Do’s and Don’ts in Climate Impact Assessment of University Campuses: Towards Responsible, Transparent and Comprehensive Reporting

Abstract

With the commitment of more and more universities to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, standardizing the modeling is now becoming urgent. To date, published climate-relevant emissions can be based on completely different and incomparable accounting methods, as shown with results between 6 and 2696 t CO2e for the use phase of the same campus. This article aims to identify, compare, and evaluate the different modeling approaches behind this. For this purpose, this article proposes basic attributes of emissions modeling and reporting. Of the three established approaches to emissions accounting, sector logic (territorial carbon accounting) produces the lowest figures. Reporting in accordance with the greenhouse gas protocol, which has become established worldwide, can also shift the responsibility outside the institutional consumer. Life-cycle assessment, instead, essentially includes provision costs triggered by the consumer. The different modeling approaches also overlap with different coverage of emission sources, for which a standard set is being proposed. Such emissions modeling should finally lead to the determination of university-specific climate performances, i.e., the CO2e emissions per capita and per m2 of gross floor area. Infrastructure and procurement expenses must be recorded in addition and converted to an annual average.