University of Bristol

The University of Bristol is a medium-sized, research-led, Russell Group university, based in Bristol UK. In 2022/23 the University had approximately 8762 full-time equivalent members of staff, a 6% increase of 8,267 in the previous year. In 2022/23 there were 29,992 FTE students, a 2% rise on 29,434 the previous year.
As a research-led University, with departments noted for excellent research in medicine, engineering and science, a great deal of energy-intensive research is being undertaken. Financial turnover has increased in recent years; financial years for the University are co-terminous with academic years, running from 1st August to 31st July.
The University is housed in an estate with a gross internal area of over 410,471 m2 for non-residential estate and 132,688 m2 for residential estate. Most of the estate is owned freehold by the University, though some office space is leased. We also occupy a small footprint in the local hospitals. This space is held under a variety of leases and other arrangements.
The University has leases over 3,000 predominantly electrically heated residential bed spaces from commercial student residences providers. Since the commercial contract for these is directly between the University and the student, rather than with the provider as a third party, within this report these have been considered as part of our Scope 2 emissions. We also take the same approach with electricity to power our offsite data centres.
The University has been aware of its Carbon burden and the need to reduce this for over 10 years and has several members of staff dedicated to reducing energy consumption in buildings, waste management and transport rationalisation. Following Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) requirements, the University agreed and issued an amended Carbon Management Plan in February 2013 detailing plans to reduce emissions from buildings and University-owned and leased vehicles by 38% by 2020 against a 2005/6 baseline. Achieving a 33% reduction by 2018/19 and a 41% reduction in 2019/20 (This decrease, although only slightly greater than previous years was influenced by Covid-19.
A new carbon management plan was released in 2017 which takes account of growth and look at options available for becoming a zero-carbon (scope 1 & 2) campus by 2030. The most immediate measures from this are a programme of identifying inefficiencies across our major buildings, and target improvements to the heating systems and controls.
Obviously, the disruption caused by Covid-19 massively affected the University's operation in 2020, 2021, and into 2022, particularly business travel, reducing our Scope 3 emissions, but also changing the way our staff work and students’ study. As such we are reviewing the need to rebaseline.