Carbon footprint is a measure of the amount of carbon dioxide emissions of a defined system or activity; considering all relevant sources and sinks within the spatial and temporal boundary of the system or activity of interest. At Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus (METU NCC), the Green Campus Initiative has been active since 2011, with the main goal of establishing sustainability and environmental friendliness and awareness in the campus. Within this social responsibility initiative, several actions have been implemented with a strategic goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions per capita by more than 10% by the year 2017. Some actions which have been implemented include tree-planting activities, regulations related to campus motor vehicles and projects for a bike-friendly campus, solid waste reduction and water/electricity-usage efficiency practices, and supporting public transportation. In addition to this initiative, larger scale developments also took place towards sustainability in the campus. A 1-MW photovoltaic solar power plant was constructed and started to be operated in 2016, which has been providing ~25% of the electricity consumed by the campus on average. In this study, it is aimed to develop a systematic, user-friendly methodology to calculate the carbon footprint of the campus as a function of time. After a comprehensive review of published studies, carbon-emission factors are collected from the literature. IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) Tier 1 Methodology is employed to quantify the CO2 emission in kg/year. Data collection is performed by working cooperatively with administrative units of the campus, to determine annual contributions of each source and sink that are identified as critical for CO2 emissions. Sources are grouped into four as electricity, fuel, food and paper consumption, while sinks are recycled materials and trees. A comprehensive spreadsheet-based tool is developed to input required data and calculate the amount of emissions with the goal of including all activities of campus employees, residents and students. It is found out that amount of carbon dioxide emitted increased by 52% during the time frame 2011-2017, due to increased number of employees and students with 7.4 million kg of CO2 emissions for the year 2017. However, considering the number of students and full-time employees, 2,312 kg of CO2 was emitted per capita in 2017, which is 15% less than the emissions for the year 2011. Solar-energy power plant reduced the share of electricity consumption from 42% to 33% within all carbon emission sources. Transportation-fuel consumption per capita also got reduced by 25% due to promotions of bicycle usage in the campus and shuttle buses for the commute of campus staff and students. Results indicate that sustainability initiatives within the campus positively contributed the strategic goal of reducing the carbon emissions more than 10%. A probabilistic assessment tool is also developed to quantify the uncertainty for carbon footprint calculations through Monte Carlo simulation. By providing expected ranges of 12 input parameters, CO2 emitted per capita is estimated to be 2,188, 2,116 and 2,007 kg with cumulative probabilities of 10%, 50%, and 90%, respectively, for the year 2018.
Keywords: carbon footprint, sustainability, IPCC methodology, university campuses, probabilistic assessment
1c. Assessing sustainability (indicators and reporting)
