The Launch of the ‘Green’ Pledge Event

After an opening welcome and introductory remarks from our Executive Director Sue Betts, Sue then presented to the group giving an overview of the Linking London event ‘Collaboration not Competition’ Summit that took place on the 15th December and the work Linking London have done since including the ‘Green’ Pledge, its goals and the next steps.  

We then welcomed our panelist Professor Stefaan Simons, Emeritus Professor of Energy Systems at Brunel University London who gave an introduction and discussed his own work around this area. Stefaan highlighted Net Zero and green skills where the UK government has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and to achieve this we need the necessary skills. Due to the pandemic, Stefaan emphasised the importance of a recovery and reskilling highlighting the work of the London Recovery Board where green skills are a big focus. 

Andrew Jones from Linking London then went through some mapping of undergraduate and postgraduate “Green” provision in Greater London. Finding 6 HE providers offering 9 courses in this area for undergraduates and finding 15 HE providers and approximately 40 courses a significant increase for postgraduate courses. In terms of other qualifications such as level 3, Andrew found some courses that include green elements embedded within them and other short courses. Rose Taylor from Linking London then highlighted the repository where we have been collecting any useful resources and information on this topic such as recent publications, useful websites and the good practise work of our partners. This can be found on the partner area here. 

After a comfort break, attendees got together in three breakout groups to discuss the Green Pledge goals, how we progress them and what can be achieved by October. The group then reconvened and discussed the main points of their discussions. The full write up of the discussions can be found here.  

The event closed with discussing what next such as having follow up forums looking at the Pledge goals individually and pulling together what is already going on in each area and sharing information. The group were thanked for their contributions throughout the afternoon. 

Presentations, recording and discussion notes 

To view the recording, presentations and the discussion notes from the day please click here. This link will take you to the Linking London SharePoint Partners' Area. You must be a Linking London member to access this section of the website. If you do not have access, please email info@linkinglondon.ac.uk.