Carbon Footprint

Greenhouse Gas Inventory for 2006 and 2007

As part of the President's Climate Commitment- Lesley University staff completed the Green House Gas inventory for the calendar years 2006 and 2007.

Click here for detailed GHG Inventory  2006 and 2007

Process in which the inventory was conducted:

The first two years of reporting we focused on our two major facilities in Cambridge and Boston, MA and therefore we are reporting our Student FTE in these two locations.

Data was collected and gathered from a variety of offices, including Procurement, Campus Services, Human Resources, Institutional Research, Finance, and Plant Operations. It was the responsibility of the Sustainability Coordinator to oversee the collection process. It took about six months to gather the information and confirm we were calculating our data appropriately.

Details:

Scope(s) 1 and 2: The Sustainability Coordinator gathered scope 1 stationary fuel data and scope 2 purchased electricity/natural gas data from historical invoices and a report tracking tool. The staff within the Physical Plant department was crucial in collecting the data from invoices that the Sustainability Coordinator did not have access to.

Scope 3: Overall transportation – commuting along with air travel were the most challenging components. Our data only reflects a minimal estimate on what our actual emissions truly are. We will look at how to better track and report our data going forward. We did use the City of Cambridge's PTDM survey results to analyze and assume our commuting data. We also used reports generated from our contracted travel agent to make the assumption of our air mileage.

Below is data limitations related to this submission and any major assumptions made in response to these limitations.

Lesley University offers degrees in Cambridge and Boston MA and in 250 sites within 23 states. For our initial inventory we are focused on our facilities in Cambridge and Boston, MA since we do not have property leases but rather use schools and office facilities in the 250 remote sites. We have excluded both the number of students, travel data and other energy related information since at present we have no way to obtain accurate fuel and energy information for those sites.

The Commuting data was estimated off the basis of an annual transportation survey we are required to complete for the City of Cambridge. The over all participation rate, can not guarantee a 100%. Note: Reported number of commuters is the percentage of survey participants who reported commuting. We assumed that the percentage of actual commuters is close to the percentage of survey participants who commute and therefore we used that data.

PTDM Participation numbers for 2006-Cambridge only - (Does not include AIB in Boston).

2006 = The PTDM survey was sent to 722 students - 263 Students participated = 36% participation rate out of all survey recipients.

(Commuting Undergraduates with classes between 6am - 8pm)

(Graduates with classes in Cambridge between 6am - 8pm)

2006 = The PTDM survey was sent to 627 employees- 232 Employees participated = 37% participation rate out of all survey recipients.

PTDM Participation numbers for 2007-Cambridge only - (Does not include AIB in Boston).

2007 = The PTDM survey was sent to 700 students - 286 Students participated = 41% participation rate for total survey recipients.

(Commuting Undergraduates with classes between 6am - 8pm)

(Graduates with classes in Cambridge between 6am - 8pm)

2007 = The PTDM survey was sent to 566 employees - 257 Employees participated = 45% participation rate for all survey recipients.

The air travel is based on the annual mileage reported via our contracted travel agent for university institutional (non-academic) use only. We also collect a report for Faculty travel -however a majority of that travel is based within our National Programs -which are not included in this first round of assessments. The contracted travel agent is highly encouraged to be used by community members but not mandated.

Population Data - We currently do not have an exact mechanism for tracking summer students or workshop participants. We offer a variety of programs on campus that may or may not be directly affiliated with our organization -therefore making it difficult to really gage the number of people who step foot onto our campus during the summer months.

Please briefly describe this verification, if any.

This report/inventory was first reviewed by the Director of Facilities and Operations, the Director of Procurement, Director of Campus Services and the Sustainability Coordinator. We then reviewed the data with the Sustainability Taskforce members during our January meeting. We projected the inventory and the ACUPCC online reporting tool on the screen so it was easily reviewed by all members. We went over each data entry and discussed how the information was collected and gathered. Suggestions were made for last minute additions/changes. This meeting was an open dialogue discussing each area of the inventory that we were able to complete along with our outcome. These documents were then reviewed by our Vice President of Administration.