Assessing the environmental performance of a university campus using a life cycle assessment approach

Abstract

Universities undertake critical duties in the development of countries and increasing the level of welfare. Therefore, to achieve sustainable development goals, it is important that they focus their efforts on sustainable campus practices and contribution to society. In this work, organizational life cycle assessment was conducted to identify major environmental aspects and the most impactful processes related to the education and research activities of Kocaeli University. Life cycle impact assessment was performed by EF 3.0 method to evaluate sixteen environmental impact categories and they were comparatively assessed for the two scenarios: present situation (PS) and alternative scenario (AS—which includes increasing renewable energy rate in electricity generation). The major environmental aspects were identified as climate change and use of fossil resources. They constituted approximately 41% and 20% of overall environmental burden of the university campus for the year of 2022; respectively. Considering the processes related to the university campus activities, electricity consumption and heating with natural gas were determined as the most impactful processes which accounted for approximately 80% of the overall environmental burden. On the contrary, treatment of wastewater in the biological wastewater treatment plant located on the university campus ensured 6% environmental saving on overall environmental burden. Comparing two scenarios, it was determined that all impact categories decreased in AS compared with PS; except from the impact category for mineral and metal resource use. According to the uncertainty analysis, AS performed better than PS by 60% of the iterations for overall environmental burden.