11. Green Campus

Green Campus

In 2021 UL successfully renewed its Green Campus accreditation, attained certified water stewardship, and achieved 21st position in the UI Green Metric Ranking (see below Tables) – placing UL in the top 2% of universities entering the rankings. A blank cell means the university in question did not partake in the scheme that year.

In addition to participating in a ‘Green Campus Roundtable’ with Universities from Norway and Germany in early in 2021, B&E gave invited presentations on sustainability at UL at number of fora including to the UL Management Council and the EMERGE group of universities. On campus, B&E worked with the Office of Public Works on the roll-out of the Optimising Power at Work Campaign with the initial focus the commissioning and validation of the associated campus-wide energy monitoring and targeting system. Concurrently priority was given to raising awareness/achieving energy behaviour change amongst students and staff in the villages, arena and library through the setting up of Energy Teams, hosting of virtual quiz nights, virtual energy clinics and lunchtime talks. In 2022 it is intended to host in-person awareness raising events and extend the Optimising Power at Work Campaign to a small number of academic buildings – which will include out-of-hours energy audits. Later in the year a B&E staff member and others who had “already contributed greatly” to sustainability on campus were invited to participate in the UL Sustainable University Steering Group. The purpose of the group, which reports directly to Executive and enjoys both project management and administrative support, is to develop a holistic and integrated approach to embedding the UN Sustainable Development Goals into “the heart of everything UL strives to become”. By the end of 2021 the first draft of UL’s Mission-Based Sustainability Framework 2030 was nearing completion. Once complete the document will require both Executive and Governing Authority approval before publication and integration into the recalibrated/ future University strategic plans.

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

UL 58 29 11 16 22 24 20 20 17 21

UCD

111

UCC 3 2 2 4 12 9 9 9 9 8

TCD

94 107

DCU 80 46 53 58 27 15 12 12 15 13

DIT 198 157 193 274 229 59

NUIM

NUIG

93 190 128 130 97 154 183

Never entered the rankings

UL 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

58 29 11 16 22 24 20 20 17 21

Total no. of

entrants 215 301 360 407 516 619 719 780 912 956

UL in the top

(percentile) 27% 10% 3% 4% 4% 4% 3% 3% 2% 2%