Inventory of Roger Williams University's Greenhouse Gas Emissions

for Fiscal Year 2007-2008

On Earth Day 2008, President Nirschel signed the President's Climate Commitment as a reflection of RWU's initiative to become a more environmentally sustainable and energy efficient institution. As a signatory of the PCC, RWU agreed to complete a comprehensive inventory  of all greenhouse gas emissions produced as a result of nearly all activities associated with the University's operations.

The results of the first inventory–shown below for the fiscal year 2007-2008–provide the necessary baseline information to guide the RWU community toward reducing its greenhouse gas footprint. The ultimate sustainability objective, as dictated by the PCC, is for RWU to become climate (or carbon) neutral which means that the institution's operations will not contribute to the further net increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

For 2007-2008 RWU's operations released

22,445 metric tonnes (or 49,482,975 pounds)

of carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalent (Table 1). (CO₂ equivalent includes the climate change effects of CO₂, methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O)).

This equals

 3.8 metric tonnes (8377 pounds) of CO₂ equivalent per person

in the RWU community (which includes all faculty, staff, and students in the undergraduate graduate, law, and continuing studies programs).

The three largest contributors to the RWU greenhouse gas footprint (Fig. 1) were:

● Electricity use  ~43%

● Student, Faculty and Staff Commuting   ~22%

● On-campus combustion of fossil fuels  ~16%

In light of these data, it is clear that all community members can contribute significantly to the reduction of RWU's greenhouse gas footprint by:

►► reducing energy and electricity use through conservation and increased efficiency

►► traveling to campus via car-pools, public transportation, bicycling, or energy-efficient automobiles

Additional interpretation and summary of these results will be made available soon. In the meantime, inquiries may be directed to Dr. Loren Byrne (lbyrne"at"rwu.edu).

The inventory was completed using the Clean Air-Cool Planet calculator, V.6 by Davide Giardini, Michael Fishbone, Colin Roderick, Dr. Charles Thomas, and  Dr. Loren Byrne, with data-collection assistance from Scott Yonan, Kathy O'Brien, Tom Didario, John Tameo, Kate Tobin, Dan Gough, Cat Conley, Ellen Almeida, Matt Clement, Paul Prewit-Freilino, and Maggie Ryder.