Green Gown Awards 2016 – Sustainability Student Champion – Tianqi Li – Finalist

Tianqi Li - Newcastle University

Tianqi’s PhD project is focussed on designing a systematic and holistic sustainability assessment method for evaluating sustainability performance of energy industry. In addition to having presented at several international conferences and workshops, as well as to publish her findings in prestigious scientific journals, Tianqi was also awarded the Linda Latham scholarship by ACEEE in appreciation for her scientific contribution to energy sustainability. Moreover, Tianqi has delivered lectures to postgraduate students on subjects surrounding sustainability.

In her spare time, she actively promotes the idea of implementing sustainability into daily life. She leads a team and conducted green audit for my university. Her actions successfully raised awareness on environmental behaviour within her organisation (such as energy saving, recycling etc.).

The staff members were highly impressed with the professional manner where audits were conducted. And Tianqi has also received very positive feedback from the Green Impact Sustainability team.

Top 3 learnings

1 I designed a novel sustainability assessment method for examining product sustainability. I learnt that sustainability can only be achieved when social, economic and environmental values are all taken into account.

2 I learnt that the term “sustainability” only makes sense when life cycle impact of the selected product is quantified

3 I also learnt that there is genuine interest in promoting sustainable development across the globe, people just need to be given the right guidance.