Almost two-thirds of land upon which UK university estates are situated is at risk of extreme heat stress owing to climate change in the future, according to a landmark new study.

The first ever  shows heat poses the most risk, with a much smaller area susceptible to flooding.

 prepared by higher education consultancy SUMS Consulting using public and open-source datasets and methods reveals that core estates of the UK’s 174 universities cover a total area of 6,390 hectares – the same size as towns such as Guildford, Chesterfield or Stirling.

Of this, 197.5 hectares (3.2 per cent) are at high or medium risk from flooding, of which 92.1 hectares of built environment are assumed to be most at risk. And 4,102 hectares (64.2 per cent) of university lands are at high or medium risk of extreme heat stress.

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Total percentage of estate at high/medium flood and heat risk

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SUMS Consulting

The report warned that these risks will be exacerbated by the changing climate and may cause an estimated £166.8 million in loss and damage to universities’ infrastructure each year, as extreme weather becomes more frequent.

Climate impacts could manifest “not only in damage to buildings and other infrastructure, but also loss of valuable equipment and disruption to critical business – both of which would carry further costs for institutions”, it says. 

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“Such impacts would come together with disruption to critical business and the associated costs, risks to the safety of students and staff, and rising insurance costs with growing challenges around insurability in the most exposed cases.”

Thomas Owen-Smith, principal consultant at SUMS, warned that climate and environmental risks are slower onset and less immediate than the financial crisis that the sector currently faces.

“But the further you go ahead into the future, the more material and actually existential those become,” he told ����Vlog.

The investigation does not include farmlands or other ancillary lands held by universities in their total site area but it does equate to about 80 per cent of the aggregate total grounds area.

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Along with the risks, the report also highlighted a series of opportunities for universities which could make “positive contributions to environmental sustainability and support their own resilience”.

It identified 17 institutions that are situated in locations which are highly suitable for wind energy, and 16 that have sites with high solar potential.

And if a tenth of universities’ grasslands were turned into forests, this could reduce an estimated 570.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year of greenhouse gases.

“If even 10 per cent of the theoretically available land was used for developing renewable energy, that can make really significant contributions for universities to be able to generate their own power, which would also allow them to save to the tune of tens of millions of pounds a year on energy bills and abate thousands of tonnes of carbon,” added Owen-Smith.

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UK HE sector land use

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SUMS Consulting

Of the mapped area, nearly 60 per cent is built environment, such as buildings or artificial surfaces, around 30 per cent is grass, about 10 per cent is covered by trees and a little less than 1 per cent is water and waterlogged land.

William Phillips, insight analyst at SUMS, added: “The hope that we have with this is that this helps for the first time somebody to engage with this question and this conversation of [whether] lands actually have other values.”

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The report urged universities to think about how their land use should be embedded in their local connections, and to inform sector-level conversations around risk and resilience.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com