Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of human life, including mobility. In a local context, the University of Oldenburg (Germany) suspended all in-person lectures and business trips in March 2020, affecting the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the community. This paper presents the evaluation of emissions resulting from mobility associated with the University of Oldenburg before and after the COVID-19 restrictions, including commuting and business trips. Moreover, five scenarios targeting a reduction in emissions related to mobility are proposed and analyzed. The GHG emissions were calculated using specific emissions factors for each mode of transport, distance data obtained via a survey, and official university data. Overall, the results have revealed a substantial decrease in emissions in the summer semester 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The estimated GHG emissions reduction relative to the average emissions of the prior two semesters (pre-COVID-19) is 79% for commuting (equivalent to 1934 tCO2e), and 69% for business trips (equivalent to 888.6 tCO2e). Furthermore, the commuting emissions are 1.9 times higher than business trip emissions in summer and winter 2019, and 1.3 times higher in summer 2020. With respect to proposals for reductions, the most effective scenario for reducing GHG emissions considers a hybrid semester assuming one day a week without commuting, which is estimated to achieve a 15% emissions reduction relative to the baseline emissions. The paper thus shows the importance of commuting-related GHG emissions in a university higher education context as well as first approaches to reduce them. This study may be useful as a guidance for the University of Oldenburg in its efforts to reduce GHG emissions by providing a quantitative basis and scenarios for prioritizing and reducing mobility emissions. Beyond that, it provides comparative metrics for other institutions with similar characteristics.
Highlights
In February of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread throughout Germany.By 9 March, infection rates were rising exponentially and the first deaths were being reported [1]
The estimated commuting-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions expressed in terms of tonnes of
While 92.7% of business-trip emissions corresponded to aviation travel in the summer semester of 2019, only 56.1% of the business-trip distance traveled during the summer semester of 2019 can be attributed to aviation, with the distance traveled by train for this same semester being 34.8% of the total distance
Summary
In February of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread throughout Germany.By 9 March, infection rates were rising exponentially and the first deaths were being reported [1]. In February of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread throughout Germany. On 13 March 2020, the University of Oldenburg (Germany) suspended all in-person lectures, which, as of the time of this research, have yet to resume in-person. The COVID-19 pandemic has been shown to be associated with decreased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally, with a recent study finding an 8.8% decrease in CO2 emissions globally in the first six months of 2020 relative to the first six months of. The same study found a 13.0% decrease in emissions from ground transportation in July 2020 relative to July 2019. Le Quéré et al [3] estimated that global emissions from surface transport fell by 36% by 7 April 2020 relative to the mean level of emissions in 2019 and this sector
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