ACUPCC Implementer

There are more than 3,800 projects participating in the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED green building program on campuses across the United States. In fact, colleges and universities have a higher percentage of LEED-certified green space than any other sector, including government, retail and hospitality. While notable, colleges have only just begun to scratch the surface of transforming their aging campuses. Today, there are more than 83,000 college buildings comprising 3.48 billion square feet on campuses across the country. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has a vision to ensure green schools for everyone within this generation and, new this year, USGBC is launching its Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council. The Center will support sustainability and green building for everyone from the kindergartner entering the classroom for the first time to the Ph.D. student performing research in a lab.

By Anthony Cortese, President, Second Nature and Andrea Putman, Director of Corporate Partnerships, Second Nature
(This article appears in the August, 2010 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer)

The ACUPCC represents a courageous and unprecedented form of leadership by higher education to lead society to a climate neutral and environmentally sustainable state in order to meet the individual, social and economic needs of all humans in the present and in the future.  Signatory schools have committed to be a model for climate neutrality and sustainability and ensure that their graduates will have the knowledge and skills to help all of society do the same.

One of the most exciting developments of this focus by higher education institutions has been the cultural shift that is taking place on many campuses.  Presidents and other campus leaders have recognized that achieving these goals requires the focus, involvement and collaboration of all parts of the institution - administrators, faculty, staff, students and trustees – in deep and synergistic ways.  They have told Second Nature and others that the Commitment has accelerated efforts to integrate academic, research, operational and community outreach actions into a holistic approach to sustainability and that it has done more to build a vibrant community and a sense of shared purpose across the institutions than any other initiative in recent memory.  Collectively, the ACUPCC network has become an important learning community and is helping to encourage all of higher education to make this commitment.

By Glenn Cummings, Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Education

(This article appears in the July, 2010 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer)

“Education is not widely regarded as a problem, although the lack of it is.  The conventional wisdom holds that all education is good, and the more of it one has, the better…. The truth is that without significant precautions, education can equip people merely to be more effective vandals of the Earth.” – David Orr (1994)

If, in fact, the survival of the earth hinges on a race between disaster and education, then certainly American higher education holds a key to that outcome. As the Union of Concerned Scientists underscores, few issues signal potential disaster more pointedly than rapidly accumulating carbon emissions (and its multiple impacts).

As colleges and universities throughout the country accept their collective responsibility for educating the next generation in an idea loosely called “sustainability,” the mission of becoming better stewards of the earth has expanded on American college campuses. In recent years, top-level officials at these institutions have called for institution-wide commitments to a more “sustainable” relationship with our natural environment.

Nevertheless, the implementation methods used within institutions remain complicated, strewn with obstacles and weighted with risks. Leadership faces complex political, structural and personal barriers to significant change in the pursuit of sustainability.

by Wendell Brase, Vice Chancellor, University of California, Irvine and Chair, University of California Climate Solutions Steering Group

(This article appears in the July, 2010 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer)

During the past three years I have served in the roles of both Chief Business Officer (CBO) and ACUPCC Implementation Liaison at the University of California, Irvine.  In this dual role I have recognized certain factors critical for attaining success in implementing climate action plans.  In this first of four articles to be published over the next twelve months, I will describe two basic tools that can determine whether your organization and key stakeholders are adequately prepared to move forward in implementing solutions to the complex problem of attaining institutional climate-neutrality.

The following 10 factors are strong predictors of an organization’s success in addressing any large, complex problem including climate change solutions.  That is, these essential ingredients predict a high-performance organization’s success path:

by Tim Stumhofer, Program Associate, Greenhouse Gas Management Institute

(This article appears in the June, 2010 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer)

At face value, the question of which environmental commodity to use in support of voluntary climate objectives (e.g., “carbon neutrality”) may read as a simple preference of taste. Tasked with parsing vague marketing claims and often-inaccessible acronym-laden jargon, the average consumer should not be faulted in assuming that choice in these instruments is little more than a matter of “mixing-and-matching” project attributes. Indeed the diversity of project geography, technology, vintage (i.e., year), and ancillary benefits (e.g., local vs. global economic development) on offer can prove alternately dizzying and empowering. While this shopping experience permits consumers the leeway to pair project traits to personal or organizational preferences transcending pure climate goals, the freedom of choice permitted in this open and incompletely defined marketplace does not come without expense.

There are many evaluative steps you should take to make an informed environmental commodity purchase. Yet, in this marketplace it may be very difficult to assess even the most fundamental of these steps: the definition of the very product being sold. By definition, a commodity is an “undifferentiated product,” meaning it should be uniform in quality and quantity in every example. However, in voluntary carbon markets, “environmental commodity” is often used as a blanket term to refer to two very different commodities: greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets (representing emission reductions) and renewable energy certificates (RECs) (which codify renewable energy generation).

by Dano Weisbord, Environmental Sustainability Director, Smith College

(This article appears in the June, 2010 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer)

Smith College recently installed a 29 kilowatt photo-voltaic (PV) array on our Campus Center. We developed this project using a power purchase agreement (PPA).  The PPA is an increasingly common model for developing renewable energy projects because it requires no up-front capital. Our Campus Center project is great, but given the amount of power we produce, it is more a demonstration than a significant new source of renewable power for campus. I am glad it is small-scale because we learned some critical lessons about PPAs that would lead us to do things differently the next time around. First, we learned that most PPAs include terms that would make it unethical for us to count as “carbon free” the electricity produced.  Second, we learned how we might develop a PPA that would reduce the sacrifices to our carbon emission reduction efforts.

by Thomas Williams, Sustainability Coordinator, Scottsdale Community College

(This article appears in the May, 2010 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer)

On February 17, 2010 Chancellor Rufus Glasper of the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) signed the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment.  His signature enables Maricopa’s ten colleges and the district office to actively pursue practices that target the Triple Bottom Line: environmental responsibility, social justice and economic feasibility. “My action reflects a strong pledge by Maricopa employees to the goal and responsibilities of the Climate Commitment and sustainability,” he said.

Five of the ten Maricopa County Community Colleges had individually signed on to the ACUPCC by the end of 2007. All of these five have completed their Greenhouse Gas Inventory, and three of them have already submitted their Climate Action Plan.

Chancellor Glasper signs the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment with the district and individual college leadership

by Niles Barnes, Projects Coordinator, AASHE

(This article appears in the May, 2010 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer)

As readers of The ACUPCC Implementer know all too well, signatories are required to report on their greenhouse gas emissions within a year of signing the ACUPCC, and then every other year thereafter. After the Climate Action Plan is submitted, the GHG reports alternate with bi-annual progress reports which provide the opportunity to compare actual results to the initial goals laid out. Many campuses find the task of doing a greenhouse gas emissions inventory fairly straightforward, and there are a number of resources available to assist them, including Clean Air – Cool Planet’s Campus Carbon Calculator, The Climate Registry, and hundreds of other campuses to look to for examples. The process itself typically results in a great final product and a valuable educational experience, particularly when students are involved. Usually, the only area that tends to cause heartburn and anguish is measuring those often elusive Scope 3 emissions sources.

by Josh Viertel, President, Slow Food USA®

(This article appears in the April, 2010 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer)

We are what we eat. Human beings are made of food. Yet we rarely stop to appreciate where our food comes from, how it was grown or why we’re putting it into our bodies. And if we do ask those questions, we often find it difficult to figure out how our food choices affect our health, our impact on those who grow our food, our environment and how much we enjoy our daily lives.

But there’s a movement afoot to change all of that. There’s a vision being formed of a world where everyone has healthy food and every farm is a healthy business. Slow Food USA is a non-profit organization working within that movement. We help everyday people connect with each other and use the power of their community to create a healthier local food system.

You can join the movement by becoming a member of Slow Food USA. Our network has more than 150,000 members and supporters across the country, organized into 225 volunteer-led chapters. Together, those chapters are working to transform food and farm policy, industry practices and consumer demand to ensure equity, sustainability and pleasure in the food we eat.

This is a big task, obviously. Success is going to take passion, dedication and collaboration on the part of millions of citizens who all believe in change. And many of the citizens leading the way – no surprise – are college students.