Climate research and education at a global university
Contributing to society through our knowledge lies at the heart of our core mission at King’s and drives our commitment to addressing global climate change. We are taking decisive action as a university by reducing the negative impacts of our operations and maximising our positive impact through solutions-oriented research and education.
King’s is proud to support our world-leading climate researchers studying across disciplines to meet the challenge we face at this critical time for our planet. Our research goes beyond the science to look at the intersection between climate and inequality, social medicine, mental health, indigenous knowledge and inclusive policy. We are also training the next generation of global changemakers who are working to address the climate emergency and shaping climate action across sectors.
Our multi-disciplinary approach and leadership on climate action has been recognised by the 2022 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, ranking us among the top 5 universities in the UK and Europe for acting to address social and environmental issues. King's also ranked second in the 2021 People & Planet University League.
Climate action at King's
Alongside these efforts to lead on positive change through research and education, both within and beyond King’s, we are continuing to take action to address our own impacts on the climate. We have decoupled university growth from growing carbon emissions, and more than halved our emissions in the last 15 years. We have also fully divested from all fossil fuels, almost two years ahead of target.
King’s students and staff have played an essential role in this. Students have not only joined our sustainability initiatives, but set up their own, forming student societies focused on sustainability and climate action, and held us accountable to our commitments. Our Sustainability Champions are embedding sustainability across the university. In our laboratories, our Champions have led the introduction of more sustainable ways of working.
We have also made significant progress in decarbonising our electricity supply. We have done this by investing in on-site renewables, such as solar panels and switching all directly purchased electricity to a 100% wind power tariff. As a signatory to the global Race To Zero for Universities and Colleges, we are one of 822 institutions that have committed to and are taking immediate action to achieve net zero emissions.
We aim to create systemic change at King’s which reaches beyond our university doors. This change must come from all directions, from our staff to our students and suppliers. We will use our influence as a university to empower impactful climate action and develop sustainable and just solutions to the climate crisis.
Activities
Sustainability opportunities
We offer a range of sustainability opportunities for both staff and students to engage with. Whether you are looking to shape climate education, you have sustainability ideas you would like to share with us, you want to get involved in making your King's residence more sustainable, you are ready to be a Sustainability Champion, or you would like to volunteer with the Sustainability Team, you will find the right activity for you at King's.
- Sign up for the KEATS sustainability module
- Sign up for the Sustainability Seminar Series
- Sign up to the King's Climate Action Network
- Sign up to be a Sustainability Champion
- Sign up to the Community Listening Campaign about Climate
- Join ResiLife to make your residence more sustainable
- Sign up to volunteer to drive curriculum quality for sustainability
Climate and sustainability PhD network
Building on the work of the King’s Climate Action Network and ongoing efforts to foster stronger interdisciplinary connections around climate and sustainability research across the university, King's has created a climate and sustainability research network for PhD students. The network is a platform to share events and opportunities, to network, and to foster interdisciplinary collaboration. If you wish to join the network, email climate@kcl.ac.uk with your name, department and area of research within climate and sustainability.
King's Spotlight on Sustainability podcast
In this podcast, we want to put a spotlight on sustainability at King’s and beyond. We want to get you thinking about some of the issues and challenges we face regarding climate change and the natural world. In each episode, we learn about a particular topic, discover what King’s is doing to address the issue and outline how you can take action. This podcast encourages a positive discourse about sustainability that will empower you to make a difference on the issues that matter to you.
Sustainability events
We organise a wide variety of sustainability events, including Lunch & Learns, workshops, discussion panels and hackathons. Sustainability Month takes place annually in February. There's also many ways for you to get involved in helping address climate change at King’s and beyond.
King's Sustainability blog
Members of the King’s community contribute to the King's Sustainability blog. The platform aims to keep you informed of what the team is up to, to share ideas around sustainability, and to inspire the campus community to actively participate in this great endeavor.
Sustainability Month
King’s Sustainability Month takes place in February every year. This month is a collaboration between King’s and KCLSU that offers all those involved an opportunity to learn more about sustainability topics, collaborate and connect with others from across King’s and #TakeAction on the climate crisis. The month brings together a diverse range of exciting events organised by people from across the King’s community focused on one or more of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Insights on climate from our community
Our world-leading climate researchers, studying across disciplines, are working to meet the challenges we face at this critical time for our planet. The 'Uniting to address climate change' series brings together research-led thought pieces by our experts and students looking at climate from all angles – from local to global, from science to finance, from resilience to affect on our health.
Climate research and expertise
King's Climate Hub
We are home to research expertise on climate change across time and space. We recognise that climate change is a multi-faceted problem that requires integration of physical and social science. As a cross-disciplinary hub, we have a particular interest in the relationship between science, policy and culture, particularly in the developing world.
Centre for Climate Law and Governance
The Centre for Climate Law and Governance is a leading light for interdisciplinary research about legal and governance approaches to climate change and sustainability within and across countries in the Global North and South, taking into account the specificities of particular sectors and local contexts. The centre investigates and evaluates legal and regulatory design, decision-making, challenges, and innovation; and how, where and with whom these occur in national, transnational and global contexts.
Centre for Integrated Research on Risk and Resilience
As the risks that confront us globally have become more unpredictable, unpreventable and potentially catastrophic, resilience has informed answers to problems of environmental, societal, and political governance. The Centre for Integrated Research on Risk and Resilience brings together researchers from across disciplines in order to explore risk and resilience as ways of understanding and responding to social, ecological and political crises today.
King's Water Centre
The King’s Centre for Water is home to our research expertise on water, environment and development. The hub spans social and physical sciences to explore the challenges of water governance from global to local scales.
Net Zero Centre
The Net Zero Centre serves to highlight, nurture and facilitate discovery and applied research to address the challenges for decarbonising our society and reducing the environmental impact of our manufacturing, infrastructure, and cities. Based in the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical and Engineering Sciences (NMES), the Centre works across the boundaries of disciplines at King’s from geography and business to law and social science to deliver solutions for sustainable development.
Environment and Public Policy Subgroup
The Environment and Public Policy Subgroup delivers theoretically and empirically grounded research focused on environmental issues and the energy transition. Recognising the importance of an inter-disciplinary approach to addressing global challenges, this subgroup forms part of a broader group of researchers across the university.
Environmental Security Research Group
The Environmental Security Research Group is a forum for collaboration between the security community and scholars working on issues of environmental security from multiple perspectives across different disciplines. In bringing scholarly and practitioner expertise together on these issues, the group aims to support security sector reform efforts to create sustainable, rule-of-law based security assistance for the proliferating environmental crises facing the world.
Foresight Research Group
The Foresight Research Group is primarily interested in studying the interplay between warnings and preventive action concerning violent conflict within states, genocide and mass atrocities. Besides this specific focus, the research group takes a general interest in the prevention of harmful phenomena more broadly understood, such as systemic financial crises, sudden or irreversible climate change, natural catastrophes, or pandemics.
Environment, Energy and Sustainability Research Group
Brazil is at the centre of global debates about sustainability because the Amazon rainforest, almost two-thirds of which is in Brazilian territory, plays a crucial role in absorbing greenhouse gases and mitigating climate change. The Environment, Energy and Sustainability Research Group focuses on Brazil’s contributions to global environmental and energy policies, including the transition to a low-carbon energy matrix, as well as the domestic political economy of Brazil’s environmental and energy regimes.
Earth Observation and Wildfire Research Group
The Earth Observation and Wildfire Research Group focuses on: 1) Earth Observation of Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions, and 2) Landscape Fire Science, including wildfires and anthropocentric burning. The group’s work encompasses many aspects of field/ airborne/ satellite remote sensing, environmental modelling, fieldwork and in situ and laboratory measurement and experimentation.
Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society
The research of the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society provides a step-change in the scientific understanding of what drives wildfires around the world, and what the future might hold for wildfires and for all the natural and human systems influenced by them. This collaborative centre involves Imperial College London, King’s College London, Royal Holloway and the University of Reading.
Sustainability at King's Business School
The researchers in the King's Business School are committed to furthering the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The School's research and activities incorporate several SDGs, including SDG #3 on good health and well-being, SDG #9 on industry, infrastructure, and innovation, and SDG #12 on responsible consumption and production.
Marjan Conflict, Biodiversity and Military Sustainability Study Group
The destruction of biodiversity ventilates the connection between conflict, insecure environments and sustainability, with climate-change multiplying vulnerability to overall significantly reduce human security. The Marjan Centre’s current main projects are: 1) SWIPRO: examination of strategic wildlife protection and involvement of military forces, and 2) The GreenHelmet Observatory: examination of the many aspects of the relationship between the armed forces and ‘green’ sustainability.
Activities
Sustainability opportunities
We offer a range of sustainability opportunities for both staff and students to engage with. Whether you are looking to shape climate education, you have sustainability ideas you would like to share with us, you want to get involved in making your King's residence more sustainable, you are ready to be a Sustainability Champion, or you would like to volunteer with the Sustainability Team, you will find the right activity for you at King's.
- Sign up for the KEATS sustainability module
- Sign up for the Sustainability Seminar Series
- Sign up to the King's Climate Action Network
- Sign up to be a Sustainability Champion
- Sign up to the Community Listening Campaign about Climate
- Join ResiLife to make your residence more sustainable
- Sign up to volunteer to drive curriculum quality for sustainability
Climate and sustainability PhD network
Building on the work of the King’s Climate Action Network and ongoing efforts to foster stronger interdisciplinary connections around climate and sustainability research across the university, King's has created a climate and sustainability research network for PhD students. The network is a platform to share events and opportunities, to network, and to foster interdisciplinary collaboration. If you wish to join the network, email climate@kcl.ac.uk with your name, department and area of research within climate and sustainability.
King's Spotlight on Sustainability podcast
In this podcast, we want to put a spotlight on sustainability at King’s and beyond. We want to get you thinking about some of the issues and challenges we face regarding climate change and the natural world. In each episode, we learn about a particular topic, discover what King’s is doing to address the issue and outline how you can take action. This podcast encourages a positive discourse about sustainability that will empower you to make a difference on the issues that matter to you.
Sustainability events
We organise a wide variety of sustainability events, including Lunch & Learns, workshops, discussion panels and hackathons. Sustainability Month takes place annually in February. There's also many ways for you to get involved in helping address climate change at King’s and beyond.
King's Sustainability blog
Members of the King’s community contribute to the King's Sustainability blog. The platform aims to keep you informed of what the team is up to, to share ideas around sustainability, and to inspire the campus community to actively participate in this great endeavor.
Sustainability Month
King’s Sustainability Month takes place in February every year. This month is a collaboration between King’s and KCLSU that offers all those involved an opportunity to learn more about sustainability topics, collaborate and connect with others from across King’s and #TakeAction on the climate crisis. The month brings together a diverse range of exciting events organised by people from across the King’s community focused on one or more of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Insights on climate from our community
Our world-leading climate researchers, studying across disciplines, are working to meet the challenges we face at this critical time for our planet. The 'Uniting to address climate change' series brings together research-led thought pieces by our experts and students looking at climate from all angles – from local to global, from science to finance, from resilience to affect on our health.
Climate research and expertise
King's Climate Hub
We are home to research expertise on climate change across time and space. We recognise that climate change is a multi-faceted problem that requires integration of physical and social science. As a cross-disciplinary hub, we have a particular interest in the relationship between science, policy and culture, particularly in the developing world.
Centre for Climate Law and Governance
The Centre for Climate Law and Governance is a leading light for interdisciplinary research about legal and governance approaches to climate change and sustainability within and across countries in the Global North and South, taking into account the specificities of particular sectors and local contexts. The centre investigates and evaluates legal and regulatory design, decision-making, challenges, and innovation; and how, where and with whom these occur in national, transnational and global contexts.
Centre for Integrated Research on Risk and Resilience
As the risks that confront us globally have become more unpredictable, unpreventable and potentially catastrophic, resilience has informed answers to problems of environmental, societal, and political governance. The Centre for Integrated Research on Risk and Resilience brings together researchers from across disciplines in order to explore risk and resilience as ways of understanding and responding to social, ecological and political crises today.
King's Water Centre
The King’s Centre for Water is home to our research expertise on water, environment and development. The hub spans social and physical sciences to explore the challenges of water governance from global to local scales.
Net Zero Centre
The Net Zero Centre serves to highlight, nurture and facilitate discovery and applied research to address the challenges for decarbonising our society and reducing the environmental impact of our manufacturing, infrastructure, and cities. Based in the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical and Engineering Sciences (NMES), the Centre works across the boundaries of disciplines at King’s from geography and business to law and social science to deliver solutions for sustainable development.
Environment and Public Policy Subgroup
The Environment and Public Policy Subgroup delivers theoretically and empirically grounded research focused on environmental issues and the energy transition. Recognising the importance of an inter-disciplinary approach to addressing global challenges, this subgroup forms part of a broader group of researchers across the university.
Environmental Security Research Group
The Environmental Security Research Group is a forum for collaboration between the security community and scholars working on issues of environmental security from multiple perspectives across different disciplines. In bringing scholarly and practitioner expertise together on these issues, the group aims to support security sector reform efforts to create sustainable, rule-of-law based security assistance for the proliferating environmental crises facing the world.
Foresight Research Group
The Foresight Research Group is primarily interested in studying the interplay between warnings and preventive action concerning violent conflict within states, genocide and mass atrocities. Besides this specific focus, the research group takes a general interest in the prevention of harmful phenomena more broadly understood, such as systemic financial crises, sudden or irreversible climate change, natural catastrophes, or pandemics.
Environment, Energy and Sustainability Research Group
Brazil is at the centre of global debates about sustainability because the Amazon rainforest, almost two-thirds of which is in Brazilian territory, plays a crucial role in absorbing greenhouse gases and mitigating climate change. The Environment, Energy and Sustainability Research Group focuses on Brazil’s contributions to global environmental and energy policies, including the transition to a low-carbon energy matrix, as well as the domestic political economy of Brazil’s environmental and energy regimes.
Earth Observation and Wildfire Research Group
The Earth Observation and Wildfire Research Group focuses on: 1) Earth Observation of Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions, and 2) Landscape Fire Science, including wildfires and anthropocentric burning. The group’s work encompasses many aspects of field/ airborne/ satellite remote sensing, environmental modelling, fieldwork and in situ and laboratory measurement and experimentation.
Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society
The research of the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society provides a step-change in the scientific understanding of what drives wildfires around the world, and what the future might hold for wildfires and for all the natural and human systems influenced by them. This collaborative centre involves Imperial College London, King’s College London, Royal Holloway and the University of Reading.
Sustainability at King's Business School
The researchers in the King's Business School are committed to furthering the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The School's research and activities incorporate several SDGs, including SDG #3 on good health and well-being, SDG #9 on industry, infrastructure, and innovation, and SDG #12 on responsible consumption and production.
Marjan Conflict, Biodiversity and Military Sustainability Study Group
The destruction of biodiversity ventilates the connection between conflict, insecure environments and sustainability, with climate-change multiplying vulnerability to overall significantly reduce human security. The Marjan Centre’s current main projects are: 1) SWIPRO: examination of strategic wildlife protection and involvement of military forces, and 2) The GreenHelmet Observatory: examination of the many aspects of the relationship between the armed forces and ‘green’ sustainability.
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Find out more about Sustainability at King's
Get involved in climate action at King's