Carbon management - Future ways of working and greenhouse gas emissions
About the project or challenge area
Over the past few years, numerous workers swapped their suits for slippers; a train commute for a walk around the block; a watercooler chat for hanging out with pets at home. However, the qualitative and quantitative impacts of remote and flexible workings are yet to be fully understood, with questions about sustainability, wellbeing, and differential effects. From a research perspective, these questions offer a complex challenge as they highlight the contingencies of carbon accounting and scoping. They also remind us that any questions pertaining to sustainability ought to be addressed while paying attention to the local context.
The aim of this project is to examine the relationship between future ways of working and greenhouse gas emissions using a case study of an office-based company and its employees.
This project has been designed in collaboration with Hoare Lea. Students will work with operational data and have access to expertise from the Hoare Lea team, with the primary contact being Sam Wilkinson, Senior Associate.
Why choose this project?
This project will:
- Review the literature on sustainability of remote and flexible working, paying particular attention to debates on methods of measurement and evaluation;
- Critically analyse existing (secondary)quantitative data on Hoare Lea's (project partner) working practices and emissions. The datasets will relate to:a)'employee engagement' survey (n=550); b) 'commuting' survey (n=550) c) analysis of GHG footprint of employees’ commuting and ICT use;
- Conduct primary qualitative research with Hoare Lea’s employees on their working practices (e.g., motivations, trade-offs between office and remote work, cost, wellbeing, productivity etc.) through the means of interviews, workshops, organisationalethnography or other creative engagements;
- Provide insights and suggest recommendations for future ways of working considering environmental, financial, health, wellbeing and social factors.
The project will be interdisciplinary in nature. It will require numerical skills to analyse GHG emissions data and survey data. It will also engage with qualitative and critical social science disciplines to shed light on the politics of emissions accounting.
How to apply
All students can apply using the button below, following the Admissions Statement (PDF, 188kB). Please note that this is an advertised project, which means you only have to complete Section A of the Research Statement.
This project is not funded, for further details please use this link.
Before applying, we recommend getting in touch with the project's supervisors. If you are interested in this project and would like to learn more about the research you will be undertaking, please use the contact details on this page.
Supervisor
Your Supervisor for this project will be Professor Chris Preist, University Academic Director of Sustainability, Department of Computer Science. Contact details: +44 (0)117 4561672 or email Chris.Preist@bristol.ac.uk
Supervisor
Your co-supervisor for this project will be Dr Ola Michalec, Senior Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science. Contact number: +44 (0)117 455 5804 or email: ola.michalec@bristol.ac.uk
Find out more about your prospective research community
The Low Carbon Energy theme is a vibrant community of researchers who integrate expertise across multiple disciplines to develop sustainable energy policy and technologies which are crucial to providing a safe, reliable and low-cost energy supply for a growing global population. We innovate in every part of the energy system, from generation and storage, to regulation and end-user demand Find out more about the Low Carbon Energy theme.