Climate change is driven by greenhouse gases from energy, transport, and the things we buy and use. Every organisation, including a university, adds to it. We can only cut emissions if we know where they come from, and a number only helps if people can trust it. That is why we measure our footprint, have it checked, and publish it. We also want our students, employees, and partners to see what the organisation they belong to actually causes.
IU Group supports more than 130,000 students at over 60 locations in Germany, the UK, and Canada. Our 2025 footprint was over 20 thousand tonnes of CO2 equivalents (CO2 e). That is a little higher than in 2024, partly because we now capture more of our emissions in the reporting.
Emissions are grouped into three kinds:
- Direct emissions (Scope 1, about 2%): what we cause ourselves, mainly heating our buildings and fuel for company vehicles. This is the smallest part, and it fell by more than half compared with 2024.
- Emissions related to purchased energy (Scope 2, about 5%): the electricity and district heating we buy for our campuses and offices.
- Everything else (Scope 3, about 94 %): emissions that happen outside our own operations but because of what we do. Most of it comes from how students travel to our campuses and from their internet use while studying. The rest comes from the equipment and materials we buy, employee commuting, business travel, and waste.
Like most service organisations, IU Group causes the bulk of its emissions indirectly. An education provider doesn’t run smokestacks. Its footprint comes from the people who study and work there, and from what it buys.
Per student, our direct and energy-related emissions are much lower than those of many of our peers1: under 0.01 tonnes of CO2e. Traditional universities show higher values, from 0.10 to as much as 7.89.
The main reason is how we teach. Most of our students learn online or in flexible formats, so we need far fewer laboratories, residence halls, and energy-hungry campuses per student. These comparisons are indicative, because universities differ in size, model, and how they report.
“Our footprint is small compared with our most important peers, which reflects how our education model works. Learning with IU requires far fewer resources, and results in much lower direct carbon emissions per student. We also believe that openly publishing and verifying our numbers is good practice for our sector, and we hope that more institutions will share their figures, so that everyone can learn from each other."
says Alex Čaičics, Head of Sustainability at IU Group.
IU strives to be a pioneer of digital solutions in higher education, and in our everyday work. Digital services and AI are central to how we teach and operate, so it is fair to ask what they mean for our footprint. At present, the answer is: not much. Data services and cloud storage together account for about 50 tonnes of CO2e, around 0.2 percent of our total.2 As our use of digital tools and AI grows, we will keep monitoring this and report on it in the same way.
Because we know where our emissions come from, we can look at where measures would matter most. We are currently working on a decarbonisation strategy for IU, starting with the largest sources, such as travel. We will continue to measure and publish our footprint every year, so that progress can be followed.
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¹ Figures cover IU Group N.V. and its operations for the reporting year 1 January to 31 December 2025 (operational control approach; 64 locations in Germany, the UK, and Canada). They were calculated under the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard (market-based method for Scope 2) and independently verified by GUTcert (certificate and report no. C-26-26922) in accordance with ISO 14064-3, with a reasonable level of assurance and a materiality threshold of 5%. Reported Scope 3 categories are 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.9, and 3.11. Other Scope 3 categories were not assessed. Emissions are expressed in CO2 equivalents (CO2e). Part of the Scope 3 figures, including the use of sold products (student travel and internet use), rests on estimates and assumptions. Peer values are IU calculations based on publicly available data (Scope 1 and 2 emissions divided by student numbers; 2025 or latest available year). Peers differ in size, business model, reporting boundaries, and methodology; the comparison is indicative only. IU does not claim climate neutrality, and no carbon offsets are used to reduce the reported figures. The statements on future measures describe intentions and are not binding targets.
2 Figure covers data services and cloud storage purchased by IU. Emissions from students’ own internet use are reported separately under ‘use of sold products’.
