Comparing Greenhouse Gas Emissions across Texas Universities

Abstract

This project serves as a study comparing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between universities in Texas. Over 90 percent of climate scientists believe that increased climate change is due to anthropogenic causes. These anthropogenic causes result in the GHG that we emit in our day-to-day activities. Our study quantifies the GHG data from our university, St. Edward's University in Austin, and compares it to data obtained from other Texas universities. This report will serve as a reference to the universities involved to improve sustainability initiatives in place by comparing practices and metrics. These findings may also serve as a catalyst for action for other universities to begin implementing their own sustainability practices. Our hypotheses are exploratory in nature; schools with sustainability offices will have lower emissions than those without, and St. Edward's emissions will have decreased since the institution of a sustainability program. The results show that there does seem to be a correlation between the schools with the lowest GHG emissions and their creation of a sustainability office.

Carbon footprint in Higher Education Institutions: a literature review and prospects for future research

“…For these reasons, universities, as an example of sustainable organisations, should take a leading role in the fight against climate change and thus in the calculation, monitoring, reporting, reduction or even offsetting of their CF. However, as a preliminary step for calculating the CF of HEI, it is necessary to understand their activities that contribute to climate change by creating a greenhouse gas emissions inventory (Bailey and LaPoint 2016 ). HEI typically consists of a mixture of buildings used for classrooms, laboratories, offices, canteens, residences, etc.…”

“…Although there are no general reviews related to this subject, the literature contains a few studies focussed on comparing the CFs of different HEIs belonging to specific associations in a specific geographical area. So that, Sinha et al ( 2010 ) compared the CF from institutions that were signatories of the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) and Bailey and LaPoint ( 2016 ) compared the CF from nine universities located in Texas (USA). Both studies applied the Clean Air Cool Planet Calculator (CA-CP 2020 ) to compile and model the emission data from the institutions compared in each study.…”

Sustainable Higher Education Systems

“…Versteijlen et al (2017) calculated staff and student travel to be the main component of Scope 3 carbon dioxide emissions accounting for 40-91% of the total emissions of six Dutch universities. Similarly, high emissions from staff and student travel were also reported in university case studies in the UK (Ozawa-Meida et al 2013) and USA (Bailey and LaPoint 2016). In response, some HE institutions have introduced sustainable transport plans, for example, promoting the use of bicycles and providing access to public transport for staff, students and visitors and discouraging single-car commuting through car sharing and parking restrictions, for example, the University of Bristol (2017) and the University of Nottingham (2018).…”

Do Codes of Ethics Reveal a University’s Commitment to Sustainable Development? Evidence from Italy

“…In particular, the SDGs that are related to environmental issues such as quality of natural resources, biodiversity and renewable energy are completely neglected. This aspect is not in-line with the numerous studies conducted at an international level in which universities try, especially empirically, to address environmental issues [52,53]. Even though some environmental issues can be considered external from the activities of universities, universities themselves could encourage, certainly not obliging, research activity to be focused on these themes.…”