Built environment
Designing healthy, inclusive and sustainable spaces across our campus.
The built environment at the University of Sheffield is central to how it feels to study, work and spend time here. Our campus brings together historic landmarks and new developments, public squares and courtyards, tree lined streets, and green spaces threaded through the city. It includes everything from teaching and research buildings to social spaces, walkways and the wider public realm.
This diversity is one of our strengths, but it also creates challenges. Our estate spans buildings from the 1800s through to major projects completed in the 2020s. Older buildings often have solid walls, single glazing and complex layouts that make them harder to heat efficiently. Newer buildings perform better but can be carbon intensive to construct. We also have 22 listed buildings, which are an important part of our heritage but require sensitive retrofit to protect their character.
Our approach is to lead in responsible estate management. That means prioritising retrofit wherever possible, designing new buildings to recognised net zero standards, and embedding circular economy principles so that materials are reused, not wasted. We are strengthening our Sustainable Building Standard so that every major project considers operational energy use, embodied carbon and indoor environmental quality from the outset. Tools such as Regenerate are now used routinely on large projects to assess how well designs support circularity, material recovery and future reuse.
We are also rethinking the spaces between buildings. Our streets, courtyards and green infrastructure have huge potential to support biodiversity, reduce surface water runoff and help the campus adapt to hotter, wetter weather. By improving planting, drainage and shading, and by making routes around campus easier and more pleasant to walk and wheel, we can create a public realm that feels greener, healthier and more welcoming.
Taken together, these changes will help us create buildings and spaces that are low carbon, comfortable, inclusive and inspiring, while protecting what is special about our heritage and place.
Targets and commitments
- Expand green infrastructure from 2025 to 2030 to enhance biodiversity and reduce surface water runoff using natural drainage systems.
- Review and revise the University Sustainable Building Standard by the third quarter of 2026 so it aligns with our targets for operational carbon, energy use, circular economy and indoor environmental quality.
- Align all new build projects with the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard by 2026.
- Finalise and embed sustainability in the Future Campus Plan by 2026, including its application to all estate changes.
- Apply a retrofit first approach for existing buildings, including pre redevelopment audits from 2027 onwards.
- Operate within a five yearly carbon budget of less than 25,000 tonnes CO2e for capital projects, with the budget reviewed before 2030.
- Ensure all new projects report embodied carbon through standardised reporting templates by 2030.
- Integrate indoor environmental quality metrics and minimum requirements into the Sustainable Building Standard by 2030.
- Complete a University wide indoor environmental quality assessment by 2030 and develop a targeted improvement plan.
- Establish a construction reuse hub by 2027 to support material recovery, repurposing and design for deconstruction.
- Define a five yearly carbon budget for capital asset management by 2028 and ensure emissions are tracked and kept within this limit by 2030.
- Implement a materials tracking system for all major capital projects by 2029 to enable circular economy reporting and reuse.