Act’Sup Pas à Pas: Our School in Action for a Low-Carbon Future

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Our School has been selected to participate in “Act’Sup Pas à Pas,” a joint project with 10 higher education and research institutions, ADEME, and CIRCES. Spanning 18 months, this project aims to establish an ambitious, validated, realistic, and robust action plan to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with a roadmap extending to 2050. This method, already used in the industrial sector by ADEME, is being implemented in higher education for the first time.

By creating its Socio-Ecological Transition department in September 2022, ESC Clermont BS set out on a path of continuous and dynamic improvement, with the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. Thanks to its strong commitment and an initial assessment of its carbon footprint, our School was selected for the “Act’Sup Pas à Pas” project.

For a higher education institution like ESC Clermont BS, conducting a carbon assessment is crucial for several reasons:

Awareness and Education

The School has the responsibility to contribute to systemic change by educating students, who are the leaders of tomorrow, about environmental challenges and sustainable development practices.

Social and Environmental Responsibility

ESC Clermont BS is committed to corporate social responsibility (CSR), responding to the growing expectations of students, faculty, and institutional and financial partners.

Innovation and Leadership

ESC Clermont BS encourages innovation by integrating environmental criteria into its pedagogical, research, and management processes. This assessment also aims to foster partnerships with organizations that share similar values.

Regulatory Compliance and Anticipation of Future Legislative Obligations

Many regulations require companies and institutions to reduce their GHG emissions. By conducting a carbon assessment in advance, the School ensures compliance with current and future legislation, thus avoiding potential penalties.

Five Major and Priority Actions

This initial evaluation allowed the School to accurately identify the main sources of its emissions and define targeted actions to reduce them. To maximize the impact of emission reductions, the School identified five major and priority actions with significant impact and achievable in the short term:

Optimizing travel by promoting public transport, implementing an ambitious PDME (employee mobility plan), and offering grants to students.
Sustainable and responsible dining by partnering with a new provider to offer low-carbon food options.
Energy efficiency by renovating heating and lighting systems.
Implementing a waste reduction and recycling program, along with an ambitious responsible purchasing policy, favoring partners committed to the planet and respectful of life and humans.
Raising awareness and involving the entire School community in GHG reduction efforts by regularly organizing workshops and continuous training sessions.
In November 2024, our School will take advantage of the closing of accounts to establish a new carbon assessment.

What’s Next?

The carbon assessment is structured into three distinct “scopes” to provide a comprehensive and accurate picture of the institution’s emissions: direct GHG emissions, indirect emissions related to energy (mainly electricity), and indirect emissions related to grey energy.

For the third scope, which is the hardest to quantify due to the diversity and complexity of emission sources, ESC Clermont Business School has chosen to include all student travel and food consumption. It is the only school, among the 10 institutions, to include all student-related emissions in its carbon assessment.

Based on the results of our first carbon assessment, the objective of the “Act’Sup Pas à Pas” project is to define our strategy for contributing to climate change mitigation, transforming ourselves within the context of the transition to a low-carbon world.

Our entire ecosystem will be mobilized to define this decarbonization strategic plan and the indicators associated with each action. At the end of the 18 months needed to finalize it, the plan will be submitted to ADEME for validation. This step will establish a robust plan extending to 2050, aimed at strengthening our actions to reduce GHG emissions, with regular checkpoints until 2050.

Did You Know?

The School has evaluated its greenhouse gas emissions and aims to reduce them, notably by opening international campuses to minimize student travel, which accounts for 22% of mobility-related emissions.

By establishing campuses in the students’ home countries, the School seeks to reduce its carbon footprint. It also promotes soft mobility and rethinks its scholarship policies to encourage environmentally friendly modes of travel.