Reducing emissions

Emissions reduction is central to climate mitigation and must include innovations in every sector of society to achieve net-zero emissions. As the world warms, environmental changes - such as increased emissions from wetlands and melting permafrost - alter the earth's ability to manage to greenhouse gas concentrations. There is an urgent need for society to get off fossil fuels and limit deforestation.

The challenges related to halting the rise and prompting the fall of emissions remain significant. There is a lot of research in emissions reduction being undertaken across the University of Cambridge in many groups, including the development of fossil fuel free energy sources, energy efficiency schemes, and new approaches to land use.  

Our work includes supporting the NERC funded Landscape Regeneration Project. One of the key areas one of our collaborators is focusing on involves determining optimal strategies for management of water table depth in agricultural settings. This is because the release of carbon dioxide and methane from fields is a key challenge in terms of emissions, and yet these gases behave differently as a function of water table depth.

We are also supporting work on emissions reduction from the built environment. We are actively involved with the Laing O'Rourke Centre for Construction Engineering.  Our Director, Shaun Fitzgerald, is Chair of the Management Board for the Laing O’Rourke Centre for Construction Engineering, and one of the key themes in the research is sustainability. One of Shaun’s previous research and applied engineering areas is natural and hybrid ventilation in buildings, and area which is being continued by the Dyson Professor of Fluid Mechanics in Cambridge.

For more information on the vast array of work on emissions reductions across the University of Cambridge, please visit Cambridge Zero.