By James Cirrone
The university senate held its monthly meeting last Tuesday, and the university’s policies for tackling climate change dominated the conversation.
At the start of the meeting, Senate Chair Pamela Lanford informed her colleagues that President Wallace Loh would not be delivering his state of affairs address that day, since he was in a conference at the White House. Lanford jokingly “offered condolences” to Loh, poking fun at President Trump and garnering some audience laughs.
After the unorthodox opening to the meeting, Carlo Colella, vice president of the Division of Administration & Finance, was called up to the stage. Colella said that the university cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2018, two years ahead of schedule. He then addressed the carbon emission reduction plan for the future.
“There’s a 60% reduction scheduled for 2025, and then ultimately by 2050 we’d be net carbon neutral, if not sooner. And I know there’s a clamoring for trying to accelerate that… and the sustainability council and work groups therein are working to come up with plans that would enable us to do that,” Colella said.
The university has taken several steps toward reaching these goals. One such step is the President’s Purchased Power Initiative, which ensures that “100 percent of purchased power comes from renewable sources by 2020.”
There are also “more than 9000 solar panels on campus” atop the three parking garages that were put up in 2017, decreasing the need for fossil fuels.
Colella lauded the policy to offset 100% of the university’s air travel emissions by participating in reforestation projects and other environmentally friendly endeavors. This policy is a part of the university’s Climate Action Plan 2.0.
Despite these achievements, Colella acknowledged that more than 80% of the remaining carbon emissions come from the university’s central energy plant. The plant provides steam and electricity to millions of square feet of buildings on campus. To change this, the university would likely have to expend lots of monetary resources in order to purchase more renewable energy. Colella said he remains open to options like geothermal energy and biomass to meet the campus’ extensive energy needs.
Colella also urged students to shut off lights when they can and asked them to remain committed to recycling.
In response to this, Sen. Alexander Williams shared his outrage and his fellow colleagues’ outrage at the fact that there remain Pepsi vending machines on campus that sell items with plastic.
“It seems to me like a simple thing to say ‘OK, Pepsi, we have this contract with you and you have these machines, well you only get to sell things that are easier to recycle like aluminum cans,” the linguistics professor said.
Colella echoed the professor’s opinions and said that he himself doesn’t drink from plastic bottles anymore. He added that the university hasn’t done nearly enough on this front.
Also mentioned in Colella’s climate action speech was the university’s rating from the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS). STARS seeks to rate colleges and universities on their dedication to sustainability. The University of Maryland received a gold rating, second only to a platinum. Only five schools ranked platinum.
This prompted a question from Sen. Raymond Nevo about the platinum schools.
“What are those schools and have we tried to establish a sort of collaboration with them to basically bring us up to that level?” Nevo asked.
Colella said that the university is working with Stanford and Colorado State who, he said, are “doing some very innovative things.”
The other three platinum schools are Thompson Rivers University, the University of California Irvine and the University of New Hampshire.
Overall, Colella and his colleagues were optimistic about the path forward and assured students and faculty that the sustainability council is continuing to work towards making the university carbon neutral as soon as possible.