| Sourced From Cornellsun.com |
Since President David Skorton signed the Presidents’ Climate Commitment in the fall of 2007 at the behest of the student group KyotoNOW!, the University has been working on a plan to make Cornell carbon neutral by 2050. Yesterday, the University unveiled the Cornell Climate Action Plan –– a set of general guidelines which Cornell plans to follow to achieve that goal.
In keeping with the sustainable mission of the plan, the CAP was only featured on the Internet via the website sustainablecampus.cornell.edu.
The homepage of the CAP website reads: “Cornell’s Climate Action Plan promotes the education and research needed to generate solutions for the challenges of global warming — and will demonstrate these solutions in campus operations.”
Mike Hoffman, director of Cornell’s Agricultural Experiment Station in Ithaca, is working with the CAP team to facilitate putting the plans outlined in the CAP into action.
“We really worked hard to create a future that’s achievable … that could be met,” Hoffman said, commenting on the feasibility of implementing the plans and attaining carbon neutrality by 2050.
Also on the homepage is a video welcome message from Skorton. “In the coming years Cornell will help make carbon neutrality a reality … Here you will see what we can do as an institution and what you can do as an individual to help in this work in which we all have a stake,” Skorton said.
The website outlines “19 actions to net zero emissions by 2050.” Each of these 19 actions falls under one of several categories or wedges, as the project team has dubbed them: green development, energy conservation, alternative transportation, fuel mix and renewables and offsetting actions.
Green Development
The main tenets of the actions under green development include making all buildings on campus operate more efficiently by raising building energy standards. The website includes a graphic that breaks down where University buildings use the most energy and explains how those energy consumption numbers will be reduced. Additionally, the University is going to look at its utilization of space on campus and make alterations to make sure that space is used more efficiently. The hope is that by 2050, a better utilization of the University’s land resources will reset 50 acres of land as open space.
Energy Conservation
One of the statistics that the website highlights is that Cornell’s energy consumption has remained at 1990 levels despite a 15 percent growth in space between that period and today. In the energy conservation section of the website, the University explains how it will explore new technologies and upgrade and enhance the systems already put in place in 1990 to help make Cornell carbon neutral by 2050.
The campus-wide retrofit program is a University plan to continue improving the lighting on campus “so that a remaining two-thirds of campus (approximately 10 million gross square feet) is converted to high efficiency fluorescent fixtures with occupancy-based controls. This effort alone is estimated to achieve an average annual abatement of [approximately] 5,600 tons and reduce annual electrical usage for campus lighting by 25 percent,” according to the CAP website.
After this initial ten-year retrofitting program, the University also has a second generation plan for years 16-40 that will include the installation of “heavily solid-state Light Emitting Diode fixtures” which will further decrease lighting on campus by 50 percent. Other energy conservation projects include fume hood reductions, a heating, ventilation and air conditioning energy conservation initiative, a building envelope project where windows and doors will be “caulked and weather-stripped to reduce outside air infiltration” and a laboratory ventilation effectiveness program.
This section also provides energy conservation tips and facts. Additionally, the section includes links to other websites where energy use of each Cornell building can be researched.
Alternative Transportation
The alternative transportation wedge is devoted to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by making campus commuting more efficient. The University is trying to reduce the number of vehicles on campus by 50 percent by providing alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles. Programs such as the Big Red Bikes initiative as well as the continuation of TCAT busing would help limit the number of SOVs on campus. Additionally, the CAP calls for increasing technological capacities for teleconferencing so as to limit the amount of travel necessary for out of town conferences and business trips.
Fuel Mix and Renewables
The wedge that entails the most research and technological advancement is the fuel mix and renewables wedge. The hybrid engineered geothermal systems is a more energy efficient way to heat and cool the buildings on campus. Within this wedge, there are also plans to further develop wind energy, renewable biomass, turbine generators and others.
Offsetting Actions
The final wedge, according to Lanny Joyce, one of the managers of the engineering, planning and energy management department and the leader of the energy conservation wedge, is the final step necessary to get Cornell to be carbon neutral. While all the other wedges are designed to significantly reduce the University’s carbon emissions, the offsetting actions wedge is needed to get the University down to zero net emissions. The website even terms this wedge as a “measure of last resort.”
The website reads: “Cornell anticipates helping to develop offsetting practices by creating local and regional offset programs featuring sustainable technologies that are related to our mission of education, teaching and research.” The University is planning on sequestering carbon dioxide emissions by maintaining local forested areas.
The CAP was created as a result of student prompting in 2007, and the student have remained involved in the process of creating the University plans for achieving carbon neutrality, according to Student Trustee Representative Mike Walsh. Walsh, while serving on the CAP project team as part of the implementation committee, said that students prompted Skorton to sign the Presidents’ Climate Commitment and have maintained their commitment to the project.
Joyce said that the creation of the CAP was a collaboration of students, faculty and staff. Walsh also noted that when the public was submitting sustainable ideas for the University, students submitted approximately 25 percent of the suggestions.
While some of the CAP plans such as the installation of a new hybrid heating and cooling system and a new steam turbine generator may have high upfront costs, the CAP explains the fiscal viability of implementing these initiatives even in a time of University monetary streamlining. According to the website, “The overall plan could produce millions of dollars in net savings over 40 years.”
