Protecting the planet

As home to around 25,000 students from all over the world, employer of around 12,000 staff, and a partner to our community in Edinburgh, we need to significantly reduce our own carbon footprint if we are to support national and global efforts to transition to low-carbon living.

We are working towards becoming a zero carbon university by 2040. We’re doing this by monitoring our energy consumption, encouraging staff and students to do what they can to conserve energy, and introducing low carbon and renewable energy technology wherever possible. For the carbon emissions that can’t be removed, we have committed to undertaking direct carbon sequestration – the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Find out more about our zero by 2040 strategy

Here at Edinburgh, we have an outstanding academic community, working across arts, humanities, science, medicine, and social science. We’ll need to draw from all that expertise to successfully mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Our Edinburgh Earth Initiative has been created to bring together research and teaching from across the disciplines that seeks to address the challenges posed by climate change. Through the Edinburgh Earth Initiative, we hope to further scientific understanding of the problems and solutions ahead and equip the next generation with the skills and knowledge to take science-informed action within a changing world.

Find our more about the Edinburgh Earth Initiative

The business sector will have a critical role to play in building a fairer, more sustainable economy and society, as we transition to low carbon living and adapt to new challenges brought about by climate change.

The University of Edinburgh Business School has been delivering climate change and sustainability research and teaching for more than a decade. Drawing from this expertise, the School’s Centre for Business, Climate Change and Sustainability is helping businesses and organisations adapt to more sustainable practices, informing policy and debate with research-led evidence, and equipping new business leaders with a deep understanding of sustainability and climate change. 

Find out how you can work with the centre

Unprecedented levels of environmental change, growing human population, and extraction of resources are creating huge burdens on our oceans and the societies and livelihoods that depend on them.

Ocean Leaders

Supported by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and Baillie Gifford, the Edinburgh Ocean Leaders programme brings together professionals from around the world who share an interest in protecting our oceans. Through one-to-one coaching and joint problem solving, the programme aims to build a global community of emerging ocean leaders who can work together to make an impact globally and locally.

Find out more about Edinburgh Ocean Leaders.

Ocean Voices

The Nippon Foundation-University of Edinburgh Ocean Voices programme is a new ocean science diplomacy initiative dedicated to building capacity and connecting the voices of ocean-dependent people to ocean science and policy in the UN Decade and beyond. Without targeted support for capacity building, global goals to secure a future ocean that is accessible, healthy, productive and equitable by 2030 will be impossible to achieve.

Find out more about Ocean Voices

To bring global emissions down, we need to transition to an affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy supply that is accessible to people and countries around the world. Understanding the interactions between energy generation and climate is crucial to providing a resilient and secure energy supply in the future.

Our engineers are developing not only low-carbon energy sources like marine, wind and hydropower, but also better energy storage solutions and more effective grid management. Meanwhile, our social scientists work on the challenges posed by energy transitions worldwide, addressing questions of energy justice, access and governance.