IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v10y2018i9p3250-d169258.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Universities as Models of Sustainable Energy-Consuming Communities? Review of Selected Literature

Author

Listed:
  • Milad Mohammadalizadehkorde

    (Department of Geography, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA)

  • Russell Weaver

    (Department of Geography, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA)

Abstract

Given the prominent position of academia in sustainability studies and sustainability science, it is natural to want to look to universities as models of (or keepers of knowledge about) sustainable practices—including practices related to energy consumption. Nevertheless, there is a long history of and literature on universities failing to implement their own sustainability initiatives. Apart from typical justifications for implementation failure that include budget constraints and financial infeasibility, one of the main obstacles that consistently keeps universities from achieving their own sustainability-related goals is a lack of enforcement. More precisely, universities tend to codify their sustainability-related goals in non-binding declarations that are voluntary. In that respect, failure to achieve a goal does not result in any sort of formal sanction. As such, universities are free to claim a commitment to sustainability in their public communications, without having to consistently and persistently demonstrate that commitment in practice. Situated on this backdrop, the present review paper aims to concisely and selectively stitch together three streams of literature: (1) the rationale for sustainability and, by extension, sustainable energy consumption, in higher education; (2) the current state of sustainability planning and its (in)efficacy in institutions of higher education; and (3) effective practices for reducing energy consumption at scales comparable to university campuses.

Suggested Citation

  • Milad Mohammadalizadehkorde & Russell Weaver, 2018. "Universities as Models of Sustainable Energy-Consuming Communities? Review of Selected Literature," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-17, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:9:p:3250-:d:169258
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3250/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3250/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard S. J. Tol, 2014. "Correction and Update: The Economic Effects of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(2), pages 221-226, Spring.
    2. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808.
    3. Zhao, Hai-xiang & Magoulès, Frédéric, 2012. "A review on the prediction of building energy consumption," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 3586-3592.
    4. Saidur, R., 2010. "A review on electrical motors energy use and energy savings," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 877-898, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas Hoppe & Gerdien De Vries, 2018. "Social Innovation and the Energy Transition," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-13, December.
    2. Elena-ClaudiaSerban & Anca-Maria Hristea & ?tefania-Cristina Curea & Raluca-Florentina Cretu, 2020. "Sustainable Universities, from Indifference to Joint Action – A Panel Data Analysis," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 22(54), pages 376-376, April.
    3. Goldfischer, Oren & Kissinger, Meidad & Riemer, Raziel, 2024. "An integrated consumption and production framework for analysing institutional greenhouse gas mitigation potential," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    4. Anirban Chakraborty & Sumit Kumar & L. S. Shashidhara & Anjali Taneja, 2021. "Building Sustainable Societies through Purpose-Driven Universities: A Case Study from Ashoka University (India)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-20, July.
    5. Enrique C. Quispe & Miguel Viveros Mira & Mauricio Chamorro Díaz & Rosaura Castrillón Mendoza & Juan R. Vidal Medina, 2025. "Energy Management Systems in Higher Education Institutions’ Buildings," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(7), pages 1-35, April.
    6. Magdalena Iordache Platis & Joanna Romanowicz, 2020. "Integrating Energy Saving Awareness into Student Engagement-Based Teaching and Learning Process," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-18, November.
    7. Kourgiozou, Vasiliki & Commin, Andrew & Dowson, Mark & Rovas, Dimitrios & Mumovic, Dejan, 2021. "Scalable pathways to net zero carbon in the UK higher education sector: A systematic review of smart energy systems in university campuses," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nick Hanley & Louis Dupuy & Eoin McLaughlin, 2015. "Genuine Savings And Sustainability," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 779-806, September.
    2. Arrow, Kenneth J. & Dasgupta, Partha & Goulder, Lawrence H. & Mumford, Kevin J. & Oleson, Kirsten, 2012. "Sustainability and the measurement of wealth," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 317-353, June.
    3. Hoberg, Nikolai & Baumgärtner, Stefan, 2017. "Irreversibility and uncertainty cause an intergenerational equity-efficiency trade-off," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 75-86.
    4. Koji Tokimatsu & Louis Dupuy & Nick Hanley, 2019. "Using Genuine Savings for Climate Policy Evaluation with an Integrated Assessment Model," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(1), pages 281-307, January.
    5. Kaitlyn Spangler & Roslynn Brain McCann & Rafter Sass Ferguson, 2021. "(Re-)Defining Permaculture: Perspectives of Permaculture Teachers and Practitioners across the United States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-12, May.
    6. Joaquín Bernal-Ramírez & Jair Ojeda-Joya & Camila Agudelo-Rivera & Felipe Clavijo-Ramírez & Carolina Durana-Ángel & Clark Granger-Castaño & Daniel Osorio-Rodríguez & Daniel Parra-Amado & José Pulido &, 2022. "Impacto macroeconómico del cambio climático en Colombia," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, issue 102, pages 1-62, July.
    7. Maddison, David & Rehdanz, Katrin, 2011. "The impact of climate on life satisfaction," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 2437-2445.
    8. CHEN, Helen S.Y., 2020. "Designing Sustainable Humanitarian Supply Chains," OSF Preprints m82ar, Center for Open Science.
    9. Denise Ravet, 2011. "Lean production: the link between supply chain and sustainable development in an international environment," Post-Print hal-00691666, HAL.
    10. Mara Del Baldo, 2012. "Corporate social responsibility and corporate governance in Italian SMEs: the experience of some “spirited businesses”," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 16(1), pages 1-36, February.
    11. Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell & Trinh, Trong-Anh, 2022. "Energy poverty, temperature and climate change," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    12. Oliver Schenker, 2013. "Exchanging Goods and Damages: The Role of Trade on the Distribution of Climate Change Costs," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 54(2), pages 261-282, February.
    13. Michael Howes & Liana Wortley & Ruth Potts & Aysin Dedekorkut-Howes & Silvia Serrao-Neumann & Julie Davidson & Timothy Smith & Patrick Nunn, 2017. "Environmental Sustainability: A Case of Policy Implementation Failure?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-17, January.
    14. Parnphumeesup, Piya & Kerr, Sandy A., 2011. "Stakeholder preferences towards the sustainable development of CDM projects: Lessons from biomass (rice husk) CDM project in Thailand," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 3591-3601, June.
    15. Chin-Shan Lu & Kuo-Chung Shang & Chi-Chang Lin, 2016. "Examining sustainability performance at ports: port managers’ perspectives on developing sustainable supply chains," Maritime Policy & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(8), pages 909-927, November.
    16. Kebede, Yohannes, 1993. "The Limits to Common Resource Management: The Bypassed Commons or Commons without Tragedy," MPRA Paper 662, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 May 1993.
    17. John Stanley & Janet Stanley, 2023. "Improving Appraisal Methodology for Land Use Transport Measures to Reduce Risk of Social Exclusion," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-18, August.
    18. Shen, Yuxuan & Pan, Yue, 2023. "BIM-supported automatic energy performance analysis for green building design using explainable machine learning and multi-objective optimization," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    19. Richard Tol, 2011. "Regulating knowledge monopolies: the case of the IPCC," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 108(4), pages 827-839, October.
    20. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:9:p:3250-:d:169258. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.