Universities have been at the forefront of the climate debate for many years through their research, but the last 12 months has seen a rise in demands from stakeholders to do more and faster.

In many cases institutions have already embraced the easy wins of behavioural and cultural change, as well as ensuring that new buildings are built to one or other environmental standard. However, the more difficult questions remain to be answered, and many of these relate to estates, buildings and their underlying infrastructure.

The key challenge for estates directors in both the higher education and private sectors is establishing what best practice looks like. Many decisions that might look sensible can raise other questions. For example, wind turbines generate green energy yet there is no sustainable way yet of recycling their blades; there is pressure on universities to limit international travel to events, yet the benefit of the research and information sharing at such events might have a more positive effect on the world than the CO2 saved by not flying; at an estate level the concept of embodied carbon might suggest that refurbishing buildings is better than building new ones, but even this debate still lacks evidence and needs further examination.

_{Read the articles within Spotlight: UK Higher Education below.}