Oxford Brookes University
A Blueprint for Large-Scale Campus Decarbonisation: How Oxford Brookes Scaled Geo-exchange
Finalist, 2030 Climate Action
About
We are scaling a repeatable geo-exchange heating systems to decarbonise our campus. The deep borehole and heat pump network was installed in phase 1, delivering ~1.2 GWh of renewable heat annually. Phase 2 innovatively expanded the system’s capacity to 3.5 GWh by integrating advanced heat pumps and earth-based cooling, without additional boreholes.
Phase 4 is being delivered at the student village, which accounts for 40% of our total utilities, to displace nearly all site gas consumption. The heat pump capacity will be expanded to 5.6 GWh in total of renewable thermal energy.
Beyond physical infrastructure, we leverage a Smart Campus workstream. By integrating AI-backed analytics with internal expertise, we have cut energy usage in new-build sites by 50% and saved £2.7m.
By sharing our projects with our students and peer institutions, we provide a transparent, transferable model that empowers the sector to accelerate net-zero transitions.
Top 3 learnings
- We discovered geo-exchange efficiently delivers high-volume, low-carbon heat in space-constrained urban campuses.
- We learned cascade heat pumps cost-effectively retrofit renewable heating into existing, high-temperature buildings.
- We realised our repeatable innovative model offers a scalable, transferable model for sector-wide net-zero transitions.
What it would mean to win
Sustainability is an issue that is of huge importance to our staff and students, and winning the award is an incredible honour.
SDG
| 2026 | |
| 2030 Climate Action | |
| Finalist, UK and Ireland |
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