{"id":1261,"date":"2025-04-30T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T09:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/?p=1261"},"modified":"2025-04-26T18:40:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T18:40:39","slug":"colleges-now-8-visualizing-bus-climate-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/2025\/04\/30\/colleges-now-8-visualizing-bus-climate-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Colleges, Now 8: Visualizing BU\u2019s Climate Action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By: Katie Koenig<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Data Dashboards<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019ve scrolled through college websites, you\u2019ve probably encountered a dashboard before. The most common is probably a breakdown of student demographics. Arizona State University, which I covered in my last post, created a Campus Metabolism dashboard to present live data on their buildings\u2019 energy and pollution outputs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although that website is no longer accessible, Boston University is one of many institutions that has made a similar webpage. Called the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sustainability\/vision-progress\/data-dashboard\/\">Data Dashboard<\/a>, the resource highlights the specific work BU has done to reduce their emissions, from waste to water to energy use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h6 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Breaking Down BU\u2019s Energy Dashboard<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n<p>The BU Energy Dashboard is an easy page to scroll through, starting with general graphs like their Abatement Curve, which details BU\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. Later charts get more complex, broken down by location and not always adjusted for campus growth. The data shows that energy use stays the same over several decades, but you have to interpret that data in the context that the square footage of BU\u2019s campus has actually increased at the same time. As such, building energy efficiency has gone up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, this kind of detailed breakdown provides users with transparent access not just to BU\u2019s net zero emissions goal but also how they\u2019re meeting that goal. You can see the massive improvement to the university\u2019s waste diversion rate near the bottom of the page, with 2024\u2019s total waste production 45% less than in 2006, with over a 50% diversion rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h6 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Daily Insights<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n<p>To highlight the very bottom of the page, BU offers exact numbers on their Atrius Building\u2019s electricity, natural gas, and water consumption for the day. The numbers are interesting, to be sure, but this section emphasizes the connection between our individual, daily actions and the larger statistics that are more commonly discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Think about it like the <a href=\"https:\/\/emerson.edu\/academics\/parents-guests\/frequently-asked-questions-parents\/hydration-station-locations\">hydration stations<\/a> on campus that say how many total bottles of water they refilled instead of having to buy new. It\u2019s easy to say that one decision on a single day hardly has an impact on the environment, and nor does it greatly change community-wide trends. However, community action is exactly that\u2014community-based. Even as individuals, we\u2019re part of the groups of people that do have marketed emissions, and sometimes dashboards like BU\u2019s and the hydration stations are a good reminder that even our daily actions have an impact when everyone gets involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By: Katie Koenig Data Dashboards If you\u2019ve scrolled through college websites, you\u2019ve probably encountered a dashboard before. The most common is probably a breakdown of student demographics. Arizona State University, which I covered in my last post, created a Campus Metabolism dashboard to present live data on their buildings\u2019 energy and pollution outputs. Although that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3509,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-1261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-programs","tag-by-katie-koenig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1261"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1266,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions\/1266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/sustainable-emerson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}