Building Low Carbon Campus In China-Case Study Of Fudan University

Facing the great challenge of global climate change, more and more countries pay high attentions on the impact of greenhouse gases emissions and make efforts to reduce them. The Chinese government has issued a number of relevant policies and regulations, and organizations and institutions at all levels in China have actively carried out energy-saving and carbon reduction activities. A campus of university/school is a community where students and staff study, work and live. Building a low carbon campus can not only make achievements of cost cutting and environmental protection, but also promote the education on energy saving and carbon reduction. More importantly, the low carbon activities can also be extended beyond the campus and introduced to the whole society.The research explores the energy consumption and the energy-related behavior of students and staff in Fudan campus. Regarding the facts that 75% of the total energy is consumed by campus buildings in Fudan and all energy use in buildings are electricity consumption, the buildings on Handan sub-campus are selected as research samples for assessing the electricity performance. The impact of behavioral aspects on electricity use is highlighted and explored, and the baselines of electricity use and carbon emissions are worked out based on the assessment of electricity performance. A concept of low-carbon campus is formed and the low carbon management system is established with the functions of sharing the information, providing the advice and guiding the activities on energy saving and carbon reduction among students and staff. The main objective of the system is to encourage every individual students and staff to make commitments to take environmentally friendly behavior changes and build a low carbon campus through the cost-effective measures.In order to establish a sound low-carbon campus management system, the priority is to analyze the energy consumption associated with individual behavior, which can be mainly categorized in six areas:lighting; computer using, air conditioning, driving, water consuming and solid waste recycling. An extreme assumption method is adopted for evaluating the energy saving measures in these six areas in Fudan University. The result of research shows that 1,236 tons of carbon reduction could be achieved within one year in Handan sub-campus by students and stuff behavior change only. Specific behavioral energy-saving measures are made in the paper. The low carbon campus management system mainly aims to achieve the carbon reduction target cost-effectively through personal awareness raising and behavioral change. The system will be useful for not only building the low carbon campus in Fudan University, but also for developing the low carbon sustainability in other communications in China.