Designing a Sustainable Future: Data, Technology, and Inclusive Energy Solutions at Birkbeck
On 17 March 2025, Birkbeck Central hosted a flagship event as part of the Birkbeck Climate Festival 2025, drawing together students, staff, and sustainability professionals to explore Data, Technology & Sustainability through the session Birkbeck’s Role in Driving Inclusive Energy Solutions.
This hands-on workshop marked a significant step in how the university imagines its transition to net zero—not only as a technical challenge but as an opportunity to foreground inclusive, data-informed, community-driven change.
Led by Holly Jones (Sustainability and Energy Manager, Birkbeck Estates), Kostan Banos (Senior Consultant for Net Zero, LCMB), and introduced by Dr. Steve Willey (Academic Co-Director of Environmental Education Projects), the workshop placed Birkbeck’s own buildings and emissions at the centre of a collaborative case study in institutional transformation.
A scaffolded approach to systems thinking
The session began not with solutions, but with a foundational question: how do we see energy? Participants were invited to engage critically with the ways data is visualised and interpreted, discussing where energy data can be sourced, how it might be meaningfully represented through graphs or charts, and what level of granularity is required to support informed decision-making. This opening segment foregrounded a key premise of the workshop—that data is not neutral or self-evident, but constructed, contextual, and often incomplete. By exploring how information is framed and for whom, the session encouraged a shift from passive consumption of figures to active questioning of how data informs action, where it leaves gaps, and whose perspectives are privileged in sustainability planning.
From this foundation, the pedagogical structure of the workshop developed gradually, allowing participants to engage with increasing layers of complexity. They worked with a set of nine retrofit or energy transition options—ranging from solar PV to radiator upgrades—presented through concise data cards, and were placed at the heart of the decision-making process by taking on the roles of Finance, Energy, and Climate Change Managers. Drawing on data from Birkbeck’s Heat Decarbonisation Plan (HDP) and the university’s Energy and Carbon Management Plan (ECMP), which at the time of the workshop was in draft and under consultation, participants were asked to make a series of strategic choices that closely mirrored the challenges Birkbeck itself must navigate on its path to decarbonisation.
These initial cards foregrounded key metrics such as capital cost, carbon savings, and annual financial savings. The aim at this stage was to build familiarity with the core parameters of institutional energy planning, offering a baseline from which more detailed and critical analysis could develop.
This initial stage allowed participants to focus on one axis of decision-making at a time. Some groups prioritised interventions based solely on cost, while others looked at carbon savings. The intention, as Jones explained in her pre-session planning, was to ‘give participants a better idea of the scale of investment and disruption involved in meeting net zero, as well as the complexities of balancing the need for urgent climate action with day-to-day institutional constraints.’
In the second half of the exercise, the “second-tier” cards were introduced. These expanded on each retrofit with contextual detail: technical feasibility, operational resilience, embedded assumptions in carbon accounting methods, and potential socio-political consequences (such as reliance on offsets). By gradually layering this complexity, participants moved from a numbers-based decision exercise into a deeper systems-thinking challenge—an approach that foregrounded how data can both illuminate and obscure key questions around justice, equity, and feasibility. The case of replacing single-glazed windows, for example, sparked heated debate. While such an upgrade promises significant energy savings and cost reductions, its capital cost and high level of disruption raised critical questions about equity and feasibility within a working university environment. Similarly, the proposed switch to zero-carbon electricity highlighted the difficulty of interpreting data: while such a move would allow for market-based reporting of zero emissions, it brings no actual reduction in energy use or local emissions under location-based methodologies.
Data-Driven decisions meet pedagogical ethics
By design, this scaffolded approach cultivated critical awareness. Participants began by playing the role of institutional decision-makers working with clean, comparable metrics—but quickly learned that no sustainability pathway is free of trade-offs. The more complex cards invited questions like: Is offsetting an ethical option, or just an administrative convenience? What does a capital-intensive retrofit mean for an institution that is already resource-constrained? How does market-based carbon reporting mask real-world emissions?
The layering of information mirrored the real-world process of sustainability planning: initial proposals often begin with simplified forecasts, which then evolve under scrutiny into far more nuanced negotiations involving energy managers, finance officers, and policymakers. As the workshop unfolded, participants became increasingly invested in their assigned roles, often speaking with the distinct priorities and agendas of their brief—defending financial prudence, pushing for maximum carbon savings, or negotiating timelines to minimise disruption. This role-based structure surfaced the institutional tensions embedded in sustainability transitions, but also made them productive, generative. Crucially, the exercise transformed the Birkbeck estate from a passive backdrop into an active pedagogical tool. By treating the campus as a site of decision-making rather than simply its setting, the workshop reimagined the university not just as a place of learning but as a method of learning—where space, data, and dialogue are dynamically entangled.
Community-Centred Climate Action
A recurring theme throughout the session was inclusion: who benefits from decarbonisation strategies, whose behaviours are being asked to shift, and what kinds of knowledge count in institutional decision-making. Participants were encouraged to reflect not only on technical viability, but on justice, accessibility, and the social narratives we build around energy use.
While the low-disruption switch to zero-carbon electricity, for instance, was revealed to have little to no impact on location-based emissions, high-disruption but high-impact interventions like double-glazing or wall insulation prompted rich discussions about balancing urgent climate action with the needs of building users.
Through this lens, Birkbeck was not just a case study—it was a classroom, a testbed, and a community. The activity turned an institutional energy plan into a living curriculum, one that allowed its participants to engage directly with the tools and tensions of sustainability planning.
A Living Model for Climate Education
The success of the workshop lay in its ability to shift understanding: from a technical view of sustainability as a set of isolated interventions, to a dynamic systems view that highlights interdependence, political stakes, and institutional responsibility. It also demonstrated how well-designed educational experiences—rooted in real data, community relevance, and pedagogical intention—can transform awareness into action.
As Birkbeck continues on its net zero journey, the outcomes of this session offer more than insight—they offer a model. One in which behavioural change is not simply demanded, but supported. Where data is not just a metric, but a means of empowerment. And where every member of the community, regardless of role or expertise, is invited to help shape the energy solutions of tomorrow.
In addition to deepening understanding of sustainability systems, the workshop equipped participants with a set of highly transferable skills—systems thinking, data interpretation, ethical decision-making, collaborative problem-solving, and role-based negotiation. These are not only valuable within academic contexts but are increasingly essential in the energy and sustainability sectors. For students and early-career professionals, the session offered practical insights into the kinds of challenges faced by organisations pursuing net zero goals, and a structured opportunity to practice working through them. By bridging academic learning with real-world decision-making, the workshop created a space where participants could test, reflect on, and refine the very skills they may go on to use in their current roles or future careers in sustainability, energy planning, and environmental consultancy.
Building on the enthusiasm and depth of engagement this pilot generated, the workshop is now being developed into a reusable teaching resource, with the ambition to offer it more widely—both across Birkbeck and to external partners. By turning the activity into a replicable format, the aim is to support other institutions and organisations in navigating their own sustainability decisions through participatory, place-based, and data-informed approaches. In this way, Birkbeck’s estate becomes not just a site of transformation, but a catalyst for learning and action far beyond its own walls.