Staff & Operations

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that without the expertise and championing of professional staff dedicated to environmental sustainability, initiatives in universities are unlikely to be systematic, well-coordinated and resourced, or have significant long-term success.

People & Planet wishes to promote a whole university approach to sustainability, in which staff from across the university bring their varied skills and expertise to tackle sustainability.

Traditional digital infrastructure consumes vast amounts of energy, generates significant carbon emissions, and contributes to electronic waste, posing a serious challenge to globalsustainability goals. The advent of AI has added a new dimension to the environmental impact of digital infrastructure, which is why taking steps to address this has become all the more necessary.

Methodology links

Governance - senior staff

1. Is sustainability included within the portfolio of responsibilities of a member of the university senior management team?

Score 30%

Clarifications

  • Sustainability may be described by universities in a number of ways (environmental sustainability, sustainable development, environmental and ethical management or social and environmental responsibility are all acceptable definitions).

  • Senior management with responsibilities limited to energy, utilities or carbon management will not be accepted.

  • Senior management is defined as those sitting on the executive board.

  • We will look for the name and role of the senior manager responsible for sustainability at the university on the university website and will award scores only where it is clear that environmental sustainability is one of their areas of responsibility.

Dedicated and expert staff

2. Does the university have a dedicated sustainability department, or a sustainability committee that has a remit for setting and implementing the sustainability strategy of the organisation?

Score 50%

Clarifications

  • Committees should state in their terms of reference that they meet at least twice a year.

  • Both committees and departments must have at least one full time paid staff member dedicated to sustainability, excluding senior management staff from question 1



Digital Infrastructure

Score 20% (2.5% per action completed)

  • Transferred all datacentre services are powered by renewable electricity, without the use of offsets and have sustainability policies.

  • Included sustainability standards in the procurement agreements with server providers, such as the EMAS standards, ISO 14001, ISO 50001.

  • Published details of the specific measures taken to reduce data transfer of the website.

  • Produced a policy or guidance on measuring and reducing emissions from digital infrastructure.

  • Produced guidance on minimising energy consumption for staff and students.

  • Produced guidance on AI usage for staff and students that details the risks and recommended usage related to at least 1 of the following: Human accountability for output and declaring where AI has been used to generate output; Mental health risks from AI; Intelligence risks from AI use; Unreliability of AI output; Privacy risks from AI use; Loss of work from AI agent use; Legal risks of using AI; Climate implications of AI

  • Changed the default search engine in use by institution-controlled systems to a privacy and/or sustainability focussed alternative. e.g. Qwant, Ecosia, Duck Duck Go, LibreWolf, Waterfox

  • Produced a policy or guidance on minimising e-waste from hardware, printing processes or other sources.

Clarifications

  • People & Planet will expect to find this information on a dedicated webpage on digital infrastructure, or similar related page.

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