BGB Bournemouth Gateway Building (BU building on Lansdowne Campus)
BMS Building management system
BEMS Building energy management system
Biomass boiler A heating system that generates heat from biomass e.g. woodchip
BREEAM Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method; a standard for sustainable construction
BU Bournemouth University
Carbon factors Factors that convert activity data into estimated greenhouse gas emissions data. The DEFRA carbon factors to be used for each reporting year are within the latest version of the DEFRA carbon factors published before the reporting year. The carbon factors used for 2023/24 are the DEFRA GHG conversion factors published 28 June 2023.
CECAP Bournemouth University’s Climate & Ecological Crisis Action Plan to reach net zero emissions and embed environmental action across the university by 2030/31
(t) CO2e (kg) CO2e (tonnes of or kilograms of) Carbon Dioxide (CO2) equivalent; the concentration of CO2 that would cause the same level of warming as a given type and concentration of greenhouse gas
DEFRA UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
DH Dorset House (BU building on Talbot Campus)
EBC Executive Business Centre (BU building on Lansdowne Campus)
EAUC Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges
EEMS Environmental and Energy Management System, BU is certified to both ISO14001 and ISO50001
ESD Education for Sustainable Development
F gas Fugitive emissions include greenhouse gases that are releases as an unintentional emission, leakage, or discharge of gases or vapours from pressure-containing equipment or facilities (e.g. from air conditioning systems).
GIA Gross internal area; the total footprint area of all BU’s buildings minus the widths of the walls in metres squared (m2)
GHG Greenhouse gases
GSHP Ground source heat pump
kWh and MWh Kilowatt-hour and megawatt-hour
Abbreviation Definition
LED
Light-emitting diode; a low energy lightbulb LPG
Liquified petroleum gas
Locationbased reporting
Marketbased reporting
NbS
Net zero emissions
The location-based method calculates the emissions from electricity use based on the average emission intensity of the power grid we are using. Meaning we use the UK grid emission factor published by DEFRA.
Calculates the emissions from the electricity a company purchases. The market-based method is intended to support the use and reporting of green energy tariffs via Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) and Guarantees of Origin (REGO).
Nature-based solutions; solutions to climate and ecological challenges that provide benefits to both nature and humans
Reducing gross emissions and then offsetting any residual emissions until the amount released is equal to the amount removed from the atmosphere
PGB Poole Gateway Building (BU building on Talbot Campus)
PH Poole House (BU building on Talbot Campus)
PPA Power purchase agreement
REGO Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin certificate is a transferable statement issued by Ofgem that guarantees electricity generated from a renewable source
Standardised Carbon Emissions Framework by the EAUC released in January 2023
Emissions from activities under an organisation's direct control such as those from gas boilers, fleet vehicles and on-site refrigerant leakage
Emissions from energy purchased for an organisation’s operations
Emissions from activities not directly controlled by an organisation such as those from the products we buy, commuting and waste disposal
Single-occupancy vehicles, used typically to describe driving in a car alone
SH Studland House (BU building on Lansdowne Campus)
SUBU
Students’ Union at Bournemouth University
TC Talbot Campus
UCY
UHD
UN SDGs
University College Yeovil
University Hospitals Dorset
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Introduction
Bournemouth University’s (BU) Climate and Ecological Crisis Action Plan (CECAP) is our response to mitigate our contribution to the negative environmental, social, and economic impacts that encompass the climate and ecological crisis and adapt to its impacts. This report is our annual progress update for the 2023/24 academic year. It is structured against our eight objectives and identifies both areas of progress and of improvement.
We report our actual greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) for 2023/24 against our targets for all scopes. This reporting year, we have decreased our overall emissions by around 1,954tCO2e (29%) compared to our baseline year of 2018/19 which is strong progress against our target of 50% reduction by 2030/31. We have made steps to tackle the key challenge of decarbonising our heat with the removal of aging gas boilers at Dorset House and replacement with electrically powered air source heat pump technology. This system alone will save around 64tCO2e each year. We have replaced our automatic meter reading system which gives us improved visibility of our utilities consumption and helps us identify
Our vision
wasted energy more quickly. We continued to add renewables to our estate including both solar PV and solar thermal technology and we continued to work with teams across the university to lower emissions, improve biodiversity and address all areas of the climate and ecological crisis.
This report aims to inform our students, staff and community about the efforts we are making and results of our efforts to reduce our emissions. It shows how everyone across BU needs to play a part in reducing their own carbon emissions so that together we can avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Our net zero emissions vision is a BU community that recognises the need to live in harmony with the natural world to protect the survival and wellbeing of all communities and takes action to enrich society for the benefit of people and planet.
The vision and our CECAP aim to support the achievement of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). You can read more about how BU is working to address all of the 17 goals in our SDG progress report which is shared on the BU website.
We have made great strides in reducing our carbon emissions. Our commitment to continual improvement in this area is fantastic to see, namely, our academics and professional service staff working together on climate solutions, students taking part in hackathons and our whole community engaging in upskilling knowledge through Carbon Literacy and Climate Fresk.
Improvements to our campus have been well received, like the heat decarbonisation of Dorset House, as well as our new Cycle Hub at Talbot Campus. I am eager to continue building on our existing partnerships for regional climate action, with thanks to all those who have contributed to our achievements to date.
Professor Alison Honour Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive Officer Bournemouth University
Summary of progress against net zero emissions target
Our aim: How we’re doing:
across all three scopes and net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030/31
across GHG sources currently being measured against the 2018/19 base year.
We have completed five years since our baseline of 2018/19 and we have seen substantial efforts to reduce emissions over this time, particularly in electricity from renewable sources on campus, infrastructure to support active travel and electric vehicles and in embedding the UN SDGs in our teaching. But there is much more to do if we are to reach our ambitious goal of net zero by 2030/31. This year we have gained much insight into the true cost of heat decarbonisation, and this is going to be much more expensive than we expected. We are pleased to see the emissions from flights are lower this year and more travel has been made by train. We have retained our commitment to achieving our goals and are proud of our progress so far.
We continue to use our CECAP action plan as it maps out our route to become a net zero emissions university with environmental sustainability embedded across our operations, teaching and research. To implement the Plan, 94 actions have been identified across 15 themes. Our progress is tracked through our CECAP Group and reported to the Sustainability Committee. A summary view of our progress is below, and more detail is provided in Appendix 2:
In 2018/19 BU’s GHG emissions across Scope 1 and 2 and measurable parts of Scope 3 were recorded as 6,723 tonnes of carbon emissions dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) for the year.
In 2023/24 this reduced to 4,770 tCO2e.
Actual GHG emissions (tCO2e) 2023/24 versus SBTi target emissions (tCO2e) using location-based reporting
Our target for Scope 1 emissions was missed, but targets for Scope 2, Scope 3 and overall emissions reduction were met.
Emissions reductions from the base year in percentage by scope and year
The largest reduction this year comes from Scope 2 (purchased electricity), where we have exceeded our 26% reduction target, and achieved a reduction of 34% compared to our 2018/19 baseline. This is due to a number of reasons:
• Reduction in electricity consumption across most buildings due to energy efficiency projects (e.g. lighting upgrades), changes to equipment run-time hours and the continued optimisation of controls.
• Increase in renewable electricity production on campus due to the addition of the Dorset House solar PV this year, and we are seeing the benefits of previous investments in PV including a large new array on Poole House last year.
• Carbon reduction has been slightly lower this year due to DEFRA Carbon Factors for electricity (Scope 2) rising by 7% this year compared to last year. This has caused an increase in our Scope 2 emissions, despite the consumption of grid electricity decreasing 0.1% year-on-year.
• We report our emissions using location-based reporting, therefore even though we did purchase 100% green electricity from a REGO backed tariff this year we do not report electricity emissions as zero. If we were to report using market-based reporting our electricity emissions would not be counted. You can see a comparison of this at the end of Appendix 1. For
Sources of emissions
future purchasing years we are not going to be using a REGO backed tariff due to the drastic increase in cost, but we will retain zero carbon emissions tariffs and we will keep this under review for future years. Despite a reduction in our Scope 1 emissions compared to last year, the 27% reduction target has been missed. We achieved a 16% reduction in emissions compared to the baseline year. Emissions from natural gas and LPG are back down to baseline year levels and are trending downwards for our campus buildings, after seeing an increase because of increased COVID-19 ventilation requirements. This year our natural gas usage for residential purposes in our Student Village has increased which could be due to user behaviour. Fleet vehicle emissions have increased due to expansion of grounds maintenance activities at Chapel Gate this year. We expect to see fleet vehicle emissions reduce in future years due to two more BU vehicles switching to electric this year.
We met the reduction target for our Scope 3 emissions this year, achieving a reduction of 32% against a target of 13% compared to baseline emissions. We have seen a reduction in business travel flight emissions from 908tCO2e in 2022/23 to 731tCO2e in 2023/24 with rail and bus fleet emissions staying very close to the figures reported last year.
The chart below shows the changes in the sources of GHG emissions in the base year compared to 2023/24. For further details, see the Emissions report in appendix 1. This year we have reported residential emissions separately and these are from our Talbot Campus Student Village as this is the only student accommodation which is operated by BU under a lease. The rest are owned and operated by third parties so are not included in our carbon emissions reporting as we don’t have control over the operational management of these buildings.
Total GHG emissions by activity, baseline year vs 2023/24 (tCO2e)
Reaching net zero
As we progress on our journey to net zero we hope to reduce our emissions by 50% across all three scopes. This reduction is firmly our priority for the seven years until the end of 2030/31. In 2030/31 we will evaluate our position and consider using certified carbon credits. We will continue working to reduce our emissions beyond 2030/31 to get as close to zero as possible. This is in line with our science-based targets. Although we are developing our approach to offsetting, our focus now is firmly on reducing our emissions and delivering the measures identified in our CECAP Full Plan. These are summarised in the table and our progress explained. Our focus remains on being efficient with resources. Each project we undertake has to be carefully considered and the business case approved internally. We consider the return on investment and balance carbon and cost in each case.
Summary of the measures we are focused on to reach net zero GHG emissions
Number Measure
1 Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs)
2 Heat Switch moving away from natural gas fired heat provision
Progress
We continue to conserve energy with over 640 LED replacements this year in Studland House, Executive Business Centre, and University Centre, Yeovil. The roof of Dorset House was replaced with improved insulation.
We have removed gas boilers in Dorset House and replaced these with air source heat pumps. A new solar thermal system has been added at Chapel Gate to reduce gas used for hot water.
3 Cloud Data Centre IT have confirmed that the data centre can’t currently be moved to cloud. Therefore, focus is on reducing energy consumption of data centres. We are seeing reducing energy consumption in data centres due to replaced server equipment and better monitoring through the Sustainable IT group.
4 PV installation
5 Flights
6 EV fleet
7 LEV buses or EV buses
We now have over 789kWp of PV capacity on site, having added a new system this year to Dorset House providing 80kWp.
We are seeing a return to flights post COVID-19, and we continue to encourage the use of rail over domestic flights where possible. Staff can find more advice in our published sustainable travel guidance which helps staff evaluate whether they should travel and find lower emission travel modes.
Most of our BU fleet is electric and we are working to replace the remaining few vehicles with EVs. This year we have made progress with two diesel fleet vehicles being replaced with electric.
Last year we refreshed our buses with the most efficient diesels available, and we plan to explore EV buses when our contract is up for renewal in 2026. This year we saw a peak in bus usage which will have displaced travel in other modes.
Top 5 achievements
1
Heat Decarbonisation Progress
This year we have delivered our first existing building heat decarbonisation project. We have removed end of life gas boilers in Dorset House and replaced them with air source heat pumps. A new specially built compound behind Dorset House now houses nine 33.4kW outdoor units, which transfer heat energy from the air outside to water storage tanks. The system will save around 64.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, this takes into account the increased electricity which we are expecting. You can read more about this fantastic achievement on our website
The 9 air source heat pumps provide high temperature hot water for the existing radiators inside Dorset House.
Installation of low and zero carbon technologies
We have commissioned a new solar PV array on the roof of Dorset House. The PV array should produce around 80,000kWh of electricity each year. This will help to mitigate the increased electricity demand from the air source heat pumps and will save approximately 18tCO2e per year.
At our Chapel Gate sports campus, we have installed a solar thermal system to support provision of hot water for catering facilities. We have also added a 16kW air source heat pump to produce hot water for the new changing rooms. This system requires approximately 4kW of electricity to produce 16kW of heat.
The new solar PV array on roof of Dorset House which will generate around 80,000kWh per year.
The new ASHP at Chapel Gate which can generate 16kW of hot water.
3 New active travel facilities
To support students, staff and visitors to travel sustainably we have completed a new Cycle Hub at Talbot Campus, located behind Dorset House. This fantastic facility provides secure, covered storage for 194 bikes including space for cargo bikes and adapted bikes. We have utilised double tier, pull down racking to maximise available space and have included e-bike charging facilities. We have tools and bike pumps available to everyone and a covered visitor cycle storage area. You can watch a short video about the new facility here. The hub includes a green roof to support nature.
The new cycle hub will help students, staff and visitors to make cycling to campus easier.
4 Supporting climate education
We have been accredited as a Bronze Carbon Literate Educator (CLE) by the Carbon Literacy Project. This highlights our commitment to embedding climate education and action into our institution, and to facilitating a cultural shift towards a low-carbon society. We continue to offer the Carbon Literacy training for BU students, staff, and alumni to raise awareness of the carbon costs of everyday activities, and to motivate our BU community to take action for the climate and ecological crisis. To date, we have trained 66 staff members and 100 students. Our strategy moving forward is to train as many academic staff as possible and support them to deliver the training to their students as part of their course. We have published a short video on our website outlining our approach which you can watch here. In this you can hear some examples of meaningful action that has been taken as a result of the Carbon Literacy training at BU. If you would like to be trained as Carbon Literate, please email sustainability@bournemouth.ac.uk
BU provide two electric bikes which can be borrowed by staff to try them. Contact travel@bournemouth.ac.uk to request this.
Emissions from business air travel have reduced
We are pleased that the carbon emissions associated with business travel by air have reduced this year from 1,426 tCO2e in 2018/19 to 731.11 tCO2e in 23/24. At the time of booking our business travel booking platform shows carbon emissions information to the travel booker which aims to influence choices for lower carbon flights. We have published our Sustainable Business Travel Guidance for staff to help them to make choices which have a lower carbon impact. Individual choices play an important role in reducing carbon emissions and we hope that by providing education, such as Carbon Literacy training, and by providing carbon information at the time of booking, we can influence staff to choose lower carbon options.
To summarise our progress in numbers this table shows where we are against our KPIs for 2023/24
Reduction in GHG emissions across all scopes. Progress towards net zero.
by 2023/24, 50% by 2030/31
kg
per m2
per GIA across Scope 1 and Scope 2
of units at each level of all programmes to have content which addresses the climate and ecological crisis
and
Objective 1: Demonstrating sustainable leadership
We aim to demonstrate sustainable leadership both internally and within the community. This means embedding the responsibility for climate action within all relevant policies and committees and ensuring that our procedures and reward processes recognise this priority.
We also hope to be a regional leader, supporting our local community and sector to act collaboratively, innovatively, and effectively to address the climate and ecological crisis.
It is our objective that staff across the university will align our governance structures with addressing the crisis and then commit to their implementation, even when facing challenges.
ISO14001 and ISO50001
Our Environmental and Energy Management System is the foundation of our university-wide work to embed environmental action and make continuous improvement every year. We are certified to EcoCampus Platinum level, and we are one of only a handful of universities to be externally certified to both ISO14001 and ISO50001 for environmental and energy management, respectively. The focus of ISO50001 particularly has in recent years helped us to secure the data we need to understand and target energy improvements and support business cases for investment. We continue to be externally audited annually, with combined audits for both environment and energy.
How the Sustainability Committee works
Our Sustainability Committee is responsible for our Environment and Energy Management System and reports directly to the University Executive Team. Committee members represent academic faculties, our students and Students Union, our staff unions as well as essential functions of IT, Procurement, Marketing & Communications and Estates. As a team, the committee works to challenge each other and provide a formal place to share sustainability leadership across BU. The committee reviews and approves all our environmental policies and proposals are regularly brought for support. We encourage student presentations to the committee to help us stay close to student ideas and feedback.
Working groups
Reporting to the Sustainability Committee we have working groups including the CECAP group, Biodiversity group, Sustainable IT group, Fairtrade Group and Offsetting Group. Students and staff can join these working groups by getting in touch with sustainability@bournemouth.ac.uk. This year we have made progress in the CECAP group to support development of our heat decarbonisation approach. Our Sustainable IT group has also been working to track against our target of a 15% reduction in power consumption in our data centres and as of November 2024 we are seeing a 11% reduction due to replacing server equipment (for more information see Objective 5). We have had a new group this year focusing on developing our approach to offsetting carbon emissions. This group has grappled with our concerns about offsetting and our stated commitment to net zero 2030/31. The group has identified a strong desire to use offsetting which is local to BU and that enables BU students and staff to be involved in removal of carbon emissions. Therefore, we will be exploring local opportunities including in the Dorset area both on land and at sea.
Local climate partnerships
We continue to work with organisations in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council (BCP) areas to support each other to make progress towards net zero. This year we have worked with BCP Council to contribute as a stakeholder in the BCP Local Area Energy Plan. We have shared our plans for decarbonisation and have provided use of our facilities for events to bring stakeholders together to share best practice.
Dorset Public Sector Decarbonisation and Ecology Group
We are pleased to be working with local public sector organisations to collaborate and share ideas to support our work to achieve net zero. BU has shared our experiences with implementing our electric vehicle charging network and developing our heat decarbonisation plan with organisations including the police, ambulance, local council and NHS organisations. We look forward to developing this partnership over the coming years.
Working with University Hospitals Dorset
(UHD)
for Climate Action
We have been close partners with UHD for several years and are increasingly working together to integrate sustainability across our organisations. We have continued to build links between the BU CECAP and UHD’s Green Plan. This year we have set a challenge for our MBA students to identify ideas to improve operational sustainability of UHD. We have also been learning together with UHD staff about the requirements under the new Biodiversity Net Gain legislation. CECAP actions addressed:
BU
Council
Student Sustainability Council –get your voice heard
Our BU Student Sustainability Council brings together students from a variety of courses. This year they have provided a consistent stream of feedback on how we can better manage our approach to sustainability issues. The council act as student sustainability champions at BU, meeting regularly to discuss ideas, and take part in our Climate Fresk and Carbon Literacy training. The group has scope for students to pursue their own sustainability interests and find ways to work together to make change. This year we launched a LinkedIn page for the council to help share progress and enable the student members to display their work with the council on their profiles to help employability.
If you are a student interested in joining, please email: sustainability@bournemouth.ac.uk
Student Sustainability
members, Folasayo Oketola, Delcia Vilhena De Sousa, Oluwaseun Awogbenle, and Oluwatobiloba Lawalson, together with the Sustainability Team Izzy Chalk and Lois Betts and the SDG Flag.
Objective 2: Aligning education and research with our climate response
We aim for our education and research to both align with the crisis through course content, research outcomes and the way we deliver these.
Education
Target: all programmes to include the climate and ecological crisis in at least one unit per level (year) by 2025/26. In 2023, we repeated our comprehensive mapping to measure how many of our courses align to the climate and ecological crisis. Of note, 93% and 84% of our programmes in the BU Business School and Faculty of Science & Technology, respectively, achieved this aim.
86% 62%
courses aligned to climate and ecological crisis
courses aligned to climate and ecological crisis at every level
62% of our programmes included content around the climate and ecological crisis (CEC) at every year of study, as per the CECAP aim. Our target was to reach 100% by 2022/23, and as this challenging goal hasn’t been achieved, we have extended it to 2025/26. To support our academics to achieve this aim, we launched a bespoke area on Brightspace, our academic portal, with resources, training and guidance for academics. This space is used to share case studies of embedding the climate and ecological crisis across the whole university, and during course revalidation to ensure that the CEC is embedded at every level. The Sustainability Academic Network also host termly meetings to network, share case studies, and give advice to fellow academics. Our annual Excellence in Education for Sustainable Development (EESD) Award recognises and rewards our academic staff for successfully embedding the climate and ecological crisis into their teaching.
Bournemouth University Business School example: Dr Manuela Picariello has embedded the climate crisis and sustainability into her teaching for Sport and Event Management students by giving real-life examples and encouraging actions that have a tangible impact on students’ lives, both during their time on campus and long after they graduate. Dr Picariello said, “The true essence of my class, Managing Sport and Events for Sustainability, lies in educating, inspiring, and empowering students to act on their values”.
To date, more than 100 students have taken this class since 2022, and student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. One student said:
“I will keep going with this sustainable practice, as it has shifted my mindset and actions to adopt more sustainable approaches in my lifestyle. I’ve benefited from saving money while discovering ways to protect the environment. I’d like to explore new ways to be sustainable and see if they bring additional benefits. Furthermore, I will continue because it makes me feel like I’m contributing positively to society and being part of meaningful change.”
Research
BU academics are working to further understanding and awareness of how we can most effectively tackle the climate and ecological crisis and support our global ecosystems. Here are some of the research projects we have been part of in the past academic year:
RESONATE: providing research and advice to improve the resilience of European forests
Associate Professor in Sustainability Science, Dr Elena Cantarello is part of a European-wide project, RESONATE, which is investigating how forests across the continent are responding to changes in their environment.
Dr Cantarello’s work is based around the New Forest National Park – a designated site of special scientific interest (SSSI) in the South of England which extends over 140,000 acres. The New Forest is comprised of a diverse mix of ancient woodlands, heathlands, grasslands, and ponds – (nowhere else in lowland England do these habitats occur together and at such a large scale), plus the area attracts over 13 million visitors each year. However, Dr Cantarello says, “60% of the New Forest is affected by disturbances, there is a tipping point where ecosystem services and biodiversity do not recover within 100 years.”
Through modelling what has happened at the site over the last 35 years, and using the results to produce predictions for the future, Dr Cantarello recommends that, “we need to expand the area they cover wherever possible, but it is also important that we protect the already existing woodlands because trees not only absorb carbon but they deliver an array of ecosystem services and biodiversity and if we do not protect them we will lose these too.”
Artificial Reefs: a potential strategy to support coral reefs in the tropics
Climate change, pollution and increased levels of carbon dioxide in our oceans can lead to ‘coral bleaching’, which limits the ability of coral reefs to sustain marine life. In response, over a three-year period a BU-led research team oversaw the installation of concrete reefs in Bali, Indonesia, to investigate whether artificial reefs can match the workings of coral reefs.
The research team took water samples from above and beneath the seabed, which were measured for vital nutrients: phosphates, nitrates, nitrites, and ammonium. They also measured levels of organic carbon by taking samples of sediment and by laying sediment traps to capture particles floating at the bottom of the water. The results revealed that while these artificial reefs do show some similarities in operation to coral reefs, more time is needed to evaluate whether they can sustain healthy ecosystems long-term.
Bournemouth University PhD student, Zach Boakes said, “It is encouraging that our artificial reefs are starting to show similarities, in terms of functioning, to nearby natural coral reefs. We’re looking forward to continuing this work with our local research partners over the coming years, especially to see how older artificial reefs can further mimic natural reefs in terms of ecological communities and biogeochemical functioning.”
The New Forest National Park is an important carbon sink and delivers a variety of ecosystem services.
Artificial reefs have the potential to support marine life.
Garden Ponds: a haven for aquatic species in urban areas.
BU Lecturer is Ecology, Dr Matthew Hill, has been investigating how we can best be managing garden ponds to enhance biodiversity, based on surveys done by the Freshwater Habitats Trust.
Key recommendations from this research include increasing the surface area of ponds to at least five metres, topping ponds up with rainwater to reduce conductivity, and increasing the number of native species within ponds. Also, pond owners should form community groups to provide macroinvertebrates with a mix of environments, helping them to thrive across their neighbourhoods.
Dr Hill says, “There are an estimated two and a half to three and a half million garden ponds in the UK and they can add to local biodiversity if they are managed correctly. Many ponds are managed for aesthetics reasons or fishkeeping, rather than as habitats for wildlife. But if we can add biodiversity into the ornamental designs, they could provide an important freshwater resource in urban areas”.
Carbon Pricing: the implications of carbon emissions pricing
A cross-faculty team – including Dr Tahni Mohamed and Dr Alan Kirkpatrick from the BU Business School and Dr Festus Adedoyin from the Faculty of Science & Technology – has produced recommendations to address the economic welfare implications of carbon emissions pricing at a national and international level. These recommendations were published as part of the report by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, titled ‘The financial sector and the UK’s net zero transition’.
They recommended that carbon border adjustment mechanisms be implemented to reduce carbon leakage, which is when business activities are transferred to another country with laxer carbon emissions constraints, and hence lower costs. This would be achieved by applying charges to take into account the variations in carbon prices in different jurisdictions.
CECAP actions addressed: ES1.1, BH2.3, DI1.1
Garden ponds are valuable sites for supporting local biodiversity.
Practice
MBA students explore how the healthcare sector can respond to the climate crisis.
Climate change has been identified as the greatest health threat to humanity by the World Health Organization. In November 2023, our MBA students were given a project brief to identify strategies for enhancing sustainability in NHS operations. They were encouraged to consider University Hospitals Dorset Green Plan, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, health inequalities, and the associate costs of potential strategies. The students were given the opportunity to learn more about the science of climate change through a Climate Fresk workshop prior to commencing the project. Students presented their projects directly to the University Hospitals Dorset Sustainability Manager, Stuart Lane, who provided feedback on the ideas and has been able to apply the best ideas to help his work at UHD.
The Hacking 4 Sustainability module is an opportunity for Business & Management students to create new solutions to real-life challenges for the Ministry of Defence (MoD)
In 2023-24 the students were given real problems faced by the MOD, including: hydrogen as a fuel source, greening airfields, carbon cost of additive manufacturing and enhancing biodiversity. Military advisors, industry mentors from reputed companies, and problem sponsors from MoD provide mentorship and industry insights throughout the project.
The Hacking 4 Sustainability module instils the values and outlook needed for sustainable development and climate action through interdisciplinary teamwork, real-world problem-solving, and close collaboration with industry partners from diverse sectors.
Dr Mili Shrivastava, unit leader for this module, said, “This comprehensive approach to a project helps our students to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, so they are well-prepared to drive sustainable change in their future careers”.
Integrated Marketing Campaign: students contribute to BU-wide sustainability objectives.
Dr Gauri Misra, lecturer In Marketing Communications, collaborated with the BU Sustainability Team to produce a live project brief for Level 4 Business and Marketing students to support Bournemouth University in achieving our sustainability goals.
The students were required to come up with a new, realistic campaign to engage students, staff, and the community with an area of sustainability of their choice, including travel, waste, biodiversity, energy, or education
CECAP actions addressed:
Net Zero Hackathon: for computing students
The Department of Computing and Informatics collaborated with the BU Sustainability team to challenge students from any course in the department to a Net Zero Hackathon. The teams had just one week to apply their skills to address the challenge to ‘develop a prototype game/experience for young people to play to explore making buildings net zero’. The students were provided with energy data and technical information about benefits of low carbon technology. Over 30 students worked in teams to come up with interactive game experiences which were fantastic! The winning team (in the photo below) created a drag and drop game which allowed users to add low carbon technology to a BU building and see the benefit. The judges were impressed with the creativity and skill shown by the students. Gernot Liebchen, Principal Academic in Computing, is experienced with hackathons and is keen to give students the opportunity to develop their employability skills by working on real life consultancy-style challenges for clients.
for sustainable development. They had to identify and justify different communication tactics, how they would directly support the campaign objectives and target audience, and evaluate their effectiveness.
Project ideas included ‘The Green Innovators Scholarship’ campaign by Zara Cresswell, ‘Visit local green spaces’ by Izzy Betts, and ‘Zero disposable coffee cups by January 2025’ by Irini Hunnable. A selection of the students were given the opportunity to present their project ideas to the BU Sustainability Committee, attended by BU academics, the Sustainability Manger, and the Director of Estates.
MBA students worked together to provide solutions for enhancing sustainability within NHS operations.
BU Business School students solving reallife problems for the Ministry of Defence.
The winning team.
Objective 3: Implementing nature-based solutions
Our CECAP actions include identifying opportunities to support nature, encouraging students and staff to connect with nature and incorporating nature into education and research.
This year we have continued to implement the results of the ecological surveys we carried out in 2022 and we have further developed our nature connection projects. We continue to benefit from previous investment in nature-based-solutions like rainwater harvesting and green roofs and we are investigating more ideas for the future.
Ecological surveys
Since we carried out ecological surveys in summer 2022, we have continued to implement the recommendations for improvement across all our campuses. The species of plants found in the surveys were added to the NBN atlas for the public to freely access.
Nature art competition
Stephen Harper, lecturer in Animation, worked with the BU Sustainability Team to run a ‘Connecting with Nature’ art competition for BU students and staff during Climate Action Week 2024. Those who took part were encouraged to produce artwork that would raise awareness of the biodiversity crisis and inspire change, with a focus on ‘what does connecting with nature mean to you’?
All submissions were displayed in the ‘Sustainability in Action’ gallery in Poole House. Zoe Deacon, Senior Math Tutor at BU and winner of the Nature Art Competition with her submission titled ‘Bee Kind to the Environment’ said, “While saving a bee by placing it on this beautiful flower, I felt inspired to sketch it!”
Trees planted BU funded the planting of seven new trees on Talbot Campus this year. The species were chosen to meet the suggestions of our ecological survey and also to provide varieties not already found on campus. These included small leaved lime, cherry plum, wild cherry, rowan and wild service tree.
50% of campus grass was left to grow
This year over 50% of campus took part in No Mow May. This national campaign, led by Plantlife, encourages individuals and companies to leave areas un-mowed during May to support wildflowers to grow and better support pollinators. We added more areas to our campaign and have left the area in front and behind the Poole Gateway Building with wildflowers through the year into November to provide habitat for nature.
Zoe Deacon, winner of the Nature Art Competition 2024.
This year we created a new wildflower area which has been enjoyed by visitors, students and staff at Talbot Campus.
Two of our new trees.
Nature connection
We encourage all our staff and students to spend time in nature to support their health and wellbeing. We share information on our internal staff intranet wellbeing pages and signpost to local nature areas near our campuses including through the Dorset Unlocked which is an interactive map created by volunteers at BU in collaboration with the National Trust, BCP at Hengistbury Head and the Dorset community and is a great way to find new outdoor spaces to explore.
It is fantastic that we have been able to add new habitat to our Talbot Campus this year with the addition of a green roof on our cycle hub. This is a sedum roof which contains around 12 sedum species. We already have green roofs on parts of our Student Centre and Fusion Building. We recognise that green roofs are a good way to help water absorption to ease flooding as well as a good way to provide additional space for nature. We hope to have students involved in monitoring the roofs over the coming years.
At Chapel Gate woodlands
We have continued to develop our nature connection area in the woodlands at our Chapel Gate sports site. In the summer holidays, this area is used for educational camps for local children. In term time we have had groups of students and staff taking part in outdoor activities for team building and dissertation de-stressing. Find out more about this area on the Chapel Gate website
Wildlife cameras to support nature connection
This year we have worked with Wildlife Windows to install a bird box with a camera inside and a bird feeding station with a camera at our sports campus Chapel Gate. You can access the live stream from these cameras and see birds coming and going from your computer screen.
New homes for swifts
We are very pleased to have installed 14 special boxes for swifts which have been made for us by our local Men' Shed in Southbourne. This project is in collaboration with the Christchurch Harbour Ornithological Group and Hampshire Swifts who advised us on the type of boxes and locations. We hope to see swifts nesting on campus in the coming years!
Rainwater harvesting
In 2023/24, 1,016,000 litres of water were collected from rainwater harvesting in Poole Gateway Building, Bournemouth Gateway Building and the Fusion Building.
Video snapshot from our live bird feeding station at our sports campus.
New green roof on cycle hub
Here you can see the extent of the new green roof on the cycle hub.
Swift box located under the eaves of Weymouth House on Talbot Campus.
Objective 4: Reducing GHG emissions through engagement and behaviour change
We aim to mobilise the BU community to actively engage with and support our CECAP objectives by developing and implementing a range of inspiring and educational opportunities. Parts of our carbon footprint are heavily determined by student and staff behaviours so we are improving our campuses to make sure sustainable options are easier, more accessible, and more attractive so our community can use their choices to make a difference.
Behaviour change
Fairtrade Award
OUR FOOD CHOICES MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
BU is the only 3-star Fairtrade University in the UK
We are proud to be the only university in the UK to have achieved the Fairtrade Award 3 stars for the Fairtrade Universities & Colleges (FTUC) scheme for the 2022-24 cohort, run by SOS-UK and the Fairtrade Foundation. This award recognises BU’s commitment and actions to embed Fairtrade and ethical practices into our procurement, our curriculum, and research. We also hosted events and campaigns during this period to raise awareness of Fairtrade including a guest talk with chocolate tasting from Tony’s Chocoloneys, and a Climate Justice Debate.
The award was audited by trained students who said, “Bournemouth University’s work and commitment to Fairtrade is exceptional, commendable, and at the forefront in tackling trade injustices”.
Food (Carbon Labelling, Too Good to Go and Olio)
This year our caterers, Chartwells, achieved the 3-star Food Made Good Award from the Sustainable Restaurant Association. Food Made Good is largest global community for driving sustainability in hospitality, focusing on sourcing, society, and the environment.
To help our community to make informed choices about the food they consume, Chartwells have introduced a new Carbon Labelling System. The system
uses A-E ratings accompanied by a traffic light colour to indicate the carbon intensity, which aligns to the global carbon budget set by the EATLancet Commission. Chartwells also continue their work to reduce food waste by using Too Good To Go and Olio: two food-sharing schemes that offer unwanted items that would go to waste either a reduced price or free, to be distributed amongst the community. To date, we have saved 2,194 meals which equates to 5.92 tonnes of avoided CO2e. This year, a new composter was installed on site. Food scraps from our kitchens are fed into it, and the compost will be used on BU grounds.
Waste Prevention
BU is committed to helping our community understand the impact of the food
The best way to address waste is to avoid it in the first place. In line with the principles of a circular economy, we have worked closely with Chartwells to develop a Cup Exchange Scheme. This reduces sales of disposable coffee cups by offering a BU-branded reusable cup that can be returned in exchange for either a new clean cup, or a token to show membership of the scheme. Since rolling out the scheme in September 2023 until March 2024, the proportion of disposable cups sold reduced from 95% to 78%.
Our new carbon labelling system is designed to help you make better choices for the planet.
This year, we also partnered with City to Sea to become the first ‘Refill Campus’. This new accreditation commits us to taking steps to ensure that we rid all our buildings of single-use plastic. To encourage our staff and students to bring their own reusable water bottles, we have branded our 45 free water refill points with bright, eye-catching artwork, making it easier to identify their location.
Reuse
SUBU’s Big Give is an annual sustainability campaign which collects and donates unwanted student items to charities before they move out. This year, the Big Give collected over 2530 bags of unwanted items which were donated to the British Heart Foundation, raising more than £28,420 for charity. The charity Prama also collected over 500 bags from our campus and street collections, raising over £7000. Our library books that no longer serve a purpose to our students or staff are collected by Anybook, who collect, store and sell the books onto others. Books that cannot be re-used are recycled. In 2023/24, 159kg of books were resold, and 3,986kg were recycled through Anybook.
Recycling and waste-to-energy
Suez process our non-recyclables which are collected and sent to a waste-to-energy facility for incineration. Estate waste such as wood and metal are collected separately for recycling. Mixed recyclables are sent to a materials recycling facility in Bristol where they are sorted and processed. Food waste is sent to an anaerobic digestion facility in Dorset, Hampshire, or West Sussex. Waste electronics and electricals are also recycled. The only waste sent to landfill is around 5% of construction materials which are non-recyclable or recoverable. In addition to our core waste streams, we recycle sweet wrappers, crisp packets, stationary, and stamps through Terracycle.
Our bin signage has been carefully selected to encourage the correct use of bins to reduce bin contamination. This year, we focused on bin positioning as a strategy to increase our recycling rate by arranging our bins into ‘bin stations’. Our waste contractor Suez came onto campus for our Climate Assemblies and during Green Week to educate students and staff about how to correctly use the bins, and talk about the implications of bin contamination from an operational perspective.
Waste data
It is important that our waste targets reflect our commitment to preventing waste, therefore we focus on reducing the overall volume of waste per person, rather than just increasing the recycling rate. Why is this? For example, reducing food waste by donating it or selling it through projects like ‘Too Good to Go’ would reduce our recycling rate, but it is much better to avoid the waste completely by selling or donating it for consumption. Therefore, in our CECAP actions we have removed the action to ‘increase recycling rate’ (WS1.3) and now focus on the action to reduce waste produced per person (WS1.4).
Our goal is to produce less than 20kg of operational and residential waste per FTE per year. In 2023/24, we achieved 14.6kg waste per FTE/year (this excludes construction activities).
Our total waste produced on campus, in our Student Village, and from construction activities was 519 tonnes, and we recycled 78% of it. To break this down, our waste produced on-campus and in our Student Village was 332 tonnes, and we recycled 60% of it. For our construction activities, we produced 187 tonnes of waste and recycled 96% of it. Compared to last year, our total waste tonnage has reduced by 7.8% (563 tonnes in 2022-23).
SUBU Recycling Roadshow
This campaign aims to help students understand how to recycle both in halls and for when they move into private accommodation. The Roadshows are supported by the community wardens. The Community Warden Scheme is run by SUBU, BU and AUB and supported by Bournemouth Borough Council. The Wardens are a team of students paid to work each week, patrolling the main student roads in Winton, Wallisdown and Charminster. They are there to support both students and permanent residents, and to help them integrate together in the local community. They can help students with anything related to housing; from dealing with landlords and estate agents to noise, parking, bins or burglaries.
Community Wardens in action, patrolling the local area.
Engagement
Carbon Literacy training
We have been accredited as a Bronze Carbon Literate Educator (CLE) by the Carbon Literacy Project, highlighting our continued commitment to deliver the training for students, staff and alumni to educate our BU community about the climate crisis. This one-day course has a specific BU focus to share what we are doing to mitigate and adapt to climate change and requires participants to make actionable pledges to reduce their carbon footprint, both as an individual and within a wider group.
The Carbon Literacy training is mandatory for BA Marketing Communications students, and we are working with our academic colleagues to make this the case for other BU courses. To date, we have trained 66 staff members and 100 students.
Climate Fresk workshop
The Climate Fresk workshop is an engaging, interactive and science-based training workshop that simplifies climate science produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into a game-like format. This workshop has been rolled out through the BU Graduate Skills Programme, integrated into the students’ courses, and used as a team-building activity for staff away days. This year, we ran 12 Climate Fresk workshops, comprised of a total of 39 staff and 35 students. We continue to encourage staff to become facilitators themselves, so they can deliver the workshop to their students.
Dr Milena Bobeva from our Business School delivered the Climate Fresk to students and staff in Vietnam to raise awareness of how to embed the climate crisis into the curriculum within Vietnamese HE institutions.
Climate Assemblies
Our termly BU Climate Assemblies provide an important platform for our students and staff to learn about what BU is doing to address the climate and ecological crisis, and importantly, the opportunity to voice their own perspectives and provide recommendations for how we can improve.
This year, our Climate Assemblies covered Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and plastic and waste. Key recommendations included the need for consistent communication about the climate crisis throughout each year of study, and an incentive from an employability perspective to take part in sustainability-related extracurricular activities, and to communicate that our water refill points provide safe, clean drinking water, which may be unclear for our international student community.
SPROUT PGR Sustainability Collective
In 2022/23, Professor Fiona Cownie and two BU Postgraduate Research Students (PGRs), Jack Olley and Michael George, collaborated with the University of Newcastle and Cardiff University to host SustainaWHAT?! - an innovative series of events for PGRs to network and identify opportunities for connecting their research with the sustainability agenda.
As a legacy of SustainaWHAT?!, the SPROUT PGR Sustainability Collective was launched in February 2024 to bring together and support PGRs, those pursuing a Master’s degree, and early career researchers who are interested in integrating sustainability into their research.
Members of the SPROUT collective will have the opportunity to develop their understanding of sustainability, learn about the value of integrating sustainability into research from a funding and employability stance, and to network with other students to broaden their range of competencies and skills.
Professor Sarah Bate, Interim Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research & Knowledge Exchange, said, “Enhancing our research environment and acknowledging and supporting the important role of PGRs in this culture is one of our key priorities.”
Senior Leaders Apprenticeship Students learning the fundamentals of climate change.
By delivering the Climate Fresk workshop to Vietnamese students, our academics are helping to enrich society worldwide.
Embedding the sustainability agenda into PGR research will increase the impact of our research and our contribution to global challenges.
Green Week and Climate Action Week
In November 2023, we collaborated with SUBU to host a Green Week to educate and engage our students with sustainability. This year, the Community Wardens hosted a Recycling Roadshow, Francesca Trotman from ‘Love the Oceans’ gave a talk about opportunities in marine conservation, and Gaia Card UK (our local green discount scheme in Bournemouth) spoke to our students about fostering more sustainable consumption habits. Student volunteers also took part in some tree planting at our sports campus Chapel Gate, and Dr Reina Marie Loader organised a screening of the film ‘Thank You for the Rain’ to raise awareness of climate injustice. BA Communication and Media student, Anika Islam, put together a detailed article about what took place during this Green Week.
Net Zero Teams
The Net Zero Teams (NZT) certification is a BU scheme designed to support and reward staff who are helping BU to achieve its targets set out in the CECAP.
The scheme starts with a group of staff making a collective commitment to reduce their environmental impact. This is followed by the completion of up to 35 activities, categorised into: leadership, energy, travel, stuff, food, and connect. These activities are designed to encourage teams to take action across key emissions areas. Teams can achieve up to 100 points, and become either a Bronze, Silver, or Gold certified team. The aim of the NZT certification is to offer a comprehensive toolkit that enables staff at BU to take climate action in a way (and to a level) that suits them, and be rewarded for doing so.
In 2023, the Corporate Communications team in the department of Marketing & Communications certified as Silver, and the Professional Team in the BU Business School certified as Gold! Some notable actions taken by these
In March 2024, we once gain hosted our Climate Action Week as an opportunity for students, staff and the broader community to get involved in taking action for climate change. This year, we offered Climate Fresk workshops for all BU students, and we organised a Bike Fair on our Lansdowne Campus to promote local initiatives to support active travel, attended by Beryl, Cycle Solutions, Hope2Cycle, the New Forest Bike Project, the BCP Road Safety Team, and the Bike Doctor. We also hosted an event, ‘Exploring Climate Action – a Panel Discussion’, where local climate activists, experts, the BU Sustainability Team, students, and staff came together to demystify climate action, and discuss how we can make climate action accessible for everyone.
teams include committing to 50% vegetarian options at catered events, installing food banks, and increasing hybrid working to 40% to reduce travel emissions.
In 2024, the Academic Services department joined the NZT certification scheme. Since joining, this team has structured their staff away day around sustainability by inviting the BU Sustainability Team to run a Climate Fresk workshop, and by giving out Fairtrade chocolate as staff prizes!
If you are a BU colleague and you would like to join the Net Zero Teams certification scheme, please email sustainability@bournemouth.ac.uk
BU students Folasayo Oketola and Alicia Herrador Rodriguez working together to support biodiversity on our Chapel Gate campus.
Sustainable commuting travel
Sustainable travel events and engagement
This year, we have hosted our usual array of active travel events. This includes the start of term’s ‘Big Bike Sale’, the ‘Be Safe/Be Seen’ campaign, promotion of the ‘Six Reasons to Cycle' campaign’ as part of Climate Action month, supported National Cycle to Work Day and held a cycle fair as part of National Bike Month held in May. Schemes and initiatives
Our BU Bicycle User Group now has over 130 members, made up of staff and students from across BU. The community teams page has grown since its creation and allows members to share experiences, give each other tips and suggestions, provide feedback to the Transport Team and raise issues or concerns.
The Cycle to Work scheme was used by 25 staff between August 2023 – July 2024 with bikes and equipment purchased through the scheme totalling £42,039.
In 2021, we joined the Love to Ride platform to encourage more staff to take up cycling. In 2022, 3025 rides were completed and in 2023, this rose to 3,206, equivalent to 20,275 miles cycled. Bournemouth University came 1st place in the Education University UK leaderboard in both the Cycle September Challenge and the Bike Month Challenge in May 2024!
We continued our free Bike Doctor Sessions: running fortnightly to provide free bike services to students and staff. Between August 2023 – July 2024, the Bike Doctor serviced 208 bikes. We also ran a bike self-maintenance session inviting people to bring their bike to work on alongside our Bike Doctor and learn basic bike maintenance and repair skills.
BU fund the Bike Doctor to provide free servicing of bikes for staff and students. Dates are published at our cycle compounds.
Join the Love to Ride community at BU and log your rides by signing up here
We continued to support our local bike share scheme Beryl Bikes through our partnership agreement including purchasing £5,000 worth of Beryl minutes for students to claim. Students can download the Beryl App and use the code BUBeryl200 with their BU student email address to get started (limited number of codes available). Staff can also access free codes by emailing travel@bournemouth.ac.uk. We have bays on campus to drop off and pick up a Beryl bike. This year we had 171 users with a Bournemouth University email address making on average 15 journeys covering 7,355km and travelling for 671 hours. We encourage you to try this fantastic scheme.
Join Beryl to get access to bikes and e-scooters in the BCP region.
Travel Plan progress
The revised Travel Plan was launched in 2019 and includes campus-specific single occupancy vehicle (SOV) targets for both staff and students. The 2023/24 commuter travel surveys show an increase in staff using SOV (up from 42% in 2012 to 57%) which has increased from 53% last year. Changes made this year may have impacted this including staff on grades 1-5 being offered free car parking to support with the cost-of-living crisis.
It was our target for SOV use to fall below 37% by 2025 however this is looking very unlikely to be achieved, and this target was set pre-COVID-19. As we move into 2025, we will be working on designing a new travel plan so we will be looking for refreshed actions and targets to move us forward. We are committed to sustainable travel and hope that our new cycle hub will help more students, staff and visitors to travel by bike to Talbot Campus.
Sustainable business travel
We continue to encourage staff to follow the BU Staff Business Travel Sustainability Guidance. This document aims to provide recommendations on when, why, and how staff should travel for business purposes through information and tools to support practices that address sustainability by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supporting equality. Business travel is any travel associated with university work including, meetings, conferences, training, teaching and research. The guidance does not cover commuter travel or travel between campuses, as these are the focus of our Travel Plan.
The guidance is built around the Tyndall Centre Sustainable Travel Decision Tree which aims to identify low-carbon travel alternatives and maximise the benefits of travel emissions. Our guidance breaks this down and helps staff to reduce the impact of their travel. We share the guidance on our staff intranet and also on our website for external parties to view to help share best practice.
Visit w ww.bournemouth.ac.uk/about/sustainability/travel-transport
Objective 5: Rapidly reduce GHG emissions through technology solutions
Objective 6: Implementing net zero carbon capital development
Core to our CECAP is reducing our emissions by 50% by 2030/31 against our 2018/19 baseline. Achieving this includes implementing projects across all activities which reduce our emissions. This requires renewable energy and water technologies, optimising building energy and water use, and moving from gas to electricity for heat and hot water.
The CECAP is embedded into our Estates Development planning and budgets. This enabled us to continue investing in technology to reduce our GHG emissions and make plans for further decarbonisation over the period to 2025 with a £1.25m investment of BU funds being made. This is supported by external funding from the Low Carbon Skills Fund (£99k) and the Public Sector Decarbonisation Fund (£493k).
Technology and energy projects completed in 2023/24
Dorset House Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP)
In 2024 we have completed the replacement of three gas boilers and hot water provision in Dorset House with air to water source heat pumps. This is the first full retrofit of its type for BU where we installed nine new 33.4kW heat pumps capable of achieving 70oC in a new purpose-built acoustically controlled compound. With an efficiency of over 200% each unit could provide over 80kW of heat with 33kW of electricity.
The system will be closely monitored for its performance over the next heating season. This project is expected to save around 64 tonnes of carbon equivalent per year, by removing fossil fuel gas from this building. The Air Source Heat Pumps will be powered by electricity which has a lower carbon footprint. This project has been part funded by the university and part through the UK Government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS).
Watch this video to find out more about the new system
In October 2023, we added a new solar array at Dorset House on the Talbot Campus. This system which comprises of 192 panels will generate around 80,000kWh every year. The new system is expected to save over 16 tonnes of CO2e each year, equivalent to 15 return flights to New York from the UK.
This is the ninth array installed on the Talbot Campus, and during the summer periods Dorset House operates using 100% solar energy generated.
Chapel Gate solar thermal
This year we installed our fourth Solar Thermal system at Chapel Gate. The system should provide up to 3,000kWh of renewable hot water for use in the main club house and will reduce the use of LPG onsite, saving over 500kg of CO2e per year.
New solar PV array for Dorset House
The new array fits 192 solar PV panels on the roof of Dorset House.
ASHP’s that provide renewable heat for Dorset House.
The new ASHP compound at Dorset House.
Using sun's energy for heating hot water.
Continued to replace lighting with LED low energy lighting
It is now a standard procedure to replace any relevant lighting with LED low energy lighting. Over the year, we continued to install more than 640 LED light fittings across the university, most of these were in SH, EBC and UCY. This is estimated to save around 7tCO2e per year and approximately 20,000kWh.
Revolving Green Fund
The funding was utilised this year for the LED projects at SH, EBC and UCY with further projects at The Old Fire Station (TOFS) lighting improvements. The fund has been utilised by BU for nearly 15 years and is due to end in March 2025. With a total initial fund of £250,000 (£50,000 from BU) energy saving projects have been completed with the savings reinvested back to enable further projects. Since the initial fund value BU has reinvested over £1.1M and completed 100 projects since its first project in February 2010. Read more about the success of this scheme in this article on the Salix website
New Cycle Hub for Talbot Campus
This year we have invested in a new cycle compound behind Dorset House at Talbot Campus. The new compound has space for 194 bikes including allocated space for adapted bikes and cargo bikes. We have installed double tier racking to make the most of the space. The new compound is well lit, and securely locked. It includes space for visitors as well as air and tools to help with bike maintenance. We are very grateful for the grant we received from BCP Council which helped fund the double tier racking.
Improved insulation on Dorset House roof
Replacement of the roof was completed due to age and condition and the opportunity to increase the insulation levels was taken to improve heat retention within the building. The replacement of the roof along with insulation then provided the opportunity to add new solar panels. As part of the Talbot Campus re-modelling works areas of the ground floor also had new double-glazed windows and doors installed further improving the fabric of the building to retain heat.
You can find this facility behind Dorset House and it is directly accessible from Wallisdown Road.
Increasing building accessibility has improved the student and staff experience.
Sustainable IT
The Sustainable IT working group has continued to meet termly to address sustainable IT issues and support delivery of the Sustainable IT Policy. We have been tracking energy consumption against the objective set by the Director of IT to achieve a 15% reduction in power consumption of IT equipment in data centres each year to 2025/26.
Current data suggests BU data centres are responsible for 12% of our total electricity use. Data from 2023/24 showed the data centre in Jurassic House used 610MWh (down from 697MWh last year) and in Studland House, 233MWh (down from 253MWh). IT has replaced some data centre equipment with new technology which is expected to use around 50% less power. The new equipment was installed in summer 2023 and the old equipment was turned off at the end of August. The data for Aug 23 – Jul 24 shows a clear reduction in energy consumption with Jurassic House consuming 12% less electricity and Studland House 9% less. This is a fantastic reduction because of technology improvements and consolidation of equipment by our IT services team.
All IT users are encouraged to follow the Sustainable IT Policy including switching off monitor screens and ensuring IT equipment goes into standby mode when not in use.
Operational energy management
In 2023/24 we continued to closely monitor our energy and water consumption. This allowed us to spot and address any usage anomalies and identify opportunities to reduce operational energy consumption. A new software solution for the Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) has been integrated to the Building Management System (BMS) creating a Building Energy Management System (BEMS). The work also required the moving of data streams for over 530 physical meters across the university and creating many virtual meters within the new software system, before checking and verifying each meter for accuracy.
This year we have continued to improve controls through the Building Management System so that ventilation and heating run times are more aligned with building opening hours. We continue to analyse the effects of changes to building usage and can use this to determine which spaces are more energy and cost effective to use for various events or teaching spaces.
The Energy Team meet regularly with maintenance and IT to discuss energy and water consumption patterns and identify potential energy reduction projects and operational strategies. This collaborative approach not only maximises energy savings but also promotes a culture of continuous improvement and sustainability throughout the organisation.
We updated our Heat Decarbonisation Plan
Our Heat Decarbonisation Plan was produced last year using funding from the UK Government's Low Carbon Skills Fund. This year we have kept the plan under review and have commissioned a cost consultant to review the estimated costs. This considered our experiences procuring our first heat decarbonisation project using air source heat pumps, as well as high rates of inflation. It also more thoroughly captured the cost of design activities. As a result, the cost estimates for delivery of a range of projects to remove fossil fuels use for heating has increased from an estimated £21.8m to £38.7m (ex VAT). The cost of heat decarbonisation is more expensive than expected and represents a challenge for delivery of these projects. External funding will be needed, and work will be required to identify efficiencies to ensure best value for money is achieved.
Technology plans for 2024/25 and beyond
Heat decarbonisation of Talbot Campus
We have proceeded to implement the first project as identified by our Heat Decarbonisation Plan. This will be monitored closely to evaluate performance in terms of electricity consumption, heat output and cost. Now that we have more realistic costs for future projects, we will be looking for funding sources and for the most efficient way to achieve decarbonisation of heat. We will be monitoring the data for Dorset House to evaluate whether more air source heat pump projects are the right way for us to move forward for other buildings.
More solar PV
This coming year we shall be exploring where more solar PV could be installed. An area being investigated will be on the Student Village within our Talbot Campus with further work in identifying potential opportunities across other sites or buildings.
Trialling more passive cooling systems in comms rooms
This year we will be installing a further two passive cooling systems in the IT comms rooms within our Fusion Building. This will help reduce energy and carbon emissions by using the ambient surrounding air instead of mechanical air conditioning to keep the rooms at suitable conditions for the services.
Replacing heating circuits in Christchurch House
Plans to reconfigure the heating circuits within Christchurch House shall move away from supplying a constant temperature (CT) setpoint 65oC to the radiators to a new variable temperature (VT) system that can vary flow temperatures generally 45oC - 65oC. This means that the temperatures for heating will automatically adjust to the
demand for heating and the outside temperature. This also includes a new and updated BMS for the building and a further 14 new temperature sensors to help improve comfort and efficiency.
Continued energy conservation projects
Work shall continue with the installation of energy conservation measures including replacing lighting with LEDs within areas across the Talbot Campus such as circulation, storage and service areas and on the Lansdowne Campus, and replacing and expanding lighting in the main carpark area in Studland House. We also plan to replace the cooling within the Studland House Data Centre with more efficient cooling systems. Data is an essential part of energy management and further improvements will be implemented across the university with either new additional metering or upgrades to older meters to more modern smart meters. The use of this energy data will allow further analysis of the building services that could identify further Building Management System improvements ensuring optimal efficiency and reductions throughout the coming year.
Intelligent campus
Our research this year showed that we already have much of the foundation of an intelligent campus with our Building Management System enabling us to closely control HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) equipment remotely. This year we have progressed investigating how we can use sensor technology to better understand campus utilisation and enable closer energy management of our buildings. We have identified trial buildings and are now preparing for procurement of a trial approach to intelligent campus. This extends our central focus on using data to drive sustainability.
We have increased our renewable generation capacity
We have worked hard to increase our renewable generation on site and this year our estate increased its number of solar photovoltaic arrays from ten to 11 thanks to the addition of the new solar PV system on Dorset House. We also installed our fourth solar thermal system at Chapel Gate and completed BU’s first full ASHP system in Dorset House.
On site renewable energy and low carbon technologies contributed 7% for electricity and 15% for heating our buildings. The amount of electricity produced on site increased from 600 MWh to 629.2 MWh.
Low carbon and renewable generation (kWh) by year
2,000,000
1,500,000
Biomass
Emissions avoided from renewable and low carbon on-site generation
The below chart shows the emissions avoided from electricity generation on site (solar PV) and low carbon heat sources (ground source heat pumps and biomass) each year since 2018/19.
Emissions avoided from renewable and low carbon on-site generation (tCO2e)
This graph accounts for the electricity consumption of heat pumps, to give the net emissions saved based on the heat output of the heat pumps. This could be improved further by accounting for the cooling output of the heat pumps. The biomass emissions recorded take into account the net emissions saved by subtracting the Scope 1 biomass emissions from the emissions saved from gas. This year, as well as the emissions avoided from low carbon and renewable energy generation, emissions avoided from rainwater collection have been included. From next year, the emissions avoided from the new ASHP at Dorset House will be included.
Objective 7: Managing climate change risk
BU’s Climate Change Risk Register sits within our Environment and Energy Management System and documents the risks posed to our operations because of climate change. As these risks become more common it is vital that we progress mitigation and adaptation measures via our CECAP whilst also further embedding understanding of these risks across BU.
Our Climate Change Risk Register includes a range of scenarios including extreme flooding events, hot weather events, low temperature incidents, wildfires, failure of national/regional electricity, gas, water supply and IT infrastructure, failure/disruption of supply chains and infectious diseases. It includes details of the impact and mitigation measures as well as the adaptations required in the short, medium and long term. All these risks feed across the CECAP: for example, adaptation to the risk of Extreme Flooding Events is aligned with our building standards where all new builds must include rainwater harvesting. Similarly for hot weather events our Biodiversity Group has been considering opportunities for tree planting, building shading through canopies and other window shading techniques to reduce impact on campus users.
Climate change risk on the BU Corporate Risk Register
In recognition of the serious impact that the climate and ecological crisis will have on BU, we have added the risk onto the main BU Corporate Risk Register. This means it will be considered at the highest levels of leadership. The wording used links to both mitigation through planning for our net zero emissions goal of 2030/31 and also adaptation to the changes which climate change will bring. This will enable the risk to be considered alongside other corporate risks, so that appropriate planning is in place to mitigate risk and realise opportunities.
Learning across the university sector
BU is a member of the EAUC Managing Climate Risk Community of Practice. This is a place for universities to share their work around climate risk and learn from each other.
AFRICAB: building resilience in Sierra Leone
Our Disaster Management Centre continued its Driving African Building in Disaster Management (AFRICAB) project based in West Africa, which aims to meet the urgent needs of African disaster managers and stakeholders; including the ability to detect and understand deficiencies in their
disaster management systems. The project seeks to assimilate, accommodate, reduce and overcome resistance factors in order to enhance the governance of disaster risk and enable disaster management frameworks to function more efficiently.
The project has been based on constructive cooperation with disaster management partners in Sierra Leone, including the newly created National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) and Freetown City Council (FCC), and involved extensive field research and practitioner engagement.
The project, led by Professor Lee Miles, has produced numerous impacts that have and are likely to continue to enhance disaster management in Sierra Leone. At the national level, the AFRICAB Report included eight thematic areas and 27 key recommendations for national policymakers and stakeholders. The report was launched on 30 September 2021 and was endorsed by Chief Minister Jacob Jusu Saffa and Director General of NDMA, Lt Gen (Rtd) Brima Sesay. You can download the report here. The AFRICAB Report also led to the development of the National Disaster Management Agency Service Charter 2023. Additionally, the AFRICAB Report has been highly utilised by wide stakeholders including Freetown City Council (FCC) in the development of new Standard Operating Procedures for Emergencies and Disasters covering Freetown’s major urban dumpsites, and Freetown’s first ever Climate Action Strategy, launched by FCC in February 2023.
AFRICAB was recognised by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the world’s largest association of business schools, as an Innovation That Inspires for 2023. This a scheme that recognises initiatives conducted by business schools that have an impact across the globe. The project was also profiled in a 2024 issue of the UK Resilience Lessons Digest, published by the UK Cabinet Office and the Emergency Planning College, focusing on the lessons learnt through the work in Sierra Leone and the successful partnerships with key stakeholders in the country.
The Evaluating Local Disaster Management in Sierra Leone (EVALDIS), which builds upon the co-operation of AFRICAB, provides a contemporary research evaluation of the existing state of disaster management within provinces, districts, wards, and local communities.
EVALDIS involves input from 259 stakeholders, as well as provincial, district and local disaster managers, climate change/action officers, members of Community Disaster Management Committees (CDMCs), tribal chiefs
and volunteers. The EVALDIS report was endorsed by the Government of Sierra Leone to ensure that leaders are as equipped as possible to deal with disasters and build resilience. In 2024, the findings and methodology of EVALDIS were incorporated into a national disaster management constitution across Sierra Leone, encompassing wards across all 16 districts and five provinces of the country and potentially covering over 8.4 million people.
Objective 8: Data management and reporting
In order to make informed decisions we work hard to have a robust system for data capture and reporting which we are continually improving. Our Environmental and Energy Management System (EEMS) is externally certified to ISO14001 and ISO50001.
A new software solution for the automatic meter reading (AMR) has been integrated to the building management system (BMS) creating a building energy management system (BEMS). The work required the moving of data streams for over 530 physical meters across the university and creating many virtual meters within the new software system, before checking and verifying each meter for accuracy. The new system is integrated with our Trend IQVision system by adding IQEnergy software.
The software will provide detailed information about where and when energy is consumed or generated with alarms provided should the energy move beyond a set tolerance. As this system forms part of the existing BMS which has more than 20,000 data points, it is starting to provide the foundations for a more analytical system that eventually will be able to intelligently understand the links between operations and usage. This new AMR system forms part of our system for data capture (described right).
Emissions and energy usage is reported monthly and is annually reviewed by the Sustainability Committee. The annual ISO50001 Energy Review assesses the impact of variables such as estates size or weather on our energy usage and identifies areas of significant energy use at the building, user or equipment level, and opportunities for improvement which are used to set targets, objectives and to identify potential projects. For key areas, including waste and transport, environmental targets and monitoring are embedded into contract standards to ensure we can gather and monitor this information.
In addition to the monthly reports provided for the Estates Senior Management Team, this year we have expanded our monthly reporting to target specific user groups on campus. Monthly energy and water consumption reports are now provided for the IT department (covering data centres and comms rooms), SUBU (covering the Students' Union-run buildings), Chartwells (covering the catering outlets and kitchens on campus) and our sports campus at Chapel Gate. Providing these stakeholders with insight into where and how they use energy is the first step in supporting them to reduce their consumption and track the impact of changes they make to their operations.
Energy
Measuring
• Direct manual meter reads
• Automatic meter reading (half-hourly data)
• Financial data (invoices).
Waste, food and procurement
• Pay-by-weight automatic monitoring
• Visual waste audits
• NetPositive Futures supplier engagement tool
• Contract meetings with suppliers
• Sales information from catering outlets.
Travel
• Annual travel survey
• Direct data on journeys made from UNIBUS contract
• Automatic business travel booking data
• Student open day travel data.
Monitoring
SmartSpaces alarms
Invoice and manual data validated in
Systems Link software
Weekly data review for energy by Sustainability & Energy Analyst
Monthly contract meetings
Annual reporting to Sustainability Committee
Analysis
Monthly reports produced and reported at Estates
Senior Management Team meetings
Monthly reports provided for targeted user groups
Annual ISO50001 energy review
Identification of significant energy users
Identification of opportunities for improvement
Targets and objective-setting
Energy projects and estate changes
CECAP Annual Report created
External
reporting
Estates Management Return (EMR)
HESA, the Higher Education Statistics Agency, collate and publish environmental information from the estates management record data returned by universities across the UK. We submit annually to the EMR data across categories including buildings and space, energy, emissions and waste, and transport. You can see all the published information on the HESA website
Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings (SDG Report)
THE Impact Rankings assess universities contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and forms a global benchmark. BU has submitted data to the ranking since its launch in 2019 and for the past three iterations have done so for all 17 SDGs. The ranking asks for data across our operational practice, education and research impact. It covers areas such as governance, environmental management, student support, equality and access activity and collaborative, impactful research. You can read the 2024 methodology here
People & Planet University League
People & Planet’s University League is the only comprehensive and independent league table of UK universities ranked by environmental and ethical performance. It is compiled annually by the UK’s largest student campaigning network, People & Planet. The league table uses information on our website to address its criteria, so we do not formally need to report to it. Nonetheless, we annually take stock of its reporting and review it at the Sustainability Committee to address areas it highlights for improvement. You can find the latest league table here
Sustainable Development Goals Accord
We have signed up to the SDG Accord: a sector-wide commitment to supporting the SDGs within our institutions. We contribute annually to the SDG Accord reporting which asks us to reflect on the sustainable development goals we have been, and plan to be, taking the most action on and to share areas of best practice to support other institutions to further their own action. Collaboration is a key part of achieving and support these global goals effectively.
Race to Zero
Powered by the UN Environment Programme, Environmental Association of Colleges and Universities, and Second Nature, Race to Zero is a global campaign to rally leadership and action in the education sector. Since we’ve pledged as part of this scheme to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, this report also represents our annual update on the actions we are taking towards this target.
Next steps
Last year we shared our seven priorities for 2023/24 and we would like to share our progress with these as a summary in the table below:
Our campus
We said:
We will increase the amount of energy we generate on site and add a new solar PV array on Dorset House roof, and a new solar thermal system for Christchurch house and Chapel Gate to reduce gas used for heating water.
We did:
Complete a new PV system on Dorset House which will generate 80,000kWh per year. We did add two new solar thermal systems, one at Christchurch House and one at Chapel Gate.
These projects have helped us to progress towards our target of 1MWp solar electricity generated on site by 2025. We now have 765 kWp installed capacity across all our buildings.
Next steps:
We are reviewing whether we can add solar PV to our Student Village. As this is a leased building not owned outright by BU this is more challenging.
We will deliver the first of our Heat Decarbonisation Plan projects for Dorset House and improve thermal properties of the building with a new roof and new windows.
We will review our Heat Decarbonisation Plan costs as we became more aware that costs were much higher than originally planned.
Complete the heat decarbonisation of Dorset House by removing the aging gas boilers completely and replacing them with nine air source heat pumps. This means the building is electrically heated and is expected to save a net figure of around 64 tonnes of CO2e per year.
We had cost analysis completed for our Heat Decarbonisation Plan which increased the forecasted cost to £46.46m from original estimates around £20m.
In 2024/25 we will be improving Christchurch House to change the heating circuits from a constant temperature to a variable temperature. This will save around 17tCO2e per year based on saving 94,300kWh of natural gas.
We will be closely monitoring the performance of the Dorset House heat pumps to consider carbon, cost and comfort for building users to determine whether we should continue this approach for other buildings.
We will continue to develop our Heat Decarbonisation Plan and look for funding to support future projects.
We will continue to implement the recommendations from the ecological surveys.
This year we have planted seven mature trees at Talbot Campus and students planted hedgerow tree saplings at Chapel Gate. We have had good student engagement around the campus bird feeders and we have installed 14 swift boxes at TC.
We will continue to implement the recommendations.
We said:
We will create more student opportunities.
We will repeat our university-wide mapping of course alignment to the climate crisis and UN SDGs.
We would support staff to make more sustainable travel choices.
We will investigate ways to measure the actions our suppliers are taking to reduce their impact and that we would continue to work to calculate the carbon footprint of what we buy.
Our people
We did:
We developed the BU Student Sustainability Council for students to have their voices heard.
We provided students across three of our faculties with live projects to work on sustainability as part of their course.
We continued to offer Carbon Literacy training and Climate Fresk for staff and students, and became an accredited Carbon Literate Educator (CLE).
We completed this mapping to identify that two-thirds of courses include the climate crisis in their content.
We published guidance for staff to make their essential travel more sustainable.
We concluded our trial of NetPositive Futures, a system to capture actions our suppliers are taking. We decided to stop using this system at the end of 2023/24 as it wasn’t giving us the data we needed. We are reviewing other products and methods to gather carbon data.
Next
steps:
We plan to launch ‘Sustainability Screenings’ to engage a wider audience on a range of sustainability topics.
We will continue to offer certified training like Carbon Literacy and expand use of Climate Fresk to embed this into courses.
We will repeat this mapping in winter 2024 to map progress against our CECAP objective.
We will continue to support more sustainable travel choices and will make policy changes to support this.
We are working to calculate the carbon footprint of what we buy and hope to implement improved methods. Now that the university wide SCEF is released we hope to use this to help us report procurement emissions by 2025/26.
Appendix 1: Emissions Report
Executive Summary
The purpose of this appendix is to provide transparent accounting for the GHG emissions reported in the CECAP report including the scope, boundaries, data sources and activities currently included in the reporting.
BU follows written guidance for the calculation of the GHG emissions footprint to align reporting more closely with best practice. This is to support Objective 8 of the CECAP and several of the data management CECAP actions. The main sources for this work were the CECAP, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard and the UK Government's Environmental Reporting Guidelines. This year, the data for LPG (liqufied petroleum gas) has been amended, and financial data has been used to ensure completeness of data, following issues with meter reads.
In 2018/19, BU’s GHG emissions across all scopes were 6,721 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) for the year. This year the total is 4,770 tCO2e
Table 1: Emissions by year
In 2023/24, the Scope 2, Scope 3 and total emissions SBTi targets were met, but not the Scope 1 target.
Introduction
Principles
The aim of this report is to align BU’s GHG emissions reporting to best practices (e.g. the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard and the UK Government's Environmental Reporting Guidelines) and improve data management along the following principles (based on the GHG’s standard):
• Relevance: the inclusion of appropriate sources that reflect the emissions of BU and supports decision making by BU
• Completeness: an inventory of GHG sources that covers as much of the GHG emissions produced by BU as possible
• Consistency: the use of consistent data sources and calculations with any changes made to methods, activities or boundaries documented
• Transparency: the recording of data sources for audit and addressing all issues clearly in reports
• Accuracy: the reduction of estimates and uncertainties around emissions amounts by collection of the appropriate data.
Boundaries
The CECAP recommends the use of the UK Government Environmental Reporting Guidelines to define organisational boundaries. As per Annex A of the Reporting Guidelines (and noted in the CECAP) BU is using an operational control boundary. Under the operational control approach, a company accounts for 100% of emissions from operations over which it or one of its subsidiaries has operational control. This allows BU to measure and control
emissions that the organisation can take steps to reduce. The GHG standard notes that having operational control “does not mean that a company necessarily has authority to make all decisions concerning an operation. Operational control does mean that a company has the authority to introduce and implement its operating policies.”
Reporting dates and base year
This report covers the year 1 August 2023 to 31 July 2024. The base year is 1 August 2018 to 31 July 2019. BU’s actual emissions targets are SBT targets created with the SBTi tool V1.1 “well below 2 degrees” model.
Operational boundary and scopes
In order to fully account for BU’s GHG emissions and identify future opportunities for reduction, activities across Scope 1, 2 and 3 need to be accurately recorded. Scope 1 to 3 are defined in Table 3. Methods of data collection and calculation of emissions have been defined for each emissions source that BU reports on (see Emissions by Source for 2023/24 section, below).
Scopes 1 and 2 are currently recorded fully and the table indicates which areas of Scope 3 are only partially recorded, or not recorded at all. BU is working to expand the inventory of Scope 3 activities that are being reported to align with Standardised Carbon Emissions Framework (SCEF) which was released as part of a larger roadmap EAUC in January 2023. In particular, we are working to calculate emissions from purchased goods and services and these have been identified as a priority, given the likely amount of emissions and the opportunity for BU to engage with suppliers to reduce these significantly.
Scope Direct/ Indirect
Scope 1 Direct Emissions associated with sources that are owned or controlled by the reporting organisation.
Scope 2 Indirect Emissions from generation of purchased energy.
Scope 3 Indirect 1. Upstream emissions from activities that occur from sources not owned or controlled by the reporting organisation.
1. Natural Gas
Fleet
3. Refrigerants & research-based f-gas
4. Other Fuels
5. Land-related emissions and livestock Land and livestock N/A Methane
1. Purchased Electricity Grid electricity Yes 2. Purchased Renewable Energy
3. Heat & Steam
electricity
Heating / steam N/A
1. Purchased goods and services e.g. emissions from procurement/purchasing. Water Currently not reported except water and wastewater Wastewater
2. Capital Goods: Construction, refurbishment etc Currently not reported
3. Fuel and energy related activities not included in scopes 1 & 2
4. Upstream transport and distribution e.g. delivery of goods to site
Electricity transmission and distribution
Electricity transmission and distribution included. Wellto-tank for LPG not included
Fuel for transportation of goods to the institution Currently not reported
5. Waste generated in operations Disposal and treatment of waste, recycling and wastewater Yes
6. Business travel Rail Rail and flights included. Grey fleet, coach travel, ferry travel and vehicle hire currently excluded. Open Day travel included Flight
Open Day travel
7. Employee and student commuting, staff homeworking UNIBUS fleet
UNIBUS fleet included, other modes and homeworking are not
8. Upstream leased assets Leased buildings and vehicles No
Scope Direct/ Indirect
2. Downstream emissions from activities that occur from sources not owned or controlled by the reporting organisation.
9. Downstream transport and distribution UK and international student travel, student accommodation No
10. Processing of sold products No
11. Use of sold products No
12. End of life treatment for sold products No
13. Downstream leased assets Leased buildings and vehicles, land-use No
14. Franchises No
15. Investments (can include pensions) No
Scope 1 and Scope 2
Natural Gas
Data management:
The BU Sustainability Team (Energy Manager / Energy Officer / Sustainability and Energy Analyst) are responsible for recording the natural gas data. This is recorded in the SystemsLink Energy Manager software as part of the ISO50001 certified Environment and Energy Management System (EEMS).
Data sources:
1. Preferred data source: direct manual reads of all billing level meters as recorded by the BU Facilities Team and/ or the Sustainability Team.
2. If the preferred data source is not available for all or part of the estate, automatic meter reading (AMR) data either from BU’s AMR system or the utility supplier will be used.
3. If the AMR data is unreliable or incomplete for all or part of the estate, financial (billing) data may be used.
Gas consumption (kWh) by year for the BU Estate
Calculation:
1. Meter readings (in m3 or ft3) are converted to kWh.
2. The kWh total for the year is converted to tCO2e using carbon factors from DEFRA (the kgCO2e factor for natural gas conversion from gross CV). The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
3. The Natural Gas consumption from residential (student accommodation in the BU Student Village) and nonresidential sources has been separated.
Natural
Natural Gas GHG emissions (tCO2e) by year for the BU Estate
Results in 2023/24:
1,217 tCO2e, a decrease from the baseline year (1,240 tCO2e). There has been an overall decrease in Natural Gas consumption of 1.3% and a decrease in GHG emissions of 1.8% from the baseline year to this reporting year. Non-residential emissions have decreased by 4%, whereas residential emissions (from the Student Village) have increased by 7%.
Natural gas is the main heating fuel for the BU Estate. Since the baseline year, the BU Estate has increased in size, which increases the heat demand. Weather also has a significant impact on consumption and part of the reason for the decrease this year compared to last year is the reduced heating need from milder temperatures. Onsite and renewable generation has decreased the consumption of gas; since the baseline year, one GSHP (Bournemouth Gateway Building), an ASHP (Dorset House, which will impact gas emissions from the reporting year 24/25) and four solar thermal arrays have been added to the estate. The operation and monitoring of the BMS and AMR systems as part of the ISO50001 Energy Management System has also reduced gas consumption.
LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas)
Data management:
The BU Sustainability Team (Energy Manager / Energy Officer / Sustainability and Energy Analyst) is responsible for recording the LPG data. This is recorded in the SystemsLink Energy Manager software as part of the ISO50001 certified environment and energy management system (EEMS).
Data sources:
1. Preferred data source: direct manual reads of all billing level meters as recorded by the Chapel Gate Operations Manager and/ or the Sustainability Team.
2. If the meter readings are unreliable or incomplete for all or part of the estate, financial (billing) data may be used.
Calculation:
1. Delivery amount in litres are recorded, or meter readings (in m3) are converted to kWh.
2. The litres delivered or kWh total for the year is converted to tCO2e using carbon factors from DEFRA. The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
Results in 2023/24: 72.96 tCO2e, an increase from the baseline year (66.34 tCO2e).
LPG is the heating fuel for the Chapel Gate sports ground because this is not connected to the natural gas network. Chapel Gate was not in the BU Estate in 2018/19 (the baseline year) but financial data was used to include it in the baseline emissions totals. Consumption of LPG has increased by 7% since the baseline year an increase of emissions of 10% (the increase in emissions is higher than the consumption difference due to differences in the carbon emissions factors published for those years). Consumption and emissions have decreased 25% in 2023/24 compared to 2022/23. This is due to the projects completed onsite and replacement of the old boiler in the club house.
LPG consumption (kWh) by year for the BU Estate
Biomass (non-CO2 only)
Data management:
The BU Sustainability Team (Energy Manager / Energy Officer / Sustainability and Energy Analyst) is responsible for recording the biomass data. This is recorded in the SystemsLink Energy Manager software as part of the ISO50001 certified environment and energy management system (EEMS).
Data sources:
1. Preferred data source: AMR from the primary heat meter (generation) of the biomass boiler.
2. If the AMR is incomplete or unreliable, a meter read (taken quarterly or annually) can be used.
Calculation:
1. The AMR records the usage in kWh.
2. The kWh total for the year is converted to tCO2e (non-CO2 only) using carbon factors from DEFRA (the kgCO2e factor
for woodchip biomass). The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
3. The non-CO2 factor is used due to the lifecycle of the woodchip; during the life of the trees that the woodchip is derived from, as much CO2 is removed from the atmosphere as is added from its combustion.
Results in 2023/24:
9.44 tCO2e, a decrease from the baseline year (7.95 tCO2e).
The biomass boiler in Poole House is responsible for low carbon generation of heat; it is carbon dioxide neutral as growing the trees for the woodchip removes as much CO2 as is emitted into the atmosphere from its combustion. However, there are other GHG gases released into the atmosphere during combustion, so it is not carbon dioxide equivalent neutral. The increased generation (67% compared to the baseline year and 9% compared to last year) is due to a more consistent operation of the biomass.
Biomass generation (kWh) by year for the BU Estate
Scope 1 Biomass GHG emissions (tCO2e) by year for the BU Estate
Fleet
Data management:
Vehicles directly owned by the university for transport
• Diesel, petrol and hybrid vehicles
a. The BU Sustainability Team (Travel and Transport Manager) are responsible for recording the mileage, fuel and cost data for the four diesel fleet vehicles and one petrol hybrid we have as reported by the users of the vehicles. This is recorded in an Excel worksheet and held in the university’s internal computer drives.
• Electric vehicles
b. The electricity used to charge the eight fleet EVs are reported as part of the Scope 2 grid electricity emissions (fleet vehicles are charged on site). There is a recommendation to separate this out in future reporting.
Grounds vehicles
The BU Sustainability Team fuel and cost data for the grounds vehicles as reported by the users of the vehicles. This is recorded in an Excel worksheet and held in the university’s internal computer drives.
Data sources:
Vehicles directly owned by the university for transport
• Diesel, petrol and hybrid vehicles
1. Preferred data source: litres of petrol or diesel purchased.
2. If the preferred data source is not available, mileage data per vehicle is recorded.
Grounds vehicles
1. Litres of petrol or diesel purchased.
Calculation:
Vehicles directly owned by the university for transport
• Diesel and petrol vehicles
1. Litres of fuel totalled for the year is converted to tCO2e using carbon factors from DEFRA (the kgCO2e factor for diesel or petrol fuel). The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
2. Alternatively, if mileage data is used, passenger vehicle emissions factors are used, based on the size of the vehicle (small, medium, larger or average based on engine size).
Grounds vehicles
1. Litres of fuel totalled for the year is converted to tCO2e using carbon factors from DEFRA (the kgCO2e factor for diesel or petrol fuel). The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
Results in 2023/24
Emissions of fleet vehicles for transport of staff has decreased from 19.5 tCO2e to 3.82 tCO2e. This reflects the replacement of diesel and petrol vehicles with electric vehicles (these are mostly charged on site and are therefore reflected in the Scope 2 emissions totals).
Grounds vehicles (operated at Chapel Gate) were not included in the baseline (Chapel Gate was not part of the BU Estate at the time). Data for this has been available from 2020. 17.21tCO2e emissions came from this source this year. The inclusion of this data has caused an increase in fleet emissions overall.
F gas (fugitive emissions)
Data management:
The contractor for refrigeration maintenance provides an annual report that includes the type of refrigerant and amounts lost to leaks.
Data sources:
Leaks from refrigeration in kg and type of refrigerant as recorded by the contractor.
Global Warming Potential information for refrigerants (from DEFRA).
Calculation:
• Leaks: total refrigerant lost in in kg
• Leak tests: total refrigerant added minus total refrigerant removed in kg
• Kilograms of each leak or leak test totalled for the year is converted to tCO2e using GWP from DEFRA. The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year. F Gas GHG emissions (tCO2e) by year for the BU Estate
Results in 2023/24:
58.35 tCO2e, a decrease from the baseline year (309 tCO2e).
The large base year amount was due to the result of three large leaks from air conditioning units occurring on Talbot Campus, which was an anomaly. Completeness of data has been improved this year, compared to the original CECAP report, which gave the original baseline amount of 135 tCO2e. Data quality for this source can still be improved to align with the method in the UK Government reporting guidelines.
Electricity
Data management:
The BU Sustainability Team (Energy Manager / Energy Officer / Sustainability and Energy Analyst) is responsible for recording the electricity data. This is recorded in the SystemsLink Energy Manager software as part of the ISO50001 certified environment and energy management system (EEMS).
Data sources:
1. Preferred data source: direct manual reads of all billing level meters as recorded by the Facilities Team and/ or the Sustainability Team.
2. If the meter readings are unreliable or incomplete for all or part of the estate, financial (billing) data may be used.
Calculation:
1. Meter readings are converted to kWh.
2. The kWh total for the year is converted to tCO2e using carbon factors from DEFRA (the kgCO2e conversion factor for electricity generation). The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
3. The DEFRA factor used will be for the consumption amount only; the Transport and Distribution amount will be recorded in Scope 3.
4. BU purchases REGO certified green electricity from renewable sources, however the GHG reporting is from a location-based (based on the grid emissions), not market-based (based on the electricity purchased). This may be reviewed if future electricity purchases are made as part of a power purchase agreement.
5. The electricity consumption from residential (student accommodation in the BU Student Village) and non-residential sources has been separated.
Electricity consumption (kWh) by year for the BU Estate 7,000,000 7,500,000 8,500,000 8,000,000
Results in 2023/24:
1753.36 tCO2e, a decrease from the baseline year (2,661.77 tCO2e)
Consumption of grid electricity has decreased 10% overall since the baseline year (a decrease of 10% in non-residential buildings, but 0% in the residential estate (Student Village)). This reduction is despite an increase in estate size, and is due to the investment in newer, more efficient buildings and energy projects. Approximately 35% of the reduction in mains consumption is due to addition solar PV arrays which have generated 109% electricity in 23/24 compared to 18/19. Emissions from grid electricity have reduced 34% since the baseline year (34% in non-residential buildings, 27% in the Student Village). The reduction is greater than the decrease in consumption due to the decrease in carbon emissions factors during that period.
Compared to last year, consumption of grid electricity has remained approximately the same, but emissions have increased 6.9% year-on-year. This is due to the emissions factors increasing compared to last year.
In 2023/24 we continued to purchase electricity through REGO backed green tariffs. This means that 100% of our electricity comes from renewable sources. However, we report our grid electricity emissions using the emission factors from the national grid (location based-reporting).
Scope 3
Electricity transmission and distribution
Data management:
The BU Sustainability Team (Energy Manager / Energy Officer / Sustainability and Energy Analyst) is responsible for recording the electricity data. This is recorded in the SystemsLink Energy Manager software as part of the ISO50001 certified environment and energy management system (EEMS).
Data sources:
The kWh total will be recorded as per the purchased electricity in Scope 2.
Calculation:
The kWh total for the year is converted to tCO2e using carbon factors from DEFRA (the kgCO2e conversion factor for electricity transmission and distribution). The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
2018/19 2019/20 2020/21 2021/22 2023/24 2022/23
Results in 2023/24:
151.69 tCO2e, a decrease from the baseline year (266.90 tCO2e).
Similar to the consumption emissions for electricity in Scope 2, the reduction in emissions from transport and distribution are due to lower DEFRA carbon factors, increased on-site renewable generation and other development and energy projects.
UNIBUS travel
Data sources:
1. Provided by UNIBUS (litres of fuel).
2. DEFRA carbon factors. The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
Results in 2023/24:
422 tCO2e, an increase from the baseline year (391 tCO2e).
Passenger numbers have recovered since the COVID-19 pandemic and bus travel is at an all time high;
the emissions remain the same compared to last year but have increased by 8% compared to the baseline year. This is due to the addition of the U5 bus route from TC to CG and increased passenger numbers. This will have displaced passengers from more polluting forms of transport. When full commuting data is included in Scope 3 in future, a more accurate and holistic accounting of staff and student commuting will be reported on.
UNIBUS Bus Fleet GHG emissions (tCO2e) by year for the BU Estate
Flights business travel
Data sources:
1. Provided by Select Travel (miles).
2. DEFRA carbon factors. The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
Results in 2023/24: 731.33 tCO2e, a decrease from the baseline year (1,426.40 tCO2e).
The number of flights taken for business travel are still below the base year amounts but have increased post-COVID-19 pandemic. There has been a decrease of emissions of 49% since the baseline year and 19% since last year. This highlights the need to continue using online meetings and conferencing where possible.
Travel (Flights) GHG emissions (tCO2e) by year for the BU Estate
Rail business travel
Data sources:
1. Provided by Select Travel (miles).
2. DEFRA carbon factors. The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
Results in 2023/24: 16.57 tCO2e, a decrease from the baseline year (31.80 tCO2e).
Rail travel has also increased post-COVID-19 (there has been a year-on-year increase in emissions of 1%), but the number of journeys are still lower than the baseline year (a reduction of 48%). The number of train journeys has increased this year from 1,210 last year to 1,366 this year.
Water and wastewater
Data sources:
1. Manual meter reads (m3), where manual reads are unavailable, financial data is used.
2. DEFRA carbon factors. The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
Results in 2023/24:
Water: 5.9 tCO2e, a decrease from the baseline year (17.19 tCO2e).
Wastewater: 3.39 tCO2e a decrease from the baseline year (31.16 tCO2e)
Emissions from water have reduced 66% from the baseline year. The consumption of mains water has reduced 23% during the same period. The reason that the emissions reduction is greater than that of the consumption is due to a large decrease in emissions factors during that time (this occurred in 2021 and can be seen in the data since 2021/22). Water consumption has decreased due to the investment into new buildings, allowing the exit of older buildings which were less water efficient. Furthermore, improved leak detection through better metering and monitoring has been implemented through this time (via the EEMS). During the same time period, wastewater emissions reduced by 80% and the recorded amount of wastewater was reduced by 24%. Water and
Operational waste
Data sources:
1. Provided by waste contractor.
2. DEFRA carbon factors. The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
Results in 2023/24: 6.80 tCO2e, a decrease from the baseline year (8.9 tCO2e).
This is a decrease of 23.6% from the baseline and an increase of 9.1% compared to last year. Operational waste emissions are now increasing as campus activity is returning to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.
Construction waste Data sources:
1. Waste weights are provided by construction contractors.
2. DEFRA carbon factors. The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
Construction waste tonnage (tonnes) by year for the BU Estate
Results in 2023/24: 4.53 tCO2e, an increase from the baseline year (3.30 tCO2e).
This is an increase of 37.3% from the baseline and a 11.5% decrease compared to last year. Construction waste emissions are dependent on the amount and type of construction activity that takes place each year. Although there have been no new build projects since 2019/20, a number of capital development refurbishment / improvement projects have taken place.
Open Day travel
Data management:
The BU Sustainability Team (Sustainability Support Officer/ Travel & Transport Manager) is responsible for recording the commuting data for Open Days. This is recorded in an internal I-drive folder.
Data sources:
The data is collated by the UK Recruitment and Outreach Team using information voluntarily provided by attendees for this purpose.
Calculation:
1. An algorithm is used to convert postcode data into distance travelled (km) using a linear estimate. The mode of transport (e.g. car, public transport) is then converted to tCO2e using carbon factors from DEFRA (the kgCO2e conversion factor for passenger vehicles) using their
average type figures. The version of the DEFRA carbon factors to be used is the last version published before the start of the reporting year.
2. Where mode of transport is not included, it is assumed the attendee travelled by car. Where the postcode is not included, an average emissions figure is assumed.
Results in 2023/24:
291.81 tCO2e, a decrease from the baseline year (278.6 tCO2e).
The increase of Open Day emissions is a reflection of the attendance at Open Days and the distance and mode travelled by attendees. There has been an increase in emissions of 8% from baseline year and 26% from last year, indicating a recovery in Open Day attendee numbers since the COVID-19 pandemic, when emissions fell.
Market-based reporting
In order to show a comparison we have included the graph below to show our emissions if we were to use the market based reporting approach. BU invested in green tariffs which are REGO backed, therefore if we were to use market-based reporting our emissions would be as below. We feel that our approach of using location-based reporting is the right method, as we recognise there are challenges with REGOs and they can only have limited impact. We are exploring the use of power purchase agreements (PPAs) which have a clearer link to driving true additionality in the renewable energy sector. We are committed to our approach which focuses on reduction in overall energy consumed and addition of renewable energy sources on site.
Appendix 2: CECAP Action Progress Report
The CECAP maps out our route to cutting our emissions by half and aligning with the BU2025 plan which puts sustainability at the heart of the university’s strategic aims: it commits us to taking a leading position on our environmental impact and to support our students and staff to take a responsible approach to sustainable development.
In order to implement the CECAP, 94 actions have been identified across 15 themes. All actions have been assigned a facilitator and a person or team responsible, as well as a timeline: if the start date is yet to be reached, an action may be noted as ‘not started’. A dashboard and actions summary allows us to report progress, including to the CECAP Group and Sustainability Committee. This year actions BH1.1 and GO1.5 have been removed.
Governance
This theme recognises that to meaningfully and robustly embed our response to the climate and ecological crisis, our governance structures must support the response across all aspects of BU life.
GO1.1
Climate focus for BU2025 refresh
GO1.2 Review policy framework to ensure all policies respond to the crisis On track
GO1.3 Reappraise departmental key performance indicators On track
GO1.4 Review, and amend as appropriate, the Academic Career Framework On track
GO1.5 Make individuals explicitly responsible - adopt goal alignment
GO1.6 Review existing controls on development and research funds On track
GO1.7 Create a body to oversee the purchase of carbon offsets
GO1.8 Agree effective carbon price to inform offsetting strategy and project viability
GO1.9 Adopt polluter pays principles for certain activities On track
GO1.10 Rename and extend the remit of the CMP Group and Sustainability Team to cover all emissions sources
GO1.11 Include relevant areas of the response in the TORs of all committees
GO1.12 Implement a staff and student assembly
GO1.13 Revise governance to support a reduction in the environmental impact of research On track
GO1.14 Ensure the climate and ecological crisis is included on BU risk register
Behaviour change
This theme is focused on mobilising the entire BU community to support our response to the crisis.
BH1.1 Create a CECAP charter that all staff must sign up to
BH1.2 Develop and implement crisis literacy training
BH1.3 Continue and develop staff focused behaviour change initiatives
BH1.4 Continue and develop student focused behaviour change programmes, including collaborations with other departments
BH1.5 Enhance and promote existing mechanisms to reward pro-environmental behaviour
BH2.2 Ongoing annual communication and engagement plan
BH2.3 Sustainability team to work with other departments and teams to engage students in the crisis response
Education for sustainable development and research
This theme is focused on embedding the climate and ecological crisis and broader sustainability into our curricula and research.
ES1.1 Continue to align programmes with the SDGs and include the climate and ecological crisis in all levels of programmes in the indicative content of at least one unit per level by 2022/23
ES1.2 Continue to align research with SDGs and investigate reporting of research aligned to CEC
ES1.3 Continue and develop staff-focused behaviour change initiatives
ES1.4 Develop a Living Labs programme to support the CECAP On track
Adaptation and resilience
Many of the recommendations which might have been included here have been embedded in other areas, although the issue of staff understanding the need to have their own response to climate and ecological challenges is highlighted by this theme.
AR1.1 Support staff to develop personal resilience plans
Capital projects
This theme focuses on the impact of major building projects but also considers how other large capital investments can support the climate and ecological crisis response.
NB1.1 New builds that respond to the climate and ecological crisis
NB1.3 Enhance effectiveness of minor works programme to address the climate and ecological crisis
NB1.4 Maximise the carbon benefit of large-scale refurbishments
NB1.5 Prioritise nature-based solutions
Existing buildings
This theme focuses on reducing the amount of energy it takes to run our buildings by improving the efficiency of their systems and making sure we use the buildings as efficiently as possible.
EB1.1 Roll-out LED lighting to all BU buildings
EB1.2 Continue with RGF projects as they are identified
EB1.3 Carry out estate-wide energy focused BMS audit
EB1.4 Optimisation of new gateway buildings
EB1.5 Poole House smoke vent compressor
EB1.6 Fan and pump replacements, and control enhancements
EB1.7 Consider options to enhance PPM and reactive maintenance impact
EB1.8 Upgrade Talbot Campus transformers
EB2.1 Identify buildings to trial replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps
EB2.2 Identify opportunities to
EB6.3
EB6.4
EB7.1
This theme focuses on both individual actions and supply chain engagement to reduce waste generation and improve recycling rates.
WS1.1 Focus on reducing supplier packaging
WS1.2 Net zero carbon waste contract
WS1.3 Increase and maintain recycling rate – removed this action as focus should be on reducing total waste per person as in WS1.4
WS1.4 Reduce total non C&D/residential waste produced to 20kg/FTE
WS2.1 Improve collection of construction and demolition waste data
WS2.2 Set stringent targets on construction waste
This theme focuses on how we can reduce our impact through food offerings across BU.
Reduce food impact
This theme focuses on reducing the energy demand of IT equipment and associated infrastructure and encouraging efficient use by looking at the provision of low energy IT equipment and infrastructure and adopting behaviour change techniques to reduce energy demand.
energy consumption (which could include changes to SH data centre)
This theme looks at how we can maximise our generation of renewable energy on site (especially through the use of photovoltaics) to decarbonise the energy we use and provide resilience in our energy system.
Gather data on carbon (and potentially wider environmental) credentials of suppliers
This theme focuses on improving our ability to act effectively through better data, target setting, and taking steps to align our reporting with best practice over time.
Ref Title
BH2.1 Developing a baseline of Scope 3 carbon emissions and setting a target for carbon reduction On track
RP1.1 Align reporting with best practice Completed
RP1.2 Enhance metering systems On track
RP1.3 Align with best practice climate related disclosures in financial reporting Not started
RP1.4 Improve data capture On track
RP1.5 Improve data management On track
RP1.6 Set additional targets where appropriate On track
Diversity and inclusion
This theme focuses on the need to include people from all backgrounds in the response to the climate and ecological crisis.
DI 1.1 People from all backgrounds are fully included in the CECAP On track
DI 1.2 Develop initiatives that actively diversify the environmental sector On track
