COP28 starting later this month will respond to the Global Stocktake, an assessment of the world’s progress on action towards meeting the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C.
It’s not looking great – the synthesis report released in September estimates that current policies set us on a trajectory to a 2.5C rise by the end of the century. Meanwhile, we see extreme weather events causing damage, disruption and death around the world.
Here in the UK, the Climate Change Committee has voiced concern that the country is unlikely to meet its 2030 emissions targets, also noting that the policy gap has grown since the prime minister’s counterproductive rolling back of some decarbonisation policies.
Zooming in to the HE sector: despite reductions over the last decade, UK universities’ emissions are still estimated at around 15 MtCO2e, the size of a small country.
