CRed - The Community Carbon Reduction Project at UNC-Chapel Hill

The Institute for the Environment’s field site in International Energy Policy and Environmental Assessment, located in Cambridge, England, focuses on strategies to make that city the first in England to reach the ambitious goal of a 60% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. The field site operates primarily during the summers, with students attending from the various environmental programs at UNC-Chapel Hill. The carbon reduction project is in collaboration with the Community Carbon Reduction (CRed) program housed at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

The reduction takes place in several stages:

1. The sectors of energy use in the city are identified: Residential, Business, Industry, Transport, Municipal Operations, University and Colleges
2. For each sector (e.g. Residential), a carbon dioxide inventory is created showing the contribution of that sector to the overall city emissions, and the contribution of each form of energy use in that sector to the total emissions from that sector (e.g. the fraction of emissions from Residential due to space heating)
3. Strategies are developed to reduce the emissions from each sector and energy use, focusing attention on strategies that would yield the greatest reduction in carbon dioxide emissions (e.g. loft insulation in existing homes)
4. Individuals or institutions are identified for each sector to serve as the points of contact between CRed and that sector, and who take responsibility for helping move reductions forward in that sector (e.g. developers in the case of the Residential sector)
5. Resources are created to help these individuals or institutions implement the strategies (e.g. information on tax credits, or providing free energy audits)
6. The carbon dioxide emissions inventory is updated every several years to measure progress towards the emissions reduction goal

We believe that such a city-wide approach linked to constant monitoring of the emissions inventory for the sectors and for the city as a whole is essential in ensuring that limited resources and public attention are directed towards reaching the reduction goals most efficiently. The CRed web tool is ideal for keeping track of an entire community, and so we have adopted it as the basis for our "accounting system". The same web tool provides a way to keep community partners in contact with each other, and acts as a conduit through which helpful advice can be provided to those partners as they search for carbon reduction strategies. Because of these features, we have adopted it as the basis for our own projects in Cambridge, also using it to link our efforts to those of other organizations such as the Energy Saving Trust that have related programs and can also provide very useful advice.

The CRed in Cambridge project is now entering its fourth year, with four suites of summer projects completed. Learn about any of these through the links below:

• Assessing the carbon dioxide implications of the proposed North West development by the University of Cambridge
• Developing the carbon dioxide inventories for the City Council municipal operations and the entire City of Cambridge
• Developing strategies for carbon dioxide reduction in selected sectors of energy use in Cambridge
• Building carbon dioxide inventories for the Colleges to supplement those obtained for other energy sectors in the city