Bibliometric Analysis and Benchmarking of Life Cycle Assessment of Higher Education Institutions

Higher Education Institutions (HEI), such as Universities and Institutes worldwide, are making efforts and setting goals to assess and minimise their environmental impacts, and to become more sustainable. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been considered a powerful approach to deal with environmental impacts of products and services. Thus, in this paper, a bibliometric analysis was carried out to benchmark the sustainability of HEI in terms of key areas, impacts, and barriers. Results indicate that, although some HEI are concerned with sustainability, LCA has not been systematically adopted in their assessments, and the main focus is on the calculation of carbon emissions. The lack of available internal information and managing commitment are the main barriers to adopting LCA in HEI. In the few cases where LCA was considered, it was observed that differences in scopes, functional units, intensities, and data reliability hamper comparisons, and lead to biased conclusions. In the end of the paper, the results of some Portuguese HEI are provided and discussed, showing the need for a better understanding of environmental assessment results.

Automated summary

Higher education institutions (HEI) worldwide are striving to assess and minimize their environmental impacts for sustainability. This paper conducts a bibliometric analysis to benchmark the sustainability of HEI in terms of key areas, impacts, and barriers. The analysis reveals that HEI have not systematically adopted life cycle assessment (LCA) in their assessments, with a primary focus on carbon emissions calculation. Lack of internal information and managerial commitment are the main barriers to LCA adoption in HEI.