EPI's

Reducing energy use and waste streams is high on the agenda in our society. From both environmental and economic viewpoints, it is important to make savings in energy and waste. Before you can improve environmental performance, however, you need to be able to measure it properly and regularly.

To this end, the Health, Safety and the Environment Service (AMD) of the University of Groningen has developed a set of Environmental Performance Indicators (EPIs) to measure environmental performance. The EPIs enable comparison of the environmental performance of buildings, faculties or even universities and commercial companies. Not only is environmental performance divided into water use, electricity use and gas use, the EPIs also provide a framework for measuring performance in the field of paper use and hazardous waste. The EPIs provide the University of Groningen with a unique system for measuring its environmental performance.

Since 1996, the University of Groningen has meticulously recorded these EPIs, enabling the formulation of new environmental performance aims. This provides useful insight into the University’s environmental performance and the costs involved in this.

Determining MPIs

If you want to measure the environmental performance of a number of buildings regularly, it is important that the Environmental Performance Indicators (MPIs) are easy to measure. To this end, the Health, Safety and the Environment Service (AMD) has chosen to measure the MPIs per square metre floor surface. The MPIs are thus the amount of power, water or waste per square metre floor surface.

It is easy to determine the floor surface of all buildings within the University of Groningen. MPIs are sometimes measured by building volume, or by the number of staff. Volume is not that easy to determine, however, and the number of staff and students changes continually.