Marsden Success - Researchers to Investigate Carbon Neutrality
Professors Amanda Ball and Markus Milne have been awarded a Marsden research grant ($824,000 over three years) to examine claims of being carbon neutral. In the face of widespread concern about global warming, many organisations are working to become ‘carbon neutral’. Carbon neutral organisations are those that measure carbon emissions, work to reduce or eliminate them, and then attempt to offset those that cannot be eliminated through schemes such as tree planting and clean energy alternatives. Professors Ball and Milne, along with colleagues Professor David Levy (UMass - Boston) and Professor Kevin Anderson (Tyndall Centre at Manchester, UK) will investigate organisation and agency claims, policies, and practices in relation to carbon neutrality. This will be achieved through a series of in-depth case studies of organisations that are pursuing this goal, along with evidence from certification agencies, auditors, and others involved in measuring, managing and offsetting Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.
Credible carbon neutrality programmes require serious attention to emissions reduction prior to offsetting. So far, however, little work has attempted to systematically understand the actual dynamics of organisational emissions reduction programmes, key motives that drive or inhibit action, or critically scrutinize obvious tensions and paradoxical motives between organisational desires to reduce ecological impacts and desires to grow and succeed economically. Achieving carbon neutrality requires organisations to think differently as well as change their practices, and Professors Ball and Milne will examine this. One aim is to uncover exactly what managers in an array of organisations mean by ‘carbon-neutrality’, and how they believe it can be achieved in their organisations. This side of the issue has not yet been examined as fully as the economic and technological aspects.
Details on postgraduate research opportunties associated with this programme are available here
UC researchers awarded $7.2 million from Marsden Fund... more