A 2009 Mobile Source Carbon Dioxide Emissions Inventory for the University of Central Florida

A mobile source carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions inventory for the University of Central Florida (UCF) has been completed. For a large urban university, more than 50% of the CO2 emissions can come from mobile sources, and the vast majority of mobile source emissions come from on-road sources: personal vehicles and campus shuttles carrying students, faculty, staff, and administrators to and from the university, as well as on university business trips. In addition to emissions from on-road vehicles, emissions from airplane-based business travel are significant, along with emissions from nonroad equipment such as lawnmowers, leaf blowers, and small maintenance vehicles utilized on campus. UCF has recently become one of the largest universities in the nation (with over 58,000 students enrolled in the fall 2011 semester) and emits a substantial amount of CO2 in the Central Florida area. For this inventory, students, faculty, staff, and administrators were first surveyed to determine their commuting distances and frequencies. Information was also gathered on vehicle type and age distribution of the personal vehicles of students, faculty, administrators, and staff, as well as their bus, car-pool, and alternate transportation usage. The latest U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-approved mobile source emissions model, Motor Vehicle Emissions Simulator (MOVES2010a), was used to calculate the emissions from on-road vehicles, and UCF fleet gasoline consumption records were used to calculate the emissions from nonroad equipment and from on-campus UCF fleet vehicles. The results of this UCF mobile source emissions inventory were compared with those for another large U. S. university.