Climate and sustainability governance and policy

Governance

The Climate and Sustainability Group oversees the delivery of our Climate and Sustainability Plan. This group is led by Phil Vickerman, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Student Experience, and includes members from faculties, professional services and JMSU to ensure representation from leadership, teaching, research, community engagement and campus management. The JMSU President is also a member of the group to provide student representation. View the Climate and Sustainability Group Terms of Reference (Word, 82.4KB).

The Climate and Sustainability Group advises the Executive Leadership Team and Board of Governors on environmental compliance, performance, and sustainable development.

Our Environmental Social and Governance statement (PDF, 263KB) outlines how we embed environmental and social sustainability into all of our university practices, and the governance structures that are in place to ensure this is delivered.

Policy and key documents

View our Environmental Management, Energy Management and Sustainability Policy (PDF, 128KB).

The University is a signatory of the welcome concordat (PDF, 165KB) for the Environmental Sustainability of Research and Innovation Practice. 

We also have other environmental guidance documents and environmental codes of practice which are available to view.

Other relevant documents that relate to our sustainability, climate change and ethical responsibilities include:

Funding and resources

We fund our sustainability and climate change activities in several ways:

  • Staff, routine work and infrastructure projects via standard service and faculty budgets.

  • Due to the scale of investment required to achieve our ambitious net zero carbon goals, we are currently looking to spend £2 -£3 million per year for the next 10 years, subject to the wider financial position of the university. This investment will be targeted on decarbonisation of the campus heating systems and on-site generation of electricity.

  • We also look to seek funding on case-by-case basis for some projects and activities within other Delivery Plans, such as biodiversity. For this we will obtain funding through annual budgets and by making requests through Capital Committee.

Key sustainability staff

Professor Mark Power, as the Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of our university, is ultimately accountable for the delivery of the environmental management, sustainability and climate change arrangements.

The Board of Governors have nominated a Governor Climate Champion (GCC), Mike Parker, to have oversight responsibility for providing assurance to the Board that we are meeting all of our sustainability and climate change commitments.

Other key staff