Earth Equity News

Campuses Find Going Green Can Be Tough. By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo, CSMonitor, October 26, 2008. "With 587 presidents having pledged their colleges and universities to reduce their greenhouse-gas impact to zero, lessons are beginning to emerge about what it will really take to get there - on campus and beyond... Campuses account for a small portion of the United States' greenhouse-gas emissions -- less than 5 percent by some estimates. But many see themselves as well positioned to promote environmental sustainability -- as centers of innovation, models of social responsibility, and educators of future workers and decisionmakers. 'Climate planning is an emerging field, and … the plans [colleges] come up with will be helpful to folks in other sectors learning to do this for the first time,' says Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). Based in Lexington, Ky., it's one of the groups overseeing the American College & University American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, which requires signers to report publicly on their progress... The University of Vermont's Greenhouse Gas Inventory, for example, goes back far enough to show that emissions levels are now nearly as low as in 1990, despite campus growth. It boils down years of data on cars, cows, and all things energy consuming into a few pages, and is the starting point for coming up with a 'climate action plan' by next fall to go carbon neutral... Upgrading the infrastructure has been messy and has cost nearly $14 million since 2003. But because of that investment, the campus has been able to add nearly 500,000 square feet of new facilities and at the same time reduce its steam output, which reduces emissions... Slowly but surely, faculty and students are also being weaned off cars... Universities can't go carbon neutral on their own, UVM sustainability director Gioia Thompson says. 'What we need to figure out next is how can we work with our community…. Significant reductions will require changes beyond the campus - locally, regionally, and nationally… It's going to be a really wild ride.'"