The Cover
Less than net zero
Universities’ push beyond carbon offsetting
With many institutions setting targets to achieve carbon neutrality, a growing number are looking beyond offsetting towards zero emissions, and even empowering students to take more carbon out of the system than they put in.
By Eugenia Lim
"Most of the institutions that we studied achieved the bulk of their commitment using a mix of measures."
The role of universities in the race to net zero is undeniably significant. Higher education institutions are uniquely positioned to address climate issues through research, private and public collaborations, as well as engagement with its community.
Not to mention, it is where leading experts and researchers are able to develop new technologies that are needed to accelerate the green transition.
So far, over 1,000 higher education institutions have pledged to hit net zero by 2050 in the United Nations’ Race to Zero global campaign, in order to avoid dangerous climate change. Already, a number of institutions have claimed to achieve their target.
However, the job is far from done. The reality is decarbonisation is still a work in progress and much more investment and development are still needed for institutions to truly be emissions free.
Carbon neutral vs zero emissions
In the US, 13 institutions have declared they achieved climate neutrality, according to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, with some even doing so ahead of their set target dates.
While it may seem impressive, it has been argued that carbon neutrality should not be the end goal, instead more focus needs to be on cutting emissions instead of relying on methods like carbon offsets to achieve net zero.
“Carbon neutrality has not served us very well as an overall goal in the climate space,” says Alex Barron, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at Smith College. “Most of the institutions that we studied achieved the bulk of their commitment using a mix of measures that are often of low quality with uncertain reductions or very hard to scale.”
Professor Barron co-authored a 2021 paper that examined the approaches of higher education institutions that have already announced achieving net carbon neutrality. The study found that while pursuing neutrality led to important institutional shifts toward sustainability, such as the setting up of sustainability offices, electrification and new zero-carbon electricity is often underutilised.
"Every institution is constrained in its actions and that includes, budget, workforce and bandwidth."
The study also noted that no institution achieved net neutrality without significant use of accounting-based instruments, with the majority of all claimed emissions reductions coming from purchased offsets and unbundled renewable energy certificates rather than direct emission reductions.
“The primary thing that we suggest in the paper is that institutions refocus their direct climate mitigation activity,” says Professor Barron, speaking to QS Insights Magazine. That means that institutions should put more focus on decarbonisation, which is eliminating emissions of greenhouse gasses on campus directly, he explains.
This is not just an issue faced by universities stateside. Higher education institutions globally are having to make major operational changes in order to transition from fossil fuel energy to renewable energy sources.
“To minimise the use of offsets and to actually drive to net zero in actual emissions, I think that's the biggest challenge for universities to go beyond being carbon neutral,” says Professor John Thwaites from Monash University in Australia.
Professor Thwaites chairs the Monash Sustainable Development Institute as well as the Climateworks Centre, a non-profit founded by Monash and the Myer Foundation to bridge the gap between research and climate action.
Monash University has targeted net zero carbon emissions by 2030. Last year, it announced that 55 percent of its energy requirement was supplied by renewable energy.
But Professor Thwaites recognises that the next steps will be even more challenging, and will require more radical measures, especially when it comes to addressing scope 3 emissions, those that are the result of activities produced indirectly through sources not owned or controlled by the university.
For instance, the University of Melbourne has taken an important step that few universities have done in assessing the full impact of its activities on the environment. It began including an expanded range of scope 3 emissions in its annual calculation of net carbon emissions. As a result, the university’s net carbon emissions were up in 2022, compared to 2021 levels.
But it is keeping its aim in focus to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025 and have a climate positive status by 2030. To do that, it is prepared to take bolder steps such as committing to reducing air travel by 10 percent of 2019 levels. This policy, however, has not been completely welcomed by staff.
“There has been some push back. Especially around the recognition that there's a sort of an equity issue here with some people flying much more than others,” says Associate Professor Ben Neville from the University of Melbourne.
He explains that it is often more important for younger researchers to network at international conferences to further their careers compared to senior academic staff.
Professor Neville is also Deputy Director of Engagement at the Melbourne Climate Futures, the university’s dedicated climate research institute. He says that despite the pushback, there’s still a great need to change such behaviours in order to effect the kind of climate friendly policy the university is advocating.
"We’re going to learn from the successes and failures of others."
Weighing costs
The most immediate challenge universities are facing in their green transition is cost, according to a 2023 report by Universities UK.
In many cases, schools may be considering completely rewiring their energy systems on campus, a not insignificant project to undertake for any organisation.
“Our work on decarbonisation, which involves the ground source heat exchange system is the largest single capital investment that we made in the institution's history,” says Smith College’s Professor Barron.
“It requires big upfront investment. And it's an investment that universities would not normally be making,” adds Professor Thwaites.
“They'd normally be investing in their education and research facilities and while the gas infrastructure is still working, it's an added cost to remove that and replace it by electrification.”
Coupling that with the current cost-of-living crisis, with high inflation and interest rates, rising energy bills as well as increased financial support for students and staff, allocating budgets has been even more difficult.
Universities UK found that institutions are often faced with a choice between supporting their current students and staff or redirecting funds into making greener and more financially sustainable choices for the future.
Collaboration is key
“Every institution is constrained in its actions and that includes, budget, workforce and bandwidth,” says Professor Barron.
“Everyone needs to collaborate to make sure that everyone is able to rise past these constraints and take the actions that we know we need to take,” he says.
One example is Smith College’s work developing a carbon pricing strategy that is part of a toolkit being distributed by the national Carbon Pricing in Higher Education Working Group.
The toolkit includes case studies and recommendations on how colleges and universities can put a price tag on carbon emissions to demonstrate the environmental costs of specific products and technologies.
“That was a very thoughtful choice to make sure that the action that we were taking was going to have an impact beyond our borders and scale,” says Professor Barron, “how to collaborate with other institutions and partners to have a bigger impact and to move more quickly.”
In a similar spirit, the Monash University’s Energy Institute and Climateworks Centre together with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network developed a detailed guide, available in multiple languages to support the net zero initiatives of colleges and universities globally.
It has also sprouted an online community that shares their knowledge about the net zero transition on university campuses.
“What we’ve discovered is that we can learn a lot from each other,” says Professor Thwaites, “and this will accelerate the transition in universities because we’re not going to repeat mistakes. We’re going to learn from the successes and failures of others.”
"If universities are able to demonstrate how best to do the net zero transition, then that information is more likely to be followed in the general community."
"It's really important for universities to be places where climate change is perceived ... to be at the forefront of understanding the problem."
Shaping the future
By far, higher education institutions’ most important role is educating the future workforce and training the next generation who will continue to tackle climate issues.
“Universities are uniquely placed in their role as educators. We are educating the next generation of engineers and other professionals who are going to drive the transition,” says Monash’s Professor Thwaites.
“So, it's vital that our education courses in engineering and science provide the knowledge and capacity to develop the future experts in net zero transition.”
Professor Thwaites believes that students are a key part of the energy transition and one of the big opportunities is to use the university grounds as a living lab where students can learn from the net zero projects on campus such as its grid or energy efficiency measures.
“It's really important for universities to be places where climate change is perceived, especially by students, to be at the forefront of understanding the problem but also generating the solutions,” says Professor Neville from the University of Melbourne.
“Many institutions are now going through processes of looking at how they integrate climate and other sustainability issues into their curriculum such that all graduates have beyond a basic threshold understanding of sustainability issues,” explains Professor Neville.
This will allow every accountant, dentist and engineer to have sufficient understanding so that they can be a positive influence on decarbonisation within those organisations they work with, says Professor Neville.
“[The University] needs to be seen and experienced as a place where you can see positive action and get involved in positive action, and you can learn and generate ideas and be part of a positive future.”
That can mean building a campus that represents a small city or town that does not need any fossil fuels to operate.
“Higher education models the changes that we need to see in society in order to address climate justice,” says Professor Barron.
“Universities are very large organisations and are quite substantial greenhouse gas emitters. Transitioning university campuses to net zero can have a significant impact on overall emissions and also set an example for other organisations about how to most effectively transition,” says Professor Thwaites.
In doing so, it can also stimulate a transition to net zero in their precinct as well. He explained that because universities are independent, they are credible and are seen as organisations that can be trusted.
“If universities are able to demonstrate how best to do the net zero transition, then that information is more likely to be followed in the general community.”