Leadership on climate change is lacking at the federal level in the United States. Progress at the international level is little better. Although the Kyoto Protocol will finally go into effect with Russia’s recent ratification, the Protocol only requires 2.5% reductions of greenhouse gases (GHG) by 2012 for developed countries. China, India, and other important developing countries currently are outside the regime.
The GHG reductions of 2.5% by developed countries stands in sharp contrast to the 70-95% immediate reductions in GHG most credible scientists believe is necessary to prevent further irreparable harm. It also contrasts with the growing calls to move beyond carbon cuts to carbon negative strategies in order to return to the 280 parts per million (ppm) carbon concentration of pre-industrial times (from today’s level of 380 ppm) to mitigate and reverse-- where still possible-- the impacts already set in motion including the now likely loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Given the need for accelerated U.S. action on climate change, it is essential that the several thousand colleges and universities in this country become centers for addressing climate change. US universities taken as a whole emit a significant amount of greenhouse gases, play a lead role in training and educating the next generation of leaders, and have a large influence on the US economy through construction, purchasing and endowment investments. Although an increasing number of campuses have “greening” programs, few deal directly with GHG emissions. Many campuses also waste the opportunity to include students in the “greening” process.
The theory behind CCN is that college campuses should provide the moral leadership for this movement and much of the technological leadership, as well. CCN’s goals are to train the next generation of climate leaders while immediately engaging the faculty and administration to develop aggressive plans to move campuses towards climate neutrality. An additional goal is to spur technological innovation on climate mitigation and sequestration.
Against this background, NAELS is launching a campaign to develop bottom-up climate leadership through its Campus Climate Neutral (CCN) program. Similar to the way that the anti-Apartheid movement grew out of an urgent moral imperative to address systemic discrimination, the CCN campaign is envisioned as a call to action for aggressive measures to respond to the current generation’s great crisis – climate change.
The goal of this project is to have Bren students design a plan for the UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) campus to reduce or offset its greenhouse gas emissions and achieve climate neutrality - a net zero impact on the Earth’s climate. The plan will be designed to serve as a template for other universities in the UC system and the nation to become climate neutral.
The plan will be informed by a multidisciplinary analysis of:
With an enrollment of nearly 20,000 students and 1,000 faculty members, the climate impact at UC Santa Barbara is significant. In 2004 alone, the campus used an estimated 60,000,000 kWh of electricity and 1,900,000 therms of natural gas. While UCSB has made important commitments to purchasing renewable energy and already has in place progressive transportation policies that will have an effect on reducing its indirect GHG emissions, the university has no plan to prepare a comprehensive GHG inventory nor to aggressively reduce its GHG emissions.
The Bren School is widely recognized within California, and increasingly throughout the US and the world, for its environmental leadership and excellence in environmental education and green building design. The Bren School, with its resources and expertise, provides an ideal starting point for CCN’s work at UCSB and within the UC system at large.
This project is an important first step that will complement other initiatives CCN is planning for UCSB and for the UC system outside of, but complimentary to, this project. These initiatives include the launch of a student-based CCN campaign and a UC Santa Barbara Climate Neutral Task Force to include faculty, staff and students who will work to implement the plan put forward by the group project and other Campus Climate Neutral initiatives. The project will also serve as an important tool for use by CCN at other UCs, such as UC San Diego, which has already completed a greenhouse gas inventory.
Stakeholders in this project include the UC community, professional and student groups working on campus greening projects, professional groups working on climate solutions, and groups specifically working on climate neutrality.
The plan will consist of a step-by-step approach to achieving zero net GHG emissions including:
The main deliverable will be the “UCSB Climate Neutral Action Plan” described in the previous section. The group project report should include the data, analyses, assumptions and scenarios that were utilized in designing the plan, including mechanisms for continuous reassessment and improvements. The project will also include a template with appropriate commentary that can be used by other universities involved in the CCN campaign to analyze GHG emissions and create an action plan for climate neutrality.
The California Climate Action Registry has agreed to provide project participants with access to its General Reporting Protocol and on-line GHG reporting tool (CARROT) and will train and assist students in preparing the inventory.
In addition, there are several models and tools for university GHG reduction that NAELS will provide to Bren students to develop this project, including:
There are also several texts that have been recently written on campus greening efforts including:
Finally, students will have access to numerous resources within the UC system and on the UCSB campus, including:
Following the Kyoto Protocol the EU calculated that the effect of the treaty, after considering offsets by CDM, JI, emissions trading, and carbon sinks, would yield only a 2% reduction by the 2008 to 2012 target period from the 1990 base year levels in actual CO2 emitted by industrialized countries. The Marrakech Accords in 2001 further clarified the rules surrounding the flexibility mechanisms of the agreement with agreements on CDMs (up to 2.5 % of emissions can be banked toward a country’s assigned initial carbon allowance), JI, emissions trading (up to 2.5% of emissions can be banked toward a country’s assigned initial carbon allowance between JI and emissions trading), and carbon sinks (up to 1% of a country’s carbon emissions can be made up for through carbon sinks), which the EU has now calculated will lead to only a 1.5% reduction in overall CO2 emissions by industrialized countries for the 2008 to 2012 period
Reada, Peter and Lemit, Jonathan . Bio-energy with carbon storage (BECS): A sequential decision
approach to the threat of abrupt climate change. http://www.accstrategy.org/draftpapers/R&L.pdf . See page 2, lines 68-81.
Such as the Abrupt Climate Change Strategy Group and its work on bio-energy as means of addressing the potential for abrupt climate change. http://www.accstrategy.org/
In 1999-2000, the expenditures of public degree-granting institutions totaled over $237 billion ; In 2001, the top 120 colleges and universities with the largest endowments had endowment funds totaling more than $186 billion. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/tables/dt343.asp ; dt346.asp ; dt345.asp
Dewey, Jim. UCSB Energy: FY 2004 Annual Report. http://energy.ucsb.edu/presentations/AnnualReport_2004.pdf