Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

About PCC’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions

At PCC, 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. 

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. 

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 made from the general fund such as goods, services and business travel. Because of their indirect nature, both supply chain emissions and commuting emissions have unique challenges both in terms of measuring change and creating. However, both of these areas are places where PCC’s mission vision and values are reflected in how PCC does business. By taking a holistic approach to sustainability, PCC works to ensure that our community has better opportunities for financial and personal health.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory

Highlights – Operating Buildings and Grounds (Scope 1 & 2 Emissions)

• Since our baseline year of 2006, we have reduced our greenhouse emissions at PCC from operating our Buildings and Grounds (Scope 1 & 2 emissions) by about 59% per square foot with a net emissions of 9,318 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, a net improvement of approximately 21% since over the previous reporting year FY 2024.
• In FY 2025, the college purchased and produced a combined total of about 15,906,423 kWh of renewable solar or wind energy, which avoided about 4,564 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 PCC’s own onsite solar arrays.
• The college received just over $21,600 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 improvement in the future. 
• Overall, we’ve become more energy efficient by decreasing our total building energy consumption use per square foot by about 48%. The fine tuning of our energy systems and use of the Strategic Energy Management Program helped the college to realize 14% year over year significant reduction in overall energy consumption, avoiding approximately $1,000,000 in additional utility spending (including water). This energy efficiency took form mostly through changes in the natural gas plant at the Sylvania plant which reduced our consumption by approximately 100,000 therms of natural gas. Further improvements are expected in 2026 and 2027 due to adjustments being made at the CLIMB center.

Highlights – Travel, Commuting, Purchasing, and Solid Waste (Scope 3 Emissions)

In FY 2025, Scope 3 emissions still made up the largest share of PCC’s emissions at 69%. Scope 3 emissions are tightly tied to commuting and purchasing, both of which historically shift with our student enrollment levels. In addition, as PCC’s Scope 1 & 2 emissions drop, Scope 3 emissions will start to make up a larger percentage of overall emissions.

The largest contributors to Scope 3 emissions in FY 2025 were college purchases (supply chain emissions) and commuting emissions, which were nearly equal at 33% and 34% each.  Business travel and solid waste combined made up less than 2% of the remaining Scope 3 emissions. Budget cuts are likely responsible for the reduction in emissions from college purchases, which roughly correspond to spending.