Carbon Trust Standard Award

We are pleased to announce that the University has been awarded the Carbon Trust Standard.

The Carbon Trust Standard is a quality assurance process. In order to achieve the standard an organisation needs to have achieved an 'Actual' Absolute and/or Relative carbon reduction over a period of time (3 years in Durham's case) and demonstrate (providing evidence) of good energy/carbon management practices to an independent Carbon Trust assessor as part of a site audit.

The process of achieving the Carbon Trust Standard generally consists of:

The completion of a carbon emission software tool to demonstrate that an absolute/relative carbon saving have been achieved.
The completion of a detailed assessment form which considers many aspects of energy/carbon management in an organisation.
A rigorous site audit by an independent Carbon Trust Assessor to scrutinise/interrogate information provided in the assessment form and physically visit examples of energy saving initiatives around the University.
Submission of an 'Evidence Pack' against the Standard's performance criteria.
The CT Assessor to provide a report on the site audit, the information provided in the evidence pack, commentary of the University's specific and overall commitment and performance to energy/carbon management best practice against the Standard's criteria and a recommendation - this report goes to the CT Moderator to ensure consistency to the Standard is achieved.
The CT Moderator considers and advises if an organisation has/has not achieved the Standard.

There are two application routes on the assessment process:

1) The 'Assisted' route, whereby the CT Assessor assists the organisation in completing the assessment form, compiling the evidence pack etc. (inc. gap analysis) or,

2) The 'Unassisted' route, whereby the organisation effectively completes the assessment form and gathers/compiles the evidence themselves.

The University used the 'Unassisted' application route.

In recognition of achieving the 'Carbon Trust Standard' (which demonstrates that an organisation is adopting carbon management best practice) it achieves a 50% weighting in the CRC early action metric for year 1.

Further details on the 'Carbon Trust Standard' can be found on this web-link.http://www.carbontruststandard.com/pages/The-Standard