Net zero by 2030/31

Energy, carbon and water

Download the Climate and Ecological Crisis Action Plan (pdf 1.5mb)

We are ranked 21st in the world and 6th in the UK for our contribution to UN Global Goal 13: Climate Action (THE Impact Rankings 2023).

The target of our Climate and Ecological Crisis Action Plan (CECAP) is to achieve net zero emissions across all activities, known as scopes 1, 2 and 3, by 2030/31.

We will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as rapidly as possible, with particular focus on energy consumption, transport and capital development, and invest in high-quality carbon offsets, where necessary, to achieve the science-based net zero target.

Reducing BU’s emissions from energy and water is a key part of meeting our net zero target. BU has been focused on continuously improving our energy and water management on campus and reducing our emissions since our first Carbon Management Plan in 2010. We have made great strides in this, reducing our GHG emissions by 45% in 2018/19 compared to the 2005/06 baseline, two years earlier than our target, and now raising our ambition further within the CECAP. You can read about our progress since 2018 in our latest CECAP Annual Report on the side of this page.

Our integrated Environmental and Energy Management system is certified to ISO50001:2018 and we are ranked 6th in the country for our contribution to SDG13: Climate Action according to the THE Impact Rankings 2023.

21st

in the world for SDG13: Climate Action (2023)

2000+

solar panels across our BU campuses

33%

reduction in carbon emissions since 2018/19 to 4,335t carbon equivalent

Renewable energy

Energy use in buildings is one of the most significant elements of our university’s carbon footprint and we are striving to reduce this as much as possible. BU has invested and continues to invest in on site electrical generation. We currently have more than 2000 solar photovoltaic panels across buildings on our campuses. This equates to approximately 500kW of peak generation capacity.

Renewable heat

We have been striving to reduce the carbon cost of heating our estate and lower our reliance on natural gas to provide our heating and hot water needs. One of the largest tools that we have been using to achieve this is the biomass boiler, which you can find in Poole House. It works by burning local wood chip and covers most of the heating and hot water demand for the building.

Whilst biomass is considered to be carbon neutral there is still a carbon impact involved in the felling, processing and transportation of the wood chip that the boiler uses as well as in the disposal of the ash created as a bi-product of the combustion process. In order to mitigate these impacts, BU sources wood chip from a local company, just outside of Ringwood, who grow crops of trees in a renewable manner for biomass. The same company collects the ash and uses it to fertilise the ground to grow more trees.

We have also invested in heat pump technology, primarily Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHPs) and our third system has been installed in the Bournemouth Gateway Building. By moving heat stored in the ground into our buildings rather than directly generating heat, GSHPs can provide heating at approximately 400% efficiency. GSHPs are also a brilliant technology to future proof our heating requirements as the national grid becomes greener so too does our heating.

Since 2021 we have been trialling Solar Thermal technology and have two projects in Poole House which provide energy for hot water including for showers in our new active travel facility.

We now source around 15% of our heat requirements from renewable and low carbon heat sources.

Water management

Water is often an overlooked carbon contributor but all the water that comes through the mains is highly treated and this treatment and pumping process comes with a carbon impact. In order to reduce this, BU has introduced rainwater harvesting systems (RWHSs) in our new buildings; Fusion Building, Poole Gateway Building, and Bournemouth Gateway Buidling. RWHSs capture rainwater which we then use to supply the toilets instead of treated drinking water, saving energy whilst also reducing the potential for flooding on campus. Our RWHS’s now supply 2% of the water used across the whole of BU, and approximately one-third in Fusion Building.

To support you to save water, we have also introduced motion sensing taps and low-flow toilets across the university. These both reduce water usage and increase hygiene.

Monitoring our buildings for water leaks is an ongoing job for the Sustainability Team, which we do through automatically generated alerts triggered by our metering systems, regularly reviewing our metering and lastly through your help! We actively encourage members of the BU community to contact the Estates Service Desk to report any leaks or dripping taps they find and where they are. You Spot the Drop, so we can stop the drop!

We are always trying to find ways to reduce our water consumption at BU. To help us to this, we collect data on water across the year, which includes mains water consumption and rainwater harvesting. Have a look at our water data for 2021-22!

You can read about BU's Emissions to Water Operational Procedure, which helps us to ensure compliance with relevant water legislation, and to minimise the risk of pollution and emissions being discharged into water.

Our buildings

All of our buildings have Display Energy Certificates (DECs). The DEC’s are based on a range of factors that vary across every building, such as energy used to run the building per square metre, and are benchmarked against similar buildings. Each building is provided with a score rating of 0–150+, with highest ranking buildings having the lowest score, as well as a letter grading between A and G. The average DEC score is around 100. BU’s average 2019 building DEC was a C rating with a score of 66.

Our Team also work regularly with Maintenance staff to monitor the temperature and ventilation of each area in our Building Management System (BMS), in order to keep our campuses comfortable for users in the most energy-efficient way possible.

You can read more about the environmental impact of our buildings on the Sustainable Campuses page.

Moving forward to net zero

BU aims to be net zero by 2030/31. A ‘net zero’ target means reducing emissions through decarbonisation with any remaining emissions being re-absorbed (UN Climate Action). For energy this means reducing energy consumption, generating on site renewable energy and then offsetting any remaining emissions to arrive at a net zero position.

The sources of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are categorised into three scopes, and we ambitiously have included all three in our net zero target. The three scopes are:

Scope 1, direct emissions: Emissions resulting from activities under the direct control of BU, such as gas boiler emissions, fleet vehicle emissions and on-site refrigerant leakage.
Scope 2, indirect emissions: Emissions arising from energy purchased by BU for its operations, such as electricity.
Scope 3, secondary indirect emissions: Emissions arising from associated activites not directly controlled by BU, such as water use, operational and construction waste, business travel, emissions from our bus fleet and emissions resulting from student travel to and from our open days. We also count electricity transport and distribution in scope 3 as per the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

In 2018/19, BU’s GHG emissions totalled 6,723 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. This doesn’t include emissions from procurement, commuting and new buildings, as we don’t currently have this data available but we are working to collect it to add to our scope 3 data. To allow us to understand how far we should aim to decarbonise before using offsetting we have set a Science Based Target (SBT) which establishes a trajectory to 2030/31 and beyond. These targets aim for a 28% reduction by 2024/25 and 50% emissions reduction by 2030/31. We would then use offsetting to reach a net zero position in 2030/31.

In working towards decarbonisation, we should recognise that our efforts must not stop after AY2030/31. The SBTi tool creates a trajectory which runs to 2060 and reflects the fact that, in order to meet the established carbon reduction pathways, net negative emissions for scopes 1 and 2 will be required before 2100. While this need not feature in our current plans, we should be aware of this longer-term issue. Read more about this on page 25 of our Full CECAP.

See how much energy our solar panels are generating

We have over 2000 solar panels on campus across our buildings that are producing energy year round. You can see how much energy seven of our arrays are generating right now as well as their annual and total carbon savings in their live portals below. As of August 2023 we have a total of ten arrays and are adding more each year.

We are Energy Management Team of the Year 2023!

We are proud to be recognised by the Energy Managers Association, as 'Energy Managament Team of the Year 2023 - Public Sector'.

Earlier in 2023 we wrote an article for the EMA as part of their women's only edition for International Women's Day, showcasing females in the energy sector. Our sustainability manager Lois Betts, and our Energy Officer Laura Bellamy shared BU's approach to energy management and this was published in issue 1 2023. You can read it here from page 18.

We talk about how we work together as a team to monitor and manage energy consumption and about the projects we have delivered working with our capital and maintenance teams.

Later in 2023 we were thrilled to be awarded the Energy Management Team of the Year and hope that this inspires women to enter the energy sector and be part of teams to address the climate and ecological crisis. You can read more about BU's committment to a gender-equal world here.

Sustainable IT

BU take a sustainable approach to managing our IT services. This relates to both equipment used by our students and staff on campus and equipment used behind the scenes in data centres and comms rooms to enable the systems we rely on to work. Our sustainability considerations cover the decisions made at point of purchase to how we use the equipment and how we dispose of it. Everyone at BU has a responsibility to follow our Sustainable IT Policy.

For end users, the key actions to remember are:

Turn off peripheral equipment such as monitors and scanners when not in use (all BU equipment including desktop PCs automatically enters power saving mode to reduce energy consumption when not in use),
Minimise the amount of printing you carry out and use our default printing standards to save paper and energy (double-sided printing, black and white),
Use video conferencing and other BU-provided collaboration technology to reduce the amount of business travel where appropriate and achievable,
Use the BU softphone on your BU mobile device over a physical IP Phone, where possible.

We have a Sustainable IT Group who meet bi-monthly to oversee our sustainable approach to IT, which is based on the Capgemini roadmap for sustainable IT implementation. Within this, we focus on three areas, detailed below.

Assess: set the foundation for sustainable IT initiatives

Energy data shows that our data centres are responsible for around 10% of our total electricity use. In 2020/21, the data centres in Jurassic House and Studland House used 618,607kWh and 261,373kWh, respectively. As a result, our Director of IT set the objective in 2022 to achieve a 15% reduction in power consumption of IT equipment in data centres and communications rooms each year. Our energy consumption data is used to monitor and measure improvements against this and other targets.

We purchase 100% renewable grid energy through REGO backed tariffs. We also generated 5% of our electricity in 2021/22 from on-site solar PV panels including a newly-installed array on top of Jurassic House which directly reduces the amount of grid energy we need to purchase to support our IT services.

Governance: create effective governance for sustainable IT initiatives

The Sustainable IT working group consists of staff in the Estates and IT departments working collaboratively to address sustainable IT issues, maximise opportunities and support delivery of the Sustainable IT Policy. The working group is chaired by the Sustainability Manager and includes the Director of IT, the senior IT leadership team, and our Energy Manager. This working group feeds into the Sustainability Committee which reports to the University Leadership Team. We find these layers of governance help us to progress actions and gain support and approvals for larger projects where needed.

Implement: operationalise sustainable IT initiatives

Sustainable IT procurement

Our Sustainable IT Policy alongside our Sustainable Procurement Policy detail our approach to purchasing IT sustainability and this includes requirements to consider environmental criteria when selecting IT vendors. Sustainability factors are considered at business case stage, including assessments of carbon impact as well for reuse of old equipment, and during tender processes which, as standard, require 15% of the tender score being allocated for sustainability and social value factors.

Reducing power consumption

We select lower energy consuming devices in replacement programmes. For example, in 2023 IT are replacing some data centre equipment which will reduce power consumption by around 50%. By working closely with the Estates team, they are also improving the cooling equipment which support our communications rooms and have trialled a passive cooling system in Weymouth House communications room, which uses 95% less energy than the previous air conditioning unit. We are planning to identify further locations to roll out this approach.

Digital signage

Our Sustainable IT work has progressed to consider our use of digital signage. Here we reduced operational hours of the 82 digital screens across our campuses by around 5 hours of operational time per day and have put the network on standby over the weekend rather than displaying seven days a week. These changes have reduced energy usage by around 20% and are estimated to be saving approximately 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.

Website carbon footprint

According to the Eco-Friendly Web Alliance (EFWA), the average webpage produces 2-2.5 grams of carbon for every visit: this can be reduced to around one gram per visit by adopting easy practices, which we shared at joint event as part of Climate Action Month 2022 with EFWA. This event supported students and staff to reduce the carbon footprint of their own websites and raised awareness of what large organisations can do to reduce this largely unseen emissions source.

Some of the key changes to lower the carbon footprint of websites include minimising large videos, photos, Java Scripts and heavy website themes or frameworks. Our Marketing & Communications team reviewed these for our own website and agreed to:

Provide advice to editors on good practice for using imagery
Embed sustainability principles when developing digital projects in the short term
Adopt sustainable procurement principles in the BU website rebuild project with our partners in 2022/23 and consider sustainability impacts in our design and build decisions.