Paula Owen – Eco Action Games
Paula is a specialist in environmental sustainability, behavioural change and engagement, staff training, carbon measurement & reporting tools. She has three decades of professional expertise in the environmental sustainability sector. She has a PhD in climate change atmospheric science from the University of Oxford. She is also the author of numerous environmentally related publications including a book on the Brent Spar oil platform crisis of the 1990s – which is currently being turned into a TV drama; numerous energy and carbon research reports commissioned by the UK government; a book on gamification for the sustainability sector. In 2021, she published he first historical fiction – Little Brown Dog – which retells the true story of a controversial statue that caused riots and violent uprisings in Edwardian London. She has just completed her second historical fiction which explores the incredible, but little known, stories for the fight for British female suffrage.
Paula has worked for a range of leading environmental not-for-profit organisations, charities, government departments and academic institutions. She was Project Architect for the award-winning UK Government’s Act on CO2 carbon footprint calculator. She has also assisted other organisations to produce carbon footprinting tools: Google UK; BBC – the Albert Carbon Calculator; the Pew Center on Global Climate Change; Bank of America; Energy UK and the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership.
In 2010 she established her own environmental consultancy, Green Gumption, providing advisory services, employee engagement training courses, research and authorship capacity and online educational and training tools to a wide range of well-known clients. The company specialises in creating and delivering education and behaviour change campaigns in areas as diverse as water saving, energy efficiency in schools, and air quality in cities. She is also the Founding Director and CEO of award-winning eco action games, a B Corp accredited, social purpose company that invents and produces innovative and educational, engagement & behaviour change resources disguised as games for all ages. She was awarded the position of London Leader for Sustainability in 2012/13, a position awarded by the Mayor of London’s Office to individuals who are contributing to making London a more sustainable city.
For the past decade Paula has been an Expert Evaluator for the Horizon 2020 EU Commission funding mechanism where she judges multi-million Euro energy potential projects on their eligibility for funding. She has been a judge for the Global Good Awards since its inception in 2015. From 2017 she has also been part of the International Jury that awards the Stockholm Junior Water Prize at World Water Week – a global competition for young adults from 16-19 - which takes place annually in Sweden.
Lecture Theatre My Net Zero Journey
From Atmospheric Science To Gaming: My Journey To Net Zero
Paula started her net zero journey with a PhD in atmospheric chemistry and her first role was trying to educate an oblivious British public about the dangers of accelerated climate change. Through three decades she has, in one form or another, continued in that vein – education and behaviour change to attempt to persuade people to take action. Around a decade ago, she happened upon the idea of using gamification to help engage people in climate action and that has been her focus ever since through her B Corp certified company, eco action games. In this talk, Paula will explain why she thinks gamification is a useful tool in the Net Zero professional’s armoury and demo her brand new game – the Great British Net Zero Lowdown – with the audience.