A Review and Case Study of Strategic Carbon Management in the UK Higher Education Sector.

Abstract

Climate change is arguably one of the greatest environmental challenges facing the world today, bringing organisations under increasing pressure from government, shareholders and stakeholders to reduce carbon emissions. The Higher Education (HE) sector has a significant social and economic impact and is not exempt from challenging carbon reduction targets, in fact, it is argued, should be demonstrating leadership in the field. The term ‘carbon management’ is popular in the literature but strategic carbon management (SCM) is an under-developed and under-researched area as it is an applied concept, especially within the HE sector. Scope 1 and 2 emissions reduction initiatives have received more attention than scope 3 thereby missing a significant opportunity for fully effective carbon reduction. These gaps have been identified through analysis of the academic and practitioner literature, reports, and websites. The study proposed in this paper will look into the gaps and possible future research direction of SCM in the HE sector through a case study of De Montfort University (DMU). It will explore how carbon emissions can be reduced strategically and develop a systematic and comprehensive strategic management approach to doing so. Finally this paper makes some provisional principles for transferable best practices for the HE sector.