These are the UK unis responsible for the most carbon dioxide emissions

In case you hadn’t noticed: the world’s pretty much fucked. A catastrophic level of climate change is, essentially, locked in. Barring fantasy levels of international cooperation and emission reductions, things are going to be bad. But if you, personally, can’t do anything about it, at least you can hold a vaguely scornful opinion of your university.

To that end, we’ve ranked the 25 unis responsible for the most carbon emissions, using data from stats boffins HESA.

Edinburgh Uni is top of the pile – it was responsible for 63 million kilograms of CO2 emissions in 2019/20. Next up is Imperial College, churning out 55 million kilos.

The rankings take into account a university’s scope one and scope two carbon emissions. Scope one emissions are all direct emissions, while scope two are indirect emissions, created generating the electricity used by a university.

However, the rankings ignore the fact that many of these unis might be where the whizz-bang technological solution that saves Earth is developed, as well as the amount of unnecessary Fiat 500s driven to and from Surrey by a university’s students.

The 25 universities responsible for the most carbon emissions (Kg of CO2 emitted in 2019/20):

1. The University of Edinburgh: 63,016,465.78
2. Imperial College London: 55,590,473.84
3. The University of Cambridge: 53,923,630.24
4. University College London: 49,821,607.76
5. The University of Manchester: 49,377,117.79
6. The University of Oxford: 44,948,949.26
7. The University of Leeds: 43,660,594.69
8. The University of Liverpool: 39,272,244.09
9. University of Nottingham: 38,907,050.86
10. The University of Warwick: 37,795,219.67
11. The University of Glasgow: 31,050,108.98
12. The University of Bristol: 28,477,821.17
13. The University of Aberdeen: 26,174,476.41
14. King’s College London: 24,506,467.09
15. Cardiff University: 23,230,328.41
16. Newcastle University: 22,808,338.06
17. The University of Sheffield: 22,530,886.45
18. The University of Southampton: 22,478,176.74
19. University of Durham: 21,299,137.81
20. Queen’s University Belfast: 21,061,799.00
21. The University of Strathclyde: 20,734,540.06
22. Loughborough University: 18,642,000.95
23. The University of Dundee: 17,772,675.33
24. The University of York: 17,429,368.28
25. The University of Leicester: 17,020,948.57

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