The University of Edinburgh has refused to release information to The Student
regarding the carbon emissions that the Teviot Row reconstruction is producing
based on “public interest.”
The refusal comes as part of a wider Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by The Student into the University’s climate policy since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The university argued that, under the terms of the Environmental Information
Regulation Act (EIR) 2004, the public interest of the University’s functions not being disrupted, and there not being a diversion of resources, outweighed the public interest of transparency because the University said it does not hold an estimate of the emissions associated with the reconstruction of Teviot Row House.
Because the University says most of these emissions fall under “Scope 3” emissions, these are harder to calculate because they are indirect emissions within their supply chains.
This was despite the University delaying its response to the question posed in The Student’s FOI request regarding Teviot Row by 2 weeks, which meant it exceeded the 20-working-day window in which a public body must respond to an FOI request.
Under the terms of the EIR, which has the same procedure as the Freedom of
Information Scotland Act (FOISA), only a request’s complexity and volume permit a 20-working-day extension to respond if it is deemed impractical to respond within 20 working days to the original request.
The University did not provide a reason why it decided to exceed the 20-working-day deadline and apologised to The Student for the delayed response.
The response comes amid rising carbon emissions the University is producing since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The University set itself an ambitious target in 2016 that it would reach net-zero by 2040, but its absolute carbon emissions has increased from 65,754 (tCO2) in 2021 to 78,720 (tCO2) in 2024.
To an extent, this increase is natural because of the pandemic, but emissions have
been steadily increasing since 2021.
In its latest annual report, the University said that it was facing challenges with buildings not designed for a carbon-neutral agenda, which would be expensive to change, and the energy-intensive nature of its research and commitment to run national facilities such as supercomputers on behalf of the UK.
The University was unable to provide information regarding the carbon emissions which its research produces because “there is no way of isolating this calculation to just research activities.”
However, the University says it has installed 905 kW of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on 18 buildings across the estate, as well as operating a 1.5MW solar farm at the Easter Bush campus, which supplies renewable electricity to five properties.
The University also said that 30 per cent of its electricity demand is supplied by on-site combined heat and power generation through a recovery of “waste heat” from university-produced electricity that is fossil-fuel based.
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