Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Introduction: governments, businesses, and individuals have become increasingly concerned about the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, mostly produced by human activities. In order to mitigate the environmental impact, a series of tools, objectives and agreements have been created for their respective control. One of the tools presented to solve this problem is the carbon footprint, since it allows estimating the CO2 emissions generated to the atmosphere due to personal or organizational activities. Objective: measure the corporate carbon footprint in a Higher Education Institution; to promote corrective actions in the optimization of the use of fossil fuels, energy consumption, paper, among others that allow mitigating its impact; and to generate guidelines so that other Higher Education Institutions can carry out their corporate carbon footprint measurements. As a fundamental axis of training, Higher Education Institutions should be leading entities in the implementation of environmental sustainability strategies. Materials and Methods: the present study is developed in an important Colombian higher education institution, committed to the environment and its respective mitigation of greenhouse gasses, making use of the corporate carbon footprint under the guidelines of the ISO 14064-1/2006 standard. Results: the results show that emission sources classified in scopes 1, 2 and 3 generated 4.76 %, 65.12 % and 30.12 %, respectively of total emissions. Conclusions: scope 2, product of energy use, generates the greatest impact, followed by Scope 3, denominated as other indirect emissions, which in this case are generated by trips made by employees, mostly teaching staff to congresses, research stays, among others. Finally, scope 1 has a low impact on total emissions