Sustainability

Earlier this term, Pembroke joined in with university-wide efforts to encourage sustainability practices among staff and students. Oxford’s 2025 ‘Green Action Week’ saw numerous events held across different Colleges which promoted the ‘actions’ we can take as a community to secure a greener future.

We are delighted to share that Pembroke has been awarded a grant of £726,710 from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, marking a second major milestone in our journey to Net Zero. The grant will fund a project to decarbonise heating in the Rokos Quad, following similar works successfully carried out in the Hall and GAB in summer 2023. Once complete, a total of 45% of the College estate will have decarbonised heating.

Our latest sustainability initiative was kicked off on Wednesday 7th February, as a group of students and staff headed down to the Pembroke Sports Ground to plant a small orchard of native fruit trees and shrubs.

Pembroke College Lecturer in Engineering, Dr Nicole Miranda, is the first author and co-lead of an important research paper with fellow Oxford academics titled ‘Change in cooling degree days with global mean temperature increasing from 1.5 °C to 2.0 °C’.

We are delighted to announce that the College has been awarded £1.36m government funding to decarbonise our historic Dining Hall, supporting the implementation of a site-wide decarbonisation plan.

We are excited to share the success of the Pembroke College Biodiversity Project. Set up in 2021 by a team of undergraduate biologists, the project began with two unassuming and overgrown fields near the Pembroke sports ground, which turned out to be hidden gems of biodiversity potential.

A number of Pembroke students worked to gather the data for a biodiversity audit. They spent a number of days around the College Main Site, the Geoffrey Arthur Building, and the Sportsground, measuring trees, birds, insects and earthworms.