In the recent years as awareness of climate change and environmental degradation has heightened, so too has the scrutiny on human activities and their ecological footprints. Research and education are not exempt from their own environmental impacts. Laboratories hum with activity, educational institutions buzz with exchange of knowledge and conferences convene minds from the globe. Yet amidst this intellectual fervor lies a significant ecological foot print, primarily driven by energy consumption, transportation, resource utilization and waste generation. Understanding and mitigating these impacts is imperative as we navigate towards a more sustainable future.
Carbon foot print, a measure of the total greenhouse gas emissions directly or indirectly attributable to an activity or entity, serves as a tangible metric to assess the environmental burden of research and education. This blog spot aims to shed light on the magnitude of this footprint, spanning various facets of academic pursuit – from laboratory experiments and fieldwork to international collaborations and academic conferences. In a follow-up post, I will provide a list of actionable strategies to reduce ecological impact while maintaining the integrity of scientific inquiry and knowledge dissemination.
Where the environmental footprint of research and higher education come from
Energy consumption
Energy consumption in research and educational institutions encompasses a wide range of activities and facilities, including classrooms, research facilities, laboratories and administrative departments.
Building operation (Bansal, Sullivan, Zhang, & Zhang, 2013): energy consumption for heating, cooling, lighting, and powering equipment in academic buildings, labs, and research facilities.
Laboratory equipment (Zhang & Zhang, 2015): energy-intensive equipment such as fume hoods, autoclaves, refrigerators and freezers used in scientific research contribute to carbon emissions.
Computing infrastructure (Zhang & Zhang, 2015)Energy consumption associated with data centres, servers and high performance computing clusters for computational research and data analysis.
Srishti Banerjee
Assistant Professor
Srishti Banerjee is an Assistant professor at L.J institute of physiotherapy and a member of the EPA executive committee. Her research interests include pathology in rare neurological manifestations and Rehabilitation strategies for neurological disorders.
Transportation
Energy consumption in research and educational institutions encompasses a wide range of activities and facilities, including classrooms, research facilities, laboratories and administrative departments.
Commutes: Carbon emissions from commuting to and from campuses by faculty, staff and students using personal vehicles or public transportation.
Field work and conferences: travel related emissions from fieldwork, attendance at conferences, workshops and research collaboration that require air or road travel (Burnham & Walls, 2018).
Materials usage
Paper consumption: Carbon emissions from paper production, printing and disposal in academic and administrative settings.
Lab consumables: production, transportation and disposal of consumables such as plastics, glassware and chemicals used in laboratory experiments.
Building materials: carbon emissions associated with the extraction, manufacturing and transportation of construction materials for building new facilities or renovating existing ones (Hammond & Jones, 2008).
Waste generation
Hazardous waste: carbon emissions from the disposable and treatment of hazardous waste generated in laboratories, including chemical waste, biological waste and radioactive materials.
Electronic waste: Carbon emissions from disposal and recycling of electronic waste, including computers, monitors and laboratory equipment.
Food waste: Carbon emissions from food waste generated in dining halls, cafeterias and food related events on campus (Saleem et al., 2019).
Water consumption
Water treatments: energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with water treatment processes for supplying clean water to academic facilities and laboratories.
Lab water systems: energy consumption from water purification systems used in laboratories for experiments and research (Bukhary et al., 2019).
Infrastructure
Construction and maintenance: Carbon emissions from construction activities, including site preparation, building construction and infrastructure development for expanding or upgrading academic facilities.
Embodied carbon: Carbon emissions associated with the production, transportation and installation of building materials and infrastructure components (Liu et al., 2022).
References
Header image by Ousa Chea on Unsplash
Bansal, S., Sullivan, J., Zhang, Y., & Zhang, L. (2013). Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of higher education buildings in the United States. Energy and Buildings, 63, 146–156.
Bukhary, S., Batista, J., & Ahmad, S. (2019). An analysis of energy consumption and the use of renewables for a small drinking water treatment plant. Water, 12(1), 28. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12010028
Burnham, A., & Walls, M. (2018). Carbon footprint of urban commuting: A case study of the University of California, Davis. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 65, 46–57.
Hammond, G. P., & Jones, C. I. (2008). Embodied energy and carbon in construction materials. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Energy, 161(2), 87–98. https://doi.org/10.1680/ener.2008.161.2.87
Liu, N., Wang, Y., Bai, Q., Liu, Y., Wang, P. (slade), Xue, S., Yu, Q., & Li, Q. (2022). Road life-cycle carbon dioxide emissions and emission reduction technologies: A review. Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering (English Edition), 9(4), 532–555. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtte.2022.06.001
Saleem, M., Blaisi, N. I., Alshamrani, O. S. D., & Al-Barjis, A. (2019). Fundamental investigation of solid waste generation and disposal behaviour in higher education institute in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Indoor + Built Environment: The Journal of the International Society of the Built Environment, 28(7), 927–937. https://doi.org/10.1177/1420326×18804853
Zhang, Y., & Zhang, L. (2015). Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of higher education buildings in the United States. Energy and Buildings, 97, 146–156.
There is a lot of data on the GHG emissions of academic exchange (meetings, conferences etc.). These can be as much as ⅓ of the overall GHG emissions from a single research project, for example a PhD – Achten, W. M. J., Almeida, J. & Muys, B. Carbon footprint of science: more than flying. Ecol. Indic. 34, 352–355 (2013). Most of this is from flying to conferences, as described thoroughly in this article: Richards, D.A., Bellon, F., Goñi-Fuste, B. et al. A behaviour change strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from international scientific conferences and meetings. npj Clim. Action 3, 95 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-024-00184-4. Reducing such travel, or swapping to ground-based alternatives to aviation is likely to be the single most effective strategy to reduce GHG emissions from academic life.