Carbon management and reducing carbon dioxide emissions
The university has implemented several initiatives to manage carbon emissions and reduce the carbon footprint of the university:
a. Sustainable Transportation Initiative:
To facilitate trips on campus, a free shuttle service is provided by the University. The shuttle has 50 passenger capacity (with 27 seats) and everyone on campus (staff, students, or visitors) can take the shuttle free of charge. The current public bus stops are used for boarding and dropping off passengers. The route and schedule of the shuttle are shown in Figure 1. The shuttle route is extended to the residential areas most of the students live in near Gulbahce, four times (one in the morning, two at midday, and one in the evening) in a day. The public transit buses serving the university are also available on campus.
Figure 1: Shuttle service provided by IZTECH for students and staff.
Figure 2: Secure parking facilities for bicycles (left); E-bikes vehicles owned by IZTECH (middle); Maintained Bicycles of UniBike Bike Sharing System (right)
In IZTECH, students and staff are encouraged to use bicycles on campus. Bicycles and vehicles share the road and the speed limit on campus is 30 kph. The elevated crosswalks are serving as speed ramps for motor vehicles to provide safe traffic on campus streets. Additionally, on campus, secure bicycle parking facilities are located nearby the buildings. For the estimation of daily bike trips on the campus, a bicycle parking lot occupancy rate study is carried out and the campus-wide bike trips are estimated as 80-100 trips per/day (Fig 2).
University owns 59 bicycles which were donated by the Ministry of Health. These bicycles can be used free of charge and IZTECH Cycling Community is in charge of managing these bicycles. University has two e-bikes and they are used for departmental needs and landscaping staff (Fig 2).
There is also a bike-sharing system called Unibike within the campus and 50 bikes serve the users for a small fee. These bicycles were introduced into circulation in 2021 (Fig 2). https://www.unibike.com.tr/mainpage
A private company also provides 40 e-scooters for the campus people which can be rented with a mobile phone application (Fig 3). Kumru Scooter
Two electric minivans have been actively used for routine freight transport on campus, and the university is in the process of acquiring more energy-efficient vehicles (Fig 3). IZTECH is provided with electric public buses by the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality to reduce carbon footprint of transport from and to the campus (Fig 3). The electric buses and their schedule are shown in the figure and can also be checked from the link given below.
Every year a protocol is signed between a transportation company and the university for transporting campus members (students & staff) to the university from different locations in the city. There is also a night bus service (20:00 Bus Service) for the staff and students working after hours. The bus is operated by the university Rectorate and one can take the bus by online daily registration free of charge. The registration is done from the university webpage.
Additionally, the number of parking spaces on campus is not increased to further curb the tendency to commute privately. Through these initiatives, IZTECH has achieved more than 50% reduction in private car use on campus and thus decreased its CO2 footprint accordingly.
Figure 4: The free campus bus service destinations (left); Free of charge campus bus service (right)
b. Renewable Energy Initiative:
One wind turbine with 250 kW rating is installed on the university campus. On the roof of the indoor swimming pool, there are 180 solar panels (rated at 158 kW) which provide energy for heating the pool water, the floors and the tap water supply
Figure 5: Renewable energy initiatives on campus