These numbers are remarkable, in particular because the number of University employees has increased by 200 since the publication of the first sustainability report and the KU uses more building space today. The most recent measures that have contributed to this development include the modernization of the lecture hall lighting at the Ingolstadt School of Management with LED technology and switching off the ventilation systems in lecture halls during semester breaks.
Overall, annual CO2 emissions have also fallen considerably over the past seven years. Especially the transition to renewable energies for the energy supply for electricity and heat has played a major role here: While CO2 emissions at the KU were just under 2,000 tons per year in 2011, they could be reduced to as little as 500 tons in 2018. In addition, paper consumption was reduced by another six percent between 2016 and 2017 to 23 tons thanks to the use of book scanners in the libraries or through process optimization in accounting.
In addition to numbers and data from the KU’s campus management departments, the new report also gives an insight into the diverse sustainability activities in the field of research and teaching at the KU. They range from projects investigating the consequences of climate change in the Alps over education for sustainable development in university teaching to the conceptualization of an exhibition’s course on sustainability for the Bavarian garden show Landesgartenschau Ingolstadt. It also introduces student initiatives, networks and collaborations as well as projects in connection with dialog and transfer on sustainability – such as, for example, the lecture series on sustainable agriculture or the project on the encyclical “Laudato Si”.
The KU’s sustainability report is available in German and can be downloaded at www.ku.de/nachhaltigkeit.