Episode 13: The Challenges and Opportunities of Aggressive Climate Action - Transcript
Dave Karlsgodt 0:00
Welcome to the campus energy and sustainability podcast. In each episode, we'll talk with leading campus professionals thought leaders, engineers and innovators addressing the unique challenges and opportunities facing higher ed and corporate campuses. Our discussions will range from energy conservation and efficiency to planning and finance, from building science to social science, from energy systems to food systems. We hope you're ready to learn, share and ultimately accelerate your institution towards solutions. I'm your host, Dave Karlsgodt, I'm a principal at Fovea, an energy carbon and business planning firm. In this episode, you'll hear a live recording of a panel I moderated at the California Higher Education Sustainability Conference, which took place earlier this summer on the campus of the University of California Santa Barbara. My panelists were Eric Eberhardt, director of energy services from the University of California Office of the President; Lindsey Kalkbrenner, director of sustainability for Santa Clara University; Fletcher Alexander, sustainability programs manager for California State University, Chico; Tyler Durchslag-Richardson, a senior analyst at the California Institute of Technology. During the session, the panelists fielded questions about their climate action efforts. You'll hear both success stories from these leading institutions, but also some honest discussion on where they have more work to do. The topics ranged from the nature of their climate action strategies, making the business case for sustainable practices, the dual role of higher education to both lead and educate carbon neutrality 100% renewable energy and more. Audience members brought up some challenging questions including how to consider equity, social justice and the stratification of resources when addressing these challenges, I think you'll hear a combination of inspiring stories and some honest self reflection from the sustainability professionals working in the trenches. I hope you enjoy this live recording recorded July 10 2018. All right, well, welcome. I'm your moderator today. My name is Dave Karlsgodt, I'm with a company called Fovea based in Seattle, Washington. But today I'm going to be wearing a different hat as host of the campus and energy and sustainability podcast. And we are going to try something new today. This is going to be the first podcast we've done in front of a live audience. So since I'm wearing multiple hats today, I expect the audience to wear multiple hats today, too. So instead of just being passive participants here, waiting for the reception afterwards to get your drinks or whatever, I'm going to make you be active participants here. So before we get started with these guys, I need you guys to practice your role real quick. Okay, so first of all, so I'll say something like, Okay, first of all, we'd like to thank everybody here, the staff at at UC Santa Barbara, and you're going to Okay, great. And then another thing that might happen is Tyler in a little bit, he'll introduce himself and he'll say, oh, and he has this cute little girl and you're gonna go Okay, good. And Eric, later on, he's gonna make a joke, and it's going to totally bomb, but you're going to be really polite, and you're going to go. Awesome. Okay. So I think I think you're ready. We'll see if our panelists are ready. I specifically chose this group of folks, partly because I knew them. That was probably the their their most qualifying characteristic. They certainly represent a different set of schools. I didn't get a community college in here, but we've got somebody from the UC system, somebody from the Cal State system, somebody from a small private school, I'm not supposed to say small, right? What's the right term for it. So you'll, you'll tell me later. And then we've got a technical schools. So they're going to all introduce themselves. We'll get to that here in a second. But the other reason I chose this group of people in particular is these are all folks that I've had really honest conversations with, they are not necessarily the person that gets up and reads all the fancy stats about all the great work they're doing. They're the ones actually in the trenches doing this hard work around deep decarbonisation on their campuses and pursuing these goals. So without further ado, we'll get started here, the format we're going to follow, allow each of our panelists to introduce themselves and speak a little bit about their own campuses. And then I've got a couple of questions just to get them get them warmed up because they need some practice to. And then I'm going to turn it over to you guys to ask your questions. And the only technical thing is, just make sure you go to one of these microphones when you ask your question. All right. Title today is the opportunities and challenges of aggressive climate action. Maybe Eric, you can start us off. Can you just give us an overview of who you are your role, and maybe a little bit about some of the big challenges you're facing right now?
Eric Eberhardt 3:58
Sure. My name is Eric Eberhardt, I'm the director of energy services at the University of California Office of the President, which is effectively the central office of the UC system, we're not affiliated with a particular campus. So just I guess, take that into mine. Based on my responses, I'm not speaking for a campus. My role at the Office of the President is really to support the campuses to create tools and resources for the campuses to achieve their goals and the system goals. So it's a slightly different perspective. And I'm part of a group at the Office of the President, which is called energy and sustainability, which supports a number of issues. I guess our challenge, our biggest challenge is probably common to just about everyone in this room, and that carbon neutrality is not the core function of the University of California. So how can we provide the right business case and framing around the projects and actions we need to take to make it palatable for campuses, budget officers, capital planners, etc. to execute on what needs to be done to get to the goals that we've set for ourselves?
Dave Karlsgodt 5:04
Alright, moving on. Lindsey, you want to
Lindsey Kalkbrenner 5:05
All right, Hi, I'm Lindsey Kalkbrenner. Can you hear me okay back there. I direct the Center for Sustainability at Santa Clara University. I've been in this role for a while I've been their Sustainability Officer for 12 years now started as a part time temporary position and worked my way up to director of the Center, we have we signed the Presidents Climate Commitment back in 2007, saying that we become carbon neutral or Climate Neutral by 2015. So that's, that's a challenge we could start with and an opportunity as well. We since revised, refined our day to 2020. So not much more realistic, but equally important and exciting. So we will be carbon neutral for scopes one and two by 2020. So that keeps me up at night. Because that's not that far away. We at the same time, we're growing in square footage, and in people which both use a ton of energy and travel. So well at least the buildings don't travel, hopefully, but that people do. And so finding out how to grapple with the balances of global travel, as well as more people and buildings on our campus with our goals for climate neutrality are in our strategic plan. We have stated both of these in the same document. and managing that in a financially responsible way that engages our campus community and more importantly, our students to model what sustainable future cannon should look like. All of those are, you know, good job security for someone in my position.
Fletcher Alexander 7:20
Hello, everyone. I'm Fletcher Alexander. I'm the sustainability programs manager at California State University Chico. Chico also signed the ACUPCC in 2007, we were actually one of the 12 founding signatories. We have done quite a bit since then we adopted our climate action plan in 2011. And our most recent greenhouse gas emissions inventory, which looked at fiscal year 14-15. Show that we reduced our scopes One, two and three emissions by about 33%. Over that 10 year period from our '06 base year through the 14-15 fiscal year. That actually puts us about five years ahead of schedule, in terms of our Climate Action Plan targets, our cap outlines and interim target of reducing back to 1990 emissions levels by 2020, which we have as our most recent inventory just exceeded by a little bit. And we have a neutrality target for 2013. And that does include all three scopes. So there's a lot that's been done to date. But we are pivoting now, I'd say to look at sort of the second phase of our climate action planning process, what's definitely going to be the much tougher phase. And there's the campus right now is actually going through a master planning update process. And there's some, like really encouraging things happening where we're we're basically folding in now our Climate Action Plan, which previously was a standalone document into our master plan. So we're starting to have some really interesting and challenging conversations about how do we get from where we are today, to neutrality in 2030, which, especially since we're including scope, three emissions will necessarily include some offsets. And as a state institution, we don't necessarily have a lot of resources to purchase them. So ways in which we might be able to actually generate leveraging our academic resources, our faculty and our students, as a really exciting conversation we're having recently as part of this master planning process.
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 9:19
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson, I'm a senior analyst and facilities at Caltech and services and planning and we have purview over sustainability and energy, we issued our first Climate Action Plan in 2008. And the goal for that plan was to reach 1990 levels of emissions by 2020. And we've since reduce since we've issued that plan, we've reduced our emissions about 24% and are over halfway to our goal but or close to 2020. And one of the things we've done it since that plan is recently we embarked on an energy resource planning process, it was a two year highly collaborative process with stakeholders across campus looking at energy supply for our campus and and how to green that potentially. And what we came to we currently operate a natural gas co generation facility on campus we came to in that plan was that you know, co Jen has been really good to us in the past, and it will be for the for the near future. But over the long term, it makes a lot of sense for us to move to off site renewables and renewable energy, for energy or for electricity supply. Now, one of the major challenges we faced as we dug into the details of that plan was, we have a lot of steam needs for the campus, both working in the campus process needs for industrial uses. And then for our laboratories, we're very resource and energy intensive laboratories on campus. And in order to really take a bite out of our emissions, we really have to address that thermal side of the equation, it doesn't really matter how many green electrons we get on the electrical side, unless we're really looking at electrification of boilers, and whatnot. So one of the big next steps for us is a utility master planning process. We're looking at optimizing our utility distribution system, and also looking at how do we address the thermal side of the equation? So that's one of the big next hurdles for us.
Dave Karlsgodt 11:07
All right. Well, I think that leads into my next question, which you can challenge my premise, but I tend to think about climate action planning, and with campuses as a three legged stool, so you have you more efficiency, that's clear. And that can be you know, building efficiency or system efficiency, you have cleaning up your supply. So that's either getting renewable energy into to the grid, or, you know, maybe bio gas or some other alternative fuels potentially. And then there's better system design. So you know, for example, if you rather than making more your fleet more efficient, what if you don't need to use the cars in the first place? For example? I guess that's my frame, I guess I'd be curious to think, you know, do you do you each think about it that way? Do you? Have you know, what, which of those are you focused on? Or how do you marry those three legs of that stool? Are there four legs of the stool, and maybe I'm missing one can go in any order, I don't care, whoever wants to go, first,
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 11:59
I'll add the forth. And then you can add to that. But I think that we have to always remember that we're an educational institution. So I think we need to everything that we're doing is for the benefit of our students, right for educating them and showcasing all these different technologies. So it'd be great to have, I always struggle with the idea of having automated lighting in classrooms and offices, because then people forget that they need to turn off the light. And when they go somewhere else outside of our campus that has an actual switch, like an old fashioned light switch, you have to actually still have that culture and that behavior. So Well, I think that it's in some cases, you have to remove the opportunity for someone to make the wrong choice. By doing those light sensors and having all those automated systems, there still needs to be that balance of that, that educational, that behavior and that culture embedded in, like all of our systems.
Fletcher Alexander 12:52
Yep, I'll follow up on that. I strongly agree. And I would say, especially for us in terms of the scope three piece, it's for sure. The trickiest piece of the mall. The commute piece is a very substantial contributor to our overall greenhouse gas emissions for us. And we are including students, staff and faculty commute, to a large extent how our student staff and faculty commute to campus certainly be on our direct control, we can influence it to a degree with incentives and disincentives. But a big part of that is, you know, engaging folks and getting them to understand that their behavior impacts what we're doing, and that these choices that they make matter. So I think the three legs you mentioned are obviously central to it. But I think there's a there's a human behavior piece, that's, that's a pretty big part of as well,
Dave Karlsgodt 13:39
maybe they're sitting on the stool,
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 13:41
I can pile on and add another leg to the stool, I think, you know, Caltech or a very data driven environment. And I think you can't really achieve what you don't measure. The first you really need a robust baseline for, for what your current operations are to understand where you're headed. And that's something we spent a lot lot of time on our campus, especially for our energy efficiency investments, we we have a green revolving loan fund that takes dollars from our endowment and invests in efficiency projects across campus. And without rigorous MNB, you know, we wouldn't be able to justify those expenditures and really have had wouldn't have made much of the progress that we've made today.
Eric Eberhardt 14:22
So I'm going to go backwards, I'm going to take away a couple legs, just keep things simple. And just for the sake of maybe our goal is scopes one into only for 2025. But I think all the things that were mentioned, are critical pieces of all this, but the way that are kind of looking at it, I guess, is really two sides of the coin, maybe versus a two legged stool, because that's probably not a good idea. But it makes it now we just look at, you know, demand side and supply side, you know, how are you going to get to carbon neutrality, you can tack those two sides. So, you know, on the demand side, obviously, focusing on energy efficiency, creating policies to support that, how can we, you know, push, efficient and low carbon for that matter, new construction and those two things, you know, that's an I think an important point is starting to really distinguish and develop, develop an appreciation for energy efficiency, 00 use of energy versus a carbon zero construction or project. So these are all subtleties that become very important and apparent when you start looking at these things. on the supply side, you know, that is a wide open field, we've taken the role as an energy service provider to go out on the market and purchase energy for our direct access eligible campuses, which is not our our entire fleet of campuses, unfortunately. So we have a certain level of control on the supply side, and other campuses we don't and so we have to look at evaluating utility green tariffs or what other alternative options may exist, or just going out and looking at how the accounting is done. And can we go down a road like a Google or an Apple as far as procuring green power, and offsetting use from that angle? So there's a lot of a lot of things there. And I think a really important point was made. On the on the gaff side, we also have seven cogent facilities that need to be addressed. There's a lot of ways to do that one. One way is on the supply side, which is procurement of bio gas, as as a component of the portfolio, it is not the answer by any stretch of the imagination, it's a bridging strategy, I think, from our perspective, to get there to address some of these assets that are going to be around for the foreseeable future. They they essentially have mortgages that need to be paid at some point. So that's kind of our perspective as the demand supply side.
Dave Karlsgodt 16:50
All right, this one's maybe a more of a lightning round, although you guys can pontificate as you'd like. So which of these best describes your climate action efforts? We are educating the next generation of climate aware engaged citizens, or we are piloting how an organization can decarbonize? And obviously, you can pick a little for both of you what
Eric Eberhardt 17:10
I'm going to give the obvious easy answer because it's both it's both the one or the other. Right? We're not but if you had to pick one, we're not doing our job. I mean, it's who you asking, right? I mean, yeah. From I, if I just go to my very narrow job description, it would be I'm not faculty, so I'm kind of in the in the trenches trying to try to do stuff. But I have to remember every day that I'm walking into an educational institution and our mission, carbon neutrality is not spelled out specifically there. So for not educating the next generation, we're not doing our job, as was pointed out before, so it has to be both it can't be anything but so I'm going to take that nice, easy answer off of what
Dave Karlsgodt 17:52
I guess I'm clarify my why even asked this question. I know, this is some schools really do focus primarily on the education piece, then don't worry so much about the facilities, it's really because they think they can get more leverage out of that. I guess, I'm just curious, you know, you all have made this commitment. So obviously have to deal with both. But how do you navigate between those two worlds? Maybe it's a better way to ask the same question.
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 18:13
I mean, or No, go ahead. I was just gonna say On the flip side, you know, our, in our institution, our role in facilities and sustainability in putting on that role had is is very much on the operation side. And showing by doing a lot of the work we do is behind the scenes in the buildings, and developing tools and processes and templates that you know, will help us achieve our goals, but then potentially could help other organizations and their operations to achieve the same. I mean to punt a little bit. I mean, I'm constantly amazed by the the research that's going on, on our, by our students, and how aware they are, you know, the things they're doing artificial photosynthesis, AI, advanced materials, research, you know, it's all above here for me, but you are going to be game to years down the road. And so we we do a little bit of both?
Fletcher Alexander 19:05
I'll just say I don't think that both is just easy answer is definitely the right answer. And in fact, at higher ed institutions, their synergies, right, so addressing both, you end up I think getting more than you would focusing on either. So I think in recent years, there's been a lot of movement at our institutions towards emerging these things. I mean, we look at the campus as a living lab initiatives at the CSU chancellor's office is about to launch, I think their fifth funding round for there's a lot of amazing projects going on at campuses across the CSU, where students as a part of their curriculum in the classroom are actually engaging with facilities folks, not just working on theoretical exercise and producing sort of concepts at a campus, but perhaps actually getting their hands dirty working on things, and the epic model educational partnerships for innovation and communities, which is a national network. But there are, I believe, eight to 10 programs in California alone, that have replicated that model that expands the same concept across the boundaries of the university. So I'd say especially if you're looking at scope, three missions, like a communities, partnering regionally, certainly with your city, government and others, is necessary to address some of those things. So I think not only is it is it a sort of a false dilemma. But I think if you're not addressing both, and finding ways they can support each other, then there's something really valuable, that's foundational to what we do at these institutions that being missed,
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 20:33
just say ditto and then add on the other. I mean, at our campus, the role of the Center for sustainability is to bridge academics and operations, we always talk about how siloed our campuses can be. And so there's great work happening on both sides. But if they don't know what's going on, they can build and leverage and have that even more incredible growth. So our job is really to kind of have that database of projects and questions and ideas. And then connect those two faculty members into students want to do a quarter long research project or a year long research project, and kind of help us come up with some of those pilot ties or solutions. And then that way we can have embed those into some of the directions that we move.
Dave Karlsgodt 21:10
All right, well, I have one more false binary question, which is in the softball round. And so I want you guys thinking about what questions you want to ask them next. We'll we'll kind of amp it up. So we want the answers to be like, make them squirm a little bit, but don't get them fired for their responses. So so that's the criteria for your questions. But my last one before I turn it over to the audience would be. So there's another kind of false dilemma you hear a lot about, which is, you know, hundred percent renewables versus carbon neutrality. And maybe I just say that, and what are your thoughts? How do you deal with that conversation? How much of a controversy is that? Is it a controversy? Or how do you how do you speak to that conversation?
Eric Eberhardt 21:44
I can start, I don't think it's a controversy. I think 100% renewable is a strategy to get to carbon neutrality. So I mean, our goal is not 100% renewable, its its carbon neutrality. And I think you can sometimes get caught up and down definitions, technical definitions of what that actually means. And you get into debates about the the effectiveness of one approach versus another. But I think at least for the University of California, it makes sense to do a carbon neutrality goal versus a 100% renewable energy goal, because it's just more comprehensive, because you're now including demand side, if you're only talking about 100%, renewable, you've just cut out all of your demand side approaches. So to have something that is indeed, I think, looking at both sides of that coin is probably more appropriate.
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 22:41
And I mean, I guess the 100% renewable wouldn't really be considering transportation, right? Certainly not misses the third scope. If you're I mean, it are our carbon neutrality goal. For scopes, one, two, and three would be 2029. I laughed because of transportations, least half of our carbon footprint right now, our greenhouse gas emissions footprint. So it's going to be I mean, a challenge to do that. So I think that aside, we're going to need to be purchasing offsets, we're never going to stop traveling. And until, you know, the travel industry runs on renewable energy, we can't, we won't be renewable for travel. So I think that we're we're focusing on carbon neutrality, now trying to emphasize reducing as much energy use as possible. And but we're knowing that we're gonna have to purchase offset. So part of our challenge is finding his mission align off offset, so we can be financially responsible, and, you know, have those educational co benefits associated with offset. So we're not just, you know, offsetting something, and not changing any of our practices, it really has to be a concerted effort. But I do like the idea of 100% renewable energy, because that would definitely minimize the amount of offsets that you'd have to purchase for your, or eliminate the amount of offsets you'd have to purchase. For energy usage. I just don't think in this time period, it's it's not realistic for us, it's more realistic for us to commit to carbon neutrality. And that's something that we can strive for and be successful at, and then have that goal of 100%. Renewable to focus on. Yep,
Fletcher Alexander 24:11
because we are including a variety of sources beyond our energy consumption, that's not really the question we're looking at. But in terms of the energy piece, we do have sort of a loading order, I'd say that efficiency first and conservation and then renewables, and this sort of the greenest kilowatt hours to kilowatt hour, you don't consume sort of an idea. So renewables are, you know, sort of one of the last things we will pivot to and look at yet 2030 is not that that long out. So we have electrified all of our building systems by then fully, you know, probably not, there will definitely be some, some offside questions for us there.
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 24:48
Yeah, you know, we're, we're a space constrained urban campus. And so 100% renewable for us would mean, it's not going to happen on our on our campus on our property. And as you see a lot of institutions, a lot of companies going with the large off site purchases, and I think something we all need to consider as we move towards a more renewable world is you know, we're all essentially using the grid as a battery when as we increase our renewables and that we that we take credit for but there are emissions associated with with our electrical purchase, even if we have a off site renewable contract that covers all of our essentially over a net period, our consumption, we have to think about that broader system as well, you know, as we get higher and higher levels of renewable penetration, what does that mean? Is 100%, renewable achievable? Are there other technologies that can help us get to that carbon neutrality at a lower marginal cost or, you know, potentially as those technologies improve? So that's something we think about Caltech.
Dave Karlsgodt 25:51
All right, well, that was softball round. So if we've got a question over here, please go ahead and tell us who you are too.
Joseph Fullerton 25:57
Thanks so much for being here. My name is Joe Fullerton, and I work at San Mateo County Community College District, we have some work to do to catch up with the All that said, one of the things that I feel like we're pretty successful in is inclusiveness and social equity. And so my question to you is, in terms of your carbon action plans, how are you factoring in or calculating or thinking about the both the direct and indirect impacts or issues around social equity within your programs, if at all? So let's leave that open. Great question.
Dave Karlsgodt 26:37
Again, rock, paper, scissors, who goes first?
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 26:40
It's something we're we're not doing enough of maybe explicitly, one thing that we've started to do is build in a social cost of carbon, at least on the planning and sensitivity analysis side of our project analysis. So we've had some some teams of students and graduate students look at the models that are out there, what are the pros and cons of the different social costs that are being floated? And then build that into our project analyses to see how do things tip? How does our view of the world change if we build in a social costs, which takes it's not, you know, a full gamut of equity issues, but potentially some of those costs that our actions are imposing on the broader world? So it's a start, and hopefully, it's something that will continue to be into institutionalized?
Dave Karlsgodt 27:24
Right. Any other questions right now? Otherwise? It's all right, we have another. Go ahead. You can go ahead first, yes, can tell us who you are and where you're from.
Cassie 27:31
Hi, my name is Cassie. I'm from San Diego State University. So like many other campuses, we've also adopted a Climate Action Plan. We have some aggressive goals to do by 2020. We have set for 2037 for 2014. So Eric kind of posed the question a little bit. I just want to know how you strategize to motivate people to make climate action plans more of a priority with so many other things they have to do, why should they focus on this?
Dave Karlsgodt 27:58
That takes one off my list hard, got some good work.
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 28:02
So in the past, we've tried really hard to make it not something extra. So something embedded in our mascot, the bronco. So that's what Broncos do, we have an energy challenge for our campus residents every year, and we're doing it in the fall, right. So as soon as first years are getting onto campus is establishing the norms and behaviors. They're learning how to do their laundry in cold water and those sorts of things. But I think this year, we've just updated our Climate Action Plan, where the process of integrating that with our sustainability strategic plan, and part of that includes a set of playbooks that show folks how they can engage in implementing the plan in their roles on campus, if they're a faculty or staff member, if they're an administrator, if they're a director of a division, if they're building manager, so kind of gives them specific things that they can do, relative to who they are on campus and ways they can be successful in helping us implement the carbon neutrality goals.
Fletcher Alexander 28:53
That's great. We also try to focus a lot on engagement. First Years are definitely a target group for us, and are really, you know, our Associated Students has a pretty robust sustainability program does a lot of amazing programming focused towards engaging students. And there are a lot of other groups, clubs, etc, across campus that are focused, especially on engaging our student body. And I think we've had a lot of involvement from our students over the years in these efforts. One of the things we're discussing as we're going through this master planning process, and looking at neutrality for all three scopes by 2030. And ultimately, at some point having to deal with offsets is this idea of, can we produce offsets in some way, right? And sort of perhaps, you know, the UC's got some of what they call the grand challenges. So sort of borrowing from that idea, can we pose a challenge with some sort of compelling incentives to our faculty and students to get them involved there? And in cracking, what ultimately will be, you know, one of the toughest parts of this whole puzzle?
Eric Eberhardt 29:56
Making people do stuff that they don't want to do? That's, that's really the core. And we I was actually with Dave, in a room right before this, trying to figure out this, this very same question. But I think, you know, one of the foundations for, for better or worse is you have to have buy in at the top level to make this happen. If you think it's, if you think it's going to realistically happen. That's just a fact. I think, and even when you have that, that is not solved your problem. We have our president, that that made this, this a presidential initiative, and you think, you know, okay, we're good. Now let's everyone just start going out and getting carbon neutral, not not so much. So then, you know, I think the next level is really creating accountability metrics, and reporting to support those metrics at all levels, and engaging all the stakeholders that are involved in those decisions and making them accountable. Because I think, in the end, people want to do this. I mean, this is, I mean, that's kind of the nice thing, right about being in this role, is it we're kind of the good news, people in general, in general, you know, we're not the coming to bring the storm clouds, usually people this is these are things that I think people inherently want to work on. So if they're accountable for things around these efforts, it gives them the latitude to spend time on it and to tell their superiors that this is, this is something that their leadership cares about, and they need to spend time on it and put the time and effort in into it to make it successful. So that's not easy to do. But I see, you know, to make a big goal like that happen. That's critical.
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 31:31
at Caltech, we try and make things as easy as we possibly can for people, our stakeholders are incredibly busy. And our issues are probably not the highest on their plate in any given day. So we try and incorporate nudges or behind the scenes actions as much as possible, or make it easy for them, for example, or freezer rebate program where they can get free money to install a higher efficiency freezer, that saves a ton of energy. So we try and make it as easy as possible.
Jared 32:01
Alright, so my name is Jared, and I represent the student body in the AS government of California State University, Chico. And so, at the last panel I was at we just learned that a third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions comes from our global food system. So my question was, what if anything is being done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced from food being sold on campus? Or are these conversations like not being held? Are they beginning or what if anything you have to say about that?
Fletcher Alexander 32:33
Well, I'd say our Associated Students at Chico has done some really innovative stuff over the years. The first year that planted question. On the one hand, yes. But in fact, I mean that sincerely. And the first year that CHESC added food systems as best practice award category, our Associated Students won that award. I think that was 2014. So in a sense, as a student government officer, you may have a little bit more knowledge about some of the things the Associated Students are doing than I do. But I think there's there's there's a serious commitment there. I mean, within our whole Associated Students, I think, I guess I should, I should clarify, our dining operations are run by our Associated Students, which is perhaps a little bit unique. We don't have any franchises or anything like that. It's all run through the AS. So I think there's been a real meaningful commitment there over the years sourcing locally, I mean, we're certainly in an agricultural area, and Chico and Northern California. So from our 800 acre University farm, where we've got now and organic vegetable project that's providing, you know, some food to the marketplace, to some other efforts as well. I mean, I think, within the as there's been a real serious commitment to that.
Eric Eberhardt 33:47
And I know we have the global food initiative, and that I'm not going to pretend that I have all the details on but I mean, just to address your question of is this being talked about? Is this being addressed? The answer is definitely yes. And I think there's a lot of synergies there that were mentioned. I think a lot of the initiatives around food are, you know, one is health and health of the citizens of the state country in the world? And how can we, you know, create a food system to support that, but also addressing these other issues around the economy and GHG. And I think, like I said, there's synergies there local, I think addresses a lot of those issues. And that's been a huge push for all the campuses I know, within the UC system to try and make that happen. So I think it is, it is a major issue that is being talked about and addressed.
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 34:35
I know at Santa Clara, we've been looking at food security on campus, as well as food recovery, both on and external to calculate campus donations. But since project drawdown came out, we were inspired to include that in our sustainable strategic plan. And so we're measuring we're determining our current baseline for food waste on campus, and coming up with targets to reduce that within the next few years, year by year working with. And then we've also looked at our percentage of plant based meals to see how we can what our baseline is and then how we can increase that from year to year.
Dave Karlsgodt 35:10
Any other comments? Okay, go ahead.
Mac Lojowsky 35:13
My name is Mac Lojowsky. And from Mendocino-Lake Community College District, I just wanted to kind of touch more on what Joe was saying about equity and whatnot. I mean, from just a cursory search on my phone, saw the California Community Colleges serve 2.1 million students, Cal State and the UCS serve less than half that. And there's a noticeably empty chair, on your panel here. But I'm wondering how do we how do we move forward? I mean, it seems to be a very large performance gap seems to Cal State UC systems have a lot of money to do these projects. California Community Colleges don't, by and large, our students are largely minority students have a high degree of poverty, such as that. So how do we see I guess, stop the stratification between the two systems? And how do we I guess, find ways to collaborate on an institutional level to move forward?
Dave Karlsgodt 36:20
I'll pile on to that. So first of all, it's my fault there isn't that seat at the table? And definitely recognize that up front, I'm sorry, I only only had so many people like I had to the battle. But to pile on for you guys for the question, because I think it's a great one. Because a lot of the issues that the community colleges deal with, are those scope three issues, some of the ones I know, with the work of the UC, that we've been doing it that's not even in our scope of what we're thinking about. I mean, people are but I guess yeah, I'll just let this question stand.
Eric Eberhardt 36:50
I can, I can start with, I want to dispel a rumor that there is a giant pot of money that these activities, we finance everything basically. And that's the beauty of energy efficiency, obviously. So I think it's, it's developing the processes and the systems to, to utilize a lot of the available resources and the size of some of these institutions and the credit worthiness of these institutions. And and use that money to to get these projects done. Like I said, Not that it's coming from a budget, it's being financed. And if you're doing cost effective projects, you know, that's, that's an available resource. So I think that that's something that is under utilized by UC for sure. And we're, we're, we're pushing it, but I think, you know, that's an opportunity for all of us, you know, like you mentioned, I think maybe to work together to continue to work with utilities and some of the programs that exist to expand them and to continue pushing that envelope, because I think that's a massive opportunity for for funding.
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 37:58
And I mean, I don't come from a system we have, there's maybe there's 28 Jesuit universities, but we're all over the US. And we don't often collaborate as much on like energy initiatives. But I think that I mean, I love learning from other campuses regarding like, regarding whatever program they're working on, that I'm thinking about right now. And I love sharing what we're doing. I mean, obviously, I'm up here today, right? But like, so I think that if there's ways that we can piggyback off of each other, if there's a successful case study, or some really cool installation that's happening on campus, like I want to go and see it and look under the hood and figure out how it worked. It's it's nice to read about it and like an AASHE newsletter, but I think it's it's more helpful for us to find those peers or counterparts that are near us that we can go and visit and exchange with. So if you're ever at Santa Clara, come on over, I'd be happy to check out your campus too.
Dave Karlsgodt 38:49
And I'll say, Oh, I was just gonna say just because I think part of his question that we're missing is the is the equity and you know, the student body aspect of it, too. Is that just to give you a chance to add on before we turn it over to Fletcher.
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 39:01
Thank you. So I think that well, one key point is the less we spend on energy, the I'm never going to say that will be able to reduce tuition, right, but at least tuition will have to go up as much. I mean, if we can be more financially responsible with how we're how we're spending our money, if we can spend less on energy, that ultimately that will lead to better improve campus operations in some other way that will improve the quality of life for the students on campus. That's my two cents for that.
Fletcher Alexander 39:31
I just want to follow up on the UC comments about finance mechanisms, our local community college Butte College, was recognized as being the first I think grid positive in terms of their electricity college university in the United States. Back in 2006 2007, their facilities management team was able to take advantage figure out how to how to do some think innovative financing, and they have solar panels everywhere on that campus, not just on the rooftop, but trellises everywhere parking structures. And we actually take a lot of heat of that about that, because our students go out to college and see that and they come back to Chico State and we do not have anywhere near that much solar. So I think that that's a great point. And I just from my own experience in our own region, our our local community college has done some really impressive stuff.
Dave Karlsgodt 40:20
It's not just the the UCs teaching the community colleges, it's actually the innovations happening at the at the smaller schools. We see that a lot in our work, too. Yeah. Go ahead, Tyler.
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 40:29
I'll just echo that, you know, we're always open to share and to learn. We have people come to our campus all the time, and we go and visit others, and see what innovative practices are doing. So hey, we're always looking to collaborate.
Dave Karlsgodt 40:43
All right, we have a line now this is great. All right, go ahead.
Bruce Chamberlain 40:47
Bruce Chamberlain, campus Energy Manager at UC Berkeley. And I was going to touch on the the, the resource issue and Thanks, Eric, and others for mentioning financing. But following up on the earlier nudges or enticements, you mentioned incentives. So we have, so for instance, we have the leadership that's on board. And we have a willingness within campus and community stakeholders to do it, because it's the right thing, or they have a certain pride of institutional efficiency. So but so that really usually the the nut to crack is the resources, whether it's staffing or money to get things done. So maybe you've touched on that. And if financing is the answer, that's great. But maybe there's other ways you could explain how that works and flows and, and builds off the momentum of these other characteristics. And then also just to throw in there training, if training of staff, facility staff to stay up with the sophistication of facilities dynamics, and all the way they're run these days. Thanks.
Dave Karlsgodt 41:57
Any takers?
Fletcher Alexander 42:00
Well, I'll say Chico established a sustainability office in 2006, where the first CSU campus to establish the sustainability office and put resources towards a full time Sustainability Officer position. There are probably, I don't know, 40 more Sustainability Officer positions across the CSU since then, so a lot of hires going on in our resource level has remained somewhat static over that time, 10-12 years now, one of the most important things we can do is to show the value that we're that we're adding to the campus to quantify that whenever possible, and I think I might be a little biased, but I mean, I think we really do add immense value to not only what we're doing operationally, but the academic mission of the university. So that can be tricky to quantify or put a dollar value on no doubt. But there are the metrics that work. And that's, I think, for sure, one of the most important things that can be done,
Dave Karlsgodt 42:53
How do you do that Fletcher? Because I think that's like, conceptually, that totally makes sense. But like, what do you like, give us give some specifics on how do you convince people that you're worth it?
Fletcher Alexander 43:03
Sure. So more recently, in my office, we've had a couple initiatives that have launched. One is a public public partnership model, and one is a public private partnership model. So we are now in fact, bringing substantial resources onto campus. So that is a little more straightforward, you know, grants, donations, etc. In fact, I just had, we went through a end of the year budgeting process, and one of the things I did was show that the dollar value of the resources that are put into our office, and next to that the dollar value now of the funding we're bringing in, and it's a larger figure by a factor of four or five.
Dave Karlsgodt 43:38
Makes it easier to ask for that extra staff person, I suppose. Yeah. All right. Anybody else on that one.
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 43:43
So we haven't done any, like major investments in carbon neutrality initiatives in a while, I think, when we're building our new buildings, we're just making sure that we don't go cheap on the mechanical systems. So it's kind of embedded in the different processes that we have in place. But it's been really hard. We don't have an Energy Manager, I like ask every day to get one paid for themselves, please, you know, but so that's been a challenge. As far as staffing time, our Director of utilities and I work together really well, we also butt heads a lot. And we have different opinions of how things should should happen. But his main job is not to implement the carbon neutrality planets to, you know, save energy, but make sure that our buildings don't turn off. And we don't get complaints because of temperatures. And so it's really there's a lot of competing priorities. It's great that we report to the same person, though, so we, we can play nice with each other. But there's not we don't we both have full time jobs that are not necessarily to reach carbon neutrality. So it's, it's a limiting of staff time, as well as funding, so I don't have a good answer for you.
Dave Karlsgodt 44:49
Put that in the challenges category.
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 44:52
One of our big successes has been our ability to demonstrate our goals or values in business cases and moving beyond strictly financials that understanding the the kind of risk context that our organization lives within its, you know, we have very sensitive scientific experiments going on and really trying to find angles and ways to quantify those risks and really think about what what is how do you? How do we proceed with risk? How do we understand the risk of catastrophic failure, it's a, you know, it's, it can be a very difficult thing to do. So we try and build in qualitative elements into our business cases, to really drive home those points. From a staffing perspective, it's, it's, I think it's a, it's an ongoing challenge, to continue to, to bring all of your facility staff along with you, you know, we, we do a lot of work. And we are controller specialists. And each fact mechanics have gained a lot of tangible and valuable skills as part of our building automation and building out smarter buildings. But you know, there's times when there's hot cold calls, and they want to just take care of it and stop this building from calling them and so the fan gets left wide open, and the alarms are turned off. And so it's a constant process of working with our team and making sure that you know, things are things aren't Left, left behind. It's not something that ends
Dave Karlsgodt 46:18
Do you want one on that Eric or should we move on?
Eric Eberhardt 46:20
Bruce doesn't want to hear what I have to say.
Steve Guttmann 46:24
Hi, my name is Steve Guttmann. I'm a consulting engineer in San Francisco with Guttmann and Blaevoet Consulting Engineers. So back to the hundred percent renewables comment and your two legged stool, Eric supply and demand. You know, we're in this weird situation in California, where we actually have excess solar on the grid, we have to curtail solar. So you know, there are a lot of discussion about all electric infrastructure and trying to get more electricity demand on the grid. Listen, we know that there's some challenges with site generated solar in terms of voltage control, and all sorts of the other issue. So How serious are you taking on your future projects sort of going to all electric buildings? Is that a viable strategy? Is that seen as the right direction? doesn't address the CO Gen systems and legacy systems? But is that the future?
Eric Eberhardt 46:38
Yeah, we we've we looked at that we actually just finished a study a building study on looking at all electric buildings. And we found that they actually, for the most part, are cost effective, versus a traditionally serve building for from natural gas and electricity. So, you know, I think there's people that have various opinions on that study. But I think in general, I think you can make the argument that it is a reasonable thing to do to make all electric new construction, from a new construction, granted, we have a lot of existing stock that needs to be dealt with and is a little more challenging, not so cost effective to electrify, but we are going to have policy in place this year, that essentially says, if you're building new building, it should be at all electric building unless you have a compelling reason why and let us know what that is. So that's kind of I'd say, step one into moving in that direction. And, you know, I think, like I said, we're looking at, how can we set ourselves up for carbon neutrality, either carbon neutral, or carbon neutral, ready? building design? So from our perspective, I do see that as a future.
Dave Karlsgodt 48:25
Tyler I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. Because I know, you've done a lot of thinking on more like, you know, because there's carbon power electric for buildings, but there's electrified campuses as a whole nother level. So I know you've done things with fuel cells and co-gen and some of the challenges there. So yeah,
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 48:40
we're I mean, we're deep in the middle of that argument or that conversation. Right now, we're not at the end of the study, we're in the middle of our utility Master Plan, which is going to tell us a little bit about how cost effective, you know, we're for retrofitting a campus to move to something like a hot water system, to be able to use heat pumps and get rid of our boilers. It's definitely costly. And it and even another consideration for us is potentially disruptive to operations, you know, digging up the campus and, and re piping all of the buildings in, you know, these are buildings where the frequency and color of the light can can impact how people feel about the impact to their work. So it's it's definitely a challenge and something we're thinking a lot about. I mean, I think there may have to be some conversations about appropriate uses for natural gas and in certain settings. And what does even taking it further if we're going to meet our two degrees, at some point, we're going to go carbon negative. So what what do What does appropriate carbon capture and sequestration and utilization look like? Is that feasible or desirable? So it's a we don't have an answer yet on our campus, and we're looking at potentially electrifying, but it did. They'll be challenges along the way.
Dave Karlsgodt 50:00
guys want to take what are you good?
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 50:01
Doesn't seem like we'll electrify anytime soon.
Fletcher Alexander 50:04
Yeah, we had a very interesting conversation on our campus about that this year, that focus on a new environmental sciences building that, as is the constructions just being started this month. There's actually a very passionate and driven small group of students who lobbied pretty hard to the university administration that it should be an all electric building. Ultimately, it is not. But because of their efforts, I think there was a much richer conversation that was had about that. A couple things there. I think one of the main ideas towards the end, as far as the building designers were concerned is that the sort of Value Engineering it would be too great of a cost to be able to afford that in terms of the sacrifices for some of the other principal functions and services of the building. And unfortunately, there's another piece, which is that not very long ago, we actually expanded our boiler chiller plant on campus. And so now we are facing a little bit of a delay, lemme there as we're seriously looking at a 2030 neutrality target. And we're also looking at our student body right now. It's about 17,000 students we're looking at our president has been making statements recently that she'd like to see it grow to as much as 25,000 in the near term. So there will be more new buildings constructed as well. I guess the answer is, you know, we don't it's it's come up more certainly this last year, I think we had a we had a hard conversation about it. Because of that this building probably got pushed in the right direction in some regards. But it isn't an all electric building.
Dave Karlsgodt 51:34
Well, I think it was interesting that Butte College was, you know, a community college was to, it's easier to do there. We're not running, you know, Einstein experiments, like at Caltech or in some of the research institutions, but so I think they're the ones that probably are going to lead the charge on that, at least for my work, but go ahead.
Breana Wheeler 51:51
Hi, there. My name is Breana Wheeler. I'm the Director of Operations at the building Research Establishment. We're a global multidisciplinary Building Science Research Organization. And we develop, we take science and we develop them into standards, such as bream. So one of the questions and you spoke earlier about accountability. And there's been a lot made of organizations like Microsoft, for example, setting carbon budgets alongside financial budgets as far as planning, is that something that your organizations are considering or have looked at as far as looking at accountability and moving towards those goals?
Fletcher Alexander 52:27
Can you elaborate just
Breana Wheeler 52:28
so what they were doing is they were setting budgets that essentially looked at the carbon emissions from particular divisions from so for in the case of university specific schools, and looking at the impacts of all of the people within that. So everything from the facilities that they use to potentially their commuting their business travel in particular, and using that to look at the cost that that brings into the organization. So for example, instead just coming up with the total ght factor for the entire entity, it was like our audience vision here is also responsible for, let's say, 70% of our business travel emissions.
Dave Karlsgodt 53:06
So instead of just using budget for the for the departments using carbon as the codes, right, yeah,
Breana Wheeler 53:11
that's right. So essentially putting a price on it. Right. Right. That's something
Dave Karlsgodt 53:16
you can check out. You can check out Episode 12. Yeah, no, Swarthmore's done a lot of work in that space. But there are a bunch of other schools that have done that. But I'm gonna let these guys answer for their own campuses.
Fletcher Alexander 53:28
we haven't done that yet. But that does make me think about what what Berkeley did a number of years ago with, as far as I understand it, establishing department energy budgets that
Joseph Fullerton 53:40
Uh it was monitoring energy use within departments and tracking, whether they're about baseline or below.
Fletcher Alexander 53:48
The baseline was set. And they were sort of handed that budget. And then as they--
Unknown Speaker 53:52
No, it was wasn't their budgets, it was an energy utility budget. Yeah. And if they say that there were some they were below their target. And if they went over there was a penalty.
Fletcher Alexander 54:09
Okay. Well, it's a model we've was like, yeah, it's something that's come up for us again, and again, as as a seems like a really compelling way to sort of parse out some of the ownership, right? I mean, the same thing, again, that
Breana Wheeler 54:23
you're making a little bit more about the accountability, but also understanding what that impact means for overall, it's not it's a more tangible thing specific to your department. It's about talking about, you know, with your students and that sort of thing. The second question I had was, how does resilience factor into all of your climate plans? How do you building in you mentioned about the sort of the catastrophic? What if everything goes down? We've obviously seen some, you know, incidents recently, the three hurricanes, I know other places are thinking about that, but in California as well, how does how does that build into those plans?
Eric Eberhardt 54:55
So I can start actually wanted to address your first question to which is is to answer your question, no, however, it's been identified as one of the barriers to getting the carbon neutrality is putting a price on it, and, and creating those impacts for for those that, that are making the decisions that that raise, you know, the the level of carbon emissions as we're trying to get to zero. So that's as far as we are as what what that mechanism and process is, is undefined, to be very honest. But it has been identified as as a barrier and a need for a solution. So whatever that's worth. And then the second question, as far as resilience, I mean, I see resilience as a huge opportunity for sustainability. In that, I think those two things are, you know, like peanut butter and chocolate, that you can raise the level of a discussion with the decision maker, when you start talking about resiliency, that folds in a lot of Allah events that are key to sustainability. So we've had some issues on some of our campuses, around resiliency with some some flooding issues that have really raised the the profile of, of resiliency, and then at the same time sustainability. So I think it's a huge opportunity that I think is being recognized and, and transitioning and weaving those things together is is really important, and something we should be doing.
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 56:26
So going back to the price of carbon, I think that we we've been having those conversations more and more on campus, but we don't have anything implemented or institutionalized right now, I think it would really help us with our new buildings and our mechanical upgrades. Because if you have that cost accounted for already, the delta is not as high as it would be if you hadn't been accounting for that. So that's something we're pushing for. But we've more recently been talking about incorporating the price of carbon into our travel, not necessarily charging departments, but giving departments that information so that if they know, by 2029, we're going to be offsetting you'll have to pay, someone will have to pay for that travel that you just didn't, if you zigzag from San Jose to Washington DC, down to, I don't know, Panama, then you're going to have to pay for the extra carbon associated with that trip, even though it was $200 cheaper to go the extra distance. So giving them opportunity to do that math and figure out what what's the more financially responsible decision no longer is just the cheaper flight it might be, which one has less carbon emissions. We're not there yet. But that's just we're just starting to have those conversations. And then the resiliency conversation, we that's not incorporated in our Climate Action Plan. Right now, frankly, I don't have enough time to, to do that as well. But you know, on our campus, we're that's referred to as business continuity. So if I go to me, we talk about business continuity, we're all kind of speaking the same thing, even though we're telling the same story, even though we're not using the same words, but it's not in the same pod.
Fletcher Alexander 57:57
As far as resiliency piece, Chico State, we did sign the climate leadership commitment when the ACUPCC was rolled over there, including the resilience piece. And actually just this past spring, we had to report on that for the first time. So we the first piece, there is an assessment. And we had actually a class couple of students who were in that class are here in the audience today that use the CalAdapt tool in the state of California and put out to look sort of regionally at what the impacts of climate change will be. That was a really valuable, I think, outcome for the campus. What came out of that is something that we submitted as part of our reporting there. And we've looked at some of the assessments and National Climate Assessment from the state of California assessments that are out there previously, but I think this kind of dialed in a little bit more for us. There's a structure piece, you know, it's necessarily more about engaging beyond the campus, right. So there's a piece where you're supposed to have some sort of committee that's got campus folks, but then also, folks from across the region, we don't really have a full well established committee yet. But we do have some smaller groups have been working together, actually, for quite some time on these issues. And we have a couple of initiatives that are what the main thing we submitted reported there. One of them's Actually, we have an educational partnership for innovation Communities Program at Chico State resilience Cities Initiative. We're working with the city of Chico on transportation and commuting issues around campus as well as some other things. And then we've got a regenerative agriculture initiative that's also fairly new that's working with farmers throughout our region, on more sustainable practices. So it's certainly something we've been talking about it I'd say, we're talking about a lot more seriously now. But it's new. It's newer, certainly. And we're still feeling you know,
Dave Karlsgodt 59:42
is it fair to say to all of you and I'll let Tyler, if you can still answer the question, but that both conversations are having, but it's not like they're totally intertwined yet, because that's kind of what I see with most campuses we work with, the climate action and resilience piece being, you know, really married. Well, is it?
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 59:59
Yeah, I mean, we're, we're having those conversations. And we're starting to starting to percolate into the discussion. So we talked a lot about in our energy resource planning how to how to incorporate a hotter world into our models into the future. And we see it in a variety of ways in our drought issues. We see it in redlining of some of our cooling infrastructure across campus, we're seeing more sustained periods of heat, which are causing infrastructure to be pushed to the limit, we we built into our sensitivity analysis, fluctuations and demand to see you know, if that demand continues to rise year over year as a proxy for hotter days, what does that impact? How does that impact our costs down the road? So we're, we're it's starting to come into our conversations. But it's not it's not a central conversation yet.
Dave Karlsgodt 1:00:52
All right, you started us off, you can end this off here. And then I have just a few words to close. And we'll hopefully get out of here a little early.
Joseph Fullerton 1:00:58
Yeah. And thanks, again, for being you're learning a ton. This is Joe Fullerton from San Mateo County Community College District. I guess, I'm going to ask you each to kind of reflect a little bit and perhaps go back to your past self. And so for those of us that might be a little bit earlier on in our path for climate action. What is your pitch to your senior leaders for climate action? I Understand president Napolitano kind of made that easy for some folks, but more hard depending on who you are. But, you know, how do you? What's your pitch?
Fletcher Alexander 1:01:43
I'll start, I guess a couple of the key things. Huge. I mean, one of the biggest is that it's what our students want to see us doing. I mean, that's been very clear for a long time. And that matters, and we're in a really big way. So I think that's been a big driver for us, and will continue to be in a very important thing for us. To continue to bear in mind, I'd say another big piece is that sort of the position that universities are in, are going to sort of protected space that enables us to, you know, innovate, and research and pilot. And I think so sort of necessarily, because of that there's some responsibility for us to address these, you know, very pressing and, and wicked types of problems. Just off the top of my head, I think those are two of the biggest, biggest pieces.
Eric Eberhardt 1:02:32
Anyone else? I'm going to steal actually, Nurit Katz made a comment in the meeting we had right before this that I think is addresses that question. She's the UCLA sustainability, Chief Sustainability Officer, but she was saying how, you know, I think we need to do a better job of making a business argument to the senior leaders about the value of this and, and that sustainability and CNI is really an overlay on business best practices. You know, we should be reducing our operating costs by doing energy efficiency, forget about carbon neutrality. Forget about all this stuff, like should we should we, you know, do deferred maintenance that reduces our energy costs and operating costs as a good business? Yes. Should we be hedging our energy purchases against volatile natural gas and electricity prices into the future with things that we can have stable agreements on and into 20 years out as a long term institution like solar PV ends and such things? Yes. So I think it's, it's, let's just call it a business argument. Let's take away these things. I think I think saddled people with these preconceived notions of all it's charity time, you know, I got to open my wallet and pay for these things and get these people to go with the science to go away. Let's talk about business best practices.
Lyndsey Kalkbrenner 1:03:57
If I had more money back in my prior self, I would have, I think, pay for a consultant to do some fancy emissions projections and modeling. But that wasn't reality. So it was me doing it with like, cleaner, cool planets carbon calculator, which I don't really understand. But you know, so I think that like, you want minimum viable product, you want to make sure you're getting at least the the main inputs to capture your emissions, and then do the best you can with that data, which is what we did. And so the demo, that's your question, but the other thing I would have done differently with our 2010 strategic plan was a should have had deliverables and dates and owners for each of those actions that we committed to, because some of them got done. But most of them didn't, and they're on our they're in our new Climate Action Plan. But the thing I've learned since is, you know, we got to embed all those, those accountability components, and as well as some better metrics and tracking both in for internal but also for the public, because people want to know how we're doing. And they don't want to click on the link to go to second nature is reporting tool, because it's, they don't know how to use it. I mean, if we can have some better feedback tools on our website, I think that that would be more helpful, and it would get more by and I think the other thing we need to do is, like we learned about lunch after lunch today was, you know, being or sorry, before, there's been more being better at communicating about climate change, and the the pressure that we're all under to reduce our energy usage and, you know, kind of get more people to buy in and engage not just operations, folks, but everybody that's on campus. So I would do that better.
Tyler Durchslag-Richardson 1:05:37
I'm not sure my younger self would, would be super excited about my gained appreciation for nuance. But what, there's a couple approaches that, you know, we we try to take with our leadership. And I think, you know, from a business perspective, that I think if we operate in California, sticks are coming. So there's carrots, now there's incentives to get there. But California has a lot of momentum, it doesn't look like we're going backwards. There's a different national conversation going on. But here, you know, these changes are coming. And if they're not coming from a regulatory perspective, they're coming from a societal pressure or student pressure perspective. I mean, this sorry, happening with fortune 500 companies. And and then additional plug are talking about resiliency and risk in this is this isn't just charity case, these are real risks and real challenges to our continued operations as a as an institution that need to be thought about. And so there, there's a lot of there's a lot of business sense and in taking action.
Dave Karlsgodt 1:06:41
It's the right thing to do, but just don't tell anybody. Right. All right. Um, well, I think we'll wrap it up there. Thank you, everybody, for your great questions. I this is what I was hoping out of this conversation. I hope they squirmed a little bit. I think they're still smiling. So that's good. But I think let's end by just giving these guys a round of applause for being fly.
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