Towards Low-Carbon Schools in Oman: A Case Study Benchmarking Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Mitigation Priorities in Six Schools

Educational institutions are increasingly recognized as important contributors to climate change mitigation and sustainable development. However, information on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from schools in the Sultanate of Oman remains limited. This case study presents a carbon footprint assessment of six public and private schools in Saham, Oman, selected based on data availability and willingness to participate, using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol framework. Annual operational data were collected and classified into Scope 1 (direct emissions), Scope 2 (purchased electricity), and Scope 3 (other indirect emissions), considering major emission sources including electricity consumption, transportation fuel use, refrigerant leakage, water consumption, and solid waste generation. The results revealed substantial variation in carbon emissions among the six investigated schools, with total annual emissions ranging from 84.5 to 659.2 t CO2-eq year−1. Public schools exhibited higher total emissions owing to their larger student populations and operational scale, whereas some private schools demonstrated higher emission intensities on a per-student basis. Per-student emissions ranged from 0.48 to 0.85 t CO2-eq student−1 year−1 and estimated per-floor-area emissions ranged from approximately 44 to 254 kg CO2-eq m−2 year−1, highlighting significant differences in resource-use efficiency among institutions. Across all schools, Scope 2 emissions were the dominant contributor to the carbon footprint, primarily due to electricity consumption for air conditioning and lighting. Scope 1 emissions, mainly associated with transportation fuel use and refrigerant leakage, represented the second-largest source, while Scope 3 emissions from water consumption and waste management contributed a relatively minor share. Differences between public and private schools were descriptive rather than statistically significant (exact Mann–Whitney U test, n = 3 per group; p > 0.05 for all comparisons), consistent with the limited statistical power of this small, exploratory sample. A simple deterministic sensitivity analysis indicated that total emissions estimates were most sensitive to the grid electricity emission factor, with a ±10% variation in the emission factor resulting in a ±7.5% change in the estimated total emissions. This study provides one of the first school-level carbon emissions baseline datasets for Oman and offers a preliminary benchmark against Gulf-region and international school carbon footprint studies. The findings identify electricity consumption, cooling infrastructure, and transportation systems as the principal drivers of emissions and quantify indicative emission-reduction potential for rooftop photovoltaics, LED retrofits, and HVAC efficiency upgrades using literature-based performance ranges, reframed here as mitigation priorities rather than an evaluated decarbonization pathway. These findings are based on a small, single-city convenience sample and should not be generalized to all schools in Oman; they are intended as a preliminary, locally grounded baseline to guide future, larger-scale carbon-management research and evidence-based decision-making in the education sector, in support of Oman Vision 2040 and long-term net-zero emission targets.