Carbon Management Programme, University of Oxford
The Carbon Management Programme delivers the University’s Carbon Management Strategy. It seeks to make significant cuts to the University’s carbon emissions whilst engaging staff and students and feeding back data and lessons learned into the higher education sector and wider industry networks. The programme has fostered new partnerships between staff, students, the city council and industry.
The degree of stakeholder engagement makes it distinctive, and the projects within are designed to empower users by transferring skills and knowledge.
The University has set an ambitious target to reduce scope one and two carbon emissions by 33% by the end of 2020 from 2005/06 levels. It has already saved an estimated 6,256 tonnes of CO2 and £1.5m of annual energy costs. Over 205 completed projects include solar photovoltaic systems, lighting upgrades, building management system optimization, building system upgrades and roof insulation.
This programme benefits the whole University as it reduces both carbon taxes and energy costs, which come out of departmental budgets. The projects improve user experience and also contribute towards funding applications where laboratories in particular can demonstrate high-level environmental control. Lessons learned are communicated back to the University’s capital projects team, who take them into account when designing new buildings.