This report seeks to understand a basic measure of students' carbon footprints and the consequent social cost of carbon at Reed College. We estimate that the average student’s carbon footprint is approximately 9.00 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, for a social cost of carbon of $459 - $1,665, using data on gas consumption, electrical usage, and travel information. Based on these findings, we recommend that Reed College institute a sustainability plan that brings more attention to how individuals’ consumptive behavior impacts their carbon footprint and to change policies to allow students to remain on campus during summer and winter breaks. As it can be challenging to ascertain student’s carbon footprints, due to the communal nature of university living, we also created an rShiny interactive dashboard where students can calculate their own carbon footprint using the data collected in this paper.
Reed College Instituional Research Board : Reed College student home zipcodes and number of students from each zipcode.
Reed College Environmental Sustainability Office : Usage of electricity, natural gas for the years of 2019, 2020, 2021.
The United States Enviornmental Protection Agency : Average CO2e emission from air, ground, electricity, gas and meat consumption.
The United States Interagency Working Group on the social cost of greenhouse gasses : 2020-2024 value of Social Cost of Carbon ($53).
Further Details on the sources can be found in the report.
Click here : Reed College CO2e emission sustainability dashboard
analysis.R has necessary wrangling and analysis materials for this project