The Clinton Climate Initiative will now help support the colleges and universities around the country in their efforts to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions on campus - part of the only sector-wide effort to set a long-term goal of achieving climate neutrality.
Former President Bill Clinton launched the partnership with the signatories of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment Nov. 7 during his keynote at the U.S. Green Building Council's International Conference and Expo, the world's largest gathering dedicated to green building. The partnership is one of several announced at the conference by the former president that aims to retrofit public and private buildings nationwide.
Ira Magaziner '69 P'06 P'07 P'10 played an instrumental role in bridging the partnership between the ACUPCC signatories and the CCI, along with son Jon '07, who now works for the CCI, and Nathan Wyeth '08, who interned there this summer.
The ACUPCC was drafted in June 2007 by a group of college presidents who recognized the role that higher education plays in global efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change, and to encourage schools to set concrete, short and long term goals for achieving climate neutrality on their campuses.
Second Nature and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education - nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping colleges and universities expand their sustainability efforts - along with ecoAmerica, an environmental non-profit that specializes in consumer research and marketing, have been helping to coordinate and support the efforts of the commitment's signatories through networking tools and online resources.
Yet, to amass the upfront capital necessary to perform equipment retrofits and improve energy efficiency on campus, colleges and universities have had to tap into their endowments or request loans. "Many schools have been interested," said Andrea Webster, membership coordinator at AASHE, "but they just didn't know how exactly to do it."
By arranging $1 billion in funding from five financial institutions, the CCI aims to make it easier for the 427 signatories of the ACUPCC to coordinate and customize funding mechanisms that work for them. While financial allocations will still be made on an individual basis, the CCI is helping to connect educational institutions with financial ones by creating a network pool that schools can tap into. "Part of the initiative is to help schools figure out how to do it themselves," said Anthony Cortese, president of Second Nature.
Participating colleges and universities will first submit assessments of their campuses' carbon reduction strategies along with requests for project proposals to the partnering financial institutions, according to Tim Sweet, director of energy and computing management at Syracuse University, one of the schools participating in the consortium. A company will then agree to the contract if it identifies the right opportunity at the school. "It's a way to keep our options open," Sweet said.
Syracuse will submit its request on Friday. According to Sweet, the school would like to be able to award a contract by March of 2008.
"It's a proven strategy that several schools are already using," Cortese said. "What the CCI partnership with the ACUPCC is doing is trying to expand on that strategy."
Clinton's initiative has also secured energy savings guarantees from eight leading energy services companies and discounts from over 25 manufacturers of energy efficient products, according to a Nov. 16 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The result is a consortium of key players in the energy, financial and higher education sectors across which resources can be easily traded and information can readily be shared.
"It's been hard to pull the packages together," said Lee Bodner, executive director of ecoAmerica, adding, "schools may be reluctant to take on large scale projects. CCI will help schools take on these projects, and help customize the retrofits."
Cortese said he does not expect there to be any significant limitations on the number of schools that can participate in the network because "the magnitude of the challenge is great, the amount of funding is significant and the amount of savings to be had is considerable," he said.
To participate in the consortium arranged by the former president, the school must be a signatory of the ACUPCC.
Brown has not signed the commitment. The University's Energy and Environment Committee has recommended that Brown reduce greenhouse gases to 15 percent below its 1990 level by 2020, but the University has not officially adopted a comprehensive policy concerning greenhouse gas emissions.
"If you take it literally, complete climate neutrality is a very serious commitment where the only way to do it is to buy carbon offsets, and that may not be the best allocation of resources at Brown right now," said to Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration Elizabeth Huidekoper. "Brown is trying to assess whether that's best for them."
"The commitment to complete neutrality is a concern of many schools," Cortese said. "Some people think that achieving climate neutrality is too difficult, and they don't want to make a commitment they can't achieve."
Associate Professor of Environmental Science Steven Hamburg voiced another reason why Brown has not signed the commitment. "Talk is cheap," he said. "We don't feel the need to make a written statement because it's more important for our actions to speak louder than our words."
Jon Magaziner, who was a key player in bridging the partnership, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that Brown may also be hesitant to strive for climate neutrality "given the many examples of organizations that have used carbon offsets instead of, rather than in addition to, undertaking energy conservation measures within their institutions in their efforts to go climate neutral,"
Yet both Cortese and Bodner expressed hopes that Brown will sign the commitment in the near future. "Signing on to this thing would be a great demonstration to the surrounding community of Brown's commitment," Cortese said, adding, "it would be a natural thing for Brown to do because it has been such a leader in this field."
The commitment requires that schools develop comprehensive short-term and long-term plans to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon footprints. In addition, they must choose to act on two of a list of seven tangible initiatives suggested by AASHE to reduce greenhouse gasses.
One of the initiatives suggests that schools establish a policy that all new campus construction meets the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver standard. Other initiatives are less financially demanding, such as encouraging students, faculty and staff to make better use of public transportation on campus and taking measures to reduce waste.
Under the commitment, each school sets its own timeline for the projects. "Some of the smaller community colleges have already started with implementation, but the larger schools may take a few more years because they tend to be more bureaucratic," Webster said.
EmPOWER, the campus climate-neutrality group, has been encouraging the University to sign the commitment because "the requirements of the commitment are things that Brown is already doing," said Wyeth, who is a member of emPOWER.
Last month, University officials announced a $350,000 commitment from the Sidney E. Frank Foundation to support student-led projects aiming to reduce carbon emissions in the Providence community.
"I think the efficiency measures and renewable energy purchases Brown is making are great, and we're excited about the program they're undertaking to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions in the greater providence area," Wyeth said. "But, to be good leaders in higher education right now, we have to work with other schools, even if that just means demonstrating examples of what works well and what doesn't."
Cortese stressed another reason why universities should sign the commitment: "Without setting the ultimate goal, you're making it more difficult for yourself to stick to it because other priorities may creep in," he said.
In addition, he said, "the most credible science that is informing policymakers and the general public is coming from the education community, which is a large part of the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change. Thus, presidents taking a stand to become client neutral are taking a stand on the research that comes from their own institutions."
EcoAmerica's Bodner voiced the importance of higher education's ability to act as a model for the rest of society. "College campuses are important laboratories that marry the research and the practice of climate neutrality," he said. "They show local business and the local community that it can be done and how to do it."
