Report: Colleges Reduce Emissions

Colleges and universities reduced their emissions by 13 percent per square foot between 2007 and 2014, according to a report released Wednesday.

Yet institutions made less progress in curbing energy use, which was down just 2 percent per square foot during the same period. The reason? Because most of the sustainability strides made by colleges in recent years have come from switching from coal and oil to natural gas, not from curbing overall usage.

These figures come from a report by Sightlines and the University of New Hampshire Sustainability Institute, which studied 343 colleges and universities with a combined 1.5 billion square feet of campus facilities across 44 states.