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Assessing the Social and Environmental Costs of Institution Nitrogen Footprints
Citation:
Compton, J., A. Leach, E. Castner, AND J. Galloway. Assessing the Social and Environmental Costs of Institution Nitrogen Footprints. Sustainability: The Journal of Record. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., New Rochelle, NY, 10(2):114-122, (2017).
Impact/Purpose:
Sustainability of human institutions like colleges and universities requires balancing the demands for food, energy and materials with the broader social and environmental costs of meeting these demands. Environmental damage costs can provide insights that may not be reflected in the N fluxes alone. EPA scientist Jana Compton, along with researchers from the University of New Hampshire and the University of Virginia, used information about the forms of N released from campus activities like transportation, utilities and dining to examine the costs associated with the universities' N footprints. While the UVA N footprint is 2.4x greater than the UNH N footprint, the damage costs associated with the UVA N footprint were 3.6x greater than for UNH (Figure 3 vs. Figure 4). This greater cost at UVA is seen because the utilities N footprint (and therefore the NOx release) make up a much larger percentage of the UVA footprint. The types of damages are also important. The UVA damages associated with human health are 74% of the damage costs but only 64% of the N flux; the reason for this difference is the higher value placed on human health impacts. Making this information available to institutions can improve their understanding of the damages associated with the different N forms and sources, and inform decisions about campus N reduction strategies. This paper is one of several to be submitted to Sustainability - The Journal of Record for a special issue on the Nitrogen Footprint Network. This paper contributes to SHC 4.61.
Description:
We estimate the damage costs associated with the institutional nitrogen (N) footprint and explore how this information could be used to create more sustainable institutions. Potential damages associated with the release of NOx and N2O to air and release of N to water were estimated using a cost per unit N approach. Annual potential damage costs to human health, agriculture and natural ecosystems associated with the N footprint of institutions were $10.5 million USD (2014) at the University of Virginia (UVA) and $3.04 million at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). Costs associated with the release of nitrogen oxides (NOx) to human health, in particular the use of coal-derived energy, were the largest component of damage at UVA. At UNH the energy N footprint is much lower because of a co-generation source, and thus the majority of damages were associated with food production. Annual damages associated with release of N from food production were very similar at the two universities ($1.37 vs. $1.66 million at UVA and UNH respectively). These damages also have implications for the extent and scale at which the damages are felt. For example, impacts to human health from energy and transportation are generally larger near the power plants and roads, while impacts from food production can be distant from the campus. Making this information available to institutions can improve their understanding of the damages associated with the different N forms and sources, and inform decisions about campus N reduction strategies.
