York University
OP-1: Emissions Inventory and Disclosure

From the York University Ecological Footprint Initiative Report:

This report accounts for greenhouse gas emissions, and Ecological Footprint, attributable to York University from fiscal years 2016 to 2020. This period was chosen as an approximate pre-covid-19 pandemic baseline, with the pandemic affecting activities only in the last two months of fiscal 2020. Greenhouse gas emissions are mostly carbon dioxide but also include other greenhouse gasses, which are measured in units of equivalence to carbon dioxide. Across all scopes, and starting with emissions, we attempted to obtain as much directly measured data as possible, in physical units, with a fallback of applying emission intensities to university expenses. We differentiated emissions into mutually exclusive categories that related to specific activities and purposes and categories of persons, to help understand the potential for affecting emissions in the future. We developed an accounting framework informed by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, developed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and World Resources Institute (2022). This protocol is an emerging global standard for scoping and categorizing emissions from entities in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors. Our framework aligns with their protocol to categorize emissions into one of three scopes with a further distinction of whether indirect emissions are upstream versus downstream of York University.

Scope 1 - From facilities and equipment owned or controlled by York - Direct
Scope 2 - From York's purchase of electricity from the electrical grid - Indirect emissions
Scope 3 - From commuting and York purchases and reimbursements that are not counted within scope 1 or scope 2 - Indirect emissions
Scope 3 - From non-York entities using York-owned assets, including commercial activities on campuses, and York investments’ scope 1+2 emissions - Indirect emissions

This report accounts for greenhouse gas emissions, and Ecological Footprint, attributable to York University from fiscal years 2016 to 2020. Greenhouse gas emissions are mostly carbon dioxide but also include other greenhouse gasses, which are comparable in units of carbon dioxide equivalents.
Ecological Footprint is a measure of the area of land and water needed to sequester carbon emissions plus the areas used to provide food and renewable materials, plus the area occupied by buildings and
infrastructure. The 5-year period ending with fiscal year 2020 was chosen as an approximate pre-covid-19 pandemic baseline, with the pandemic affecting activities only in the last two months of that fiscal
year, which ended on April 30.
This report documents the accounting logic, methodology, assumptions, and parameters used to generate results. Results were generated from a relational database that was developed to systematize
the integration and reconciliation and cleaning of multiple datasets. A sample of results are presented in this report, at an aggregated level and with detailed breakouts that were assumed to be helpful to
understand the distribution of emissions by purpose and by stakeholder.
Even though the measurement of Ecological Footprint does not relate to regulatory requirements, or to a targeted reduction by York or by Ontario or Canada, the consideration of Ecological Footprint helps to
demonstrate York’s broader interest in sustainability and York’s leadership in this measure of global significance. Altogether, and as a side benefit, this project developed and demonstrated capacity within York, and among the report’s authors, to undertake enterprise-wide emissions accounting.

The Ecological Footprint Initiative (EFI) is a York-based research, training and analytics hub that produces the National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts used around the world, plus fee-for-service work. The initiative is housed in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC).
Over the last three years, the Ecological Footprint Initiative at York has been working on a project to measure York’s carbon and ecological footprints during fiscal years 2016 – 2020. From the York University Ecological Footprint Initiative Report:

Scope 3 is a broad category that aims to account for emissions related to the full “value chain” of York’s interactions with other enterprises and its staff and students, through purchases, commuting, and the use of York-owned assets. Emissions in this scope can be further qualified as being either upstream, from York purchases and reimbursements and from commuting, or downstream from non-York entities using York-owned assets, including commercial activities on campuses and the returns from York investments. We applied emission intensities from Statistics Canada to estimate the emissions embodied within goods and services that York purchased or reimbursed and which were sold on campus. This was our best approximation to follow the logic of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol equating an entity’s scope 3 emissions to be equivalent to the sum of scope 1 plus 2 emissions of the enterprise’s upstream consumption.

Apart from mobility (air or ground travel and commuting), waste diversion, and investments, we estimated the rest of scope 3 emissions by relating York’s expenditures to one or more economic sectors involved in providing the good or service, from Statistics Canada’s list of sectors with recorded emission intensities. Statistics Canada publishes annual national average energy and emissions intensities attributable to 109 sectors covering business services, government, and non-profits serving households. Statistics Canada does not publish these on a provincial basis; we inquired about ordering a custom run of provincial (Ontario) intensities, but they declined to even quote us on the cost."