New City College Environmental Sustainability Report 2022

Environmental Sustainability

Annual Report 2022

Foreword

Measuring and evaluating progress in becoming a more sustainable organisation is a key priority for New City College. As the College has grown to become one of the largest FE colleges in the country, so has the environmental impact of our activities. Our student and staff community is more than 20,000 strong and our estate spans over 110,000 sqm. We have a duty to do whatever we can to reduce the negative environmental impact of our actions.

This report highlights what we are doing well and where we need to focus our efforts for better impact. We do so in a context of significant financial challenge and an absence of meaningful investment in our sector.

Despite this, our commitment remains. Our students, stakeholders and our environment demand that it does.

We have made significant progress in the last academic year but this progress has not been linear or without objection. Our intention is that by publishing our annual reports we can increase both the support and challenge for our actions in order to achieve a real reduction in our environmental footprint.

Gerry McDonald Group Principal and CEO December 2022

Introduction

New City College (NCC) launched its Green Strategy in January 2021. The purpose of this Strategy is to create a greener NCC. It is aligned with the Climate Action Roadmap for FE Colleges1 and covers actions related to Leadership and Governance; Teaching and Learning; Estates and Operations; and Partnerships and Engagement. The Strategy is being delivered in phases with Phase 1 taking NCC from an emerging to an established college on environmental sustainability over the calendar year 2021. Phase 2 is under delivery and will take NCC from established to a leading college by December 2024.

This is the first annual report on NCC’s environmental sustainability work. It presents NCC’s carbon emissions and how those have evolved over time. It provides an overview of actions and activities undertaken as part of the Green Strategy during the academic year 2021/22. It concludes by outlining the focus areas for work in 2022/23.

Understanding carbon emissions

Organisations and individuals are increasingly being asked to assess and report on how environmentally sustainable they are. This is usually done by calculating how much carbon emissions an organisation/ individual emits in a year. The reporting measure used is carbon emission equivalent (CO2e) which brings all greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. methane in addition to carbon dioxide) responsible for heating the atmosphere under one measuring unit.

Carbon emissions are reported on against three scopes, defined as:

• Scope 1: direct greenhouse emissions that occur from sources that are controlled or owned by an organisation. For NCC this includes gas boilers, f gas and owned vehicles.

• Scope 2: indirect GHG emissions associated with the purchase of electricity, steam, heat, or cooling. For NCC this includes electricity.

• Scope 3: the result of activities from assets not owned or controlled by the reporting organisation, but the organisation indirectly impacts in its value chain. Scope 3 emissions include all sources not within an organisation’s scope 1 and 2 boundary, e.g.

1. www.eauc.org.uk/fe_roadmap

2. Shared as an example of an organisation with a strong track record of reporting transparently on their carbon emissions, incl. Scope 3 emissions.

waste, water and travel. NCC is currently able to measure emissions from waste, water, paper use, international business flights and staff travel to college where expenses are claimed from NCC.

The below examples may be helpful to contextualise carbon emission metrics:

• 1 tonne of CO2e (tCO2e) is equivalent to a return flight from Paris to New Year for one person OR driving 6,000km with a diesel car

• 6.3 tCO2e: World average carbon footprint (i.e. annual carbon emissions per year) for an individual

• 9.5 tCO2e: UK average carbon footprint for an individual

• 424,727 tCO2e: UCL carbon footprint 2020-21, of which 392,839 tCO2e are from products they buy. 2

In order to achieve the ambition of stopping global warming at 1.5°C, all countries will need to reach net zero emissions by 2050, with the majority of the reduction taking place by 2030. This means reducing emissions as close to zero as possible and offsetting the emissions that cannot be reduced.

NCC’s carbon emissions

NCC reports on its carbon emissions using the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) process as recommended by the UK Government. The full 2021/22 report is included in Appendix A.

In 2021/22 NCC produced 4,095 tonnes of CO2e emissions. Over half of the emissions are from gas consumption. NCC’s estate spans over 100,000 sqm and all buildings are currently heated with gas boilers. Emissions from f gases are included in the report for the first time this year.

Emissions from electricity account for 37% of NCC’s emissions. All of NCC’s electricity contracts are based on brown energy and there are no immediate plans to change this due to the current energy crisis. However, NCC is investigating the option of introducing solar panels on one of its sites in order to start decarbonising its electricity supply.

NCC’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions have declined by 10% since 2019/20. This is a result of reduced consumption of both gas and electricity. NCC’s electricity consumption has reduced by 8% and gas consumption by 4%. Together the reduced consumption has saved 364 tonnes of CO2e emissions in 2021/22 compared to 2019/20. The reductions in consumption have been achieved through changes in the settings of building management systems, rollout of LED lighting installation, campus closures during halfterms, closures of specific building blocks earlier in the day and introduction of a building temperature protocol standardising the approach to the heating and cooling of NCC buildings.

It should be noted that a number of factors have impacted on energy consumption in the past years explaining some of the fluctuation in the figures. In 2019-20, parts of the college estate were closed during the first Covid-19 lockdown.

This was also the case in 2020-21, during the January-February 2021 lockdown. The new building of the Rainham construction centre was under development this year. In 2021-22, there have been no lockdowns but the new Rainham construction centre is now in use, adding 3,000 sqm into the NCC estate. At the same time, some of the buildings in Ardleigh Green have been mothballed, reducing energy consumption.

Hackney, Poplar and Ardleigh Green campuses account for over 50% of NCC’s carbon emissions when comparing emissions from gas, electricity and water use. All of them incorporate old buildings that are inefficient and poorly insulated resulting in significant energy wastage. Plans are in place to redevelop all of these sites, with phase 1 of Ardleigh Green’s redevelopment plans underway.

Limited data is available to help assess how NCC’s carbon footprint compares to other organisations. Whilst many colleges publish SECR reports annually, each collect emission data slightly differently, making comparisons difficult. Many organisations outside of the education sector use different intensity ratios and ways of reporting on emissions.

The Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineering (CIBSE) have developed an energy benchmarking tool, which shows typical and good practical values for energy consumption in different types of organisations. The values for standard lecture (i.e. teaching) rooms in further and higher education institutions are used in the below tables to demonstrate how NCC’s campuses fare against these benchmarks.

NCC’s carbon emissions (continued)

The comparison against CIBSE benchmarks shows that most NCC’s campuses consume less electricity and gas per square meter than the recommended good practice rate. The exceptions to this are Rainham and Ardleigh Green for electricity consumption. In Rainham’s case, this is likely due to the highly energy intensive curriculum provision on the site as it is a specialist centre for Construction and Engineering. As a result, limited action can be taken to reduce electricity consumption on this campus. Instead, plans are in place to reduce gas emissions in Rainham by replacing some of the existing gas boilers with low carbon heat sources. The centre is also developing a new curriculum offer on the installation and maintenance of low carbon heat sources, further supporting the ‘greening’ of the centre. In Ardleigh Green, the two main reasons for the high electricity consumption are 1) the fact that one of the buildings is a temporary building relying on electric heaters for heating and 2) that LED lighting has not yet been introduced. Both issues are being addressed as part of the phased redevelopment plans.

Poplar and Arbour Square consume more gas than is typical practice in further and higher education institutions. This is most likely due

to the old age of the buildings. Arbour Square is a Grade II listed former school building with single-glazed windows in need of repair. Grant funding has been secured from the Department for Education to undertake urgent repairs to the windows which are likely to reduce energy loss to an extent. Poplar campus also incorporates a Grade II listed Naval College from 1906 and poor-quality extensions from 1950s. Plans are in place to fully redevelop the campus into a 21st century teaching and learning environment and it is anticipated that the new campus will meet the highest environmental building standards.

In 2021/22, NCC increased its capacity and capability to capture Scope 3 emissions. This is the first year that NCC is able to report on emissions produced through water and paper use and waste. These data continue to be patchy and further work will be done in 2022/23 to improve data collection and accuracy. Due to the complexity in Scope 3 data collection NCC has sought to quantify the carbon savings of actions that relate to this scope. It is estimated that NCC has saved over 3,500 tonnes of CO2e by reducing food waste, introducing sustainable catering options and reducing single use products.

As a result of the increased Scope 3 data collection, NCC’s total carbon emissions rose by 72 tonnes of CO2e from 2019/20 to 2021/22. The overall emissions are likely to continue to grow over the next few years as Scope 3 data tracking improves. Some estimates suggest that Scope 3 emissions account for 90% of an organisation’s emissions, depending on the range of data points that are tracked and reported on. NCC will continue to report transparently on its emissions as data tracking improves.

Green Strategy Actions 2021/22

TOP 3 actions/activities under each Green Strategy strand

Leadership & Governance Teaching & Learning

Invested in an Environmental Sustainability Manager post focusing 100% on the delivery of the Green Strategy

Established a Green Investment Board to review and make recommendations on estate decarbonisation

Established internal structures, including an Operational Sustainability Group, a Green Committee and a Green Club to champion and drive actions around a greener NCC

Estates & Operations

Piloted a number of initiatives in NCC catering outlets including Meat Free Mondays, Too Good To Go and stopping the sale of water in plastic bottles

Changed the paper used in college printers to one that is made of 100% recycled paper

Developed a building temperature protocol to standardise the approach to heating and cooling in the NCC estate

Impact of Green Strategy actions and activities in 2021/22

Delivered carbon literacy training to staff and students

Delivered a CPD day focused on environmental sustainability to all support staff resulting in teambased action plans

Engaged in green conversations with all curriculum directors to identify existing good practice and reviewed the existing green curriculum offer as outlined in qualification specifications

Partnerships & Engagement

Signed up to the Greater London Authority’s Green New Deal Working Group and Retrofit Accelerator – Workplaces programmes to accelerate estate decarbonisation

Arranged the first Green Week to coincide with COP26

Planted 105 trees sourced as donations from the Woodland Trust

• 100% of green club members (students) trained in carbon literacy

• 139 staff trained in carbon literacy, incl. 100% estates staff trained

• 292 staff trained in environmental sustainability

• 407 students directly engaged in the first Green Week

• 4% reduction in gas consumption compared to the baseline year of 2019/20

• 8% reduction in electricity consumption compared to the baseline year of 2019/20

Focus for 2022/23

We will continue to deliver on Phase 2 of our Green Strategy in 2022/23. Specific areas of focus include:

• Submitting funding applications to Salix’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme for projects to replace existing gas boilers in two campuses with low carbon heat source alternatives. If successful, the projects will be delivered as part of our summer works schedule in 2023. These projects have the potential to reduce NCC’s carbon emissions by over 100 tCO2e per annum or c. 3% of Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

• Investigating and procuring a supplier to install solar panels in one of our campuses in order to start decarbonising our electricity supply. This project has the potential to reduce NCC’s carbon emissions by 150 tCO2e or 4% of Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

• Launching a campaign to reduce energy consumption in all college campuses, supported by the new building temperature protocol.

• Adapting the pilot initiatives in our canteens, replacing Meat Free Mondays by becoming a Beef Free College; removing the sale of all plastic bottles in favour of recyclable cans; and continuing our partnership with Too Good To Go.

• Starting to tackle the emissions produced by the waste we create by reviewing all waste contractors we work with and exploring the possibility of moving to a single hybrid recycling contractor for all our sites.

• Continuing to increase the quantity and quality of emission data we collect in order to continuously improve the understanding of our carbon footprint.

• Continuing with our activities to engage students and staff through the Green Committee, Green Clubs, carbon literacy training and Green Week.

Intensity measurement

The primary intensity measurement ratio is total gross emissions in metric tonnes CO2e per staff member (counted as FTE), the recommended ratio for the sector. We have also included a secondary intensity measurement ratio which captures total gross emissions in metric tonnes CO2e per student (counted as FTE).

Measures taken to improve energy efficiency

NCC seek to improve energy efficiency in all campuses, in the year 21/22 NCC have implemented the following:

• Stricter campus closure periods outside of term time

• Adjustments to BMS systems to reduce energy consumption

• Upskilling of estates and security staff to reduce day-to-day energy consumption

• Introduction of temperature protocols with a stricter approach to managing building heating and cooling

• Continued transition to LED lighting

Further, we have improved our capability to measure and report on carbon emissions.