TY - JOUR

T1 - Life cycle assessment of higher education institutions

T2 - method and case study

AU - Jürgens, Meret

AU - Hartmann, Kristin

AU - Endres, Hans Josef

AU - Spierling, Sebastian

N1 - Funding Information: The authors would like to thank the Green Office of Leibniz Universität Hannover as well as the Studentenwerk Hannover for providing life cycle inventory data for the case study. Additionally, the authors would like to thank Alois Kaufmann for providing the icon graphics used for some of the figures.

PY - 2023/12/10

Y1 - 2023/12/10

N2 - Against the backdrop of climate change and resource depletion, sustainability and sustainable development has been brought in the focus of industries and organisations. To quantify the environmental impacts of products and organisations the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) is applied area-wide in many different sectors. The higher education sector in particular has an important role to play in sustainable development due to the multiplier role by educating the academic employees of the future. Additionally, higher education institutions (HEIs) are a relevant sector by themselves due to their size and number of employees as well as their impact on innovation and future technologies. Therefore, HEIs should be at the forefront of assessing and reducing their environmental impact. In contrast to this an analysis of the available LCAs of HEIs shows significant limitations with regards to availability of assessments as well as guidelines on assessment methodologies. To contribute to closing this gap and increase the availability of LCA information for HEIs, a guideline is developed based on current LCA standards, which contains assistance regarding the goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment. The guideline is applied in a case study for Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH), one of the nine leading technical universities in Germany. Results of the case study show that the major contributors for the impact of the LUH are the transport activities, infrastructure and energy supply. In 13 of the 16 assessed impact categories, transport activities account for the largest share of potential environmental impacts, ranging from about 43% to 82%. However, the results of the case study must be considered with care as primary data availability from the LUH has been limited and therefore must be extended in the future.

AB - Against the backdrop of climate change and resource depletion, sustainability and sustainable development has been brought in the focus of industries and organisations. To quantify the environmental impacts of products and organisations the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) is applied area-wide in many different sectors. The higher education sector in particular has an important role to play in sustainable development due to the multiplier role by educating the academic employees of the future. Additionally, higher education institutions (HEIs) are a relevant sector by themselves due to their size and number of employees as well as their impact on innovation and future technologies. Therefore, HEIs should be at the forefront of assessing and reducing their environmental impact. In contrast to this an analysis of the available LCAs of HEIs shows significant limitations with regards to availability of assessments as well as guidelines on assessment methodologies. To contribute to closing this gap and increase the availability of LCA information for HEIs, a guideline is developed based on current LCA standards, which contains assistance regarding the goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment. The guideline is applied in a case study for Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH), one of the nine leading technical universities in Germany. Results of the case study show that the major contributors for the impact of the LUH are the transport activities, infrastructure and energy supply. In 13 of the 16 assessed impact categories, transport activities account for the largest share of potential environmental impacts, ranging from about 43% to 82%. However, the results of the case study must be considered with care as primary data availability from the LUH has been limited and therefore must be extended in the future.

KW - Case study

KW - Higher education institutions

KW - LCA

KW - Method

KW - University

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85176919945&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.139649

DO - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.139649

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85176919945

VL - 430

JO - Journal of cleaner production

JF - Journal of cleaner production

SN - 0959-6526

M1 - 139649

ER -