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In 2009, Duke University created the first university-based offsets program in the United States, and Sustainable Duke is responsible for developing and implementing the University's strategy for meeting its neutrality commitment by 2024. In pursuit of this goal, Sustainable Duke strives to showcase Duke University as a model for achieving climate neutrality and pass along the lessons learned through project successes and failures, implementation tools, and educational resources to ease project development within the academic community. Duke retired, or used, 232,000 offsets from four different projects to reach neutrality in 2024. Read more about Duke's 2024 carbon offsets portfolio.
Duke University's Approach to Offsets
Duke University rigorously evaluated and purchased carbon offsets to help meet its 2024 carbon neutrality goal. Duke has experience developing its own, small-scale carbon offset projects ranging from urban forestry to swine waste-to-energy. These pilot projects are foundational to Duke’s approach to carbon offsets by gaining first-hand expertise through researching and managing projects within the carbon market. Leveraging this experience led to the implementation of a responsible carbon offsetting strategy that prioritizes real, additional emissions reductions from high-quality projects.
This strategy is a part of the reduce, renew, offset framework that has guided the university’s approach to carbon neutrality in 2024. This framework focuses first on quantifying and reducing Duke’s own emissions as much as possible, followed by investing in renewable energy to the extent logistically and financially feasible. Only once these first two efforts have been exhausted should carbon offsets be used to address the emissions remaining in the university’s GHG accounting.
Operating within an academic institution, meaningful collaborations with students, faculty, and staff have been key to expanding understanding of the carbon market, carbon offset projects, and how offsets can be responsibly used to combat climate change. Serving as clients on masters projects and the Design Climate program, leading Bass Connections projects, and presenting in classes and at academic conferences, collaboration with faculty and students around carbon offsets has always been a priority.
Duke used a portfolio approach to purchase carbon offsets from a wide variety of projects, which reduces risk when compared to investing in fewer projects. Different offset project types reduce different greenhouse gas types (e.g. methane or nitrous oxides), confer varying types and levels of co-benefits, and involve differing levels of risk to the project’s continuation. Duke’s portfolio includes projects such as landfill gas destruction, swine waste-to-energy in North Carolina, community forestry, and the destruction of ozone depleting substances.
Why does Duke purchase carbon offsets?
Duke University is a complex institution that has a thriving physical campus, tens of thousands of employees, and many complex layers of infrastructure that make the research and education Duke is renowned for possible. Many of the activities necessary for Duke to fulfill its mission result in GHG emissions, including lighting and heating/cooling classrooms and labs, providing transportation to everyone on campus, and university scholars flying to conduct and present their research. Though Duke has made significant progress in reducing its GHG emissions, it is not currently possible for an institution of any size to feasibly reduce its own emissions to zero without carbon offsets.
Replacing internal combustion vehicles with electric vehicles, LED lighting retrofits, and steam-to-hot-water conversion are all examples of activities that reduce emissions and make Duke’s operations more sustainable, but still result in residual emissions. Duke has even taken responsibility for some emissions that it has little to no control over and result in large amounts of residual emissions, such as employee commuting (see Duke’s greenhouse gas emissions boundary). These emissions that are leftover even after Duke has made strides in reducing its own emissions are what carbon offsets are used to address.
Duke University uses an “offsets as a last resort” approach to carbon neutrality. This means that it first focuses on reducing emissions where possible, through projects like energy efficiency upgrades, steam to hot water conversion, and incentive programs. Duke University also invests in renewable energy, like the solar project, to reduce the impact of purchased electricity used on campus. However, the amount of renewable energy that the University can invest in is limited due to North Carolina’s energy regulations. Once these activities take place, there are still emissions leftover because the technology does not currently exist for Duke to get its emissions down to zero while maintaining necessary campus operations. This is where carbon offsets come into play. High-quality carbon offsets allow Duke to reach carbon neutrality through yearly purchases while still working on reduction projects that will reduce our reliance on offsets in the long-term.
Why doesn't Duke make its own carbon offsets?
Since 2009, Duke has researched dozens of project types and actually developed small-scale pilot projects including swine waste-to-energy, residential energy efficiency, urban tree plantings, regenerative animal grazing, and residential solar, all of which provided student research opportunities and strengthened relationships with local organizations and community members.
The carbon offset projects that Duke has developed allowed Duke to become well versed in the voluntary market and participate as more than a traditional buyer. The projects also provided invaluable student experience and research opportunities. The lessons learned from Duke-developed projects have informed larger-scale projects led by third-party offset developers. However, it is difficult for Duke to manage large-scale projects in a way that made financial sense for the institution. Therefore, Duke has pivoted its focus to evaluating and procuring carbon offsets, while still keeping an eye to the market for future development opportunities.
Duke’s Carbon Offset Evaluation Process
There are many projects of varying degrees of quality and legitimacy available for purchase in the voluntary offset market, where Duke operates. Duke considers offsets to be high-quality if they are from projects that occurred due to carbon offset financing with carbon reductions or removals that are long-term, and do not adversely impact local communities or people. To facilitate the evaluation of offset projects, Duke created a robust evaluation process to review all potential offset projects before purchase.
- Duke sends out a request-for-proposal (RFP) to carbon offset developers to source potential carbon offset projects that meet Duke’s quality standards.
- Each project is reviewed through the evaluation tool to assess the quality of each project and screen for red flags. The evaluation tool was created in partnership with an independent offset verifier. It primarily looks at additionality, transparency, permanence, measurability, and leakage.
- Any project that meets Duke’s quality standards is presented to Duke’s Offset Advisory Committee, which is composed of student, staff, and faculty representatives, for expert review.
- Offset projects that make it past the Advisory Committee are then brought to the Executive Committee, which includes VPs of Facilities, Operations, Finance and Climate. The Executive Committee makes the final decision to purchase offsets from a particular project or not.
- If the Executive Committee approves the project, Duke facilities the purchase of the carbon offsets.