Performance based core sustainability metrics for university campuses developing towards climate neutrality : A robust PICSOU framework

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openAccess

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Volume Title

A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2023-10

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Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

16

Series

Sustainable Cities and Society, Volume 97

Abstract

Despite the global interest, the sustainable development of universities remains commonly unmonitored as existing tools are either overly complicated or less specific for university campuses. Evaluation of existing tools motivated this study to focus on measuring sustainability performance of university campuses. By concentrating on factors having the most prominent impact on buildings’ and activities’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and social performance, PICSOU (Performance Indicators for Core Sustainability Objectives of Universities), a six-category framework with about 20 key performance indicators (KPIs) was identified to monitor more than 80% of Scope 2 or/and Scope 3 carbon footprint of a university campus and enables relatively easy cost-benefit analysis of potential improvements. Proposed categories and KPIs are general, but the improvement measures can always have a local origin. To test the framework, a case study was conducted and findings include discovery of lowutilization spaces, potential parking footprint reduction, co-benefits exceeding energy savings in renovation and an annual carbon footprint of 1.3 tCO2eq per university population.

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| openaire: EC/H2020/856602/EU//FINEST TWINS Funding Information: This research was supported by the Estonian Centre of Excellence in Zero Energy and Resource Efficient Smart Buildings and Districts , ZEBE (grant 2014-2020.4.01.15-0016 ) funded by the European Regional Development Fund , by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research and European Regional Fund (grant 2014-2020.4.01.20-0289) and by the European Commission through the H2020 project Finest Twins (grant no. 856602 ). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors

Keywords

Carbon footprint, Energy efficiency, Indoor environmental quality, Sustainable development, Transportation, University campus

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Citation

Jiang, Q & Kurnitski, J 2023, ' Performance based core sustainability metrics for university campuses developing towards climate neutrality : A robust PICSOU framework ', Sustainable Cities and Society, vol. 97, 104723 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2023.104723