Carbon Reduction Measures in the Higher Education Sector

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and Salix Finance’s Revolving Green Fund (RGF) provides funding to help reduce carbon emissions.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and Salix Finance’s Revolving Green Fund (RGF) provides funding to help Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in England reduce carbon emissions.

Between 2008 and 2013, the RGF has made £61 million available to provide recoverable grants to institutions for projects that reduce their emissions. Institutions will repay the funds through the savings they make.

The fund has two strands of investment: a ‘Transformational’ fund for large, one-off projects which significantly reduce an institution’s carbon emissions; and an Institutional Small Projects (ISP) fund which allows the incremental implementation of small scale projects over time, reducing utility spend through projects that might not have otherwise been carried out.

Report summary

To date there are only four completed Transformational projects. There are 43 universities which have received funding for ISP projects. Salix expect these projects to save approximately 572,000 tonnes of CO₂ over their lifetime (about 45,000 tonnes per annum) and achieve a 2.1% reduction in English HEI annual carbon emissions.

Following desk research, supported by telephone interviews with university representative’s, a series of case studies have been developed which provide details about the projects including success factors, lessons learnt and savings achieved.