Assess Current Conditions
The first step in the decarbonization process is to determine your baseline. Knowing your starting point is key for setting goals, planning effective solutions, and measuring progress. Plus, it provides a crucial snapshot of the current state of building conditions and operations to help get stakeholders on board.
What to Look for When Gathering Data
There are a couple of main types of information to collect at the onset: existing campus plans and building- and operations-level data. By understanding these two elements, you’ll be able to find gaps, assess needs, and get the buy-in needed to start the next phase of strategic planning.
Existing Campus Plans
Many higher education institutions operate under a variety of active (or inactive) plans. It’s important to understand how current plans can complement your decarbonization goals or even offer pathways to acquire the resources to help you with implementing decarbonization solutions.
Determine if your institution has the following plans:
- Campus master plan. Long-term vision of campus growth and building, grounds, and property use cases in the future.
- Climate action plan. Guidance on emissions reduction or carbon neutrality timelines, which give teeth to your case for a decarbonization plan.
- Energy master plan. Long-term roadmap for managing campus energy use, reducing costs, and achieving energy reduction goals. This plan typically outlines the current state of energy infrastructure systems, identifies recommended building upgrades, and planned maintenance.
- Deferred maintenance plan. Scheduled HVAC and other equipment upgrades or replacement can help you find funds needed to install systems that avoid the use of fossil fuels.
- Building design standards. Some campuses publish minimum requirements for new construction or major renovations to meet sustainable building standards (LEED, Passive House, Net-Zero, etc.). These standards often provide specific guidance on energy efficiency, energy use intensity, and greenhouse gas emissions limits.
Once you’ve done a thorough review of these documents, you’ll want to develop a summary highlighting existing plans and standards to describe your institution’s current state.
Building- and Operations-Level Data
This data will enable you to understand how your campus is using energy to then identify needs, prioritize accordingly, and set goals.
Your campus may track energy use and emissions through the following methods:
- Greenhouse gas emissions inventory. This is typically a systematic accounting of GHG emissions by source across a campus. Understanding the sources of your emissions provides key information on where to focus your decarbonization efforts. Your campus may choose to track some or all of Scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions to include in your baseline.
- AASHE STARS. Your institution may have collected some sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions data via the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System
(STARS®) tool through the Association for the Advancement of Higher Education. STARS also enables institutions to benchmark their efforts against their peers. - Facility condition assessment. Typically, a thorough evaluation of a building's physical condition, including its structural, mechanical, and electrical systems, to identify deficiencies, prioritize repairs, and inform capital planning. Your campus buildings may have another 50 years of useful life ahead of them, or they may be ready for major renovation. This information can help you determine what sorts of decarbonization efforts could be more easily integrated into upcoming plans to renew spaces.
- Energy audit(s) and/or assessment(s). Similar to a facility condition assessment, an energy audit focuses on systems within a building that use energy. An energy audit or assessment will assess the current conditions of energy using equipment and identify recommended upgrades or replacements considering energy savings, cost savings, and payback.
- Campus- and building-level energy data. Campus-level energy use can be obtained from utility bills and/or a building automation system to establish a baseline. Energy metering and/or submetering can provide more granular data at the building level to determine the most energy-intensive locations on campus and places to focus decarbonization efforts.
Include conclusions from available building and operations data in the summary you draft to complement information about existing plans. Then you can evaluate how this information supports your decarbonization efforts. This will provide stakeholders with a comprehensive, but concise, snapshot of your current state.
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