University of Southampton Sustainability Strategy: overall emissions reporting: a methodology and initial estimates

Abstract

This report has used the GHG Protocol approach to the measurement and reporting of an organisations’ emissions to update the 2018/19 baseline for the University of Southampton. This provides a best estimate of ~129,600 T CO2e compared to the partial value of 33,342 T CO2e initially reported in the University’s Sustainability Strategy. This is almost entirely driven by the introduction of estimates for Scope 3 Purchase of Goods and Services as well as Scope 3 Employee commuting, waste disposal and upstream emissions due to energy use.

While the analysis suffers from missing data, the results indicate that in 2018/19 our estimated emissions where known were:

• Scope 1: 13,414 T CO2e
• Scope 2: 11,638 T CO2e
• Scope 3: 104,566 T CO2e

Overall, we recommend that the University adopt this approach for the calculation and reporting of emissions in future years. This will provide a crucial basis for understanding the relative scale of emissions from each source and thus where resources should best be focused to effect rapid and significant reductions. It will also provide the means to annually track the impact of actions on emissions categories and thus the University’s overall emissions footprint.

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ORCID for Ben Anderson: orcid.org/0000-0003-2092-4406

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