Background:
The Royal Anniversary Trust recently published its “Accelerating towards Net-Zero” report, a roadmap for carbon reduction in Further and Higher Education institutions. The report resulted from a year-long research project funded by the DfE, known as The Platinum Jubilee Challenge. Further and Higher Education organisations from across the UK were invited to participate in the Challenge (21 in total - see the list at the end of this post). This approach had a dual benefit in that the participants not only understood the issues facing their sector but also carried a relatively high degree of knowledge and expertise in Carbon reduction.
Summary of Recommendations
There are three 'Action Pathways' identified to accelerate the UK tertiary education sector towards Net Zero by 2050:
The Built Environment
Travel and Transport
Sustainable Supply Chains
The report also notes that to make progress, there are two "Enablers" (underpinning actions). First, the sector needs to take a long-term approach to finance and Investing in the sustainability and the decarbonisation of its estates, identifying ways of unlocking more significant investment from the public and private sectors. Second, institutions must identify and develop the internal skills and resources they need to achieve net zero, with appropriate staff recruitment and ongoing learning and development.
The document also recommends the adoption of the Standardised Carbon Emissions Framework (SCEF), developed by the Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education (EAUC), which will enable all HE and FE institutions to measure and manage carbon emissions.
The report has 14 recommendations for government:
The 14 recommendations are summarised below; in this post, given MabelSpace's focus, we have devoted the most space to the first two (relating to the Built Environment).
Built Environment
1. Establish a UK-wide Decarbonisation Institute for the tertiary education sector to support the implementation of a low-carbon energy transition and Net Zero emissions built environment. It should provide individual institutions with data and insights to back the right solutions, identify system-wide regulatory blockers, and promote collaboration across the wider public and private sectors.
Besides providing centralised expertise that institutions of all sizes can access, the report anticipates three impacts:
Every institution will have a blueprint for decarbonisation, with a clear understanding of the financial investment needed. This will support informed decision-making and prioritisation of emissions reduction.
The sector and the government will work together to unblock barriers to progress and focus on effective policy development.
Funding will flow more equitably across the sector, and public-private partnerships will fast-track system-wide progress.
2. Fast-track the transformation of the National Grid to remove barriers that currently hamper the adoption of renewable technologies by the sector. The large education estate has a high potential to generate green energy but needs the right infrastructure and commercial framework. At present:
Many energy providers don’t have the infrastructure in place to support local renewable energy generation due to limits in load capacity.
Institutions with complex estates can't transfer energy across their campuses without incurring additional charges when it moves across meter boundaries.
National Grid infrastructure inhibits public-private partnerships for district-level energy grids.
With an improved grid, the sector can innovate, invest, and collaborate on local renewable energy generation to increase grid capacity, build local resilience, and provide green power for the sector and local communities.
Travel and Transport
3. Fund the research and development of a simple digital business travel tool with a portal, allowing institutions to measure and influence staff and students’ business travel.
4. Require all local councils to consult with local universities and large colleges on their sustainable transport plans.
5. Require publicly-funded research bodies, including UK Research & Innovation, to ensure transparent principles of sustainable travel are mandatory within research-led funding bids.
Sustainable Supply Chains
6. Make the data from existing carbon reporting available via a dedicated online portal.
7. Incorporate sustainability and carbon reporting modules within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ‘Help to Grow’ scheme, increasing carbon literacy in SMEs.
Finance and Investment
8. Extend 0% VAT rate relief to incentivise decarbonisation of the existing tertiary education building stock through low emissions refurbishment and retrofit (ahead of new builds).
9. In the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (Salix), ring-fence that proportion of carbon emissions that tertiary education is responsible for, specifically for the sector's projects.
10. Create a UK government-backed mechanism for smaller tertiary education institutions to raise private sector funding for investment in renewables.
Internal Skills and Resources
11. Fund and create a sector-led digital hub to share resource materials (good practice, policy frameworks, case studies).
12. Fund a dedicated resource for FE institutions to obtain the skills needed to collect and measure carbon data.
13. Offer incentives for FE and HE students completing their courses with sustainability expertise and skills to work within the tertiary education sector.
Finally... a recommendation on 'Offsetting'
14. Regulate and improve land use and sale transparency for carbon capture schemes (based on current work by The Scottish Land Commission). Offsetting for carbon removal should only be used as a last resort.
The Existing Position: 18.1 Megatonnes
Due to fragmented regulation on emissions reporting, and differences in approach across devolved nations, there is a lack of comprehensive emissions data for the HE and FE sectors in the UK. However, using the available data, the researchers estimated emissions for the 268 HE universities and 269 FE colleges in the UK. This allows for emissions as a direct or indirect result of the sector's activities. The report notes,
"The UK HE and FE sector greenhouse gas [annual] emissions were estimated to be 18.1 MtCO2e [megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent]. HE institutions contribute approximately 86% of this, and FE 14%. With the presence of international students and the inclusion of student accommodation, emissions per student in HE are significantly higher (6.3 tCO2e/student) compared to FE (2.0 tCO2e/student)."
In fact, 12% of all estimated emissions were attributed to overseas student flights (the vast majority attending HE institutions), almost as large as all forms of emissions for all FE colleges.
Credit: The Royal Anniversary Trust
The Built Environment (the challenges)
The report contains broad proposals for tackling all emissions; however, we have focussed on The Built Environment Action Pathway for the remainder of this post.
The Built Environment is a significant source of emissions (19.1%); fuel and electricity consumed within the Environment total 12% alone (10% of HE emissions and 22% of FE emissions).
It's acknowledged that the sector faces a tension between the cost of decarbonising operations and funding its primary functions of education, training and research. However, the sector urgently needs to decarbonise to reduce emissions associated with heating, cooling and powering buildings. This will require strategic and technical leadership as institutions grapple with legacy heating systems, changing campus usage, increasing costs, emerging technologies and evolving energy infrastructure.
The education sector needs to shift to renewable energy and new technologies to reduce carbon emissions and costs while also securing supply. While decarbonising the National Grid will make reductions, many institutions also need to divest their gas-powered Combined Heat and Power Systems and invest in offsite or locally-generated renewable energy.
To achieve net zero by 2050, the sector must take a systems-based approach that protects and enhances nature and delivers broader social impacts. All buildings must become climate resilient, and the sector must remove embodied carbon in new construction and refurbishment projects through sustainable construction standards. To deliver these priorities, the sector needs the right skills and resources for detailed carbon reduction planning and implementation, access to long-term capital investment, and public-private partnerships to implement change at scale.
The government recently announced the launch of the Energy Efficiency Taskforce (EETF) to drive improvements in energy efficiency and bring down bills in households, businesses, and the public sector. It is hoped that an anticipated additional funding package announced in 2025 will be made accessible to the sector.
Energy data and carbon measurement are crucial for institutions to establish their total carbon footprint and develop decarbonisation plans for each building. To achieve all this, the sector needs to invest in expert skills and data systems.
Good practice takes a whole-life carbon approach to building. This means extending financial decision-making beyond functionality and cost per m2 to consider the emissions associated with the construction processes alongside future operational emissions. This approach is vital to deliver a climate-neutral built environment.
Those HE institutions already implementing Carbon Plans usually have senior sustainability leaders with skilled teams to develop, implement, and manage projects. This includes specialists in carbon and energy management, data analysis, carbon accounting, waste, and transport. However, these skills are scarce across FE institutions [which are generally smaller institutions with less access to finance].
The Standardised Carbon Emissions Framework (SCEF)
The report notes that transparent standardised reporting methods are vital for measuring the progress of the entire sector and planning for emissions reductions. The authors strongly support the recently developed Standardised Carbon Emissions Framework (SCEF), designed to align reporting across the UK, by the Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education (EAUC).
The EAUC Reporting Framework was developed by a working group from the education sector, with representation from seven HE institutions, and overseen by a steering group consisting of key sector bodies, including Universities UK (UUK), the Association of Colleges (AoC), the British Universities Finance Directors Group (BUFDG) and the Association of Universities Directors of Estates (AUDE).
The first iteration of the Framework was distributed to participants in The Platinum Jubilee Challenge in June 2022; in September, it was distributed for wider sector feedback through key sector bodies' memberships. Feedback was used to develop the Framework's final iteration, which was passed to the DfE in December 2022. Data needs to be managed and distributed from a single source. The report proposes that JISC be the data controller (JISC is a not-for-profit company providing IT services and digital resources supporting further and higher education institutions).
The Framework has three levels of reporting granularity and has been developed to help institutions progress from basic reporting and data management to more detailed and granular reporting methodologies.
MableSpace Comment: Strategic Decision Making
The above outlines a long but highly readable and excellent report, which provides a good roadmap for decarbonising the tertiary sector's entire operation (a copy can be downloaded using the link below). There is much to do, and proper progress will require action from numerous parties (including the government).
There is limited emphasis on reducing carbon consumption as part of broader long-term strategic estate planning. Strategic planning is traditionally focused on creating and maintaining, in the most economically advantageous way, an environment that attracts new learners and is also an effective place for teaching, training and research. It's likely that the authors did not want their message to be diluted by these broader considerations. In any case, it's clear that some of the participants struggle with this approach. The report states,
"Many in the sector find extensive ‘estate-wide’ planning impractical or difficult to tackle, and the outcomes are challenging to fund. The alternative is to manage a building-by-building approach that allows for piloting and learning as projects, technologies, and infrastructure develop."
A costed building-by-building approach justifies a separate carbon reduction budget that can be managed by experts concerned with this single issue. A single budget for the comprehensive reconfiguration of an estate, with a built-in allowance for carbon reduction measures, might result in those funds being diverted to that architecturally ambitious and over-budget new faculty building.
Yet a building-by-building approach can miss the big picture. Proper strategic estates planning starts by identifying the institution's mission, values, curriculum plan and other strategic objectives. If it is agreed at the governance level that a defined amount of carbon reduction is a strategic objective, then it is 'baked in' at the start of the process, and the emerging plan should address the issue.
On a final point, the report mentions space efficiency, but it would be easy, given the numerous other recommendations, to overlook the significance of this. HE and FE institutions together manage over 40 million square metres of floor space. With the increasing prevalence of online learning, knowing how much space an institution will ultimately need will avoid significant upgrades to space that is not required and even unnecessary new building projects (with both embodied and operational carbon).
Developing a useful and actionable Property Strategy is something we shall return to in a future post.
Useful Links
The 21 Participating Institutions
Chichester College Group: Rob Kay and Tom Hughes Exeter College: Richard Church and Steve Strang University of Glasgow: Professor Jaime Toney and Dr Stewart Miller
University of Leeds: Lynda Simmons, Dr Shona Smith and Professor Piers Forster London School of Economics and Political Science: Bob Ward and Thea Hamilton
University of Reading: Professor Mark Fellowes and Dan Fernbank South West College (NI): Dr Barry McCarron and Eimear Grugan University of Strathclyde: Dr Roddy Yarr and Dr Tracy Morse