The Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology have announced the creation of a new professorial position of sustainable reaction engineering.

The move highlights the recent attention focused upon Cambridge's attitude to climate change, closely following as it does last week's student climate change campaign, Energise Cambridge, which culminated in the formation of a human wind turbine on Parker's Piece.

The new professorial position is intended to allow researchers in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology to "meet society's need without damaging the environment" and aims to strengthen the Department's contributions to sustainable energy.

In particular, the new Chair is intended to push the boundaries of the state-of-the-art in low carbon chemical technology.

Head of the Department Professor Nigel Slater acknowledges the "complex and urgent research challenge" of creating sustainable processes that balancing the needs of industry with environmental protection, and commented that this new position is a "very exciting development".

Energise Cambridge representative Isobel Braithwaite, however, believes that the real challenge that needs to be addressed is leveraging the considerable expertise that already exists to translate into emission reduction targets and to ensure that Cambridge is as sustainable as possible.

She told Varsity that the student campaign aims to send the message to the University that "as a world leader of higher education and research it's also immensely important for it to demonstrate sustainability leadership locally".

She does acknowledge, however, that the appointment is "obviously a step in the right direction" and Braithwaite hopes that the new position will work towards strengthening communication and coordination between various departments within the University that are focused on both climate change and sustainability.

Energise Cambridge criticized the University as being one of the leading emitters of carbon among higher education institutions in the UK, and listed their ideas about how the University could instigate changes that would help to go some way towards the problem of decreasing its carbon footprint.

The recommendations to the University Environmental Strategy Committee include a move towards a more 'cost-effective' policy, rather than the current approach of maintaining a 'cost-neutral' one, as well as the conduction of further research into the alternative renewable options that are viable and open for the University.

The group is ultimately advocating a commitment to the seeking of low carbon sources of electricity and to an overall carbon intensity target of 100g CO2/kWh by 2030.