778
V. Espinosa-Duró et al.
1 Introduction
Few issues have a greater impact on our lives and on the sustainability of the planet
than the climate change. Launched in September 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda (United Nations 2015) are
focused on 17 actions to end poverty, fight inequalities, protect natural resources and
curb climate change by 2030, fully integrating the three dimensions of the sustainable development: economic, social and environmental one. Each goal define a set
of specific targets to be achieved over the next 12 years, taking special attention on
the 13 Goal (“Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”) as one
of the greatest challenges of this century in order to preserve the Humanity and its
environment how we have conceived it till now. According to fifth assessment report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the UN (IPCC 2014), reduction
in CO 2 emissions becomes a key factor in order to reduce one of the main greenhouse
gases due to its extremely long atmospheric lifetime and its direct contribution to the
climate change effects.
In this context, Governments have been designing a package of regulatory and
incentive measures in order to stablish a new green framework to face climate crisis.
Thus, European Union has put forward climate action as the central driver by defining
its EU 2020 Agenda (best known as the “20-20-20”) and its 2030 Climate and Energy
Framework (EU 2014). These European Union’s 2020 headline targets include a
set of measures for promoting renewable energy sources in the electricity, biofuels
and heating and cooling sectors, and a second set of strategies aimed at improving
the energy efficiency, specially, on the largest energy consumer sectors in the EU:
transport and building sectors. As mentioned in report 483 final/2 of The Commission
Parliament in 2013 (COM 2013), nearly 40% of final energy expenditure and 36% of
greenhouse gases is caused by European buildings. In order to address this concern,
EU is currently strengthen its efforts on promoting the improvement of the energy
savings of both new and existing buildings within the Union, through the Directive on
the Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD 2010). This Directive introduces and
highlights the concept called Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings or nZEB. In accordance
with its Article 2, nZEB refers to a “building that has a very high energy performance.
The nearly zero or very low amount of energy required should be covered to a very
significant extent by energy from renewable sources, including energy from renewable
sources produced on-site or nearby.”
In a parallel effort, a large number of organizations and institutions have been
managed a significant transition towards a green economy embracing a set of different sustainable strategies to operationalize such transition. In this regard, Higher
Education Institutions (hereafter, HEIs) have acted as appropriate sites to address
sustainable purposes over the last decade (UNESCO 2009; Casajeros et al. 2017).
Along the same lines, Universities should also contribute to the achievement of the
2030 Agenda and the goals and targets it contains (GUNI 2017), thus becoming
drivers of change towards sustainability. Nonetheless, as is widely discussed in the
literature (François 2015; Grau 2015; GUNI 2017), only a paradigm shift in refram-
V. Espinosa-Duró et al.
1 Introduction
Few issues have a greater impact on our lives and on the sustainability of the planet
than the climate change. Launched in September 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda (United Nations 2015) are
focused on 17 actions to end poverty, fight inequalities, protect natural resources and
curb climate change by 2030, fully integrating the three dimensions of the sustainable development: economic, social and environmental one. Each goal define a set
of specific targets to be achieved over the next 12 years, taking special attention on
the 13 Goal (“Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”) as one
of the greatest challenges of this century in order to preserve the Humanity and its
environment how we have conceived it till now. According to fifth assessment report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the UN (IPCC 2014), reduction
in CO 2 emissions becomes a key factor in order to reduce one of the main greenhouse
gases due to its extremely long atmospheric lifetime and its direct contribution to the
climate change effects.
In this context, Governments have been designing a package of regulatory and
incentive measures in order to stablish a new green framework to face climate crisis.
Thus, European Union has put forward climate action as the central driver by defining
its EU 2020 Agenda (best known as the “20-20-20”) and its 2030 Climate and Energy
Framework (EU 2014). These European Union’s 2020 headline targets include a
set of measures for promoting renewable energy sources in the electricity, biofuels
and heating and cooling sectors, and a second set of strategies aimed at improving
the energy efficiency, specially, on the largest energy consumer sectors in the EU:
transport and building sectors. As mentioned in report 483 final/2 of The Commission
Parliament in 2013 (COM 2013), nearly 40% of final energy expenditure and 36% of
greenhouse gases is caused by European buildings. In order to address this concern,
EU is currently strengthen its efforts on promoting the improvement of the energy
savings of both new and existing buildings within the Union, through the Directive on
the Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD 2010). This Directive introduces and
highlights the concept called Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings or nZEB. In accordance
with its Article 2, nZEB refers to a “building that has a very high energy performance.
The nearly zero or very low amount of energy required should be covered to a very
significant extent by energy from renewable sources, including energy from renewable
sources produced on-site or nearby.”
In a parallel effort, a large number of organizations and institutions have been
managed a significant transition towards a green economy embracing a set of different sustainable strategies to operationalize such transition. In this regard, Higher
Education Institutions (hereafter, HEIs) have acted as appropriate sites to address
sustainable purposes over the last decade (UNESCO 2009; Casajeros et al. 2017).
Along the same lines, Universities should also contribute to the achievement of the
2030 Agenda and the goals and targets it contains (GUNI 2017), thus becoming
drivers of change towards sustainability. Nonetheless, as is widely discussed in the
literature (François 2015; Grau 2015; GUNI 2017), only a paradigm shift in refram-