Performance based core sustainability metrics for university campuses developing towards climate neutrality: A robust PICSOU framework

Abstract

Despite the global interest, the sustainable development of universities remains commonly unmonitored as existing tools are either overly complicated or less specific for university campuses. Evaluation of existing tools motivated this study to focus on measuring sustainability performance of university campuses. By concentrating on factors having the most prominent impact on buildings’ and activities’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and social performance, PICSOU (Performance Indicators for Core Sustainability Objectives of Universities), a six-category framework with about 20 key performance indicators (KPIs) was identified to monitor more than 80% of Scope 2 or/and Scope 3 carbon footprint of a university campus and enables relatively easy cost-benefit analysis of potential improvements. Proposed categories and KPIs are general, but the improvement measures can always have a local origin. To test the framework, a case study was conducted and findings include discovery of lowutilization spaces, potential parking footprint reduction, co-benefits exceeding energy savings in renovation and an annual carbon footprint of 1.3 tCO2eq per university population. This study showcases the latest endeavor in identifying a simple and robust framework containing universally measurable indicators that are easily compatible with different campuses and can enable the timely and accurate measuring of university campus sustainability