UCC Carbon Literacy Training Course

Carbon Literate citizens understand how climate change is affecting them and how it will impact their lives in the future.

This course is a UCC Digital Badge. and Carbon Literacy training accredited by the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP). Over the course of this Digital Badge, you will engage in a number of different activities such as online quizzes, calculating your carbon footprint, and group work to maximise your understanding of climate issues and how you can motivate others to take action.

This Carbon Literacy Training is made up of 5 modules:

• Module 1: Science of Climate Change (online)
• Module 2: Climate Justice (online)
• Module 3: Carbon Footprints (workshop)
• Module 4: Mitigation & Adaptation (workshop)
• Module 5: Taking Action (online + workshop) 

Carbon literacy is the start of the journey, and you must complete all modules and assignments to receive your Digital Badge from UCC and your Carbon Literacy certification from CLP. Our UCC Carbon Literacy Training uses a step-wise approach to ensure that you achieve the following Learning Outcomes by the end of this course. 

• Recognise the main drivers of climate change and situate yourself within the context of the local and global climate crisis.
• Appreciate the imbalance of the impacts of climate change and critically reflect on the complex social injustice issues associated with a just transition.
• Calculate your personal carbon footprint and collaboratively contrast high and low impact actions.
• Discriminate between different policy and mitigation scenarios and their potential to reach international climate targets while valuing the use of policy levers to effect systemic change.
• Envision a positive climate future and outline key steps as a group that can be implemented at a personal, institutional, and local level and detail the consequent action plan.

Workshop Sessions 

Modules 3, 4, and half of 5 are carried out through interactive workshop sessions. All sessions will adhere to public health and UCC safety guidelines and will be held on campus. During these workshops, our facilitators will lead you through a variety of activities during which you will get to learn as a group with other students and staff and have the opportunity to share experiences and collaborate with other participants.

Final assignment

As part of this training, you must complete a final assignment which includes the following actions:  

1. Create at least one significant action, within your area of control, to personally reduce your own or someone else’s carbon footprint (and this should be within the context of UCC).
2. Create at least one significant action involving other people, within your area of control, to reduce the collective footprint of your workplace, community or within the context of UCC.

The actions undertaken in this assignment must be ‘meaningful’ and ‘significant’ and cannot be something you are already doing. The meaning of these words can vary from person to person. For example, what is ‘significant’ for a first-year student coming straight from secondary school will be very different from what is ‘significant’ for the manager of an academic department or the President of UCC. 

If you have any questions about the training course, please contact m.kirrane@ucc.ie

Click to enrol for the Canvas Course Digital Badge: Carbon Literacy