Blueprint for a Green Campus (2001 Update) 

Table of Contents | Introduction | Climate-Friendly Campus | Growing Without Increasing Traffic | Safe/Healthy Campus | Consumption and Disposal Habits | 2002 Blueprint Update | Original Blueprint  

Introduction

In April of 2000, the University of Colorado Environmental Center released the Blueprint for a Green Campus. To quote the introduction to the Blueprint:

"Building on the environmental successes at CU over the last two decades, we propose a vision of a growing, dynamic campus which steps lightly upon the earth and satisfies additional demands for energy, transportation, and resources through increased efficiency rather than increased consumption."

The Blueprint lays out challenging goals in the areas of climate change, transportation, health and safety, and disposal and consumption habits.

The 2001 Update to the Blueprint for a Green Campus is intended as a check-in on the Blueprint. The 2001 Update seeks to answer questions on support for the Blueprint goals, what progress has been made, obstacles to progress, and newly emerging issues.

The major campus departments have reported on their progress on working toward the goals set forth in the Blueprint. Information from the departments is incorporated throughout the 2001 Update. The complete reports as submitted by Facilities Management, Housing, Environmental Health and Safety, and Parking and Transit Services are available at www.colorado.edu/ecenter.

The Blueprint has been formally endorsed by 2 major campus bodies: the University of Colorado Student Union and the Boulder Faculty Assembly. The Blueprint was also recognized by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, which issued a Year 2000 Climate Protection Award to the Environmental Center for the creation of the Blueprint.

The Chancellor's Executive Committee reviewed the Blueprint for a Green Campus last spring, and set up a Blueprint Committee, chaired by the Vice Chancellor for Administration. The committee is meeting quarterly to review the proposed goals, and to make recommendations to the Chancellor on implementation steps.

To date, the committee has not formally endorsed adoption of any of the goals, although it has supported a number of action steps. Some highlights:

• The committee asked that an emissions inventory be completed prior to considering adoption of the climate protection goal. The inventory is now completed, and is attached to the climate section of this report.

• The committee asked for a draft Integrated Pest Management (IPM) policy for review. Staff from Facilities Management, Housing, and the Environmental Center agreed on a draft last fall. The committee reviewed the draft in December, and expressed significant concerns with its length and level of detail, and a concern that it may be too restrictive on the use of pesticides. Facilities Management has drafted a shorter version which is currently being circulated for comments, and is appended to the IPM section of this report.

• While the committee did not endorse the transportation goal, it has been supportive of a goal to reduce the single occupant vehicle mode share of trips to and from campus. This is a significant step, since the campus master plan assumes no change in modal split. In addition, the committee expressed support for improving campus bicycle infrastructure.

Progress during 2000-2001

There are a number of major accomplishments that are worth highlighting in this introduction.

Institutional and Structural Issues:

First, in the arena of "accounting for true costs", the Blueprint recommended that the campus marketplace be adjusted to send the right price signals. Currently, the campus marketplace often encourages excess resource consumption, through practices such as ‘free’ printing in computer labs, un-metered energy use by campus departments, and parking prices which treat the land under parking lots as free. In the last year there have been two major steps in this direction:

• Facilities Management has begun significant investments in accurately metering building energy use.
• Housing eliminated free printing from computer labs in the residence halls, instead charging individual users.

Another recommendation involves more consistent and accurate monitoring of campus environmental performance. Some progress on this front includes:

• The creation of a greenhouse gas emissions inventory for campus.
• Facilities Management, Housing and the Environmental Center are working cooperatively to gather baseline data to accurately track landfill diversion rates; and are beginning to work on consistent surveying of campus transportation habits..
• The proposed Integrated Pest Management policy requires reporting and tracking of campus pesticide use.

The Blueprint also recommends the creation of a campus environmental council. The Blueprint Committee has at least partially served this role. In addition, the Housing department created a new position this fall dedicated to recycling and environmental management. This is a major step forward, as there is now an institutional voice within that department. It is interesting to consider the broader context that Facilities Management created an environmental operations supervisor position 3 years ago, and Parking and Transit Services created a transportation modes coordinator position 2 years ago. This means that all of the major operational departments on campus now have dedicated staff paying attention to environmental issues. These staff meet and communicate quite regularly, forming at least an informal network of environmental managers on campus.

Creating a Climate-Friendly Campus:

• Students voted overwhelmingly in favor of increasing student fees by $1/semester in order to purchase 2 million kilowatt-hours per year of wind generated electricity, establishing CU as the nation's largest university green power purchaser.

• Just last month the chancellor agreed to fund a lighting upgrade for 15 general fund buildings, which will reduce lighting energy use in these buildings by approximately 30%.

Growing Without Increasing Traffic:

• This spring, a student group has collected signatures to place a ballot issue before the student body, asking students to raise fees to generate over $100,000 per year to build state-of-the-art bicycle facilities on campus to encourage non-motorized transportation.

Creating a Safe and Healthy Campus:

• Two new staff positions were funded within Environmental Health and Safety. The Chemical Management Specialist position will focus on chemical inventories, chemical redistribution, and centralized procurement. The Waste Treatment Specialist position will run waste treatment processes at the new facility and advise on waste minimization techniques.

Greening Campus Consumption and Disposal Habits:

• UCSU allocated significant capital funding for expanding recycling in both the 2000 and 2001 academic years, and Facilities Management and Housing are working cooperatively with the Environmental Center to implement this aggressive expansion program.

• The UMC remodeling and expansion project has involved a much more extensive recycling and reuse effort than any previous campus construction project, with over 1,000 tons of material diverted from the landfill.

Obstacles and Outstanding Issues

At the same time that there has been significant progress in some areas, there are still major challenges ahead. Some of the issues we face:

• Energy use continues to increase rapidly, with four to five percent annual growth rates. We will not be able to meet the climate goal without substantially slowing this growth rate.

• Increasing housing costs are leading to an ever larger percentage of university employees and students living outside of Boulder. Unless the university can build significant amounts of housing on or near campus, this trend will make it more difficult to meet the transportation goal.

• The university has not yet made a firm commitment to any of the goals proposed. This contrasts to schools like Stanford University or the University of Washington, which have committed to the transportation goal; or Tufts University, which has committed to the climate goal. While we can make some progress without a formal commitment to the goals, there are difficult decisions that will require policy guidance from the highest levels of the university administration. Without clear goals it will be difficult to resolve these issues.

• Finally, the physical growth of the Boulder campus means we must continuously reduce our per capita or per square foot use of energy, paper, and other resources in order to meet our goals. This is clearly technically possible. As Lovins, Lovins, and Hawken point out in Natural Capitalism, a 10-fold increase in efficiency is possible with today's technology. The real question is whether we have the political will.

Invitation

Some of these issues that are highlighted in the 2001 Update to the Blueprint for a Green Campus as well as other campus environmental topics will be featured at the 2001 Campus Earth Summit from April 16th to 18th, 2001. All interested parties—students, faculty, staff, and community members — are invited to attend and participate in these sessions. The 2001 Campus Earth Summit agenda is located in the front of this document and online at www.colorado.edu/ecenter.