A+H Plans for Harris: Acting on Sustainability
The Harris School’s Keller Center has been rated as one of the most sustainable buildings in higher education, as well as in the City of Chicago overall. Keller’s design incorporates reclaimed materials whenever possible, captures rainwater to mitigate impact on the City Sewers, makes use of bird-friendly glass, and produces solar energy on the scale of hundreds of kWh/day. Unfortunately, the Keller Center is an exception to the University’s general antipathy toward sustainable design and carbon-conscious thinking. As UChicago publicly seeks to expand its physical space, Harris students should have a voice at the table to ensure that the University be a leader in promoting sustainable infrastructure. We believe that in all things the Harris School does, from the construction of buildings, to transportation and food systems, and even in the university’s investment portfolio: environmental impact must be prioritized and made public.
Firstly, we’d like to provide a background on the University’s progress on Sustainability thus far. In 2016, the University of Chicago published a 9-area plan to improve sustainability via the Office of Sustainability. This plan offers our slate hope: The University Board of Trustees, the Office of the Provost, and the Office of Sustainability Advisory Council (which includes faculty and admin) have all publicly supported a need for a more sustainable UChicago. We believe the University is off to a great start; and we expect to cooperate with these and other existing groups and urge them to act boldly whenever possible. All the same, we urge the University to be more proactive, and more transparent in reporting data.
Perhaps the most attention has been given to Area 1 of the UChicago Sustainability Plan: “reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change”. The University has made a stated goal of reducing carbon emissions from 16.5 kg eCO2/sqFt as measured in 2014 to 13.2 kg eCO2/sqFt by 2025: a reduction of 20%. A reduction in emissions is always a positive: but half-measures to combat the existential crisis of climate change may feel like a let-down. Unfortunately, the University’s goal is not only less ambitious than those of our peer institutions, it is also not being acted quickly upon. In UChicago’s Spring 2020 Greenhouse Gas report, the University displays prominently that greenhouse emissions have gone down 13% since 2014; however, since 2016 (the time Aidan has been at the University), greenhouse gas emissions have gone down 3%. In fact, the University’s most recent Climate Change report concedes that Greenhouse Gas emissions have increased by 1.5% from the previous year. It is disheartening to discover that the University made most of its progress in accomplishing a 2025 goal from 2014–2016, and have coasted ever since. To set a carbon emissions goal by 2025 and witness emissions oscillate year-to-year, so long as a stated number is hit in 2025 is unfortunate.
The University makes the claim that an increase in the student body has led to increased greenhouse gas usage, and that they hope to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% come 2030 (from the very high 2014 level). Even still, this goal can be translated into saying that by 2030, the University will be emitting nearly double the Greenhouse Gases Princeton University is planning to be emitting…in 2026. As Co-Presidents at UChicago Harris, Heather and Aidan will build a template for future Harris SGs to ensure a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions not each four years: but regularly. To this end, we are aware that natural gas and electricity consumption in campus buildings account for 70% of the University’s greenhouse gas emissions. As currently stands, the University’s actions to implement 7 new LED lighting retrofit projects per year might be a quick enough pace to reach 2025 goals, but not fast enough to claim to be responsible in combatting climate change.
Frustratingly, the University does not publicize its annual data on other sustainable goals nearly as readily as Greenhouse Gas emissions. As Harristas, we believe in the power of data collection to solve policy issues: and will urge the University to not only publish annual data, but reauthor their 2016 Sustainability Plan with updates from the past 5 years. To show a few examples, here are tenants of the Sustainability Plan we feel have not appropriately been updated:
Area 3 of the Sustainability plan, Multi-Modal transportation, lists their “next step” as providing new policy recommendations in this field. Our slate would be excited to partner with Student Organizations and Administration to analyze how we could ensure our transportation system is as sustainable as possible.
Area 4 of the Sustainability plan, Waste Reduction, lists its next step as “continuing to explore improving waste reduction”. Our slate would be excited to provide support for these improvements, and reanalyze data to build off them. We would be interested in analyzing 2021 data offering an approximate percentage of waste that is landfilled or diverted from landfill. We would be interested in comparing this to the available 2015 data.
Area 5 of the Sustainability Plan, Food systems, seeks to reduce length of shipment of food to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Since Heather and Aidan have been at UChicago, there have been 3 different food vendors. We would be interested in assessing the degree to which 2015 data has changed given new food vendors.
Area 6 of the Sustainability Plan, Green Spaces, seeks to limit the use of leaf blowers, replace synthetic fertilizer with compost to improve water quality, and make other Green Improvements. Our slate would be interested in data that informs us as to the successes of this initiative.
Area 7 of the Sustainability Plan, Water conservation, has been addressed well through construction of the Keller Center and the Rubenstein Forum. We urge updating the page nonetheless with relevant contemporary data.
I’d like to pause from each other area in this plan, to focus next on Area 8 of the Sustainability Plan. Environmentally Preferable Procurement is an action that specifies that the University must remain aware of how it’s investments impact Climate Change. In 2020, The Chicago Maroon compiled filings from the Securities and Exchange Commission on the University’s asset holdings. Through The Maroon’s analysis, the University of Chicago has invested over $40 billion in companies related to deforestation, $20 billion in fossil fuel companies, and $6 billion in the manufacturing of conventional and nuclear weapons. The University’s commitment to sustainable design is thrown sharply off course due to its failure to procure their assets in an “environmentally preferable” way. The University’s failure to even act on Area 8 of their Sustainability Plan throws the entire plan into skepticism: which is why we encourage a re-authoring of the plan to begin with.
The University of Chicago’s Office of Sustainability continues to rely on older data and graphics, which do not offer a compelling case for the University’s proclaimed devotion to sustainable design. For the University to be taken seriously in their commitment to sustainable outcomes, we must ensure data is open, goals are compared to peer institutions, and student feedback is welcomed. As Harris Student Government Co-Presidents, Heather and Aidan would look forward to representing student voices in urging for sustainable solutions: our collective survival is reliant on it.