TUL carbon footprin

About two-thirds of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from the combustion of fossil fuels used to produce heat and electricity, for transport and industry. The latest IPCC report warns that failure to reduce emissions will lead to catastrophic health, economic and social consequences around the world. However, we can prevent these changes by reducing emissions and investing in adaptation strategies. It is also very important to raise people's awareness of the real impact of climate change on their lives and health.

An activity that can contribute to increasing awareness is the dissemination of knowledge about the Carbon Footprint . This is one method of counting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It may concern materials, services, technological processes, as well as the activities of enterprises, organizations or entire sectors of the economy. The carbon footprint includes not only emissions directly generated by a given product or activity, but also emissions associated with all stages of their Life Cycle Assessment. An organization's carbon footprint is usually measured on an annual basis and expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent in kilograms or tons (kg/Mg CO2eq). The higher education sector also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse Gas Protocol The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, GHG Protocol), i.e. the standard by which organizations calculate their carbon footprint, divides emissions into three ranges (according to ISO 14067):

Scope 1. - direct emissions of greenhouse gases resulting from the combustion of fuels in stationary and mobile sources or resulting from technological processes or escaping refrigerants.

Scope 2. – indirect emissions resulting from the consumption of imported (purchased or externally supplied) electricity, heat and process steam.

Scope 3. - All other indirect emissions in the organization's value chain, i.e. greenhouse gas emissions that the organization can influence but does not control. Emissions related to e.g. transport of purchased goods, waste disposal, business trips, commuting of employees/students to work using vehicles not owned by the organization. This is often the largest range and at the same time the most difficult to quantify.

Monitoring the carbon footprint will soon become not only a legal obligation for many entrepreneurs, but also a condition for maintaining a competitive advantage. It will allow universities to strengthen and develop their image. The obligation to determine GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions will apply to issuers as early as 2023, and will soon be included in non-financial reporting by all large companies, including private ones, employing more than 250 employees (regulations on sustainable development reporting will come into force on January 1, 2024 ).

Lodz University of Technology has joined the UN-supported initiative "Race to Zero". This global campaign brings together enterprises, cities, as well as institutions from the education, finance and healthcare sectors, whose common goal is to create and implement transparent action plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in accordance with the Paris Agreement.

The Race to Zero for Universities and Colleges campaign is run in partnership with EAUC (The Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education), Second Nature and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The signatories of "Race to Zero" declare, among others: taking action to achieve climate neutrality by 2050.

To meet these expectations, you must first know the current state by performing a carbon footprint analysis. In order to carry it out, you can use the literature data for each product/process used, as well as the type of transport in the entire supply chain, or the databases of LCA indicators of products and processes available in the literature or contained in commercial databases, e.g. ecoinvent, associated with licensed software such as SimaPro, Umberto or GaBi. Knowing their carbon footprint, organizations can manage emissions more effectively, reduce the carbon footprint of processes, and thus - reduce costs.

Identification and verification of greenhouse gas emissions at the university can be used, among others, to assess the share of greenhouse gas emission sources owned by the university, or to assess the distribution of GHG emissions, taking into account spatial and temporal changes.

Carbon footprint calculations differ in the scope of analysis, e.g. they may omit some stages of the life cycle, e.g. due to the lack of sufficient data, the type of methodology used or software used to calculate the carbon footprint.

In order to calculate the carbon footprint of Lodz University of Technology, SimaPro software with the ecoinvent 3.8 database and the IPCC 2021 GWP 100a method were used. The results present the carbon footprint based on information on media consumption on campuses and dormitories belonging to Lodz University of Technology in 2019-2021. Table 1 shows the input data that formed the basis for calculating the carbon footprint.

Table 1. List of data on media consumption in 2019-2021 in buildings belonging to Lodz University of Technology.

Based on the above information, a carbon footprint per square meter of buildings was calculated (Table 2).

Table 2. Carbon footprint for buildings belonging to Lodz University of Technology in 2019-2021 per m² of space.

The importance of construction in the process of achieving climate neutrality is indisputable. The latest data show that buildings are responsible for approx. 38% of global CO₂emissions, with as much as 28% coming from the operation of buildings, and the remaining 10% is caused by the consumption of energy necessary for the production of materials and technologies used in construction (the so-called embedded carbon footprint).

Analyzing the above data, the impact of the pandemic on the results of the carbon footprint is clearly visible. In 2020, compared to 2021, the carbon footprint of buildings on Campus A was as much as 30.4 kg/m² lower, which is nearly 30%. A slightly smaller difference, at the level of 25 kg/m² (25.5%), was visible at TUL Residential Area. The smallest, but equally significant at the level of 12.1 kg/m² for buildings on campus B (17%).

The sustainability challenge in the area of buildings goes far beyond reducing CO2 emissions during the use phase. Nevertheless, based on the obtained results, it is clear that the so-called operational carbon footprint, i.e. CO₂ emissions caused by heating, cooling, domestic hot water preparation, use of devices, computers, elevators, installations, servers, etc., but also water or gas consumption have a significant impact on the carbon footprint. Further work will focus on also including Scope 3 in the analysis of Lodz University of Technology's carbon footprint and will form the basis for concrete practical action. Their goal is to strive to achieve climate neutrality.