ACUPCC

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.

On January 10th, 2007 Diana Van Der Ploeg, President of Butte College in Oroville, CA signed the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), making the institutional pledge to create a plan for pursuing climate neutrality and promoting education and research on climate and sustainability.  They have set a target date of 2015 for achieving climate neutrality.

Last week, Butte announced that it’s latest installation of solar photovoltaics, once completed in May 2011, will make the college grid positive – meaning it will generate more electricity on site than it purchases from the grid each year.  This leading project is another big step toward climate neutrality and sustainability.  Butte’s 2006 GHG inventory shows Scope 2 emissions of 2,942 metric tons CO2e – the updated report that will be submitted this fall will undoubtedly show the sharp drop in emissions associated with grid-purchased electricity due to these efforts.

The $17 million project was funded in large part by Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) along with funding from the college and support from state and federal rebates and incentives.

President Van Der Ploeg points to active student involvement for much of the college’s success in moving towards sustainability.  This video, from Butte’s day of climate action on 10/24/09 (part of the international day of action organized by 350.org) shows the level of student engagement and creativity:

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 Van Du, Advancing Green Building Intern, Second Nature

Second Nature’s Advancing Green Building in Higher Educationteam participated this month in the third and final UNCF Building Green Learning Institute. Hosted in San Antonio, Texas, from June 10-12, 2010, the institute once again brought together faculty, staff, and students from colleges and universities across the country to continue the discussion on sustainability efforts in higher education.

As with the previous institutes, this was a great forum for colleges and universities to learn from one another about the different sustainability and building green initiatives that each school is implementing.  In addition to showcasing schools and their ‘greening’ efforts, conversations and remarks at the institute underscored the importance of dedicating time and effort to this journey.  Many schools began by making a commitment to change. For example, Elizabeth City State University just recently became a signatory of the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment—the first UNCF Building Green Learning Institute participant school to do so.   However, it was clear that the real challenge for many schools is the transformation from commitment to action.

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.

“Let us put our minds together and see what life we will make for our children”
– Sitting Bull

The second of three Green Building Learning Institutes is being held in Minneapolis, MN with strong representation from tribal colleges in the region.

The highlight of the opening reception last night was an incredible dance performance from Larry Yazzie of Native Pride Dancers and his eleven-year-old son and three-year-old daughter.  Learning about their work of preserving these cultural traditions and passing them on to the next generation was a powerful reminder of the importance preserving a suitable habitat for humans on this planet and a global society that fosters, not destroys, a diversity of human cultures.

We also heard from Dr. Karl Reid who head Academic Programs and Strategic Initiatives for UNCF and Minneapolis City Councillor, Robert Lilligren, who talked about a host of exciting sustainability initiatives, including installing the largest green roof in the state and being recognized as the country’s number one biking city last year.

So far the event promises to be an excellent venue for networking and accelerating the great work that is being done in tribal communities and communities of color – and particularly the institutions of higher education that serve those communities – to create a healthy, just, and sustainable society.