Conference Agenda

The dominant transport mode for school journeys is safe, comfortable and affordable private automobiles. The transport system consists of well-engineered roads. Carers know that the car is usually the safest and most convenient option for the school run. Traffic congestion, air pollution, loss of exercise and increased risk to pedestrians and cyclists are thoroughly researched externality costs of the automobile school run. Net zero emission targets impose additional tensions for schools and local authorities to make rapid changes. Travel demand management research has been aiming to keep motorised vehicles away from schools, and to encourage physically active modes for the school run. But changing the infrastructure, travel behaviour and culture of a school community presents a wicked problem that requires transdisciplinary systems approaches from engineering and social science. This article reports on the Transition Engineering co-design process with incumbent stakeholders. The result is a novel learning and teaching programme which also achieved safe and sustainable school transport. The programme enables students to engineer the changes they require, communicate their needs to decision makers, and achieve net zero with fair provision. The school culture shifted to finding their own way to net zero school transport, contributing to wider community travel demand management efforts. The protocol of the design process, the co- design results, and a reflection on the preliminary stakeholder feedback are presented. The article addresses the wider challenge of how transdisciplinary transition engineering can deliver safety and sustainability of incumbent engineered systems, while navigating real-world social and economic dynamics.

Given urbanism’s significant collective impact on planetary climate

change, many cities are working to reduce and eventually neutralise their carbon

emissions. Currently this is broadly limited to emissions for which city authorities

are responsible for. This is a positive endeavour but limited in terms of impact, as

most urban carbon emissions are produced beyond their direct responsibilities.

Whilst local authorities possess a significant degree of influence to reduce, remove

and ultimately manage city-wide carbon emissions, the essential task of expanding

their scope of accountability is one beset by varying complexities. Not only are there

numerous silos (not just in terms of disciplines but also data silos) to contend with,

but questions concerning public buy-in and environmental justice are equally

prescient. The task of city-wide urban carbon management is an inherently

transdisciplinary one, where the engineering challenge of carbon management in the

physical built environment is entwined with the socio-political complexities of the

urban realm. To this end, a review of the urban carbon management literature is

presented to identify the transdisciplinary challenges which have the potential to

limit city-wide carbon management - through which a definition for urban carbon

management is proposed. This is informing the development of a more systemic,

transdisciplinary approach towards engineering better urban carbon neutrality

approaches going forward, which is being piloted with cities as part of the European

Commission funded UP2030 project.

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change establish guidelines for the performance of companies in relation to emissions reduction, governance, and disclosure through the Climate Action 100+ Net Zero Company Benchmark. As a result, companies in all signatory countries are obliged to reduce their emissions and consumption of non-renewable forms of energy by 2050. Since this accord affects all companies from all industries globally, every company needs to establish their own internal procedures to achieve established targets. Securing new forms of energy supplies results is a new challenge for companies and results in uncertainty and additional transaction costs with potential effects on profitability and thus shareholder value. As a method to maintain shareholder value, companies have therefore sought to offset resulting higher costs with organic sales growth. Therefore, we investigate the link between organic sales growth in a large publicly traded multinational – Procter & Gamble - as a result of its implementation of renewable energy policies and increased utilisation of renewable energies in production. We use time-series data from 2002 to 2022.

Keywords—renewable energies, sustainable development goals, organic growth, organic sales growth, corporate social responsibility, risk management, emissions reduction, P&G

The world’s urban population is growing and increasing the demand for a more balanced and sustainable city life. According to UN Habitat, more than half a billion people have been added to the world’s population since the 2015 introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030. The urgency is rising to take a deeper dive into the characteristics that define a Smart City and how they could be traded-off to ultimately achieve balance in the quality of life and sustainability. Components of a city comprising buildings, transportation, services such as hospitals, educational institutes, economy and commerce - in short, it is the city and its various features that people interact with in a day and the environment that they live in. Experiencing a Smart City and its features for a better quality of life could differ from person to person, for a person from one city to another and from one country to another. This paper builds on standards and models for evaluating characteristics of cities in social, economic and environmental dimensions. The transdisciplinary approach to these trade-offs of a Smart City emphasizes the three factors of well-being, sustainability, and the importance of infrastructure in supporting both for the quality of life. Transdisciplinary trade-offs are considered in the context of the solutions for future cities, making sure that the figures of merit of quality of life are achievable without adversely affecting the sustainability of the environment.