ASSESMENT OF NEUTRALITY AND SUSTAINABILITY OF KCAET CAMPUS

Abstract

Sustainable urban design, system-level organizational planning, and human behavior have been recognized for their potentially important roles in helping to reduce energy costs and associated environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions. University campuses, with their long planning timeframes, centralized organizations and dense populations are ideal places to examine these carbon mitigation strategies. A project was conducted, with a view to study the carbon neutrality and sustainability of KCAET campus. It was done for the purpose of sector- wise adaptation and mitigation strategies to develop KCAET campus of Malappuram district in Kerala as a “Carbon Neutral Campus” by carrying out a carbon emission and sequestration analysis in the sectors of food consumption, transportation, energy, waste and AFOLU (Agriculture, Forest and Other Land Use). The study was conducted for the period 2021-22. In order to assess the carbon neutrality of KCAET campus, the total carbon emission from above mentioned sectors were calculated and total carbon sequestration by sectors such as trees in the homestead, coconut plantation, soil profile and organic carbon content of soil and forest like dense vegetation were analyzed. As per Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), three hierarchical tiers are used to categorize the methodology complexities of emission factors and activity data. Tier 1 uses default data and simple equations. The required data were obtained by conducting various surveys and the corresponding emission factors were taken. Carbon emission and sequestration of each sector was obtained by the product of the emission factor and activity data. The total carbon emission from the campus was found to be 330.261 CO2 eq. tonnes and the total sequestration from the campus was 177.2 CO2 eq. tonnes. Since the carbon emission is higher than carbon sequestration it can be concluded that KCAET campus is not carbon neutral. A recommendation on action plan at KCAET campus level with short-term and long-term strategies for achieving carbon neutrality had been proposed as a major outcome of this project.