BY KATIE MCVICKER | THE DAILY
The university’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) was finalized and signed
by President Emmert earlier this month, meeting it’s Sept. 15 deadline.
The Environmental Stewardship Advisory Committee (ESAC) called for
student feedback on a working draft of the plan last spring.
“Climate change is a critical issue affecting our environment
locally, regionally and globally,” said members of ESAC Sandra
Archibald and Ruth Johnston in an e-mail to The Daily. “As a leading
research University in the nation, our goal is to maintain our
leadership position in environmental stewardship, and we demonstrate
this with launching the new UW College of the Environment and
developing our Climate Action Plan.”
The plan outlines several steps the school needs to take in order
fulfill its obligations as a signatory of the American College & University President’s Climate Commitment, an effort to address global warming.
The University has been successful in lowering its total greenhouse
gas emissions since 2000. Seattle City Light has provided the school
with zero GHG emission electricity, and due to the campus’ energy
conservation plan, steady energy use has been maintained in buildings
regardless of increasing population and floor space. However, the UW
still faces many obstacles.
Commuting faculty and students’ vehicles are among the main GHG
emission culprits associated with the Seattle campus. To combat these
machines the CAP proposes actions like providing faculty with
incentives to buy zero or low-emission cars, develop better
videoconferencing and long-distance education technologies to avoid
unnecessary traveling and “greening” the UW vehicle fleet by placing
limits on personal mileage reimbursement rates.
“Technologies for reducing carbon are indeed emergent, and we are in
the process of evaluating the market development,” Archibald and
Johnston said. “For example, carbon sequestration technology would be
an area that we could look into for the UW Power Plant, the campus’
largest emission source, but this is just one possible technology that
could emerge.”
The UW will also look into improved technologies for solar and wind energy.
Samantha Croffut, the 2008-2009 Chapter Chair of WashPIRG, thinks
the biggest challenge facing the university right now is funding.
“We couldn’t reach the highest LEED standard (Leadership in Energy
and Environmental Design) for building the new HUB due to money
constraints,” she said. “In the future, we would really like to see a
student fee, similar to the removable U-PASS fee, attached to help
reduce our carbon footprint as a school.”
The CAP does mention a “student green fee” as a possible means to
finance some of its projects. The document states, “A $5.00/quarter fee
assessed to each undergraduate and graduate student would generate
about $700,000 annually to support Climate Action Plan initiatives.
Students will need to organize this effort and gain approval through a
student body election.”
Other funding options include finding available research grants and establishing a revolving loan fund.
“The plan definitely puts UW in the right direction,” said sophomore
Wen-Chung Su, who represented the SEED (Students Expressing
Environmental Dedication) organization during the planning process. “It
gives the school a clear goal and something concrete to work on. What
we hope to see is that UW follows the plan and sticks with it. It is
not going to be simple, but it has to be done.”
As of now, a working team is already planning the next stage of the
CAP, which is identifying priorities and developing
implementation strategies.
Reach reporter Katie McVicker at news@dailyuw.com.
