How can my organisation
meet its targets for
carbon reduction?

The Climate Change Act 2008 requires colleges and universities, directly or indirectly, to take action to reduce carbon emissions in order to contribute to the national targets for carbon reduction. These challenging targets embrace reductions of 34% of carbon emissions by 2020 and 80% by 2050, compared with 1990 levels.

The UK funding bodies and sector leadership bodies recommend you have your own carbon reduction strategy and policy in place and take action to meet the government’s carbon reduction targets. HEFCE’s ‘Reducing carbon emissions’ and the Scottish government’s action plan for education provide a framework for UK colleges and universities to work towards. In thinking about how to reduce carbon emissions, it is useful to think in terms of the emissions that are produced by ICT, and those that ICT can reduce by enabling new and smarter ways of running the campus.

Our ICT energy and carbon footprinting tool helps you identify where you’re using the most energy and which areas produce the most carbon emissions. The most recent estimate of ICT related energy costs found that ICT was responsible for between 18% (where the institution has high performance computing) and 27% (where there is no HPC) of a typical UK university electricity bill. Some universities like the University of Central Lancashire are using energy dashboards that show the weekly carbon emissions and energy levels of individual buildings.

Firstly, JISC’s work with institutional carbon footprints shows that the most power-consuming categories of ICT are servers and desktop PCs. For the former, JISC’s briefing papers on server room efficiency and Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) can help you understand the issues and how to start to think about dealing with them. Secondly, for PCs, consider power-down solutions (including the solution developed with JISC funding at Aberystwyth University) and consider the use of thin-client solutions. JISC has developed a Thin/Thick Client comparison tool and there is a detailed analysis of the issues involved from the team at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Thirdly, tackle printing. Removing personal printers, enabling duplex and greyscale printing by default are all useful steps – JISC’s project at the University of East London produced a helpful guide to efficient printing.

Networks are a further area where electricity savings will be possible – but here, working with your network vendor is probably the best route as new energy efficient products are starting to become available.

While ICT is a significant contributor to carbon emissions, it has a role to play in making universities and colleges more efficient and effective. The Smart2020 report found that ICT accounts for 2% of global carbon emissions, but estimates we can reduce emissions by as much as 15% by 2020 by changing our working practices.

The scope for ICT to reduce carbon emissions and to improve environmental performance overall includes more flexible and intelligent buildings, reducing the size of the estate by making more efficient use of existing buildings, and new ways of working, teaching and researching.

Your green credentials won’t go unnoticed by prospective students either, as the People & Planet Green League Table shows.

Each of JISC’s Regional Support Centres has a Green ICT contact who can give you tailored advice and guidance to green your campus.

Our horizon scanning report ‘Low carbon computing: A view to 2050 and beyond’ explores the longer term considerations for environmental sustainability.

The resources we have highlighted are only a taste of the comprehensive set of guidance, advice and case studies that the JISC Greening ICT programme has amassed – see more at the Good Campus site.