University of Toledo Carbon Footprint: Scope 3 Emissions
May 6, 2010
Group Members:
Kathleen Gallagher
Neale Mahon
Josh Quinlan
Colin Serne
Joe Wcislak
Abstract
The goal of this study was to determine the carbon footprint of the University of Toledo’s Main Campus for Scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 emissions are optional emissions that are subjective to Universities. The University of Toledo decided to include emissions from commuting, sports and study abroad transportation, wastewater, solid waste, and paper. These emissions are either upstream or downstream emissions. The upstream emissions occur before the product or service is on campus. These upstream emissions include; commuting, sports travel, study abroad travel, and paper. The downstream emissions occur after use on campus. These emissions occur at a plant or landfill after the university uses the product. These downstream emissions include; wastewater and solid waste use. Scope 3 also includes offsets that the University of Toledo would purchase. However, there were minimal offsets purchased for the main campus.
These emissions were all converted into equivalent carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide were found for each emission and then converted to metric tons of equivalent carbon dioxide. The amount of equivalent carbon dioxide was used to find the carbon footprint of scope 3 emissions for the University of Toledo.
After the footprint was figured, the results were compared to another comparable institution’s results. Since scope 3 emissions are very subjective to each university, the competing school’s numbers were a little different from the University of Toledo’s scope 3 emissions. Using the results we found from this study, suggestions were able to be made to improve our main campus’s environmental impact and lower the carbon footprint of the University of Toledo.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 4
2. Objectives 5
3. Methods 5
3.1 Commuting 6
3.2 University Paid Sports 8
3.3 Study Abroad 8
3.4 Water and Wastewater 9
3.5 Solid Waste 11
3.6 Paper 12
3.7 Main Campus Offsets 13
4. Results and Discussion 13
4.1 Commuting 13
4.2 University Paid Sports 15
4.3 Study Abroad 16
4.4 Water and Wastewater 16
4.5 Solid Waste 17
4.6 Paper 18
4.7 Main Campus Offsets 19
5. Scope 3 Total Carbon Emissions 19
6. University of Toledo versus Ohio University Scope 3 Comparison 20
7. Conclusions 20
8. Suggestions 20
9. References 20
10. Acknowledgements 21
11. Appendices 21
1. Introduction
The University of Toledo has many greenhouse gas producing components in its daily operations. Scope 3 was responsible for only a small part of the University’s total operations; these parts include indirect emissions resulting from commuting, sports travel, water, wastewater, solid waste, and offsets. When reviewing carbon footprints from similar schools such as the University of Washington these four categories combine to create nearly a quarter of the total emissions from the school.
Commuting is a large contributor to green house gas production. The University has a large portion of its students who drive to campus every day to attend class and a very little amount who take public transportation. Along with students driving to class faculty and staff also commute varying distances to come to the university to work. With all of these vehicles traveling to and from school everyday thousands of tons of greenhouse gases are produced.
The University has many varsity sports that it sponsors. When these sports teams travel to other schools to participate in matches and tournaments the school has to pay for their travel. This travel reaches all over the country from the west coast to the eastern coast. This travel, whether it is by a bus, train or airplane creates large amounts of greenhouse gases. The school also sponsors the travel of students and faculty to study abroad. Studying abroad incorporates traveling long distances, commonly requiring traveling by flight.
Toledo uses large amounts of clean drinking water for its bathrooms, sinks and other operations; this water is than commonly turned into waste water. Water and wastewater treatment requires large amounts of energy. Along with this water use the university also produces large amounts of solid waste from its dining halls and general garbage cans found throughout the campus. Disposal and treatment of solid waste, much like the treatment of water requires large amounts of energy and in turn creates large amounts of greenhouse gases.
Paper is a viable source in the learning process. Without paper one would not be able to write or read as freewill as it is. Paper use at a university for printing of tests, assignments, handouts and syllabi are just a few examples of the vast amounts of paper used. Paper production is an energy hungry process and this energy use results in greenhouse gas emissions if energy is produced from fossil fuels.
Finally, the University does have some processes in place to create greenhouse gas offsets. These offsets are used to counter the amount of greenhouse gas the University creates.
2. Objectives
The goal of this study was to determine the carbon footprint of the University of Toledo’s Main Campus for Scope 3 emissions. In order to compare Toledo’s campus to other campus’s carbon footprints, the units of: commuting, sports travel, water, wastewater, paper, and offsets had to be equal. The common unit used to compare the effect is carbon dioxide equivalent. This process has been established by Clean Air – Cool Planet in order to help Universities document, understand, project, and reduce their campus greenhouse gas footprint. Once carbon footprint was estimated, we also made projections for the future and some recommendations in order to reduce the carbon footprint associated with Scope 3 emissions.
3. Methods
The collection of the data seemed very daunting at first however with help from Harvey Vershum, Director of Energy Management, many contacts were established and the process could progress. In order to contact the necessary people the work load was divided amongst the group: Neale Mahon and Colin Serne were responsible for commuting, the largest data collection; Joe Wcislak was responsible for University paid sports and the study abroad program; Kathleen Gallagher was responsible for water, wastewater, and solid waste; and Josh Quinlan was responsible for paper and University offsets. A summary of data collected and departments contacted in order to provide the data is shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Contact Information
Type of data / Provided by / Person that provided the dataNumber of parking permits / ID Card & Parking Services Manager / David Wahr, ID Card & Parking Services Manager for University of Toledo
Frequency of TARTA stops on campus & miles traveled / TARTA Marketing / Steve Atkinson, Marketing Director for Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority
Sports Teams miles traveled to away events / Athletic Department / Shelly Lawniczak, Sports Department Secretary
Study Abroad miles traveled / Study Abroad Department / Fran Molnar, Study Abroad Department Secretary
Potable Water Usage / Facilities Planning/Bay View WWTP / Danieal Klett, Director of Facilities Planning
Solid Waste Transported to Landfill / Building Services and Recycling / Dan Royer, Building Services and Recycling & Arlene Fell, Director of Environmental Resources
Pounds of paper per year / Building Services / Dan Royer, Building Services and Recycling
Offsets / N/A / Not able to acquire data
In order to convert the data into equivalent values, the use of a Carbon Calculator (Clean 2008) was used. The equations modeled in the below subsections are how the Carbon Calculator converts the inputted data numbers into the equivalent carbon dioxide values necessary for the Green House Gas Inventory.
3.1 Commuting
Commuting is a large player in the role of greenhouse gas production. The University of Toledo has a large percentage of its student population that lives off of campus and commutes to class on a daily basis. Along with this student commuting is the commuting done by the faculty and staff of the university.
To determine this commuting it was determined that the number of commuters would need to be known. The University distributes parking passes to all of these commuters to keep track of who is allowed to park where and where not. The number of passes was obtained from David Wahr, the Director of Student Affairs, Auxiliary services, (Table 2). Based on these passes it was determined just how many students, faculty, and staff commute to the school on a given day. Due to privacy issues the mailing locations of all parking pass holders were not permitted to be given. Assuming a rough sample of miles driven for each parking genre and averaging these we estimated how many miles of travel each group generates, (Table 2), (Table 3).
Table 2: Number of Passes
Fall 2009 Passes issued / Spring 2010 Passes issued / TotalsStaff / 1245 / 1273 / 2518
Commuter / 9096 / 8099 / 17195
Residents / 893 / 917 / 1810
Freshmen Residents / 1044 / 507 / 1551
Freshmen Commuters / 2010 / 1156 / 3166
Totals / 13911 / 11574 / 26240
Table 3: Average Miles per Day
Average Miles round trip / Fall 2009 Registered Drivers / Total Miles per dayFaculty/Staff / 35 / 2,518 / 88,130
Commuter / 17 / 20,361 / 346,137
Residents / On Campus / On Campus / On Campus
Table 4: Miles per Year
Total Miles per day / Trips to campus per week / Weeks visiting campus per year / Total miles per yearFaculty/Staff / 88,130 / 5 / 40 / 17,626,000
Commuter / 346,137 / 4.5 / 36 / 560,741,94
Residents / On Campus / On Campus / On Campus / On Campus
Using the excel sheet we could plug in our values and determine how much greenhouse gas was being generated due to the schools commuting population and the use of public transportation.
Also, included in the commuting value was the data from public transportation. The University of Toledo has public bussing provided by the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority (TARTA) that transports students to and from campus. TARTA was contacted and the data provided is displayed in Table 4.
Table 5: Public Transportation
2007 / 2008 / 2009Stops made on campus / 42,100 / 35,185 / 23,555
Average Riders / 4.5 / 4.5 / 4.5
Route Miles / 23 / 23 / 23
3.2 University Paid Sports
In order to discover how many miles were traveled by the sports teams and study abroad program, the two departments were contacted first. The sports department informed where the team’s schedules where located online. An excel spreadsheet could then be made of the locations of each sports yearly schedule and destinations. This included the number of trips to each location for the years of interest. The sports department could not give a definite answer for the cut off between driving and flying; there are heads for each sport that make that determination, and no definitive cutoff is used. Therefore, a 500 mile cutoff was used for the spreadsheet, over 500 miles we used flight, and under we applied to bussing. The mileage was found from Toledo to the destination city, multiplied that number by the number of trips made to that city per year for all sports reporting, and then multiplied that by two for the return trip. The miles were then added together to each city for the years of interest, for both the air travel and the driving individually, and these are the numbers we will use for the input on the carbon calculator, modeled by the following air and bus travel equations. The conversions modeled by the calculator are displayed in Equation 1.
Input(miles)*0.00394MMBtuShort Tons ×19.33 Tg CQBtu 109 kgTg QBtu109 MMBtu ×99% × 44 g CO212 g C*2.8=kg CO2+ Input (miles)*0.000261 KgCH4gal0.135MMBTUgal×0.00394MMBTUPASS.MILE=KG CH4 +
Input (miles)×0.00394 MMBTUmile× gal0.135MMBTU×0.0003 KG N2Ogal =KG N2O]/ 1000 (Equation 1)
3.3 Study Abroad
The travel abroad department of the University was contacted several times with no return calls, nor anyplace to find the data needed. With a little help, the travel abroad department did reply to an e-mail, and found some data that was needed. They provided the countries to which students travelled to for study abroad, however the specific cities were not included, therefore the capital cities of the countries were used. With these cities the miles traveled could be found to figure the mileage traveled per year. These are the figures used for the input on the carbon calculator. The conversions modeled by the calculator are displayed in Equation 2.
[Input(miles)*39.67MPGpass mile*19.95Tg CQ BTU*109kgTg*Q BTU109MM BTU*0.138MM BTUGal.*72.367Kg CO2MM BTU + Input(miles)*39.67MPGPASS*0.000567Kg CH4Gal*0.000014292Kg CH4Miles*input milesMPG=Kg CH4 + Input(miles)*0.000006478Kg N2OMile*39.67MPGPass.*0.000275Kg N2OGal.*inputmilesMPG=Kg N2O] / 1000 (Equation 2)
3.4 Water and Wastewater
In order to collect the wastewater information needed for this study of the University of Toledo’s campus carbon footprint, Danieal Klett, Director of Facilities Planning, sent a data file of the main campus’s usage of potable water.
The data collected for potable wastewater usage is given in cubic feet for each fiscal year. These values need to be converted into gallons in order to use the campus carbon calculator. After finding the total amount of potable wastewater used on the University of Toledo’s main campus, the ratio of aerobic, anaerobic, and anaerobic digesters that the Toledo Wastewater Treatment Plant uses to treat the wastewater was found by emailing the wastewater treatment plant. This breakup was then used to calculate what percent of the potable water that was used by the main campus was treated aerobically, aerobically, and by anaerobic digesters. These were then entered into the campus carbon calculator, which used the equations discussed below to give us the campus carbon footprint.