Energy Efficiency Initiatives at Universities: A Systematic Literature Revie

Abstract

Energy efficiency has received increasing attention in sustainable development over the past years due to the attention of climate change mitigation. In this context, universities have the role of promoting sustainability through energy efficiency efforts, improving environmental, economic and social aspects and increasing energy savings and the use of renewable energy. The aim of this paper is to perform a systematic review of the literature on the topic energy efficiency initiatives/practices/actions at Universities and analyse how they are contributing to the four categories created by LiFE Index: facilities and operations; leadership and governance; learning, teaching and research; partnerships and engagement. The databases Web of Science and Scopus were used to the review and resulted in 100 articles published in the last 10 years. This research illustrates a comprehensive approach related to the panorama of initiatives, practices and actions that universities are developing in the energy efficiency topic. In addition, the literature review highlights examples and barriers between energy efficiency and sustainable development by comparing and analysing them, showing its relevant features.

Electrically Savvy or Not? Tentative Portrait of the Romanian Student as a Consumer of Electric Devices and Utilities

“…On the one hand, the survey highlighted the students' consumption behaviors on a list of domestic appliances from the point of view of availability and frequency, and on the other hand, the survey aimed to identify student energy-saving or energy-wasting behavior. The combination of monitoring and survey data can help overcome the limits of a single-angle approach [17,44,50]. To obtain the desired profile of students as consumers of electrical utilities and devices, the analysis was carried out along the following variables: sociodemographic and tools [51].…”

“…individual and sociodemographic factors that affect the energy-saving behavior of student communities [10,31,49,50]. These studies inspired the third research objective:…”

“…A third consistent direction of research goes toward identifying the drivers for energysaving behavior in the investigated population. Studies highlight the effects of competitions [47,48], data visualizations and other sources of information delivery, or individual and sociodemographic factors that affect the energy-saving behavior of student communities [10,31,49,50]. These studies inspired the third research objective:…”

HyDSMaaS: A Hybrid Communication Infrastructure with LoRaWAN and LoraMesh for the Demand Side Management as a Service

“…And it's worth mentioning that these are also energy users, so they will also be present in AMI. For universities to be present in AMI, it is necessary to have a data aggregator to collect the data of all the blocks and sectors scattered throughout the geographical area of the university [83]. Applications have been studied and developed to promote automation and communication between various sensors and actuators within the university, and this is important to be considered because they are of extreme importance to intelligently manage energy consumption in these locations.…”