You're listening to the Decarbonization Dialogue,
a podcast from Salix. Welcome to Delivering on
Climate Change. Welcome to the Decarbonisation
Dialogue. I'm Hannah Walker and I believe that
the best way to communicate a message is by being
passionate about what you are talking about.
My guest today is Catherine Ross from the British
Library. Katherine is a passionate environmentalist
and an experienced project manager. She has worked
as sustainability manager at the British Library
since August 2023, which was the first time for
a dedicated role focused on the library's own
operations, as well as its voice and influence.
Before joining the British Library, she led much
of the work towards net zero carbon in the Church
of England's environment program. Catherine is
responsible for developing the organisation's
sustainability and climate change strategy. And
this wide -ranging strategy focuses on four main
priorities for action across the library, which
is our places, our purpose, our partnerships,
and embedded in our work. The British Library
is the UK's national library and it holds one
of the largest collections of printed material
in the world featuring almost every language
and cares for, and I'm sure Catherine will correct
me if I'm wrong, cares for more than 170 million
items from books, maps, stamps to sound recordings
and even a copy I believe of every UK domain
website. So welcome to Catherine. Good to have
you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having
me. Catherine, can we start with just a little
bit about yourself and how your career has developed
and how you got to where you are today? Yeah,
so like a lot of people, that's not a straight
line for me. The environment is always in the
background for as long as I can remember. But
really when I started my family, that was when
I started thinking more and more about the environment.
So my youngest is 22 now. When she was a baby,
I started thinking about all of those newspaper
headlines about 2050, and you realize, well,
hang on, that's when my kids are going to be
adults. So I started doing far more at home in
terms of our own environmental impact and then
I started doing loads in the community and for
lots of years I volunteered in my community for
a local environmental charity and then over time
I was able to move my career over. So I've worked
in the charity sector for a long time but for
about the last eight years I've worked on specifically
environmental roles. Just trying to find a way
to play my part in being a solution to the problems
that we face. We're talking today about climate
change and sustainability and your work with
the British Library. Can you tell us what does
sustainability mean in the context of a national
library? What does it mean? So it's worth, I
think, understanding, as you said, we've got
over 170 million items. Within that, we've got
so many of our collections which can speak to
climate change and nature loss. So obviously
we've got our science collection, but we've also
got maps, we've got weather records, we've got
all of history, we've got nature recordings,
eco -fiction, we've got papers, conference papers
of climate scientists, political manifestos.
So we have all of this knowledge and that knowledge
can really be brought to bear on issues around
climate change. sustainability, nature loss.
And then in terms of our own estate, we've got
two sites. We've got our big London site, which
is kind of the library that a lot of people know,
one and a half million visitors a year. And then
up in Yorkshire, we've got our big storage site
where 80 % of the collection is kept. So in terms
of when we think about sustainability, it's kind
of those two different halves. It's how can we
open up access to our collection? and all of
that knowledge that we hold in order to help
people find solutions to environmental problems.
And that might be businesses that want to start
a green business. That might be researchers wanting
to do their PhD in an area in this area. That
might be an activist who wants to think about
how to do it to do a campaign. It might be a
school teacher that wants to bring their school
to come and learn about sustainability. So there's
that side. How do we use our collection? And
then the other side is our own impact. We have
energies around our buildings. We have transport.
We use materials. We have water. What can we
do to reduce our own impact? And I think at the
British Library, we naturally think ahead because
our role is to look after all that knowledge
for posterity. So we think a long way ahead.
We make decisions a long way ahead. And then
as soon as you start thinking into the future
in that way, you absolutely see the climate crisis
coming. It's already impacting us, but we know
that in the time scale that we are tasked with
looking after the collection, the climate crisis
is only getting worse and the impact it's having
is getting worse both on us and our collection,
but also in our communities and on the world
as a whole. So our sustainability strategy is
kind of reflecting our determination as the National
Library to play our part. You mentioned your
career and you said it was not like many of us,
it's not a straight line, it never is, but you've
obviously got this experience and background
with the Church of England and working there
on the Net Zero initiative. What lessons do you
think you've brought from there to the role that
you're playing at the British Library? They're
very, very different organizations. There's always
things you can take from one to another. And
I would say the main thing was just about engagement,
engagement, engagement, engagement, talking,
training, communications, looking for champions
and supporting those champions. And then Church
of England obviously is a large and complicated
organization. So trying to find where are those
points where you can have some influence. So
for example, when I was at the CV, We did a lot
of work updating the rules that set out what
changes you could make in church buildings to
try and help achieve net zero carbon. Here at
the British Library I've done work getting sustainability
to be part of our business case process so it's
looking at where are those kind of points of
influence that you can have. which then embed
sustainability in decisions going forward. And
I really want to talk about that influence and
that voice that you have in a moment. But going
back to your experience, so the Church of England
is responsible for huge estates, obviously, ranging
from cathedrals to churches, but also housing
and small, small housing, smaller buildings.
And of course, now, as you say, we talk about
these, you know, millions of items that you're
responsible for and the energy and the resource.
that goes into that, because you have, as you
say, you have big sites, but we don't all think
about what practically it means, for example,
in terms of managing that precious material that
you have and those archives, whether they're
paper archives, digital archives, and the environment.
What kind of things are you balancing? What kind
of technologies are you balancing in all of that?
So in terms of where our own carbon emissions
come from, Last year, our direct carbon emissions
were a little bit under 7 ,000 tonnes of carbon
dioxide equivalent. The vast majority of that
is electricity and gas being used to heat, cool,
humidify, dehumidify our buildings. Our collection
needs to be kept in specific conditions for temperature
and humidity in order to make sure that we're
not damaging that collection, that we're keeping
it safe over time. So that requires gas and electricity
to run the buildings and maintain those collections.
And then we also, for the first time last year,
started to report our wider scope three, our
supply chain emissions, and they were a little
over double of our directs. So it was about 16
,000 tons of that supply chain emissions. So
in terms of what we can do there, that's about
embedding sustainability in our capital projects.
And it's about working with our suppliers, trying
to use our influence with our supply chain to
try and make sure that they are reducing their
carbon emissions as well as us producing ours.
I think about physical and digital, physical
books and newspapers and magazines, I think it's
more apparent what their impact is because we
have to build storage buildings and keep those
items in those buildings heated and cooled. digital
collection they also have an impact in a different
way. So we have a large amount of digital storage
and that requires servers either on site or cloud
and then over the lifetime remembering that we
need to keep those digital files also for posterity.
So over the lifetime of an item it might be several
different file formats and so there's some quite
naughty and complicated sort of trade -offs between
whether it's better or worse environmentally
to keep things physically or digitally. It is
exceptionally complex isn't it when you when
my colleagues I know visited your library and
they met you and they just came back just in
all really of that huge responsibility that you
bear and keeping and treasuring these items that
are so important and then thinking about the
correct temperatures and correct ways of handling.
You need to think all of the time about the environment
and the impact that you're having. We're so grateful
to have had the funding that we've had through
the public sector decarbonisation scheme managed
by CELICS that it's enabled us to implement new
technologies that we just could not have afforded
to do otherwise. So I've put Boston Spa, we've
got Groundsource Heat Pump now that's serving
several buildings, A -Source Heat Pump serving
several other buildings, solar panels on the
roof and down here at St Pancras we've got one
of the largest solar thermal installations in
the country on our roof. Even though we're a
grade one listed building, we were able to do
that and also just more energy efficient lighting,
energy efficient pumps and motors. We just couldn't
have done that work otherwise and those kind
of projects are enabling us to look after the
collection but in more low carbon ways. So going
back to your voice because you were talking about
your work at the Church of England and now obviously
at the British Library, do you see institutions
like the British Library as kind of neutral spaces,
or do you see that they have a responsibility
to use their voice around climate? I would say
it was both those things. We provide open, unjudgmental
access to our collection, to anyone, to everyone.
That is our role. Anybody can come to the British
Library. It's free to become a reader. They can
access our collection to research any issue,
whatever they wanted to research. But then we
also know that We, like any library, we have
a really important role in trying to increase
what we call information literacy, which is people
being able to find trusted sources of information
that they know that they can rely on and then
understand that information. And one part of
that work on information literacy is climate
literacy. So we want to be an organization like
any library that is helping people find and understand
reliable information. and in this particular
context in terms of the climate change obviously
that means we recognize the issues and we want
to help people find reliable and strong information
to understand climate change, to understand climate
impacts, to understand sustainability, to understand
what they can do about it. Often what we try
and do is let our collection items do the talking.
So for example we recently had a display in our
entrance hall and we had maps there that showed
glacial retreat. or when we had our animals exhibition
there was a beautiful sound recording of a bird
which is now extinct and we hold that nature
recording in our collection so we can find collection
items like that that tell this story in a very
powerful way. And that has such impact doesn't
it when you describe that extinct bird that you
can no longer hear and you come to the British
Library and you You can hear it there, but it
is no more. That's incredible impact, more than
any words, really. And that messaging, and as
you say, you're providing that resource and that
information, and it's how people use it and take
it away. So you have all this information, but
you also have your own sustainability strategies,
which you've published. And a lot of work has
obviously gone into that. if you could offer
some advice to anybody who's putting together
a sustainability strategy, because most businesses
have them now, or at least working on them, what
do you think the hardest part of writing a strategy
and obviously embedding it into your everyday
practices, what do you think the challenges are?
Yeah, and it's interesting. So those are two
different things, right? Writing it and then
embedding it. They're both vital. They're both
vital. In terms of writing it, what I did here
at the British Library, and I took a very similar
approach at the Church of England, is about taking
the time to co -create the document with my colleagues.
So it takes longer. What we did here was we formed
two working groups. One working group looked
at our, what we call our places. So it was kind
of the bricks and mortar and our own environmental
impact and the other working group looked at
our purposes. So that much kind of wider using
our voice. thinking about how we deliver it through
all of the activities of the library. Each of
those working groups had representatives from
different departments around the library and
I created like a template structure for the document
but then they each wrote the section that they
were the expert in and they engaged their teams
in thinking about what the priorities were going
to be and the actions were going to be. It takes
longer to do it that way but it means that by
the time the document is is written and signed
off. All of those teams have already been involved,
they've already thought about it themselves,
they thought about what actions they want to
take and they've already started doing it. So
we had teams already starting to implement actions
before the strategy was even signed off because
they were like, oh this is something we can do
in our area, let's just get on with it. I think
that kind of involvement process does take longer
but I really believe that it's more powerful
and then it helps with that embedding. because
there's been that engagement. The other thing
I think which is really key, there's so much
in terms of embedding, but like training is really
important. So we've gone down the route of carbon
literacy training. So we offer that to our staff
now and we've achieved bronze accreditation as
a carbon organization. We've made it part of
our induction. We have made it part of our business
case process. We've made it part of our procurement
process. It takes time, but what I'm trying to
gradually move towards is that sustainability
is one of the things that's part of every decision
that we take, that is on the table. You know,
that we would always be thinking obviously about
our budget, we'd always be thinking about risk,
we'd always be thinking about the benefit for
users, we'd always be thinking about any impact
on staff, but that sustainability should be one
of those factors that's become part of how we
take decisions and I'd say we're moving towards
that. We're definitely not there yet but we are
moving towards that. Is there a, you say you're
not there yet, Is there a yet? Is there an end
point for that or I guess it's kind of an ongoing
process, that journey? I think it'll always be
an ongoing process, won't it? I don't think there
would be anyone you would speak to who'd go,
yeah, we finished. We finished, that's it, we're
sustainable now, job done. Yes, I mean that carbon
literacy, indeed we've done the very same thing
at Salix and we've also had someone from the
Carbon Literary Trust on our podcast actually
to talk about the value of that and what that
can bring to organizations and how that obviously
can make a difference because of course you're
embedding this for the British Library and the
institution but of course all of that gets taken
home doesn't it by your team members, by all
of those curators, by everybody who works at
the Library, whoever they are. It's very lovely
that you've invited me and I love to talk about
it but it's just worth understanding that what
we've achieved at the British Library has been
so many colleagues, so many colleagues in their
own area. who really care about this, and they
see the part that they can play, and then they're
taking that forward. And I think the carbon literacy
training really helps with that as well. Because
if you've got someone who cares about the environment,
but they don't quite know what they could do,
then the carbon literacy training helps with
that. And by the end of the day, each person
who comes makes two pledges for action. And then
over time, as people take forward those pledges
for action, it has this really long lasting impact.
So when people visit, talking about your teams
and the work that you're doing, and you've also
talked about how you are including visitors,
people who have access to your collection. But
do you think when you engage with members of
the public, and I'm not talking about your supply
chain because that's obviously embedded, you
know, you're looking at where your supply, where
everything comes from. But do you think if you're
visiting the British Library in any capacity
to, whether it's to borrow a book or to listen
to a talk or whatever, do you think people are
aware of this work generally? Or do you think
they care about it? We haven't surveyed our own
users, but there has been, there was a very big
piece of work in the culture sector as a whole
that showed that the majority of people that
access cultural organisations do care and they
do expect those organisations to be taking action.
So my sense would be that our users would consider
this to be important. When they visit us, they
would probably notice things like there are recycling
stations all around the building. They would
notice things like you can't buy a plastic bottle
of water. and that we've got really good veggie
and vegan options in the cafes. They would notice
those kind of things. They might notice the cycle
parking. They wouldn't notice things like, oh,
you've got low -energy light bulbs. And they
shouldn't notice that, right? They shouldn't
know that we've got solar thermal on the roof
because you can't see that from inside the building.
In a way, you want all of that stuff to be invisible
because it's just about doing the things you're
already doing, but doing them in lower carbon
ways. We have made a real effort to include it
more in things like our exhibitions. So we've
just recently had our unearthed exhibition, which
was about the power of gardening, and we aim
to make that our most sustainable exhibition
ever. And then we have signages you came out
of that exhibition that explained the sustainability
strategy. So in things like that, we have absolutely
aimed to tell the story. But in terms of someone
just coming into our building, I hope they would
just think they were in a beautiful building
filled with Filled with knowledge. Fantastic.
If we came back and had this conversation, we
did talk a little bit about timelines because
this is something that is in our news. It's something
that we've got various targets, you know, carbon
targets, whether it's 2030, 2045, 2050. So, as
you say, this is ongoing and we have to pay attention,
but we have to pay attention now. But if we revisited
this conversation in five years, what do you
think success would look like at the British
Library? Yeah, so as I said, in a way, it's a
lot about doing the things we're already doing,
but doing them more sustainably. So we'd be more
energy efficient. We'd have even less waste.
We'd have less duplication. By then, our new
passive store will be open up at Boston Spa.
So this is our newest storage building on our
Yorkshire site. We're building to passive house
standards. So that will be open and we are including
a viewing gallery in that building specifically
so that people can come to site and they can
see the work that we've done to create a really
really energy efficient building that's got no
active heating and cooling. You said five years
time? Yes. Five years time and I have to say
subject to funding we are aiming to have significantly
reduced our use of gas here in St Pancras so
we're designing replacement systems using air
source heat pumps for heating and cooling, but
whether we will have achieved that in five years'
time, I very much hope that we will. We are aiming
to have new collection resources by then so that
people would find it even easier to find what
we have in that massive collection that we have,
that they could find the things that they wanted
in terms of climate change and nature loss, and
culturally, as we discussed earlier, that it
would be just one part, a natural part of every
decision that we take. Thank you very much to
Catherine for explaining that and providing such
insight. There can be no doubt that climate change
is the biggest challenge of our time. Today we
must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow
global warming. Today we must act for tomorrow,
adjusting our lifestyles to current and future
impacts of climate change. Today we must use
our collective wisdom to deliver on our climate
commitments. Today we work for tomorrow's world.
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast channels
and please do email us. We're always interested
in your views at podcast at salixfinance .co
.uk. And thank you once again to Catherine Ross
from the British Library. Thank you for having
me. You've been listening to the Decarbonisation
Dialogue, a podcast from Salix. For more information
about our work and to find more content, please
visit salixfinance .co .uk forward slash podcasts.