º£ÌÄÖ±²¥

º£ÌÄÖ±²¥ PCC’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions

PCC’s greenhouse gas emissions are influenced by student and educational needs, building and systems design, fuel choices, operational efficiency, and individual behaviors such as purchasing and commuting choices. We look at our emissions in terms of the amount of direct influence we have and divide them by scope accordingly.

Our Scope 1 & 2 emissions chiefly consist of emissions from heating and lighting buildings and running electrical equipment.  It is also where PCC has the greatest opportunity to influence change, through green building design and improvements in operations, energy efficiency, and education and outreach.

Our Scope 3 emissions are more challenging to both measure and influence. They include emissions from commuting to the college by both staff and employees, college purchases of goods and services and from business travel. Because of their indirect nature, both supply chain emissions and commuting emissions have unique challenges in terms of measuring change. While we have undertaken many significant projects to reduce the emissions from our supply chain through greener purchasing, supply chain emissions are chiefly measured by spending and it is difficult to separate green spending from non-green spending at this time. Furthermore, commuting emissions tend to fluctuate with student enrollment and while significant commuters utilize alternative transportation, the sheer number of people commuting to campus each day overshadows this.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory

Operating Buildings and Grounds (Scope I and II Emissions) Highlights

• Between 2006 and 2023, we reduced our emissions º£ÌÄÖ±²¥ from operating our Buildings and Grounds (Scope 1 & 2 emissions) by about 47% with net emissions of 12,069 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent  (MTCO2E) compared to
• Between FY 2006 and 2025, we reduced our emissions º£ÌÄÖ±²¥ from operating our Buildings and Grounds (Scope 1 & 2 emissions) by about 70% per square foot with a net emissions of 9,171 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent  (MTCO2E) compared to 12,855 MTCO2E in 2023 and 12,682 MTCO2E in 2019 (our last full year of reporting prior to the pandemic). 
• In FY 2025, the college was able to purchase or produce a combined total of about 15,420,00 kWh of renewable solar or wind energy, which avoided about 5,782 MTCO2E of greenhouse gas emissions due to  subscriptions to Portland General Electric’s Renewable Energy Credit programs: Green Future Enterprise and Green Future Impact as well as Oregon Shine’s Community Solar program and its own onsite solar arrays. The college received just over $21,000 in utility bill credits from the Community Solar program in FY 2025. One of the arrays did not report for some of the highest producing months and the community solar program is still growing, so we expect to see even more growth in FY 2026 and FY 2027. 
• Overall, we’ve become more energy efficient by decreasing our total building energy consumption use per square foot by about 60%. The fine tuning of our energy systems and use of the Strategic Energy Management Program helped the college to realize 19% year over year significant reduction in overall energy consumption, preventing approximately $1,000,000 in additional utility spending (including water). It was most visible in a reduction of around 100,000 therms of natural gas.  

Travel, Commuting, Purchasing, and Solid Waste (Scope III Emissions) Highlights

Overall Scope 3 emissions still made up the largest share of PCC’s emissions at 71%. Scope 3 emissions are tightly tied to commuting and purchasing, both of which historically shift with our student enrollment levels. In addition, as our Scope 1 & 2 emissions drop, our Scope 3 emissions will start to make a larger percentage of our overall emissions.

The largest contributor to Scope 3 emissions in FY 2025 were commuting emissions, which made up about 38% of the Scope 3 emissions, while emissions from college purchases (supply chain) made up the majority of the remainder of Scope 3 emissions at around 31%. Business travel and solid waste combined made up less than 2% of the remaining emissions. Budget cuts are likely responsible for the reduction in college spend, which corresponds roughly to emissions from college purchases.