The tool could now play a part in helping organisations reach their commitments to net zero emissions. As set out in Oxford University’s recently published Environmental Sustainability Strategy, it has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2035, removing more than a quarter of a million tonnes of carbon from the environment each year.
The tool draws on the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol and takes into account unique sources of indirect emissions associated with the University’s activities, such as student travel and upstream transport emissions.
Indirect emissions have long been a complex area for organisations to calculate and manage. This work, for the first time, provides a detailed and transparent methodology, benchmarked across higher education and best practice within a common supply chain, to help organisations better understand, and then mitigate, their indirect emissions.
Tom Yearley, Deputy Head of Sustainability at Oxford University, said: ‘The launch of the new Oxford University Environmental Sustainability Strategy prompted an update of the process used by the University to measure carbon emissions. We have compiled this tool with the intention that it is shared widely and that feedback is received to provide consensus and advance reporting around this important environmental impact.’
Professor Richard Barker, Deputy Dean and Professor of Accounting at Oxford Saïd, said: ‘This all comes down to being absolutely rigorous and transparent with the data. We still have more work to do in this space before we can truly say we have an absolute understanding of the indirect emissions we create, but this new tool is a helpful step forward, not just for Oxford, but the whole sector, towards achieving that.’
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We welcome any feedback on the methodology presented in this report and are happy to support colleagues in applying it to their college, university or other institutions. Email us at sustainability@admin.ox.ac.uk.
