Carbon Footprint

The Commitment

Rice University is a signatory of the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment, and has set a target to become carbon neutral as a university by the year 2030. Rice adopted its first Climate Action Plan in September 2013, with fiscal year 2013 (July 1, 2012 – June 30, 2013) serving as the baseline by which to measure progress.

Carbon Footprint

A carbon footprint is the amount of carbon emissions associated with an individual, business, product, university, etc. Some aspects of a carbon footprint are easy to calculate from readily available data. Others require estimates.

The bulk of Rice’s carbon footprint comes from energy, specifically electricity and natural gas. Below is a summary of Rice’s carbon footprint.

Stacked area chart showing greenhouse gas emissions from 2010 to 2025 measured in metric tons of CO2e, with separate sections for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Total emissions peak around 2014 near 90,000 metric tons, decline through 2016, and then fluctuate with a notable drop in 2020 before gradually increasing again through 2024. A dashed vertical line at 2013 is labeled “Baseline.” Scope 1 emissions (blue) range roughly from 22,000 to 32,000 metric tons, while Scope 2 emissions (orange) range from about 40,000 to 55,000 metric tons. Notes on the right indicate Scope 1 emissions primarily come from natural gas, Scope 2 from purchased electricity, fugitive refrigerants are excluded, and Scope 3 emissions are not included.