Campus Decarbonisation

University campuses are complex places with a wide variety of building styles, types, functions and ages, used by thousands of students and staff daily. All need to be made energy efficient and net-zero in line with the Climate Change Act 2008.

There are many challenges to addressing the decarbonisation of university campuses;

• buildings, which need to remain in-use, need to have their fabric and fittings adapted.  Many buildings have specialised systems e.g. for labs.
• catering services, which need to service thousands of people across multiple outlets, need to become sustainable.
• research consumables and infrastructure which is often specialist and energy-intensive
• general infrastructure, such as IT systems, computing clusters etc.

The N8 universities are working together to share knowledge and understanding as well as best practice on how we can address the many challenges of decarbonisation.  All institutions have their unique challenges but there are also areas of shared interest, where solutions from one place can be adapted and used somewhere else, and there are clear common challenges.

All of the N8 universities are committed to decarbonisation and you can read more about their strategies here:

• Durham
• Lancaster
• Leeds
• Liverpool
• Manchester
• Newcastle
• Sheffield
• York