SDG13: Climate Action
We are committed to delivering education for sustainable development and ensure that our programmes and research programmes explore global challenges and seek sustainable solutions to the climate emergency. The following pages outline Northumbria's policies and practices in support of SDG13 Climate Action.
Measuring Low Carbon Energy Use
Northumbria University is committed to cutting carbon emissions and driving the transition to renewable energy. We generate electricity onsite from a number of PV panel arrays, and our purchased energy is provided through a green tariff whereby all electricity comes from low carbon renewable sources. We measure the amount of low carbon energy used across the university, which is tracked via our publicly available online energy portal Energy from Sunlight, with totals reported in our Annual Carbon Management Report.
Our campuses are powered in part by Solar Photovoltaic (PV) arrays which we monitor to track progress in reducing emissions. In 2024/25, we generated 307 MWh of renewable electricity from our solar arrays, saving more than 64 tonnes of CO₂. You can also explore the details of our solar energy systems on our Energy from Sunlight pages.
We are continually improving the carbon efficiency of our buildings by installing LED lighting, replacing gas boilers with air source heat pumps, retrofitting facilities and enhancing our Building Management Systems.
Northumbria is also one of Europe's leading centres for solar research. Our scientists are currently working on a £2 million project to develop new raw materials for solar panels, reducing costs, enabling mass production and making solar energy more accessible.
Local Education Programmes on Climate
Northumbria provides and delivers local education programmes and campaigns on climate change risks, impacts, mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning. Through outreach, schools engagement and public events, we help young people and communities understand these risks and encourage sustainable action.
We host free public seminars throughout the year on climate change, energy efficiency and clean energy. Hope Not Heat, delivered jointly with Newcastle University and led by Dr John Appleby, ran across two days in February 2025 and offered six free events for students from both universities, including a Model United Nations style COP negotiation session, a screening of the climate documentary 2040 and talks from campaign groups including the Plant-Based Universities campaign, giving students practical, hands on ways to engage with climate action. Another recent example is the Newcastle Climate Change Forum and Great Climate Debate, co-hosted by Northumbria, Newcastle University and Newcastle City Council at Northumbria's Great Hall in March 2026. Open to civic leaders, businesses and the wider public, the event drew over 100 attendees to an evening of expert led learning on greening the city's university campuses and urban biodiversity, equipping local residents with the knowledge to help shape Newcastle's climate plans.
Our Design for Planet Festival aimed to harness the power of the UK's design and business communities to create ways out of the climate crisis, with more than 60 guest speakers from disciplines including energy, food waste, biodiversity, supply chains and design sharing ways that participants could take action as individuals.
We also provide Continuing Professional Development courses to support professionals in understanding environmental management and carbon reduction. Examples include our IESP certified Carbon Footprinting (GHG Accounting), Net Zero Targets and Carbon Reduction Planning course, and the IEMA Foundation Certificate in Environmental Management.
Net Zero Targets
Our target date to become a carbon neutral university, in line with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, is set out in our Carbon Management Strategy 2020 to 2030, which sets our 2030 commitment to reduce emissions by 80% compared to a 2014/15 baseline, and to achieve Net Zero, or carbon neutrality, by 2040 at the latest. Progress is reported annually in our Annual Carbon Management Report.
Our Net Zero target covers Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions in full, with Scope 3 emissions, including procurement, travel, waste, investments and energy use outside campus, tracked on a partial basis and a major focus for improvement. Work is underway to refine Scope 3 reporting accuracy and shape a pathway to full coverage and to Net Zero.
Climate Action Plan
Northumbria's Climate Action Plan is part of our Environmental Sustainability Strategy and is set out in our Carbon Management Strategy 2020 to 2030. As part of our publicly available strategy, we produce a detailed and strategic framework for measuring, planning and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and related climatic impacts each year, which is shared with local government and community groups.
We share our Carbon Management Strategy with local government, including Newcastle City Council and the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority, in addition to local hospitals and local community groups via the Go Zero! Newcastle Group. As an Anchor Institution of the Group, we actively contribute to the city-wide climate action plan and are committed to the city's decarbonisation goals set out in the Net Zero Newcastle 2030 Action Plan. The plan is aligned with Newcastle City Council and regional goals for a Net Zero North East, ensuring our research and innovation contribute directly to city wide climate change resilience.
Northumbria maintains a number of ongoing collaboration programmes that serve as key mechanisms for engagement with the local community on climate matters. Through these initiatives, the University both shares its expertise and gains valuable insights from local residents, local government and civil society representatives. Northumbria actively participates in strategic partnerships that influence regional climate policy and decision making. As a key partner in the Collaborative Newcastle Universities Agreement, Northumbria works alongside Newcastle University and Newcastle City Council to address city wide issues like sustainable transport, biodiversity and climate change mitigation. Through the programme, Northumbria works closely with local government on our climate change action plan and decision making on our carbon reduction measures.
Co-operative Planning for Climate Change Disasters and Climate Resilience
Northumbria works with government and community partners planning for climate resilience at local, regional and international levels. Our researchers support projects on climate adaptation, sustainable cities and green infrastructure, working with local communities and participating in co-operative planning for climate change disasters, such as flooding and heatwaves.
Locally, Northumbria is a delivery partner in Newcastle City Council's Climate Change Adaptation Action Plan, contributing to the city's co-operative planning for flooding and extreme heat, including city centre surface water management work, alongside fellow city partners including Newcastle University and the local NHS trust.
Regionally, we hosted EcoMat 2024, a three-day international conference held at the Hilton Gateshead from 8 to 10 July 2024 and chaired by Northumbria's Dr Ben Xu, connecting academia, industry and government policymakers to explore renewable energy, circular economy solutions and sustainable futures. Sessions covered catalysis, energy storage, thermal, wind, solar and hydrogen energy, as well as smart materials for environmental applications.
Internationally, our Living Deltas Hub is working with delta dwellers and policymakers planning for climate change disasters, such as flooding risks in Vietnam, Bangladesh and India, which could result in the displacement of millions of people, both within a country and across borders. River deltas comprise only 1% of global landscapes but support more than half a billion people, and are under threat from climate change, heatwaves, rising sea levels, industrial farming techniques and pollutants. The Hub was a five year (2019 to 2024) research initiative funded by UKRI's Global Challenges Research Fund and led by Newcastle University, bringing together over 200 people and more than 90 collaborating organisations across the UK, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam by the end of its funding period. At Northumbria, Professor Matt Baillie Smith and Dr Oliver Hensengerth led Work Package 1 on livelihoods and adaptation. Over its funding period the Hub produced more than 300 academic papers and held over 300 engagement events, two thirds of them international, and was directly associated with more than £32 million of further research funding.
Complementing this work, research by Northumbria’s Disaster and Development Network (DDN) has examined how people in marginalised locations can control ecological and socio-economic risks. Funded by DFID, ESRC, NERC and other partners including WHO, UNICEF and the British Council, DDN research shows that risks often attributed to climate change, resurgent pathogens or physical instability are made worse by socio-economic vulnerability and local systems of governance. It puts the disaster risk reduction paradigm into practice through enhanced community resilience, demonstrating that community self-organisation, a sense of security and health attributes shape how well communities withstand disaster. Involving communities in local governance and in identifying and managing risk, particularly to health, has been shown to promote collective control and responsibility. While natural environmental influences are hard to overcome, DDN projects show that the human activities which contribute to environmental disasters can be reduced through community-based approaches involving a range of institutions. Work has focused on primary resources such as water supply, the role of children in disaster risk reduction and rights-based participatory action research, including in Southern Africa where growing numbers of children are orphaned by HIV and AIDS, alongside more quantitative methods. The DDN’s impact case study was ranked among the top 20 most impressive examples of UK research contributing to global development in the Research Excellence Framework.
Inform and Support Government
Northumbria informs and supports regional and local government through the Anchor Institution role and partnership structures described under Climate Action Plan above, including our work with Newcastle City Council and the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority to design evidence-based adaptation strategies. Beyond this shared civic structure, Northumbria also provides applied technical expertise directly to government and industry partners, with attributable outcomes, illustrated by the following example. Northumbria researchers are contributing to the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project (ISMIP7), a newly funded international effort supported by $5 million from the Heising-Simons Foundation to project how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will contribute to sea level rise through to 2300. ISMIP7 forms part of phase 7 of the World Climate Research Programme’s Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP7) and has been formally tasked with producing projections for the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report, building on ISMIP6 projections that featured prominently in the IPCC’s sixth Assessment Report. The main goal of ISMIP7 is to deliver projections that can inform policy making and public spending, particularly for coastal communities vulnerable to sea level rise. Dr Ronja Reese of our School of Geography and Natural Sciences co-leads the Antarctic ice and ocean focus group. The group provides ocean conditions from global climate models for the ice sheet projections and works to assess and improve how ocean driven melting beneath Antarctic ice shelves is represented in ice sheet simulations. Dr Inès Otosaka, Co-Director of Science for the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM), co-leads the observations focus group. CPOM is led by and based at Northumbria University and is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, in partnership with the British Antarctic Survey, to provide UK national capability in polar observation and modelling.
Our Visualisation and Virtual Reality group uses innovative 3D survey and analysis to transform decision making in built and natural environments. It collaborates with national agencies, regional government and industry to provide tailored solutions to challenges arising from climate change, including climate related disaster risks such as flooding and heatwaves. Their early warning work on slope visualisation and change detection data with Forestry and Land Scotland recommended plantking of tree species to improve slope stability. Internationally, the group works with Natural Resources Canada monitoring and addressing the key risks to infrastructure and communities posed by permafrost cliff erosion, and their early warning systems helped to prevent a potentially fatal landslide arising from excess precipitation.
Collaboration with NGOs on Environmental Education for Climate Adaptation
Northumbria collaborates with NGOs and community groups across the North East and internationally to advance climate adaptation, with environmental education a consistent thread running through this work. These partnerships span classroom resources co designed with community organisations, practitioner learning programmes delivered with national charities and long-term research collaborations with wildlife and conservation trusts, each helping people understand and respond to a changing climate.
Locally, we work closely with Business in the Community (BITC), a major UK based NGO, on a number of climate focused projects relevant to education and practice. In 2023/4, Northumbria was appointed as research partner on BITC’s Green Skills Lab, an education programme built around workshops, site visits and peer learning sessions. Our researchers co designed the learning content used in these sessions and helped deliver workshops that build the knowledge and capabilities organisations need to address climate risks and transition to net zero operations, embedding climate adaptation and resilience as core learning themes alongside skills development and local economic inclusion.
Northumbria’s NUSTEM outreach group has partnered with the community organisation Roots and Wings and a North East primary school to co design Climate Change: It’s in Our Hands, an environmental education board game launched in 2023 with NERC funding. Northumbria environmental scientists and NUSTEM outreach practitioners worked directly alongside Roots and Wings staff and pupils in a series of co-design workshops to develop and test the game as a classroom resource that helps children explore climate adaptation choices and their consequences. The game is now used with schools across the region as a direct output of this NGO partnership.
Through Northumbria’s Living Deltas Hub, our researchers worked with community organisations and Jadavpur University in the Indian Sundarbans on research into how voluntary work supports climate adaptation in one of the world’s most climate vulnerable delta regions. Northumbria researchers trained community members in participatory photography and diary writing methods, then worked with them to co-produce a bilingual photobook and exhibition explaining the role of voluntary work in climate adaptation. Launched with the British Deputy High Commission in Kolkata in 2024, this material now serves as a public environmental education resource, building wider public understanding of the challenges facing the Sundarbans.
Northumbria’s Environmental Humanities Research Group has also worked with Northumberland Wildlife Trust on the Kielderhead Wildwood project, a rewilding and native woodland restoration scheme delivered with Forestry England at Kielderhead in Northumberland. Associate Professor Tony Williams and a Northumbria PhD researcher in English and Creative Writing worked alongside Trust ecologists and site staff to produce educational materials on the site’s ecology and its response to a changing climate, and co-hosted public engagement events bringing together ecologists, scientists, artists, writers and local contributors to share this material and build public understanding of climate adaptation and habitat restoration.
Alongside these education focused partnerships, Northumbria also collaborates with NGOs on climate adaptation more broadly. We are a partner in Green Corridors North East, a £3 million project launched in 2025 with the National Trust, Durham Wildlife Trust, Tees Valley Wildlife Trust and the Wear Rivers Trust, transforming 35 miles of urban, suburban and rural land across Gateshead, Durham and South Tees into climate resilient, biodiverse green corridors. In 2025, our Centre for Global Development also signed a new five year research agreement with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, supporting 191 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies and their volunteers who respond to and adapt to climate related crises worldwide. Our researchers are also working with the Natural Environment Research Council to develop new sensor technologies that monitor carbon emissions from peatlands, ecosystems which store one third of the world’s soil carbon but release greenhouse gases when drained or cultivated, improving UK carbon release estimates and testing monitoring solutions in extreme locations such as Arctic Canada and Finland.
