cc: Aishath-Farhath.Ali@uea.ac.uk, M.Andersson@uea.ac.uk, H.Aplesiasfika@uea.ac.uk, J.Barichivich@uea.ac.uk, R.Bellamy@uea.ac.uk, J.Bevan@uea.ac.uk, Sebastian.Blake@uea.ac.uk, Dave.Brooks@uea.ac.uk, Z.Buys@uea.ac.uk, Zhenxing.Chen@uea.ac.uk, Z.Dai@uea.ac.uk, K.Devitt@uea.ac.uk, Jane.Dickinson@uea.ac.uk, F.Duffill@uea.ac.uk, A.Elvidge@uea.ac.uk, F.Farrashkhiabani@uea.ac.uk, E.Foster@uea.ac.uk, E.Gasson@uea.ac.uk, J.Graugaard@uea.ac.uk, Christopher.Harris@uea.ac.uk, Rebecca.Hart@uea.ac.uk, Catherine.Harvey@uea.ac.uk, K.Hopkin@uea.ac.uk, N.Hughes@uea.ac.uk, S.Hughes1@uea.ac.uk, George.Knights@uea.ac.uk, S.Kung@uea.ac.uk, A.Lazzarotto@uea.ac.uk, R.Leavett@uea.ac.uk, Zhenjiang.Li@uea.ac.uk, Shiou-Yu.Lin@uea.ac.uk, Wenshi.Lin@uea.ac.uk, L.Liu2@uea.ac.uk, C.Lohvongpaiboon@uea.ac.uk, C.Luther@uea.ac.uk, Jie.Mao@uea.ac.uk, J.Marunye@uea.ac.uk, D.Masisi@uea.ac.uk, S.Mayilswami@uea.ac.uk, Donal.Mccoy@uea.ac.uk, Y.Minegaki@uea.ac.uk, Q.Mohamad@uea.ac.uk, Norni.Mohamed@uea.ac.uk, R.Nitta@uea.ac.uk, D.Nose@uea.ac.uk, Sarinah.Omar@uea.ac.uk, S.Osman@uea.ac.uk, Kimberley.Parsons@uea.ac.uk, A.Pattinson@uea.ac.uk, L.Petit@uea.ac.uk, Jennifer.Price@uea.ac.uk, M.Raven1@uea.ac.uk, C.Rison@uea.ac.uk, Lucy.Rose@uea.ac.uk, H.Shah@uea.ac.uk, J.Shiv@uea.ac.uk, G.Simpkins@uea.ac.uk, X3022846@uea.ac.uk, S.Sritharan@uea.ac.uk, A.Swami@uea.ac.uk, O.Tang@uea.ac.uk, S.A.Taylor1@uea.ac.uk, R.Wonderen@uea.ac.uk, E.Wan@uea.ac.uk, Jinglu.Wang@uea.ac.uk, Mingming.Wang@uea.ac.uk, Adam.Williams@uea.ac.uk, Lezann.Wright@uea.ac.uk, Sheng.Yang@uea.ac.uk, Shu.Zhu@uea.ac.uk, Barnaby.Andrews@uea.ac.uk, R.Baldwin@uea.ac.uk, J.Hodbod@uea.ac.uk, d.cobb@uea.ac.uk, p.simmons@uea.ac.uk, p.jones@uea.ac.uk, K.Briffa@uea.ac.uk, c.Peres@uea.ac.uk, Jason.Chilvers@uea.ac.uk, S.O-neill@uea.ac.uk, d.benson@uea.ac.uk, S.Dorling@uea.ac.uk date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:48:59 +0000 from: ian renfrew subject: Possible MSc projects with Global Action Plan to: Alan Bond Dear MSc students, I've just been contacted by Global Action Plan, who have worked with ENV faculty recently to carry out research projects. They are keen to recruit some MSc students for 2 internships. Details below. If anyone has not yet chosen a topic, then read the following and please contact Global Action Plan directly. They seemed very keen to get a good student - free lunches even! regards Ian Renfrew (Acting Director MSc programmes) ------------------- 2 Internships: Evaluating Pro Environmental Behaviour Change Programmes. Global Action Plan run engaging and practical behaviour change programmes based on socio psychological literature on behaviour change and what we know works over 15 years experience. We run these in communities (EcoTeams: groups of 6-8 households together), Schools (Action in Schools), hard to reach communities (Evergreen: Residential Associations), Small and Medium Enterprises (SmartWorks) and Corporations (Environmental Champions). For more information please see our website. We have been measuring the waste usage, energy usage and waste production throughout all of our programmes. Recently we have added Psychometrics to our measurement process too but we still do not feel we are capturing our programme impacts in the most efficient and robust way. We are looking for an MSc student interested in doing research which would suit their interests and dissertation requirements to evaluate our evaluation procedure, and produce a small internal report for us on how we might measure our programmes more effectively in the future. We believe they are having much greater impacts than we are capturing, and we would like to know how we might capture these impacts better. We would seek to begin this work immediately. It would involve working across all of our teams, and a few of our programmes, with plenty of desktop based research into measuring methods, and some practical work going out and seeing how our programmes actually run. It may also involve speaking and meeting measurement tool providers (e.g. industrial scale smart meters) to establish costs potential deals for GAP. This is a rough outline and can be tailored towards a student’s interests. There are two positions available for this work, with students able to specialise in the programmes which most closely match their interests. Volunteering Opportunities: There are a number of voluntary jobs also available but which do not warrant a full intership or dissertation but that again hopefully provide the student with valuable insight and networking opportunities into the environmental field in the UK. Converting behaviours into carbon savings figures: (Estimated work: 2 hrs per behaviour Max; ideally less) Please find attached the EcoTeams Questionnaire…The relevant section for your work will be the actions and behaviours sections. Ideally I would like a carbon figure for each of these behaviours on the assumption it at least partially replaces an old behaviour. Realistically this will not be possible but it would be great to be able to say we have thoroughly researched each one of these behaviours and found the carbon equivalent data for every behaviour that data exists for. The smartest way to do this will be to speak to Sam Balch first. He is our research and development manager, and has been working on doing this for a while by taking data from the AMEE database and matching it to our EcoTeams survey. He already has some carbon convertibles for certain behaviours, and the first job would be for you to create a spreadsheet which simply copies of all of the actions and behaviours from the survey, and matches the carbon reduction figures and assumptions along side them for easy presentation. He only has a few, and you would have the job of finding the rest and making the assumptions based on what he’s already done. Clearly this will be difficult as it depends on what the alternative behaviour was and how much the person has improved on it. What we will need to do is make some assumptions and then when we are reporting on these we can state the assumptions and report transparently. For example if we are considering composting….then we should assume that before composting the organic waste was being thrown in the regular bin and going to land fill. Hopefully there are figures out there for this behaviour. But what if the person has “Improved” what they are doing rather than simply started the behaviour. What do we assume then; do we assume a 20% improvement i.e. 20% more organic waste is being sent to compost than before, or should it be 10% or 50%. I would like you to use your own initiative as this will be different for each behaviour. Please state the assumptions you are making and why. So for example: Putting the lid on the pot when I am cooking: “Started this behaviour”: A carbon figure for this would assume simply a 100% switch that they do it all the time now and they are an average UK household. Putting the lid on the pot when I am cooking: “Improved on this behaviour”: A carbon figure for this might assume they were already doing it half of the time and now they are doing it 75% of the time, meaning we use 25% of the carbon reduction figure as it is an improvement of 25%. Desktop based research on Industrial Smart Meters: (Estimated time: 32 hours/ 4 days Max) Google “industrial smart meters” for a start and have a look at what’s out there to give you an idea of costing and capabilities of systems. If need be give the companies a call to ask questions about suitability for what we want to use it for. We want to use it essentially for measuring the energy usage in schools, so that we might pick up where our programmes are having an impact. This means they would have to be easy to install and then remove so we can take them with us as we move around schools. They may have to be able to do deal with multiple main electricity points and be able to aggregate or simultaneously record multiple inputs (dependant on cost) other wise we will have to report each one separately which is also possible but means having more of them. Ideally they would measure and record in real time meaning would could see night time energy usage and day time energy usage etc and pick up hot spots of energy use. And their cost would need to be reasonable. Remember we are a charity when asking about prices so that often we will get charity prices or discounts. Once you’ve got a good idea of what’s out there, it might be worth calling Andrew Ford who knows a lot about energy in schools below. He knows about GAP Schools programme as we’ve worked with him before and explain what you have found and see if he thinks it is fit for purpose of it there is a better way of doing things. Andrew Ford Energy Projects Officer Energy Saving Trust Advice Centre for London Green Living Centre Islington Council 222 Upper Street, London, N1 1XR t : 020 7527 2022 f : 020 7527 2332 Alternative contact: Energy Centre 020 7527 2121 Whilst working on the schools research, if you do happen to speak to schools etc, do please be open to giving them information about our schools programme and putting them in touch with me so that we might pursue running programmes with any interested parties. International Data Collation: GAP EcoTeams (Estimated Workload 4 hrs/ .5 of a day as and when information comes in) As I mentioned I will be talking in Copenhagen in the lead up to the COP15 negotiations later this year. I will be presenting findings from our Ecoteams programme across all of our international partners and have recently requested they send me their reports and data. It would be great if I had someone to bring this together for me and perhaps even create a visual that easily shows the programme impacts across all of our international partners. I am waiting on data from India and Spain this week and will forward this onto any interested parties to work on. Transporting our Interactive displays in an EcoFriendly way: (Estimated workload 16hrs/ 2 days Max) At the moment we move all of our interactive displays (Eco Driving Simulator/ Energy bike/ Carbon Gym) by public transport as we simply assumed that public transport was the most enviro friendly way to get these to events. A debate at the pub last night with the director, Gav (who you met yesterday re the EcoDriving Simulator) and some others led us to question that assumption however. A typical journey for any one of our Interactive displays involves a taxi ride followed by a train ride, followed by another taxi ride. We are wondering if there is perhaps a place for an extremely eco efficient vehicle to be driving these things to events instead. Calculations to figure this out would probably involve 5 scenarios of a typical journey for our simulators that are representative of their travelling. Across these 5 scenarios public transport (taxi and train) would be compared against a range of vehicles….you would need the dimensions of the interactive displays to ensure they would fit in whichever vehicle that is chosen. I’m certain they would fit in a small van, but perhaps they would even squeeze into a car with drop down seats opening the possibilities to far more efficient vehicles. Or indeed would electric vehicles fit our purpose, be affordable, and be able to do the distances required. Ideally a very small report at the end would give us the appropriate option and cost for each type of journey along with associated cost as a comparison against our current methods. This would look something like: Event Location Best Option Comparison London event: Hybrid = 1KG of Carbon from return trip of less than 30 miles and cost £20. Compared to return Taxi of 5Kg and £25 Outside London short distance = Small Van 3Kg for 60 mile return trip and cost £25 Compared to return taxi of 4 miles plus train of 25 miles return at £40 total. Long distance = Train and Taxi as before. Costs would assume the attendance of 2 Eco Educators along with the interactive display e.g. 2 train fares at economy rate etc. This would allow us to always transport our displays in the most environmentally friendly way possible; which we are not sure we are doing at the moment. We would also be looking for companies who would help us fulfil these travel plans e.g. green tomato cabs run Hybrid Taxi’s in London and I’m sure there must be Electrical Hire vans, otherwise there are some quite efficient vehicles within the StreetCar car club company. OK, That’s all. I’m sorry it’s so lengthy. I wanted to be clear about the projects. Please do contact me directly if you are interested in gaining some experience working with us. Scott Davidson Behaviour Change Researcher Global Action Plan – creating the climate for change 8 Fulwood Place, London WC1V 6HG t - 020 7025 3960| f - 020 7831 6244 | e - scott.davidson@globalactionplan.org.uk | w -http://www.globalactionplan.org.uk Winners: the Ashden award for sustainable energy Finalists: Creating the Future Awards Do you really need to print this email? 80% of emails are printed unnecessarily...save resources, be happy! Internet Communications are not secure. Global Action Plan accepts no legal responsibility for the content of this email or liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by it. Views presented are those of the author only. This email (including attachments) is subject to copyright, all information in it is confidential, and it is only intended for use by the addressee. ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ -- Dr Ian A. Renfrew Reader in Climate System Dynamics School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich, NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom Room: 2.33 tel: 01603 592557 fax: 01603 591327 email: i.renfrew@uea.ac.uk http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/e046/home.htm ----------------------------------------------