How Understanding Campus Utilization Rates Can Reduce Your Institution’s Carbon Footprint

First published in Facilities Manager Nov/Dec 2024 Issue. Reproduced with permission.

With 39 percent of global carbon emissions coming from real estate—and 28 percent from operating buildings themselves—universities in the United States have become significant producers of greenhouse gases due to one of their largest assets being real estate.

Not only that, but many universities in the United States also choose to operate their own power plants to avoid paying premiums for the energy necessary to power their campuses and avoid dependence on other sources of electricity.

According to a study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), 103 campus power plants at 93 universities emitted 5.8 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2020, the equivalent of 1.1 million cars, and that is just 93 of the 5,300 universities located in the United States.

Like many corporations worldwide, U.S. universities are now under mounting pressure to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, educational facilities need a way to reduce their carbon footprint that is less drastic than moving into greener real estate but more impactful than simply putting recycling bins in campus kitchens.

The adage goes: “You can’t improve what you can’t measure.” That is why mandating colleges to measure and report on their campus carbon emissions creates a pathway to reducing them.

Similarly, measuring and quantifying how students and staff occupy and utilize all classrooms and other buildings creates a pathway to reducing a campus’ overall carbon footprint. Monitoring occupancy and usage identifies the most impactful areas that will help reduce emissions daily.

But to achieve this—and to ensure campuses can be run more sustainably going forward—FM professionals who specialize in managing educational facilities need to have an accurate and up-to-date understanding of occupancy and utilization rates across all areas of the campus.

By understanding occupancy and space utilization, universities can use five key approaches to reduce their carbon footprint across their real estate portfolio.

Conduct a Sustainability Audit

Before educational facility managers can create a space utilization-led sustainability plan, they need to know what is currently working and what is not. A sustainability audit will help them analyze existing efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and find areas for improvement.

Doing so will enable them to set sustainability targets and create a plan of action for achieving them. A key part of this will be embedding sustainability in the college’s culture and encouraging the use of efficient systems, equipment, and the latest technology to drive their sustainable transformation.

Identify Underused Spaces and Cut Energy Use

Cutting back energy use in classrooms and other buildings must be carefully balanced with the impact it may have on academic staff and students. That is why underused spaces are prime targets for reducing carbon emissions. Change can be made immediately, with little or no impact on staff and students, if hardly anyone is occupying the space.

The best place to start is keeping track of space utilization rates across the entire real estate portfolio in real-time. From there, identify where utilization rates are low. This could happen in certain areas only on specific days or consistently across the board.

These are areas where educational facilities can strategically reduce energy consumption and wastage by reducing the use of lighting, heating, cooling, and servicing.

For example, if data shows that a study area has less than five percent utilization rate on Fridays, the area could be closed on Fridays only. By managing occupancy, anyone who usually ventures into that space could be reallocated to another study area that has a higher utilization rate and will be open anyway, but has space to take on the excess students.

Placing intelligent occupancy sensors in spaces that are not in constant use will also cut unnecessary energy consumption and carbon emissions. Sensors trigger HVAC systems to turn on and off when people enter and leave a space, slashing energy use without having to rely on constant reminders to switch off the lights and turn down the thermostat.

If this is replicated across a large educational real estate portfolio, the reduction in energy use could start to add up.

Manage Occupancy to Reduce Waste

Managing occupancy is directing academic staff and students to the right resources at the right times through tools and policies.

Resources typically include energy-consuming equipment and facilities in lecture halls, classrooms, seminar rooms, laboratories, technology labs, art studios, libraries, study rooms, auditoriums, social spaces, and specialized rooms such as language labs, music practice rooms, and drama studios. This even includes parking spaces.

By strategically managing occupancy, universities can shift occupancy patterns and funnel staff and students out of areas that are increasing the carbon footprint—without impacting or sacrificing their campus experience.

Using the previous example of closing off a specific study area on Fridays, that area would not be bookable on Fridays if campus managers blocked such bookings in their space scheduling system. This would avoid confusion amongst students and lecturers over available areas, providing a seamless experience.

Occupancy management can also be used to avoid unintentional waste—such as when staff and students work in spaces that have more equipment and resources than they need. It would avoid excess use of lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation—and the room would not need to be cleaned afterward.

By managing occupancy with a booking system, large rooms could only be booked by groups of a minimum number. As a result, the resources (and energy required to keep them running) would not be wasted. Additionally, facilities managers could set up a list of smaller rooms in the system. These would be suggested for groups not qualifying for the larger rooms, thus creating a better match. Moreover, everyone gets a better campus experience since the resources they need can be reserved.

Educational facilities can reduce their carbon footprint by ensuring all staff have precisely what they need to do their best work, thus enabling students to gain the most from their time on campus. Providing anything less creates a negative experience for everyone. However, providing more than they use creates waste that drives carbon emissions.

Right Size Use of Facilities Management and Services

Facility management teams are best placed to make things happen when it comes to increasing energy efficiency, reducing resource consumption, and thus slashing a campus’s carbon footprint. After all, they operate almost every asset in an educational facility’s real estate portfolio and do it daily.

They can ensure universities minimize and neutralize their environmental impact by employing sustainable facilities management methodologies, processes, and tools.

However, a key way FM teams can impact the campus’ carbon footprint is by right-sizing facilities management and servicing different spaces within each building proportionately to their occupancy levels.

Maintenance, repairs, and servicing can all be very carbon intensive. Repairs are costlier than maintenance—both for colleges and the environment. Proactive and regular inspection of equipment makes it less likely that FM teams will have to make repairs that incur a higher environmental cost.

Conversely, equipment in heavily occupied areas of the campus is more likely to need repair. By increasing inspection frequency in areas with higher utilization rates, FM teams can reduce the risk of equipment needing sudden repairs.

Similarly, by tracking space utilization and overlaying this with floor plans, it is possible to visualize which areas the janitorial team needs to pay the most attention to and which areas they can service less frequently.

The same is true for other services like restocking vending machines and catering. By looking at occupancy patterns and trends over time, it is possible to predict how many students will turn up, want food or snacks, and order the correct amount. This means less spending on catering and vending, less food waste, and a reduced carbon footprint.

Additionally, older electrical equipment often uses more energy than newer alternatives. In spaces where occupancy data indicates much higher and more frequent utilization rates, it may be worth replacing or upgrading old equipment with more energy-efficient versions.

Use Predicted Occupancy Rates to Make Decisions that Lower the Carbon Footprint

Predicted occupancy is a data-driven prediction of how space utilization rates will increase, decrease, or stay the same based on past and present trends. Essentially, it is understanding the patterns of how students and faculty use the spaces on campus and adapting the spaces to be better equipped for that use in a sustainable way.

Measuring predicted occupancy rates for each asset in a university’s real estate portfolio ensures that new buildings, floors, and zones are not acquired or built unless they are used.

For example, constructing a new facility from scratch will come with risks of a higher carbon footprint that will need to be mitigated. If students are not occupying newly acquired spaces, the impact on their carbon footprint and the financial cost for the college is effectively sunk costs.

The same is true of deciding to let go of real estate. What might seem like a cost-effective decision could increase the carbon footprint if the environmental cost of an educational facility skyrockets because of overcrowding.

Measuring predicted occupancy reduces carbon emissions by providing the data to back up future real estate decisions. On a broader scale, it ensures that the university gets a return on investment (ROI) out of its real estate portfolio.

Predicted occupancy can also inform decisions to repurpose areas of a building or change functionality. For example, suppose the data shows that students mostly study in quiet common areas instead of collaborative areas in a certain building. In that case, the collaborative areas can be shifted to quiet spaces to avoid overcrowding. Understanding which changes are beneficial to the use patterns on campus means these alterations can be made to reduce the environmental impact—for example, by not overbuying furniture and equipment.

With universities being among the most prominent real estate operators in the United States, they face significant responsibility to become more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint. The key to limiting greenhouse gas emissions is better utilization of their spaces. In understanding how students and faculty use the campus, changes can be made to provide resources that meet these needs more sustainably. Even if only half the universities in the United States found one room that could be closed for one day per week—and save the carbon emissions associated with operating that room—it could already significantly reduce their contribution to climate change.