Kicking off a series of blogs by #ExeterEnergy alumni, recent CGES graduate George Dempster (BA Geography, 2019) reflects on his experiences with the Climate-KIC summer school.

Words by George Dempster

In July I graduated from the University of Exeter with a degree in geography. I studied at the Penryn Campus and had an amazing, unique and fulfilling student experience all thanks to the opportunities that studying in Cornwall provides.

I am very interested in energy and am looking to start a career in the sector. Arguably it acts as an enabler for everything that happens on earth and in terms of climate change, ‘greening’ up the energy industry would lead to huge reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions. In my final year I studied ‘Whole Energy Systems’, a module that looked at energy systems in the past, present and what they may look like in the future. I found the focus on systems thinking in this module eye-opening. In the past I had thought about environmental problems in isolation which created stand-alone solutions. What this module focused on was looking at the bigger picture and figuring out how through structural and societal change, there is the potential to create greater impacts.

Back to July and I had just graduated and was on the hunt for a job. I knew that I was interested in the energy sector and trying to create systems change but what was I going to do? Luckily for me I had landed a place on ‘The Journey’, the world’s largest climate innovation summer school ran by Climate-KIC. The end goal of this summer school was to produce an output (e.g. business plan, campaign, policy document) that helps to create systems change for a low-carbon future.

Climate-KIC is a Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and is working to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy. They run educational programmes for students, postgraduates and professionals and also supply funding to climate innovation start-ups. They really focus on systems thinking and supporting change agents to help the transition to a more sustainable future.

‘The Journey’ one of the programmes offered by Climate-KIC. It is a 4-week residential trip around various locations in Europe. This year there were nine different journeys with roughly 40 students on each. These students came from all over the world and studied a wide range of subjects but all had a passion for sustainability. Four journeys took place in July and mine took place with four others in August. You spend ten days in one location, ten days in another and then combine with the other journeys for a conference style community summit in the fourth week. Being a programme focused on combating climate change travel between the locations was mainly done via buses, trains and ferries. Our journey unfortunately was the only one to fly and in the four weeks we took four flights. My carbon footprint alone was very roughly equivalent to the carbon footprint of consuming 500 beef burgers!!

These flights took us from Helsinki (Finland) à Trondheim (Norway) à Budapest (Hungary). Finland was actually split into two locations for us. We spent the first five days in the Hyytiälä (He-ooo-tea-a-la) Forestry Field Station and the next five at Aalto University in Helsinki. In Hyytiälä I got to further my understanding of systems thinking and learned how to draw systems maps. I also learnt about self-reflection techniques and how useful it can be to take time to think about your own ideas and goals to help your personal development. I also started to build good friendships with the other people on the programme and after dinner each day you could find us in the sauna drinking a beer or jumping into the lake to cool off. In Helsinki we turned our attention to the group projects. I chose to work on the topic of the energy transition. Over the next few weeks we would develop our own projects within that topic. In Trondheim we took part in many workshops around entrepreneurship and design thinking to help us progress with our group ideas which we also had a lot of time to focus on. In our downtime there we went on hikes around the fjord, played ultimate frisbee and kayaked through the city centre.

My team came up with a business plan for a non-profit organisation called ‘SWITCH’. We discovered that a lot of students want to contribute to the energy transition but don’t know how to. A lot of students also live in rented accommodation where they pay a monthly bill to their landlord for utility bills and rent. We put the two together and saw that by giving students the right support they could start the conversation with their landlord about switching to a renewable energy provider. In the Netherlands, much to surprise of most people we spoke to, this switch actually saves the landlord money. To find out more about our business idea please check out the pitch that myself and Rudy gave at the community summit in Budapest.

Budapest marked the end of my journey and I was very sad to be leaving such a talented, motivated and exciting group of people that I had made such good friendships with. I would (and do) also miss having the space and support structure that allowed us to fully focus on developing ideas to tackle environmental challenges. I learnt too much to write about them all in my four weeks but my take away learnings were:

1. Multidisciplinary work is crucial to finding and developing great solutions to the biggest challenges.
2. Putting yourself outside of your comfort zone is key to learning, developing and focusing on what is important to you.
3. How to make an amazing pizza dough from Pietro.

As the programme is funded by the EU, when I applied in early 2019, Climate-KIC could not guarantee my sponsorship because of the ongoing Brexit negotiations. Luckily for me, because the Brexit deadline was pushed back from March 2019 to October 2019 the funding was still available for me in August. For ‘The Journey’ 2020 there may no longer be funding for UK-based applicants (you can find out more about this here).

I would highly recommend ‘The Journey’. I am a more curious, knowledgeable and motivated individual because of it and look forward to finding out where the experience may take me.

 

Thanks George!

#ExeterEnergy is an interdisciplinary network of researchers spanning all colleges and campuses at the University of Exeter.

Find out more at our website, and follow us on: Twitter & Facebook