Formulación de soluciones tecnológicas que mitiguen la huella de carbono en la Universidad Santo Tomás, sede Aguas Claras-Villavicencio

Abstract

With the present work, the quantification of greenhouse gases was carried out, through the different activities that take place in the University Santo Tomás campus Aguas-Claras, Villavicencio headquarters. As a first measure, it was carried out a previous diagnosis to delimit each one of the activities that can generate emissions inside the campus, taking into account both primary information, which was provided by the university, and secondary information, from external sources. The collection took into account data such as energy consumption by lights and EEE, waste generation and management, fuel consumption by power plants and cafeteria, corporate flights, air conditioning refrigerants and a survey previously conducted by two students of the faculty, on tertiary mobility. After collecting the information, the estimation and quantification method was chosen for the emissions inventory, where it was decided to use the documented emission factors, and in other cases, referenced calculation tools, to obtain the result of the emissions as a whole for the calculation of the carbon footprint for the year 2019. According to the quantification made, the carbon footprint for 2019 was 1084.62 Ton CO2 eq, where the largest amount of emissions is represented in scope 3, by the tertiary mobility, where a result of 863.39 Ton CO2 eq was obtained, and the least amount of emissions was in scope 1, represented by the use of refrigerants with a total of 0.57 Ton CO2 eq. Taking into account the above, 11 strategies were proposed, viable both in the short and long term, where 3 of them correspond to technological proposals regarding energy consumption, with their respective associated costs, and relevant characteristics, if this type of strategies were to be implemented. For this reason, the quantification of emissions by means of emission inventories is a practical and viable way to optimize the activities within the campus, which generate the largest emission sources.