Climate and Sustainability at the College of Science & Engineering
The pressures of environmental change give us new responsibilities as scientists, mathematicians and engineers. The links from this page take you to examples of the huge effort underway in the College to tackle the emerging problems and to understand how our environment interacts with us. We hope this will stimulate you to deepen your understanding of what’s possible and, perhaps, to join us in making a positive change to our relationship with our planet.
Climate
ECCI is an inclusive hub for researchers, policy makers, businesses, students and educators. As such the ECCI community includes agencies who work to tackle climate change and experienced climate practitioners working on externally funded challenge driven projects.
The centre works with a wide range of partners to provide the critical interdisciplinary knowledge to deliver sustainable landscape management and policy development, with an emphasis on forested landscape mosaics.
The Edinburgh Earth Initiative is our response to the climate crisis. Drawing on strengths from across the University and working with our global partners, we will deliver ambitious solutions for a future that effectively manages and mitigates the effects of climate change.
The Earth and Planetary Science Research Institute is united by a desire to understand the physical processes, properties and history of the planet on a fundamental level, which continue to shape the world in which we live.
The Geography and the Lived Environment Institute is comprised of geographers and environmental scientists who study the social, cultural, political, economic and physical processes that create and reshape the world.
The Global Change Research Institute is a grouping of over 200 researchers whose overarching mission is to understand past, present and future changes in the Earth system, and to inform mitigation strategies for future change.
The Science for Sustainability Hub
The Science for Sustainability Hub spans disciplinary boundaries and nucleates activity across research, industry, government and civil society to pioneer technological solutions and build a new vision for an equitable, inclusive and sustainable future for people and the planet.
Through teaching programmes, research and collaboration with businesses and administrators, CFI will co-create a powerful network of experts who can tackle issues from different and unconventional perspectives, gathering many hands to solve the problems arising from the complexity of infrastructure systems.
The ERPEs world-leading and internationally recognised researchers push boundaries to create innovation, producing novel products, companies and technologies that have established Edinburgh as a research hub driving societal change.
The ARCHER2 supercomputer is an HPE Cray EX supercomputer. It will provide a step-change in performance for climate researchers, allowing them to run larger, more complex simulations than ever before.
The Centre for Adapting to Changing Environments (ACE) is a leading centre in multidisciplinary research bringing together the diverse expertise needed to address how populations can adapt to our rapidly changing world.
Oceans
Conceived for cutting edge academic research into wave and tidal current interactions, and also used to help fixed and floating offshore wind and the marine operations that support all offshore renewables.
In 2020 St Abbs Marine Station signed a five-year partnership with the University of Edinburgh to ensure more sustainable use of the seas and marine ecosystems. As partners, we will address a range of scientific and societal challenges and enhance interdisciplinary marine research, teaching and innovation.
- Video: Atlantic adventures with ATLAS
- Academics unplugged ATLAS talk
Between 2016 and 2020 the ATLAS project worked across the North Atlantic to improve our understanding of complex deep-sea ecosystems in a changing ocean. Watch Professor Murray Roberts' talk on 'understanding deep-sea ecosystems at ocean basin scale'.
Energy
SCCS is the largest Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) research group in the UK, providing a single point of coordination for CCS research, from capture engineering and geoscience to social perceptions and environmental impact through to law and petroleum economics.
The Institute for Energy Systems, is one of seven multi-disciplinary research institutes within the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. Led by Professor Vengatesan Venugopal there are seven integrated research areas involving 26 academic staff, 28 research staff and around 70 postgraduate students.
The ECFP mission is to advance formulation and composite design and manufacture through scientific understanding of complex fluids. We endeavour to improve product performance, introduce innovation and help companies switch to more sustainable resources and more efficient processes.
FASTBLADE is an industry-academic partnership between Babcock International Group (Babcock) and the University to build a 75-tonne structural reaction frame. Launched in May 2022, it is initially being used for lifetime fatigue testing of renewable energy tidal turbine blades, using pioneering technology which will be the first of its kind in the world.
Education
Education and training
From free short online courses to degrees, we have a wide variety of options if you are looking to study in the area of climate and sustainability:
Full list of our sustainability-related university programmes
Climate Solutions short course
Learning for a Sustainable Future short course
Climate Change: Carbon Capture and Storage short course
Observing Earth from Space short course
Nitrogen: A Global Challenge (English) short course
Impact
How downplaying green benefits could boost plant-based meat
Plant-based meat sales are stagnating. To get it on more plates - and take pressure off the environment - does it need a rebrand that ignores its eco-friendly credentials?
How a basic conservation income won’t cost the Earth
Giving money unconditionally to people living in conservation areas like the Amazon rainforest might cost trillions, but it could still be a shrewd investment.
How soils changed life on Earth
Soil has only existed for less than 10% of our planet’s history and around 500 million years ago, it was key to making the Earth habitable.
Calling time on greenwashing
If international standards for measuring greenhouse gas emissions are flawed, what does this mean for companies and institutions trying to reduce their footprint?