Climate change experts are gathering in Aberdeen on Friday, 1 May 2009 to discuss how best to measure greenhouse gas emissions in North East Scotland. The Greenhouse Gas Footprinting Workshop is being hosted by the internationally renowned Macaulay Land Use Research Institute and will feature key speakers from AEA Technology, the Carbon Trust, the Stockholm Institute, and the Tyndall Centre in Manchester.

The aim of the workshop is to establish a reliable estimation procedure for carbon footprinting for North East Scotland from the range of scientific approaches that have been developed. As councils and other public bodies make efforts to reduce their carbon footprints, it is vital that they can accurately measure their starting point and future reductions in carbon emissions.

Bill Slee, head of the Socio-Economics Research Group at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute who organised the event, says, “This workshop will help to establish the reputation of the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute and the North East Scotland Climate Change Partnership as committed participants in tackling climate change. We acknowledge the need to address the challenges of climate change, but must be able to assess accurately the contribution of different actions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. By bringing the major players in UK greenhouse gas footprinting together we will give the North East Scotland Climate Change partnership the guidance they need.”

The North East Scotland Climate Change Partnership is a public sector private sector partnership which includes a wide range of public sector organisations as well as the Federation of Small Businesses and Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce.

The workshop will also host the launch of the GILDED project, a collaborative research programme between The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Impact Research in Germany, The Institute for Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, The University of Groningen in the Netherlands and The Institute of Systems Biology and Ecology at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The aim of the research is to identify social, economic, cultural and political changes that could aid European households in their bid to consume less energy. Running from 2008 until 2011, the three-year project is being funded by the European Union Framework Seven.

Councillor Martin Ford, Chairman of The North East Scotland Climate Change Partnership, said, “This workshop aims to establish the next step that the North East Scotland Climate Change Partnership will take for measuring the level of greenhouse gasses emitted by different parts of the regional economy, including households, transport and businesses. We need a comprehensive benchmark from which to start and must be able to measure future changes in emissions.”

There are major commitments to tackling climate change by North East Scottish institutions and Scottish and UK governments. We want to play our part and to do so we rely on events such as this to help bring together and build the expertise to enable informed decision making. I am also pleased that the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute is leading on such a prestigious European project which will help us in the North East develop the understanding on which we must act.

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