ACUPCC

Dickinson College Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 12, 2010

Dickinson College receives Second Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Institutional Excellence in Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th Annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

Dickinson College’s Climate Action Plan aims to attain climate neutrality by 2020. Current efforts include the conversion of the central energy plant boilers to burn Viesel, a net-zero carbon biofuel made from filtered waste vegetable oil. The college purchases renewable wind energy credits equivalent to 100% of annual electricity consumption and has installed 84 kilowatts of solar photovoltaics with student assistance and produces 50-100 gallons of biodiesel per week from waste vegetable oil in student run biodiesel shop.

Alamo Community College District Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 12, 2010

The Alamo Community College District (ACCD) receives Second Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Institutional Excellence in Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th Annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

Since 2002, The Alamo Community College District (ACCD) has partnered with the Energy Systems Laboratory (ESL), a division of the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEES) located at Texas A&M University to identify, design, and implement Energy Cost Reduction Measures. This partnership has reduced ACCD’s electricity and natural gas consumption by 16.5% and 41%, respectively. Providing a cumulative savings of approximately $3,950,517, while keeping 37.2 tons of NOx and 33,803 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

ACCD has implemented a district‐wide metering program.  Every Alamo College facility is being equipped with metering devices to monitor electrical, gas, thermal, and water usage. This energy management control system will collect and analyze data to help inform energy use decisions and behavior.

University of Pennsylvania Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 12, 2010

The University of Pennsylvania receives Second Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Institutional Excellence in Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th Annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment(ACUPCC) Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

University of Pennsylvania (Penn), President Amy Gutmann champions the environmental efforts and provides senior leadership that complements the grassroots efforts of an engaged campus community. An extensive network of students, faculty, and staff known as the Penn Green Campus Partnership is an umbrella group created to foster a culture of sustainability. For two years, an advisory committee of over 40 campus constituents, led by the Vice President of Facilities, collaborated to produce the Climate Action Plan, an ambitious outline of strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to the strategies outlined in Penn’s CAP, the university has long emphasized sustainability in its academic mission including but not limited to:

University of Montana President Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 12, 2010

University of Montana President, George Dennsion receives Second Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Outstanding Individual Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th Annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

Unity College Sustainability Coordinator Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 12, 2010

Unity College Sustainability Coordinator, Jesse Pyles receives Second Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Outstanding Individual Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th Annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

As the Sustainability Coordinator for Unity College, Mr. Pyles focuses on mobilizing student sustainability efforts on campus, and is coordinating the College’s climate action planning process. Among other things, he oversees campus waste, food-growing, and energy assessment work. He sits on the College’s planning and budget committees, is a member of the academic Center for Sustainability and Global Change, and reports directly to President Mitchell Thomashow. Mr. Pyles’ 2010 Sustainability Team includes Dr. Anne Stephenson, a Rocky Mountain Institute Sustainability Fellow, who is focusing on emissions mitigation strategies in campus buildings as well as numerous work-study students working in the areas of recycling, compost, food production, media outreach, and campus buildings.

University of California San Diego Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 12, 2010

University of California San Diego (UCSD) receivesSecond Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Institutional Excellence in Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th Annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

Environmental sustainability is part of UCSD’s institutional DNA. In 1957, Scripps Institution of Oceanography‘s (SIO) Director Roger Revelle warned that greenhouse gases from industrialization could endanger the planet. SIO chemist Charles Keeling precisely measured atmospheric CO2, and his Keeling Curve is “the most important geophysical measurement of the 20th century.”

University of Maine – Presque Isle Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 12, 2010

The University of Maine Presque Isle receives Second Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Institutional Excellence in Climate  Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th Annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment(ACUPCC) Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

In 2009, the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI) became the first university in the state of Maine to install a mid-size wind turbine on campus.  After talking with the US Department of Energy about wind power, the University worked with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Renewable Energy Research Laboratory and determined the project was fiscally feasible. After a suitable contractor had been found and all permits secured, University officials announced in November 2008 that they were moving forward with the project. By spring of 2009 the turbine was completed and began to produce electricity.

Warren Wilson College Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 12, 2010

Warren Wilson College receives Second Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Institutional Excellence in Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th Annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

Catalyzed by President, Sandy Pfeiffer’s signing of the ACUPCC in 2007, Warren Wilson College’s (WWC) sustainability progress has accelerated significantly in the areas of senior leadership, academics, and work and service.

Highlights of WWC’s climate leadership include but are not limited to the following actions:

Senior Leadership Engagement:

  • PAC team formally adopts sustainable decision making
  • President receives two grants for sustainability curriculum with 2011 focus on Energy
  • Chief Sustainability Official leads 20 faculty, staff, and students to develop CAP
  • Provost appoints faculty Director of Sustainability Education
  • Human Resources director modifies staff evaluations to assess sustainability actions
  • Facilities Director creates student Energy Services Crew, Strategic Energy Management Plan to support CAP
  • CFO approves Funds to support CAP
  • Trustees approve 5-year Strategic Plan with “Sustainability” as Core Value and CAP as action step
  • Dean of Work guides new Land Use Plan that supports CAP; modifies student work evaluations to assess sustainability actions

Campus-wide Learning Experiences:

Ball State University Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 11, 2010

Ball State University (BSU) receivesSecond Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Institutional Excellence in Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th Annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th

Ball State University President, Dr. Jo Ann Gora, is one of the twelve founding members of the ACUPCC Leadership Circle. BSU is in the midst of installing a geothermal‐based district system. When complete, it will eliminate the annual burning of 36,000 tons of coal, reducing yearly CO2e emissions by 85,000 tons and saving $2 million in net fuel costs per year.

Delta College President Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 11, 2010

Delta College President, Jean Goodnow receivesSecond Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Outstanding Individual Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th AnnualAmerican College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

President Jean Goodnow has been making sustainability a strategic imperative by integrating it into Delta College’s (MI), educational, administrative, and operational activities. In 2007, President Goodnow signed the ACUPCC and convened a Sustainability Task Force. In 2008, she assembled a college-wide Green Summit during which sustainable concepts were introduced and input from the campus community was invited. As a result, Green Fridays, a four-day work-week, was piloted. Green Fridays has been established as a successful measure of carbon reduction and expanded each year.

Cornell University Recognized for Climate Leadership

October 11, 2010

 

Cornell University receivesSecond Nature’s 1st Annual Climate Leadership Award for Institutional Excellence in Climate Leadership. Award recipients were recognized at the 4th Annual American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) Summit in Denver, CO on October 12th.

One Student's Net Impact

October 7, 2010

Net Impact is an international nonprofit with a mission to inspire, educate, and equip individuals to use the power of business to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world. They recently ran this inspirational story about Net Impact member - Clayton Snyder - championed the cause for the Monterey Institute of International Studies to complete their climate action plan for the ACUPCC - with a target of eliminating net greenhouse gas emissions by 2016.

"All this carbon neutrality work has been our [Net Impact] chapter’s biggest accomplishment,” Clayton says. “And personally, leading the project allowed me to manage sustainability policy for an organization. I never would have gained skills in GHG auditing or carbon planning without the Campus Greening role."

The impact of the energy efficiency, conservation, and behavior change efforts that will help MIIS achieve climate neutrality are important - but Clayton's experience, which he is now bringing to his professional career at EcoMedia, an organization that allows advertisers to support municipal environmental projects to make them feasible.  In the Net Impact article, Clayton goes on to encourage more students to take an active role in their campus's sustainability planning:

posted in: 

Why do good plans die?

October 6, 2010

By Wendell Brase,  Vice Chancellor University of California-Irvine and Chair  of the University of California Climate Solutions Steering Committee

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

The ACUPCC

Every institution has an unfortunate legacy of well-intentioned plans that have died.  Some were announced with great fanfare following a year of committee work, consultant studies, and boardroom proclamations.  Yet, despite the intellectual capital and financial resources invested in these plans, they proved useless -- languishing and ignored within a few years, forgotten within half a decade.

Why do some plans transform an institution while others grow stale on the shelf?  Sometimes plans with the most impressive packaging are inherently inadequate, lacking the key ingredients necessary for an organization to move from plan to action:  a goal that is simple and clear, measureable milestones, understandable metrics, and feasible resource expectations.  These fundamentals are even more basic than the best practices highlighted by the Eastern Research Group (in this issue).

Transitions

October 6, 2010

By Michelle Dyer,  Chief Operating Officer, Second Nature

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

After the ACUPCC Climate Leadership Summit in Denver I will be stepping out of my role as Chief Operating Officer of Second Nature, to join Intersection Partners, a private equity investment firm that builds sustainable businesses, as Principal.  I joined Second Nature to support Tony Cortese and the Second Nature team through a time of significant growth and to build the organizational capacity to advance its mission.  With the excellent team now have in place, and the phenomenal success of the ACUPCC and the Advancing Green Building in Higher Education Initiative, the time has come for me to move forward.

This opportunity came quite unexpectedly as I was conducting early research into potential next steps in my career path.  I knew it would be rare to find an investment company with the supportive atmosphere and committed team I have enjoyed during my tenure at Second Nature, not to mention difficult to make a transition given the current state of the economy.  I was blessed to connect with my new partners, who understand sustainability deeply and feel a vocation to create meaningful, positive businesses.

New Report Highlights the Best Practices for Creating a Climate Action Plan

October 6, 2010

By Sargon deJesus, Science Writer and Analyst,Anthony Amato, Senior Climate and Energy Analyst, and Robyn Liska, Climate and Energy Analyst, Eastern Research Group

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

When signatories take the first step of self-discovery by starting to craft a Climate Action Plan (CAP), many discover that the journey is more of a grueling uphill climb. Every school faces challenges that set back their climate action planning – entrenched operations, cost, lack of community buy-in, constraints on staff time. What can your school do to avoid these obstacles? To help answer this, a new report byEastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG) details important best practices in creating a CAP by analyzing completed reports and speaking with schools directly. Through the support of EPA, the recently released study “Climate Action Planning: A Review of Best Practices, Key Elements, and Common Climate Strategies ” identifies helpful approaches that any signatory can start using for their first CAP or future update.

What is the best way to structure my CAP development process? Who should be involved in making decisions? How do I present or share information with key people? What do I include in the CAP? What metrics do I use to track my school’s progress? The report surveyed 50 completed CAPs and conducted two dozen interviews with school representatives about their unique experiences to answer critical questions such as those.

The ACUPCC Network: Collaborative Action Creates Multiplier Effect

October 6, 2010

By Georges Dyer, Vice President of Programs, Second Nature

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

The ACUPCC

A core concept in the field of systems thinking is that in any system, “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”   The relationships between the components of a system are vital to understanding the system as a whole, and it is impossible to really understand a system by only studying its components in isolation from one another and in isolation from other systems.

This concept is illustrated through the ACUPCC network.  This group of over 670 colleges and universities with top-level commitments to promote education and research on climate and sustainability, and ‘walk the talk’ by pursuing climate neutrality in their operations is poised to have a great impact on humanity’s quest to break our fossil fuel addiction and preserve a safe, livable future.To date, 535 institutions have submitted greenhouse gas inventories and 320 have submitted climate action plans - all publicly available so students, faculty and staff can learn about where their institutions stand and what strategies other institutions are trying.  As the results of preliminary analysis of this data become available, some trends are emerging.

What ACUPCC Reporting Data Can Tell Us about Campus Sustainability

October 6, 2010

By Cynthia Klein-Banai,  Associate Chancellor for Sustainability, University of Illinois at Chiacgo

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

The ACUPCC

Tying in sustainability to climate action seems quite obvious to most of us.  Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions result from a number of activities that sustainability initiatives traditionally address such as electricity use, energy usage for building heating and cooling, air travel, campus fleet, commuting, and waste disposal.  If the emissions from those activities can be reduced, substituted by more “sustainable” energy sources, or offset then the campus carbon (equivalent) footprint is reduced and we are on our way to being more sustainable.

Unity College Joins Bill McKibben in a Road Trip to Put Solar Panels on the White House!

September 21, 2010

By Vanessa Santos, Advancing Green Building Intern, Second Nature

Last Tuesday evening at Old South Church in Boston, MA, you couldn’t turn around without seeing bright white signs that read “Put Solar on the White House!”

This is Bill McKibben’s clear and simple message. Mr. McKibben, with the support of 350.org, the students of Unity College, as well as many local and national environmental groups, has successfully brought this message from Maine to Boston, judging by the crowd of people that was present at the church to support the movement on September 7, 2010. The team then continued this ”Solar Road Trip” to disseminate this same message to New York City and eventually to Washington D.C. Hopefully this message will prompt President Obama to take action on 10/10/10, the day when organizations, politicians and people around the world will get to work to mitigate climate change.

Traveling with one of the very solar panels that President Carter put on the White House in 1979 (which Reagan removed during his presidency), Bill McKibben and some Unity College students made their first stop in Boston, as they rallied to get President Barack Obama to return this solar panel, and other donated solar panels, to the roof of the White House.

Building Capacity to Make Sustainability ‘Second Nature’ For All!

September 7, 2010

By Ashka Naik, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Second Nature

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

Within the Advancing Green Building in Higher Education Program, a capacity-building initiative funded by The Kresge Foundation, Second Nature has been building the sustainability capacity of many under-resourced institutions for the past two years.  As Second Nature continues to work on this initiative, we thought of taking this opportunity to share with you some of the highlights and success stories of this program.

This initiative has a two-fold mission. The first one is to level the playing field and offer access to all under-resourced higher education institutions to embrace institutional sustainability.  And, another long-term mission is to assist these institutions in committing to climate neutrality by enabling them to sign and implement the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment(ACUPCC).  Second Nature is directly working with more than 50 under-resourced institutions through this initiative.

Minority Serving Institutions Building Green

September 7, 2010

By Felicia Davis, Building Green Program Director, United Negro College Fund

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

The United Negro College Fund (UNCF) Institute for Capacity Building has embarked upon an ambitious endeavor to catapult minority-serving colleges and universities into leadership roles in the transition to a sustainable green global economy.  Elevating the critical need for emissions reductions and social, economic and environmental responsibility is central to the mission of higher education institutions.  Energy efficient upgrades, LEED certified building, and interdisciplinary sustainability studies are key elements in campus-wide sustainability efforts.  Minority-serving institutions are in a unique position to make a quantum-leap by embracing and aggressively pursuing carbon-neutral campus infrastructures.  These institutions can turn liabilities, such as older inefficient buildings, into assets by adopting LEED standards for new and existing buildings.  They can lead the way to a sustainable future.

Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) in North Carolina, under the leadership of Chancellor Dr. Willie Gilchrist, is the first institution to sign

Above - Felicia Davis presents ESCU Chancellor Willie Gilchrist award as first ACUPCC signatory since start of Building Green initiative

Pages

Subscribe to ACUPCC