An investigation into the relationship between the extent of climate change research and climate change action in universities

Universities and affiliated research institutions produce a significant portion of climate change data. Researching at the bleeding edge of human understanding, they not only provide the data on climate change, but the means to face it. However, although some universities prioritize funding for climate change and preach urgent action and education, do they take measures themselves to reduce their own negative impact?

Various Ontario Universities were analyzed based on publicly accessible data on public grants, total funding, student population, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The data was plotted using five-year moving averages to reduce local discrepancies. K-means analysis divided the data into four clusters of GHG per capita emitters. It was found that institutions that allocated relatively little funding varied in the per capita GHG emissions.

However, it was discovered that universities who had more research funding allocated to climate change research had consistently lower emissions; all such universities fell into the two lowest emission clusters, and those with the highest funding into the lowest. This seems to suggest that some though not all universities are reducing their footprint regardless of how much they invest into climate change research, yet those who do put an emphasis on climate change research consistently have lower per capita GHG emissions. This finding adds credibility to the data coming from institutions that invest significantly into climate change research, and is a victory for climate change education.