Carleton failed to live up to last year’s grade this year on an annual environmental sustainability report card.
Each year, the Sustainable Endowments Institute releases its College Sustainability Report Card, which ranks 300 colleges and universities in Canada and the United States based on nine criteria.
This year, it gave Carleton an overall grade of C-plus, lower than its B-minus grade last year. Carleton received grades of B or higher in five categories, but received two Cs and two Ds.
The College Sustainability Report Card 2011 grades are based on information collected from April to September 2010, according to a press release that accompanied the report card. Information includes both surveys sent to administrators and students at the schools and publicly available information on the criteria.
Fifty-two indicators are used to evaluate performance in the nine criteria.
Carleton’s highest score was for transportation, and received an A grade — higher than the average school score of B. Carleton scored high for the U-Pass program, free bike-sharing program, and the university’s use of mainly electric vehicles for its fleet.
Carleton’s lowest grades were Ds, one of which was for the climate change and energy category. The low score was based on Carleton’s failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions levels, low purchase levels for renewable energy sources, and almost zero incentive programs for reducing energy use on campus.
Of the eight Ontario universities ranked in the report card, Carleton tied for the lowest with the University of Waterloo. All other schools were ranked in the B range, except for the University of Toronto, which scored highest with an A-minus.