Keywords

1 Introduction

Universities have the primary task of investing in research and development of innovative technologies aimed to mitigate climate change. As centers where the drivers of innovation are studied and designed, they intrinsically have the role of demonstrators of the feasibility and effectiveness of policies for sustainability and decarbonization of the built environment (Fig. 41.1).

Fig. 41.1
A circular model displays the mission of the University of Sustainability to build an environment with net zero buildings. These missions are behaviors, education, research, and the third mission.

University for sustainability: the central role of the net zero carbon built environment

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From a scenario analysis to think structurally about the challenges that universities might face in the long run, an interesting characterization of the typological identity found emerges: there are universities with an orientation mainly close to society (open to life acting as a financially strong cooperative partner), universities rather distant from society (conservative maintaining a niche existence) and universities with a mainly instrumental role (market-oriented generating profitable knowledge) (Barth et al. 2011).

The Committee for International Cooperation (CIC) highlighted that universities’ commitment to sustainability is academic and involves its three missions: Education, Research, and Third Mission, and it is not implementable separately by the interested actors (del mar Alonso-Almeida et al. 2015).

The scientific work carried out by the DADI-Vanvitelli and ANEA research groups as part of the Project “Mediterranean University as Catalyst for Eco-Sustainable Renovation” (MedEcoSuRe), funded by the European Union under the ENI CBC MED Program, focuses on the environmental aspects of sustainability, in particular the management of energy and natural resources in university buildings.

In WP4—Policy and Project tools for Energy Efficiency retrofit in Higher Education Buildings, DADI-Vanvitelli research group different analyzed and compared some university sustainability assessment methodologies in order to extrapolate the most effective indicators to assess the environmental and energy performance of existing buildings, not only to highlight the truly virtuous buildings, but also to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the university building stock in order to implement the most appropriate renovation strategies that would be able to make them sustainable in the fullest sense of the term. According to the Renovation Wave Strategy, these strategies are intended to improve not only the energy performance of buildings but also the quality of life of people who live in and use university buildings. This is consistent with what was already stated by the Stockholm Declaration (1972) and reiterated by the Talloires Declaration (1990), which advocated the direct correlation between people and their living/studying/working environment, giving university buildings a key educating role in achieving environmental sustainability.

2 Tools for Assessment of Sustainability in Universities

The international strategies promoted by the European Green Deal and the New European Bauhaus lead us to question the environmental energy performance of the built heritage. If carbon neutral buildings are to be our goal in 2050, we need to understand: what is the current carbon footprint of university buildings? And how can we measure it? Almost all the investigated tools deal with the theme in a complex way, not separating the environmental energy assessment of the built environment from the ways of using it and from the awareness taught in these places of knowledge, giving strength to the concept that the habitat in which the human being lives, conditions in a biunivocal way his behaviors.

However, in many cases, there is a strong gap between the sustainability taught in the different courses of study, and the real performance (in terms of ecological footprint) of the buildings where they take place. For this reason, a series of operational tools, tested in different cultural areas of the world, have been studied in order to highlight not only the recurring non-negligible features, but also the strategies to enhance the best practices to implement a Cross Border Strategic Plan for University Building Retrofitting (WP 4.2). The research highlighted that several tools for assessing the sustainability of universities have been developed around the world over the past two decades.

Dalal-Clayton and Bass (2002) describe three main approaches to measure and analyze sustainability:

  • Accounts (raw data that are then converted to a common unit: monetary, area or energy),

  • Narrative assessments (that combine text, maps, graphics and tabular data and might use indicators),

  • Indicator-based.

Indicator-based appraisal is certainly preferable for tackling the sustainability assessment challenge of university buildings. This kind of approach involves a comprehensive process of prioritization and ensures better strategy advancement, performance follows up and genuine decision-making and most importantly describes strengths and weaknesses (Adenle et al. 2020).

In most of the instruments analyzed, the indicators are generally divided into thematic categories, which attempt to assess, through multi-objective (qualitative–quantitative) criteria, all the aspects that make a University more or less sustainable. Usually, the indicators should cover the entire system to address: Education (referring to Courses and Curricula), Research, Campus operations, Community outreach and Assessment and reporting (Lozano 2006).

In the MedEcoSuRe research project, net zero carbon buildings assume a central role in this quadrilateral of convergence toward sustainability (Fig. 41.1), promoting cross-sector dialogue between institutions on sustainability and stimulating environmentally conscious behavior and learning.

In the United States, for the past two decades, academics and environmentalists have sought to evaluate places of knowledge based on their sustainable practices and policies, primarily through the tools proposed by three organizations: Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), The Princeton Review and Sierra Club (Albis 2017). Among the tools developed, the one proposed by AASHE (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System™–STARS®) is one of the most exhaustive, as well as being one of the first assessment systems specifically geared to assessing the sustainability of universities (Adenle 2020). This is a voluntary and transparent self-assessment framework, active since 2006, based on a well-structured set of indicators and used to assess a wide range of actions from energy use to transportation, procurement to academic offerings in the field of sustainability, against six main categories: Institutional Characteristics, Academics, Engagement, Operations, Planning and Administration and Innovation and Leadership. Instead, the Princeton Review, which publishes an annual green guide with rankings of America's sustainable universities (see https://www.princetonreview.com/press/green-guide/press-release-2022), assigns the score through a Green Rating. In the questionnaire administered to students, the questions regarding the energy-environmental performance of buildings are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Are school buildings that were constructed or underwent major renovations in the past three years LEED certified?

  2. 2.

    Does the school have a formal plan to mitigate its greenhouse gas emissions?

  3. 3.

    What percentage of the school’s energy consumption is derived from renewable resources?

Therefore, Princeton Review includes more energy-related questions than any other topic (Albis 2017).

Assessing the efforts made toward sustainable development by universities is also covered by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI): a voluntary tool, born in a predominantly corporate environment (Hahn and Kühnen 2013), which offers a comprehensive set of standards for reporting impacts related to the three dimensions, economic, environmental and social, aimed at 40 different sectors, divided into 4 main groups. Universities belong to Group 4: Other services and light manufacturing–Educational services Education services at all levels, including online education. This tool can also be used by universities (Lozano 2011), to communicate to the outside community how they address the dual mission of providing students with new skills to create a more sustainable society and reducing the environmental impact of their activities. In this second mission, the role of buildings and how they are designed, upgraded and managed takes on strategic importance. Although at the global university level the adoption of reporting standards through the GRI framework is not yet sufficiently widespread, European universities can still be considered pioneers in the adoption of such standards (del mar Alonso-Almeida et al. 2015).

3 Approach and Methodology

The critical and contextualized analysis of the main tools for assessing the sustainability of universities was carried out in order to:

  • extrapolate more-representative indicators, to evaluate the energy-environmental performance of university buildings,

  • attribute a weight to each indicator in relation to the role that sustainability of the built environment has in relation to the global rating,

  • highlight, with a SWOT analysis, the critical elements, bringing out the significant aspects not yet evaluated,

  • select other evaluation indicators for the aspects that have not been evaluated,

  • analyze the criterion of connection between the tools to assess global sustainability,

  • obtain a Rating system for sustainable buildings.

The SMART approach (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Limited in Time) (Alshuwaikhat et al. 2017) is the basis of the methodology for selecting indicators, made particularly laborious by the great complexity and interdependence of energy-environmental phenomena and socioeconomic impacts with which the tool must measure itself (Fig. 41.2).

Fig. 41.2
An infographic represents various logos of energy institutions. It also enlists the components of the SMART approach, namely, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and limited in time. At the bottom, there is a 6-step process of energy management.

The SMART approach in the structure of the MedEcoSuRe workshop

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The main macro-categories of indicators considered relevant refer to: energy use (for heating, cooling, ventilation, domestic hot water production and lighting), waste management, water resource management, air quality and integration of renewable energy sources. The indicators of effectiveness, referring to the above categories, are specifically selected in order to:

  1. 1.

    contribute to the pursuit of specific objectives (quantified if they lend themselves to quantification);

  2. 2.

    be consistent with proposed actions/strategies;

  3. 3.

    monitor the status of implementation of actions/strategies in terms of physical results, outcomes and, if possible, impact at the appropriate level;

  4. 4.

    contemplate economic and social implications.

For this reason, a prescriptive taxonomy of objectives is not possible, nor it is possible to provide a univocal indication of the indicators that must be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed actions. Instead, the recommendation is to univocally identify the limits of validity of the selected indicators. This will allow the start of a comparison of certain interest and legitimacy in the perspective of a consolidation and improvement of the programming action of eco-oriented actions of the universities.

From the analysis of the assessment tools, it emerges that a point of weakness is certainly the applicability of the same tool in different contexts, even if under similar conditions and purposes. Climatic and geomorphologic conditions, but also the binding legislative context and local government policies dictate the rules of use of economic and environmental resources.

During the International Workshop “Energy Efficiency Action Plan in the Higher Education Building Sector”, organized by DADI-Vanvitelli within the MedEcoSure Project, the challenge was not so much to analyze as to compare the energy-environmental performance of three pilot buildings, located in Italy, Palestine and Tunisia, using the same assessment tool. Similarly, in the choice of retrofit interventions to improve the existing performance, the knowledge of the local building systems, of the relevant technical and historical elements and of the local technological culture has been fundamental, guiding, with technical sensitivity, the proposed design solutions in relation to the perception of the cultural/architectural value intrinsically present in the studied buildings.

4 Results: Analytical, Propositional and Debate Aspects

The literature review of the major tools indicated that the most comprehensive tool for assessing building performance is Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating Systems (STARS®). Only Sustainability index Model–DPSEEA (Waheed et al. 2011), Sustainable Campus Assessment System (SCAS) (Hokkaido University 2013) and STARS® have extensively included spatial indicators at both indicator and sub-indicator levels (Adenle et al. 2020).

The indicators used by STARS® to assess the energy-environmental performance of university buildings, and the use of renewable energy, are contained in the Operation category and are listed in Table 41.1, where for each credit are indicated Points available, Applicable to, Minimum requirement (Table 41.1).

Table 41.1 Credit, applicability, criteria and scoring in STARS® 2.2 Technical Manual
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With respect to indicators OP3 and OP4, the score is attributed, according to STARS® 2.2 Technical Manual, to the buildings that were constructed or underwent major renovations (in the previous five years) were designed and built in accordance with a published green building code, policy/guideline and/or rating system.

Green building codes, policies/guidelines and rating systems may be:

  • Multi-attribute

  • Single-attribute: focusing predominantly on one aspect of sustainability such as energy/water efficiency, human health and well-being, or sustainable sites.

Third-party certification under a multi-attribute green building rating system developed/administered by a WorldGBC member Green Building Council (GBC) is weighted more heavily for scoring purposes (Table 41.2).

Table 41.2 Relation between credit ad rating system in STARS® 2.2 Technical Manual
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“Each rating system also has criteria related to LEED/sustainable certified buildings. STARS and Sierra Club go as far to measure percentage of certified sustainable building space” (Albis 2017).

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) uses the following indicators to assess energy sustainability:

  • GRI 302-1 Energy consumed within the organization

  • GRI 302-2 Energy consumed outside the organization

  • GRI 302-3 Energy intensity

  • GRI 302-4 Reduction in energy consumption

  • GRI 302-5 Reduction in the energy requirements of products and services.

The Green Metric, promoted in 2010 by the University of Indonesia and whose reference for Italy is the University of Bologna, was also studied as part of the research. This tool groups indicators into six macro-categories to which a specific weight is attributed:

  1. 1.

    Setting and Infrastructure (15%)

  2. 2.

    Energy and Climate Change (21%)

  3. 3.

    Waste management (18%)

  4. 4.

    Water use (10%)

  5. 5.

    Means of transport (18%)

  6. 6.

    Education and research (18%).

Within the Italian Network of Sustainable Universities (RUS), a simplified methodology based on the verification of some minimum requirements related to automation, energy, water, indoor comfort, lighting and security, developed by the Energy Working Group of RUS, coordinated by the Polytechnic of Turin, and has been adopted.

Assessing the sustainability of university buildings has to take into account multiple aspects that relate not only to the environmental and functional performance of buildings, but also to direct user satisfaction (providing a safe, healthy, comfortable environment for students, teachers and staff).

The evaluation of environmental and functional performance of educational buildings should ensure that the effectiveness of buildings is maximized not just in terms of occupancy costs but also with respect to user satisfaction (Ekekezie et al. 2021).

However, the analysis of the analyzed tools showed that the centrality of the direct user and his perception of sustainability and comfort is not among the evaluation indicators. Moreover, the evaluation of the green potential of the building, that can be defined as the “capacity to refurbish a conventional building into a green building (green refurbishment) through architectural interventions” (Ben Avraham and Capeluto 2011) is delegated to other assessment tools.

In light of these considerations, in the MedEcoSuRe research we see the need to

  • investigation of direct users: identification of critical issues in relation to specific modes of use

  • verification phase of the green potential of buildings.

In fact, the research considered multiple aspects concerning not only the environmental and functional performance of buildings, but also the direct satisfaction of users (providing a safe, healthy and comfortable environment for students, teachers and staff) and the strategies to manage energy, water, green and material resources during the operational phase (Xue et al. 2020).

A questionnaire was administered to the students based on indicators both related to indoor environmental quality (air quality, temperature, ventilation, room acoustics, natural and artificial lighting) and related to obvious performance/functional deficiencies of the building as directly encountered by the end user. These aspects played an important part of the Participatory Energy Audit (Violano et al. 2021) in which students were involved during the workshop. However, it was not possible to collect all the data necessary for a thorough evaluation because the workshop took place during the COVID-19 pandemic and the students were not allowed to attend the university continuously and under normal conditions to do an appropriate direct evaluation. For this reason, the research work has been delayed and is currently in progress.

5 Conclusions

Among the many aspects that affect the environmental and functional performance of buildings, the research also brought out the need to consider the satisfaction of direct users (providing a safe, healthy and comfortable environment for students, teachers and staff). In fact, evaluating the energy and environmental performance of places of knowledge should ensure that the effectiveness of buildings is maximized not only in terms of occupancy costs, but also with respect to user satisfaction (Ekekezie et al. 2021). Providing a fundamental tool to support the decision-maker (energy manager), this user satisfaction analysis should help identify functional and environmental inadequacies of building performance in universities, and most importantly, it should be aimed at improving the quality of life of people living in and using university buildings.

This research yielded three significant findings. It analyzed and discretized several possible approaches to assessing the sustainability of universities, comparing some of the most widely used tools. Second, it has unequivocally shown that the way buildings are designed (energy and environmental performance) is relevant to overall sustainability. Finally, it provides methodological indications for the decision-maker (primarily the Energy Manager) in the energy and environmental upgrading of university buildings, proposing criteria for defining priorities both in the choice of interventions and in the buildings on which to intervene.

In conclusion, the green transition requires the improvement of the quality of the built environment by incorporating the principles of sustainability (Humblet et al. 2010), the creation of healthy living and learning environments by establishing policies and regulations that encourage sustainable practices in daily activities and decision-making processes (Alsharif et al. 2020) and a reduction of environmental impacts that depend directly on the policies and actions of universities (Creighton 1998). Guidance can be derived from this analysis to support administrators and energy managers in both assessing priorities for action and the best strategies that can be implemented.