Evolve

LCIC’s involvement in the EVOLVE programme was two- fold:

The first was the Carbon Change Agents Programme which offered seminars and training to staff from small businesses that wanted to take steps towards understanding their carbon emissions sources and reducing them. The programme lasted several months with attendees learning how to identify the various scopes of carbon emitting activities in their own organisations and plan for short, medium and longer term actions for change. 

The attendees assessed their own companies’ activities and had the opportunity to network with the others in the programme, to discuss the barriers to progress and learn new strategies for overcoming them.  The programme helped the attendees develop an action plan for behavioural change in the workplace, for financial investments and how to measure the returns.  In many cases low cost interventions were chosen, which gave great benefits including staff engagement and culture change and thus paved the way for future actions.

In the second strand, LCIC delivered a suite of one-day Low Carbon Courses covering Carbon Management, Low Carbon Development, Carbon Footprinting, Low Carbon Energy and Behaviour Change in the Low Carbon Future.  They were aimed at people who may be new to the sector or those wanting to enhance their skills.  The courses gave an overview of the issues, skills and regulatory framework, using case studies and examples to demonstrate the current trends in this fast moving sector.  They proved extremely popular and gave students a brief and succinct introduction to each area.

As a result of the enthusiasm shown by students on the Low Carbon Development course, a one-off trip to the Building Research Establishment (BRE) Innovation Park was organised, to allow the group to see a range of innovative low carbon houses, and was a great success.