Jane Davidson talks at TippingPoint about the challenges of planning future energy use in Wales. Her recent work at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David has looked at ways in which important issues of sustainability and energy can be introduced effectively across the undergraduate curriculum.

Interview Transcript

'Innovation in Wales'

I’m Jane Davidson, I’m Director of INSPIRE, which is the Institute for Sustainable Practice, Innovation and Resource Effectiveness at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The University of Wales Trinity Saint David operates across Lampeter, Carmarthen, Swansea, a small campus in Cardiff and a business school in London, and we also have two further education colleges as part of the university group in Carmarthen and in Ceredigion. So we have a reach from Aberystwyth to Swansea, with a base in Cardiff and a base in London.

'Energy and the Welsh planning system'

I spent twelve years in the National Assembly for Wales and eleven of those I spent as a minister. Latterly, from 2007 to 2011, I was the Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing, and that included climate change, energy and planning. So I became particularly interested in energy: in the context of energy efficiency, because I had the responsibility for fuel poverty initiatives; in the context of low carbon building, because I had the responsibility for planning; and we focussed on really increasing the environmental requirements in the context of the planning system in Wales.

'Energy-efficient campuses'

One of my particular interests is how you systemically change an organisation so that it is more sustainable in everything it does. So in the context of the university, for example, it’s how we make our campuses more energy efficient, how we recycle more, how we change the curriculum, how we change our partnerships with others in the area, and how, by doing all of that, looking at campus and curriculum and community, we change the culture of the organisation and we create students with new graduate attributes, students who will be creative and critical problem solvers, students who will be active citizens.

I think energy has an enormous amount to play in that. In our context, in the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, because we have recently merged three different universities into one, two colleges with three universities, what we have is very different campuses which have not been recording, generally, issues around energy. So what I’m trying to do is to work with others on ensuring that we make our campuses energy efficient, that we appoint, for the first time, an energy manager, that we actually can make what are predicted, some £88,000 of annual savings, as a result of becoming more energy efficient; but that we also make that part of our engagement with students, so that they see the culture of the organisation is not to waste any energy, and also to encourage them on a track that encourages them to save energy for the future. So I think there’s a huge opportunity, particularly in universities, for people to take action as the staff of a university, but engage with students as well so it becomes part of how we face what otherwise will be a pretty bleak future, if we don’t together look at the fact that energy is a problem, it’s going to become a bigger problem but it’s one that we can only solve together.

'The future of energy-efficiency at the university'

In the short term what we’ve done in the university is set ourselves some targets, and they are a small number of quite ambitious targets. So, in the context of the curriculum, for example, we are looking at opportunities to introduce sustainability right throughout the curriculum. Now in our School of Natural and Built Environment, for example, in our new School of Architecture, in our Faculty of Engineering, all those places will be looking at a much greater focus on issues around energy. But we also want to work in our community relationships with local authorities and others and support community energy initiatives. So I can see in both the short and medium term our looking at working with the student body, with local authorities and others, to start demonstrating different kinds of community usage. I can see in the medium to longer term our then developing new and renewable sources of energy to fund the university in partnership with others. We are extremely privileged, and it’s very exciting at the moment, to be located very close to the new tidal lagoon project in Swansea. We are hoping that if it is possible that we will be able to potentially use tidal lagoon energy and jointly develop an initiative whereby our use of their energy and our support for their technology becomes part of the message. If Swansea develops the first tidal lagoon in the world, it gives us a huge opportunity to demonstrate there are different ways of harnessing energy and different ways of creating a better future.

'The future of Planet Earth: Optimist or pessimist?'

I’m an optimist in some ways and a pessimist in others. I’m an optimist in the fact that humans are endlessly innovative and I think there will be all sorts of technological changes, not least tidal lagoon type of technology. New battery technology I’m absolutely convinced that will come in that will enable more cars to become electric, that will enable more homes to live off grid etc. But I’m pessimistic that the public appetite for energy change is not there, and I think that that dialogue about how we engage with the public over their energy use is the one in which at the moment I’m pessimistic, and yet I do believe it could relatively easily be turned around. But that is about policy makers and government and activists working together. It’s an absolutely critical equation, because people, if they’re going to be asked to change their behaviour, they have to believe that they’re changing their behaviour for a reason and that the government is absolutely determined to deliver on whatever that reason is. So if the government can set a vision of a future where there is hope because we’re tackling the climate issues, because we’re bringing down our carbon use, and demonstrates unequivocally that it’s taking all the action it can take in partner with other governments to deliver on that, then I’m optimistic that we can then achieve individual behaviour change to support that.

What doesn’t work is if government says one thing and does another. Then, of course, the population at large does not feel that they have any responsibility to engage in the debate unless they are already concerned. Why don’t we reward energy efficiency?

I think the question that I’d like to ask at the moment is a question to the government of all parts of the UK: Why don’t they offer a reward system through council tax for homes that become energy efficient? It has struck me in the last couple of days, while we’ve been at this exciting TippingPoint conference, that we have to be innovative in our ideas and we have to be very clear about the aim of those ideas if we’re going to make good policy. And this seems to me a simple idea that could have huge effect. Because if, right throughout the UK, every house was encouraged to become more energy efficient, and if their becoming more energy efficient was rewarded through the council tax system, that engages every single citizen in the UK in this debate. And I think that if all governments were to do that, then we would see a dramatic reduction in energy use, we’d see a dramatic reduction in the waste of energy we currently have, and I think also we’d be able to identify those who are most vulnerable to benefit from other support to help for their houses to become more energy efficient too, because every single policy around energy must also have a counter-side, which looks after the vulnerable.

[End of Interview]