CRed - The Community Carbon Reduction Project at UNC-Chapel Hill

The Cambridge Colleges Carbon Reduction and Sustainability Project

The University of Cambridge (along with Oxford University) has an academic structure in which the University and Colleges are separate administrative units. Previous carbon dioxide inventories developed by our team had the contributions from University operations clearly separated from the remainder of the City of Cambridge Sectors, but the contribution from Colleges was hidden inside the larger Commercial and Residential sectors of the city. The Cambridge Colleges Carbon Reduction and Sustainability Project, therefore, was begun in the summer of 2006 by Brian Levo (a UNC student attending the Summer Field Site), who produced an administrative map of the University and College system and identified a variety of groups in Cambridge that might serve as coordinators for the College efforts in the area of sustainability in general and climate change in particular. The Cambridge University Environmental Consulting Society develops a Green League Table for the Colleges annually, and so the UNC-Chapel Hill effort is in collaboration with CUECS. In December, 2006, Dr. Robert Mair, Master of Jesus College, agreed to use Jesus College as the template for the College program; the material and procedures provided on this site are the result of testing the system at Jesus College during the 2006-2007 academic year. The CRed team extends their thanks to him and to the staff of Jesus College for providing that opportunity and assisting with the collection of data needed for the analysis.

The following materials expand on the idea of carbon emissions reductions to include a variety of other measures of environmental quality and sustainability, creating a methodology for assessing the overall environmental footprint of a College that can be used in developing a Green League Table. The previous Green League Tables developed by CUECS served as the starting point for this methodology. The methodology for those earlier tables focused on determining whether a College had active programs and policies in several key areas: (i) kitchen and bar; (ii) computers, printers and photocopiers; (iii) gardens; (iv) insulation and lighting; (v) waste; (vi) housekeeping; and (vii) a general commitment of the College towards environmental issues. Points were assigned in each of the seven categories based on responses to a questionnaire. The sum of these points made up a final score used to establish the ranking of the Colleges. An example is shown in the figure below, taken from the 2006-2007 report.

While an excellent starting point for assessing sustainability of a College, the Green League Table can be improved upon by making it more quantitative and having scores based on actual environmental performance of a College’s infrastructure and practices, rather than solely on the presence or absence of policies and practices. Hence, the present web site and the methodology presented.

View the Cambridge Colleges Carbon Reduction and Sustainability Methodology