Green Scorecard Launched

13th May 2016

The Green Scorecard has been officialy launched. See the official press release below: 

The Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE) has launched its first ever Green Scorecard in partnership with the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC). The Green Scorecard is designed to be a comprehensive tool to help Higher Education Institutions across the UK measure the sustainability work they do, set targets and benchmark.

AUDE members have long been committed to the sustainability agenda and for many years made a significant contribution to achieving a more sustainable HE sector, so ensuring estate teams have sector-wide accurate data is important to ensure continuing progress and innovation in achieving carbon reduction and other environmental sustainability targets.

The AUDE Green Scorecard has been designed independently by ARUP based on consultation and feedback from both AUDE and EAUC members to create a fit for purpose benchmarking, management and planning tool. It has been developed with flexibility to recognise and reflect the size, location and specific individual institutional specialisms.  The tool will focus on topics including energy; transport; water; waste; adaptation; biodiversity and landscape; procurement and management. Online reports in these areas can be produced to aid and inform the development of estates and environmental sustainability strategies.

Trevor Humphreys, Chair of AUDE said, “We are delighted to be piloting the new AUDE Green Scorecard. As an organisation, the sustainability agenda is one of our primary area of focus; the Scorecard will give us a very effective and transparent way to set targets, monitor performance, to showcase best practice and to highlight areas where we can improve. We have worked closely with EAUC to create an objective scorecard that will grow year on year and we are excited to develop our partnership further.”

Iain Patton, Chief Executive at EAUC said, “We are pleased to have worked with AUDE to develop the new scorecard.  It aims to provide the sector with assurance about the significant environmental progress that many universities have made and impetus to do more.  The AUDE Scorecard will make a key contribution to whole institution sustainability metrics which EAUC is leading”

The Green Scorecard is a toolkit which will use EMR data that all universities already produce for the annual institutional HESA (higher Education Statistics Return) and so a “do once approach” has been adopted in terms of data collection. The development of the tool was via extensive consultation with 150 AUDE and EAUC members across the country, culminating in a testing programme, with nine universities piloting the system to ensure its effectiveness. The Scorecard will be reviewed on an annual basis, in order to keep the data set properly focused on the work of constituent universities.

Keith Lilley, Director of Estates and Facilities Management at the University of Sheffield commented, “We have been through a rigorous consultation programme. The purpose of using the Green Scorecard is primarily to properly reflect the sustainability work and performance of universities throughout the UK. It allows universities to see how and where they can improve.”