participating organisations: a reputational incentive in addition to an increased cost of carbon.

So, from April, measures will be enforced to ensure relatively large UK organisations (including universities) produce 80% fewer carbon emissions by 2050, compared to 1990 levels.  The figure of 80% reflects our current, generally agreed scientific understanding of what the UK must do to help stabilise worldwide carbon emissions and ensure that the global temperature does not increase by any more than +2c by 2100.  80% is the UK and many other developed countries’ obligation to ensure that the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere does not exceed 450ppm (parts per million of C02 equivalent) ((I recognise that the 450ppm figure is a political compromise and that Hansen et al. are advising a reduction to 350ppm. I use 450ppm here because that is the figure the CRC Scheme is using. For more information on 350 vs. 450, see 350 vs. 450: The Heart of the Matter)). Developing countries that already emit fewer emissions may continue to increase their emissions for a while longer in order to pursue economic growth and a better standard of living. However, by 2050, worldwide carbon emissions, we are advised, should be stabilised at 450ppm.

2050 is the deadline

80% is the necessary reduction in emissions

+2c is the maximum ‘safe’ increase in global temperature

450ppm is the maximum ‘safe’ level of carbon in the atmosphere

Last month, the Committee on Climate Change, published a progress report which showed that UK emissions have fallen at just 0.6% per year between 2003-7. This is in contrast to what the report says we should be doing (currently legislated at -1.7%) and need to be doing, which is reducing our annual emissions by 2.6% to meet our intended carbon budget.

UK reductions in emissionsThe UK reported to the UN that between 1990 and 2004, we reduced our carbon emissions by 6% ((Prosperity without Growth? – The transition to a sustainable economy, p.51)) However, the way this figure is calculated ignores the fact that the UK has ‘lowered’ its emissions almost entirely through exporting our industry. More recently, we have reported a 15% reduction to the UN, but according to Dieter Helm, government advisor and Prof. of Energy Policy at the University of Oxford, the reduction does not take into account our emissions from aviation, shipping, overseas trade and tourism. ((UK’s official CO2 figures an illusion – study. Source: Too Good to be True? The UK’s Climate Change Record [PDF])) When these factors are taken into account, our 15% reduction is actually a 19% increase in carbon emissions since 1990. That is, around half of our energy footprint occurs overseas so it doesn’t count. Yet despite this, only last week it was reported that thanks to the UK and a few other countries, the EU as a whole is ‘on track‘ to meet its 2012 Kyoto target commitments. Not surprisingly, this shifting of our industry and emissions to other countries has, for example, meant that “10.03–26.54% of China’s annual CO2 emissions are produced during the manufacture of export goods destined for foreign consumers.” ((Yan, Y.F., Yang, L.K., China’s foreign trade and climate change: A case study of CO2 emissions. Energy Policy (2009), doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2009.09.025)).

This is the first story I want to highlight. We tell ourselves that our emissions are decreasing, all the while they are increasing. Helm calls it an ‘illusion’ and that “focusing on consumption rather than production of emissions is the only intellectually and ethically sound solution.” ((West blamed for China’s rapid increase in CO2)) If we are to focus on consumption, rather than production, there is another story to tell about energy, but I will leave that for another time.

Towards a ‘resilient education’ ?

The 2050, -80%, +2c, 450ppm scenario is increasingly seen by some scientists as conservative. In 2006, Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre, said that a 90% cut is required to stabilise at +2c, 70% of which should be achieved by 2030. ((Living Within a Carbon Budget, 2006)) A conference in September at the University of Oxford concentrated on the implications of a +4c rise in temperatures:

The immediacy and scale of the reductions necessary to avoid anything below 4°C, and indeed the human and ecosystem implications of living with 4°C, are beyond anything we have been prepared to countenance. Understanding the implications of 4°C and higher temperatures is essential if global society is to make informed choices about the balance between “extreme” rates of mitigation and “extreme” impacts and adaptation costs.

Along these lines, the Tyndall Centre recently published a paper which concluded that:

It is increasingly unlikely any global agreement will deliver the radical reversal in emission trends required for stabilization at 450 ppmv carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Similarly, the current framing of climate change cannot be reconciled with the rates of mitigation necessary to stabilize at 550 ppmv CO2e and even an optimistic interpretation suggests stabilization much below 650 ppmv CO2e is improbable. ((Reframing the climate change challenge in light of post-2000 emission trends, Anderson, K & Bows, A, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A (2008) 366, 3863–3882 doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0138 Published online 29 August 2008))

In a discussion of their scenarios, they state that to stabilise at 450ppm, global energy related emissions should peak in 2015 (five years earlier than the IPCC report) and rapidly decline by 6-8% per year between 2020-40, with complete decarbonisation soon after 2050.

While this analysis suggests stabilizing at 450 ppmv is theoretically possible, in the absence of an unprecedented step change in the global economic model and the rapid deployment of successful CO2 scrubbing technologies, 450 ppmv is no longer a viable stabilization concentration. The implications of this for climate change policy, particularly adaptation, are profound. The framing of climate change policy is typically informed by the 2C threshold; however, even stabilizing at 450 ppmv CO2e offers only a 46 per cent chance of not exceeding 2C (Meinshausen 2006). As a consequence, any further delay in global society beginning down a pathway towards 450 ppmv leaves 2C as an inappropriate and dangerously misleading mitigation and adaptation target. ((ibid p. 3877))

A peak in emissions by 2015, even 2020, has profound implications not only on the way we use energy, but also our economic model of growth, both of which I intend to address in future blog posts. Personally, as an individual whose glass is usually half-full, I am deeply affected by the literature on energy and climate change. I wonder if there has ever been an equivalent body of research that details the possible decline of civilisation within just a few generations. As I read the reports, I am reminded that we are discussing a date that my two-year old daughter may live to experience and certainly my grandchildren will. Indeed, I hope that I will live past the threshold of 2050, all of which makes me realise that this is something I have a responsibility towards. It is within my grasp to effect change, in whatever small and possibly inconsequential way.

The Tyndall paper states that

Ultimately, the latest scientific understanding of climate change allied with current emission trends and a commitment to ‘limiting average global temperature increases to below 4C above pre-industrial levels’, demands a radical reframing of both the climate change agenda, and the economic characterization of contemporary society. ((ibid. 3880))

I am reminded of the quote below by George Monbiot, where he reflects on the power of individual action versus group action. It suggests to me that those of us working within Further and Higher Education are better positioned than many people to influence radical change. Many of you are academics and teachers who can draw this into your work. Many of us work closely with Snr. Management in large institutions and there are opportunities for both informal and formal discussion.  Most of us are able to advertise, to potentially thousands of people, ad hoc seminars and meetings where these issues can be discussed and campaigns co-ordinated. All of us, especially within the EdTech community, can begin to think about how to develop ‘resilient education’. That is, a pedagogy and curriculum that both encourages and fosters the radical change that is necessary as well as ensuring that the present depth, breadth and quality of education is sustainable in a future where there may be less abundance and freedom than we have become accustomed to.

Most environmentalists – and I include myself in this – are hypocrites … I would like to believe that the changes I suggest could be achieved by appealing to people to restrain themselves. But though some environmentalists, undismayed by the failure of the past forty years of campaigning, refuse to see it, self-enforced abstinence alone is a waste of time . . . I have sought to demonstrate that the necessary reduction in carbon emissions is – if difficult – technically and economically possible. I have not demonstrated that it is politically possible. There is a reason for this. It is not up to me to do so. It is up to you . . . The campaign against climate change is an odd one. Unlike almost all the public protests which have preceded it, it is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but also against ourselves. ((Heat: How to stop the planet from burning, Monbiot, G. 2007))

What will Higher Education look like in a 2050 -80% +2c 450ppm world?

Bill Rees: The Vulnerability and Resilience of Cities

A week or so ago, I came across a podcast of a keynote that Bill Rees gave at the Resilient Cities conference in Vancouver last month.  Bill Rees is a significant figure in the world of ecology not least because he originated the term ‘ecological footprint’ and co-invented the method by which it’s calculated.

It’s not often that I hear a presentation, keynote or talk that I’d want to share with people as widely as possible, but in this case I do. I think it will appeal to anyone concerned about climate change or peak oil, but I think it will (should?!) interest those of us who have a particular interest in technology as a solution to a problem. The problem in this case is catastrophic climate change and how cities both reflect and encapsulate the unsustainable societies we have created.  He discusses the self-reinforcing myths about technology that we perpetuate and the parasitic nature of cities and by extension, the developed world.

After listening to the podcast, I contacted Prof. Rees to ask him for the slides of his presentation. I then created the ‘slidecast’ below by syncing the audio with the slides. He appreciated this and is happy for it to be publicly available.

Throughout his keynote, he’s blunt about the state we’re in, (assuming the science is generally correct – and it has been so far). There are a few points he makes which I want to repeat here, for discussion, if nothing else.

  1. Climate change is a global problem (i.e. ultimately it can’t be traded away to other nations without still affecting us) and requires us to reduce carbon emissions in absolute terms by at least 80% before 2050. The reduction must be absolute. “Growing more efficiently does not address the problem. It merely makes us more efficiently unsustainable… If your ‘solution’ does not result in an absolute reduction  in energy and material consumption and waste production, then it is part of the problem.” (slide six)
  2. Modern cities are unsustainable, incomplete ecosystems. They are parasitic on the environment around them. The example he gives is Tokyo, which has an ecological footprint 4.3x greater than Japan. (slide 22)
  3. To stabilise temperatures at +4c by 2100, “the majority of OECD nations must begin to make draconian emission reductions soon (within a decade)… this will require a planned economic recession. (slide 28)
  4. However, a +4c rise in global temperatures will be catastrophic for much of the world (see map on slide 29).
  5. “Sustainability means giving up material growth in rich countries… There will be lifestyle changes. Get used to it.” (slide 31)

The last 20 minutes of the slidecast is an interview with Bill Rees where he discusses some of these issues in more detail.

Bill Rees isn’t alone in this view of the next few decades. There was a recent conference at Oxford University on the implications of +4c global temperatures and the MET office recently published a +4c climate map. If you follow developments closely, it does look like +4c is fast becoming the new +2c.

My interest here, in my work, is what the implications of a zero growth economy which requires draconian reductions in energy consumption and consequent emissions, means for the modern university.  Along the same lines of the unsustainable city, is the university in its current form unsustainable, too? What would a sustainable university, in absolute terms, look like? I’ll be thinking about this more over the next few months and writing down my ideas here. I welcome your thoughts and comments.

An energy crisis reading list

In the course of writing our GreenICT proposal, 2020 Vision: Thinking the unthinkable, I’ve read a large number of recent, good quality reports which provide ample research for the casual reader into Peak Oil and a related energy crisis. Perhaps some readers of this blog might be interested in learning more about this topic, so here are a few good places to start. If you know of other essential reports that I should include, please leave a comment.

Global Witness. Heads in the Sand (2009)

Bristol City Council. Building a Positive Future for Bristol After Peak Oil (2009)

Ofgem. Project Discovery – Energy Market Scenarios (2009)

Sustainable Development Commission. Prosperity without growth? The transition to a sustainable economy (2009)

UK Energy Research Centre. Global Oil Depletion – An assessment of the evidence for a near-term peak in global oil production (2009)

Welsh Local Government Association. Peak Oil and Energy Uncertainty (2009)

Chatham House. The Coming Oil Supply Crunch (2008)

David MacKay. Sustainable Energy – Without the hot air (2008)

The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre. Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis Report (2008)

Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security. The Oil Crunch: Securing the UK’s Energy Future (2008)

National Assembly for Wales. Peak Oil (2008)

International Energy Agency. World Energy Outlook – Executive Summary (2008)

Local Government Association. Volatile Times – Transport, Climate Change and the Price of Oil (2008)

Robert L. Hirsch. Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management (2005) + [Summary article]

Further resources (ODAC)

UPDATE: I’ve bundled these as a reading list which you can subscribe to by RSS. As I find more reports which are worth including, the reading list will be updated. You can grab the OPML file and the Atom feed, too. The source for the reading list is on delicious.

Thinking the unthinkable

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been dipping in and out of a bid that I am writing for JISC’s Greening ICT Programme. Those of you that follow me on Twitter will have seen me drop related tweets into the stream. I’ve been a bit nervous about doing so because they seem quite unrelated to my usual topics of conversation. Also, the subject matter can be pretty depressing and I worry that it might get on people’s nerves after a while. Oh, well. ((Somewhere in this post, I just want to say thanks to Richard Hall at DMU for encouraging me to write about this.))

Anyway, Peak Oil and a related energy crisis is something I’ve been interested in for a few years and is a topic I discuss regularly with friends face-to-face. Over the years, I’ve found that a lot of people aren’t interested; either because the consequences are just too depressing and/or because the the other ‘big issue’ of climate change is surely what we’re supposed to be worrying about now. (It is, but peak oil is likely to increase our consumption of alternative fossil fuels and therefore increase our carbon output). When we hear politicians questioned about an ‘energy crisis’, they say there is no crisis as long as we concentrate on a shift to the use of a mix of renewables and greater energy efficiency. I tend to disagree because…

The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking. ((The ‘Hirsch Report’: Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management (PDF). An often cited report commissioned by the US Department of Energy in 2005))

My bid to JISC comes under their ‘Small Scale Exploration Studies of Aspects of Green ICT’. It’s basically part research project and part scenario planning for HEIs and JISC to help them consider and plan for a long-term energy crisis. In JISC’s recent Strategy Review 2010-2012, they include a section on Priority Investment Areas, under which there is a sub-section called ‘Efficient and Effective Institutions‘. This includes providing ‘leadership on Green Computing and environmental sustainability‘ and ‘guidance on sustainable business models’. The sub-section is split into the Here and Now, On the Horizon (2-5 years), and Beyond the Horizon (3-10 years).

You’ll see from my comment, that when I read this, it occurred to me that JISC’s Strategy didn’t seem to recognise the possibility of disruptions to energy supply and significant spikes in the cost of energy over the next ten years. There’s the welcome and necessary acknowledgement of ‘Green Computing’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘efficiency’, but these don’t show an awareness of the fundamental problems that JISC’s Vision, Mission and Objectives would face in the event of an energy crisis.

“But what crisis?!?” I hear some of you say.

Well, there’s a lot of good research available from very credible sources. Today, the BBC and Telegraph reported on The Global Depletion Report,  from the Government-funded UK Energy Research Council. The report, launched today, is authoritative in that it’s a review of all the available evidence and arguments around the issues to-date. You only have to read the Executive Summary to find assertions which should cause us all significant concern.

It confirms what some of us have been reading for years, that global peak oil, the point where it becomes increasingly uneconomical to supply the oil that is demanded by the world, is imminent.

On the basis of current evidence we suggest that a peak of conventional oil production before 2030 appears likely and there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020.

The estimated range they give is actually between 2009 and 2031, but this doesn’t really matter because they quickly acknowledge that whether it’s already here, ten or twenty years away, the time frame is very tight when it comes to developing substitute fuels. Note that production of oil has actually plateaued since 2006.

Oil production

The report is up front in saying that it doesn’t discuss the consequences of peak oil or how we might tackle it:

The report does not investigate the potential consequences of supply shortages or the feasibility of different approaches to mitigating such shortages, although both are priorities for future research.

Which is why I hope JISC will recognise that this is a vital area of research they should be funding. I had no idea that this report was being prepared – there are plenty of others that offer the same conclusions – but it does seem very timely given JISC’s Greening ICT programme of funding. As I write in my bid outline:

As HEIs increasingly turn to ICT to enhance, support and deliver education, we ask the question: “What will happen to the provision of a technology enhanced education when the consumption of energy is restricted by recurring interruptions in supply and significant spikes in costs?”

In preparing my bid, I’ve obviously tried to pull a few key points together to convince the judges that this is worth pursuing. The first important point to get across is that oil is fundamental to the UK way of life. Pretty much every material benefit we enjoy can be traced back to the discovery, production, supply and exploitation of oil.  Not only does the supply of oil affect the supply of other forms of energy, as the graph below illustrates, it is used in the production of food, plastics, medicines, chemicals, lubricants… you name it and oil plays a part in the process somewhere.

Correlation of oil, coal and gas prices
Source: ODAC

The UK doesn’t rely on oil directly for the production of electricity. We get it from a mixture of coal (32%), gas (45%), nuclear (13%) and renewables (5.5%), importing a third of our gas requirements (this is expected to rise to around 85% of our requirements by 2020). However, we can see that when the price of oil rises, the price of other fuels and, in turn, electricity rises. We’ve all felt this over the last couple of years as we’ve seen consumer electricity prices rise.

As you can imagine, for an organisation the size of a university, rises in the price of electricity can have pretty large financial consequences. Typically, a HEI will tender for a fixed term contract of a couple of years to protect from unforeseen spikes in prices. This is good if the price is relatively low at the time of your tender, like now, but what if your HEI had to renew its electricity contract last year when prices were very high? Our institution, small by comparison with some, is forecasting an annual electricity spend of £1.2m in 2009/2010, up 13% on 2008/9. Even with planned reductions in efficiency and consumption, we’re only likely to be able to reduce the increase from 13% to a 6% increase in spending. Gas, fuel oil and other utilities are in addition to this, too. I might add that we underwent a ‘server consolidation’ exercise last year and most of our server infrastructure is now virtualised, so we’ve already taken steps towards greater energy efficiency there. Of course, there is more we can do.

So, I’ve touched on the cost implications of a peak oil scenario. The bottom line is that it will get much more expensive to run a university, despite increased efforts to reduce energy consumption and improve efficiency. What’s also worth pointing out is that as we increase the efficiency of things that consume energy, we only counteract that by using more energy in other ways. So far, innovation, growth and progress has ultimately required more energy than it’s saved ((An extensive UK government-funded report that discusses this in detail is Prosperity without growth? The transition to a sustainable economy)) which is partly why we’re using 11% more energy now than we were in 1990. ((Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics 2008)) This is a global problem to which, despite our best efforts, we are not immune. The OECD European countries are slowly reducing their consumption of oil over the last few years ((Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2009)), yet consumption pretty much everywhere else is on the rise and so the supply and cost implications still affect us all.

It’s interesting to note that four out of five recessions since 1970 have been preceded by a spike in the price of oil ((What’s the Real Cause of the Global Recession? For a more detailed analysis of historical recessions, see Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08)), as we saw last year when it hit $140/barrel.

Oil and Recessions

A report from Chatham House, last year (with a postscript in May 2009), concluded that a ‘crunch’ in the supply of oil (i.e. Peak Oil) is likely around 2013 with prices rising to around $200. They note that although recessions temporarily reduce demand for oil, the investment in energy efficiencies decreases during recession, too, and consumers prefer to hang on to less energy efficient appliances for longer because of income fears and unemployment, both of which contribute to an even greater demand for oil as the economy improves. In addition, investment in oil production drops during a recession, so innovation in improving oil extraction from existing reserves and discovery of new reserves is slowed. Any delay in the 2013 crunch which might have come from reduced demand is, according to Chatham House, negated.

It’s all quite complex, but happily (?), even for a lay observer like myself, there is sufficient comprehensible primary research and analysis that it’s not too difficult to get a decent picture of why an energy crisis is imminent and then consider the possible implications of such a scenario.

JISC have already funded work on Scenario Planning. They describe it as:

Scenario planning or scenario thinking is a strategic planning tool used to make flexible long-term plans. It is a method for learning about the future by understanding the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces affecting our world.

Many of the regular methods for strategy development assume that the world in three to ten years’ time will not significantly differ from that of today and that an organisation will have a large impact on its environment: they assume we can mould the future. Scenario planning however assumes that the future can differ greatly from what we know today.

Participants in Scenario Planning are encouraged to ‘think the unthinkable’ and ask the question, ‘what do we need to do (now) to be ready for all scenarios?’ This is what I propose to do, together with our Business Continuity Manager, Environmental Sustainability Manager, ICT Information Security Manager and other colleagues. We need to be thinking the unthinkable a lot right now and JISC’s Strategy for energy efficiency and sustainability needs to be informed by more than the climate change debate, important though it is.

We will seek to clarify the areas of uncertainty with respect to sustainable ICT by re-framing the provision of Higher Education within an energy crisis scenario that may arguably emerge in the next ten years – the reference period for JISC’s 2010-2012 Strategy.

While the policies to mitigate an energy crisis are often complementary to those required to combat global warming, the explicit policy-making in the UK for global ‘Peak Oil’ is nothing like as advanced as climate change, yet the threat to institutional business continuity is arguably greater in the short to medium term. The project will seek to effect attitudinal and behavioural change across the sector by developing scenarios for HEIs that examine the provision and continuity of education within the context of a long-term global energy crisis and suggest actions that JISC and the community may make to forecasts widely held by energy analysts though rarely acknowledged by government policy and strategy.

This is important to me, not least because the social implications are so great, but because increasingly I’m thinking that Educational Technologists are building a house of cards. We’re investing our occupation in developing a vision of the future which there is good evidence to suggest, won’t exist.

Everything is put at risk by peak oil. The manufacture of microchips and hard drives ((I ran across an article yesterday that describes how Intel Executives are trying to petition the US government to focus on the problem)), the transportation of ICT equipment to consumers, the reliable supply of electricity to power equipment. ((See also, the report by the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security, which includes Yahoo! and Virgin, among others.))  And it’s not just the obvious things that it will affect. I was discussing this with our Business Continuity Manager recently and she pointed out that if there is no power to the fire detection and alarm system, the building has to be evacuated. ((UPDATE: If they cannot be powered the Unviersity will either have to employ fire marshalls patroling buildings keeping a fire watch or when the battery power backups fail they will have to move to another building. In addition the University would have to go back to manual fire alarm e.g. bells, or an alternative manual warning system (e.g. person shouting being the last resort).)) Our UPS and backup batteries will allow for a graceful power down in some parts of the campus in the event of power cuts, but they won’t maintain business as normal. We had a three-day-week in the UK for three months in 1974, in order to conserve electricity. ‘South African style power cuts’ are forecast for the UK by 2015. What might be the government’s response to an energy crisis and how might it affect HEIs and our provision of an industrialised education? Some local authorities are beginning to take the issue into their own hands. ((See the The Welsh Local Government Association’s Peak Oil and Energy Uncertainty,  and ODAC’s Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis)) I think Educational Technologists should be leading on this in our sector, too.

Postscript

The bid to JISC was not funded though I quote their feedback below:

The main reason that your proposal was not approved for funding was that, although the evaluators thought the question you posed was of great importance and one that really ought to be answered, they decided that it really did not belong in a JISC funded call for projects around Green ICT.

For example, in the question of the overall fit to call, they said:

“Whilst in the general area of sustainability and a piece of useful work, its link to the specifics of the programme is a little thin. Not about Green IT but energy uses response.”

and

“The proposal is very left of afield (sic), it is a good idea and while I am sure it would be extremely interesting to pursue; it does not, I feel, fit within the scope of the call.”

and

“Think this is a very interesting bid that is likely to produce some very thought provoking outputs. It does seem to be slightly orthognonal to the issues described in the call but I think that it would be very useful despite that. It is very clearly written and makes its case well.”

Under the question of the workplan one said:

“Most of it seems well planned. However, I am concerned about only allowing a month for the survey and dissemination. The recruitment risk is significant. Dissemination is very strong.”

In terms of value for money concern was expressed at the high cost of the scenario planning exercise and it was felt overall to be not good value for money.

Overall Comments from the evaluators were:

1. A good proposal, of value to JISC but consideration needs to be given to its relationship to the programme. It appears to be out of scope.

2. Quite interesting as a proposal and possibly work that JISC might want to consider funding under a future call. However, this does not fit well within the current call.

3. An interesting and thought provoking bid that looks to be very useful I would like to give it an A but I have a number of minor concerns as discussed above.

…the evaluation panel came to the conclusion that it was too far from the scope of the programme that we could not fund it. However the panel wanted to pass on their encouragement to seek other sources of funding for this idea and keep in touch with JISC.