The Carbon Neutrality Committee’s ad hoc Climate Action Planning sub---committee responsible for overseeing the drafting of this document included the following members:
Dr. Virginia Levine (Executive Assistant to the President);
Nasrin Parvizi (Associate Vice President of Facilities Management); Pierre Gagnon (Executive Director of Auxiliary Services Corporation);
Jeff Lallas (Director of Facilities Planning, Design and Construction); Timothy Slack (Director of Physical Plant);
Ralph Carrasquillo (Director of Residence Life and Housing);
Sarah Williams (former Assistant Director of Residence Life and Housing Operations);
Dr. Brice Smith (Associate Professor and Chair of the Physics Department);
Byron Norelius (Lecturer in Biological Sciences and Campus Sustainability Coordinator); and
Jeremy Zhe---Heimerman (Coordinator, Assistive Technology and Test Administration Services for Student Disability Services)
As the principal author of the report and the designer of the wedge models used to project future greenhouse gas reductions and their associated costs, any errors or omissions remain, of course, my responsibility.
In addition to members of the committee, there are a number of people I would like to acknowledge for their contributions to this work. First, I would like to thank the students from my Fall 2010 PHY 505: Energy and Sustainability class (Laura Bald, Michael Baldino, Stephen Brown, Bryan Davey, Ann Knickerbocker, Caitlin Rouse, and Christopher Todd) who helped to collect information regarding historical sustainability efforts undertaken by the campus and to prepare the carbon footprint surveys for distribution and Matthew Rankin, my research student in Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 whose work on the potential for geothermal heat pumps and biomass boilers to meet the demands of heating on upper campus was instrumental in preparing the model present in Chapter Four. I would also like to thank Don Chisholm, former Energy Management Engineer and head of the Heating Plant at SUNY Cortland, who passed away on November 10, 2010. Don was a major supporter of campus sustainability efforts and helped to provide much of the campus information used in the initial construction of the campus heating and electricity models.
Second, I would like to acknowledge Bill McNamara, Director of Dining Services for the Auxiliary Services Corporation, for his role in providing much of the information on the ASC sustainability initiatives highlighted in Chapter Seven. In addition, Cynthia Lake, Amanda Anderson, and Courtney Andros from Residence Life and Housing aided in collecting information on sustainability initiatives underway in the residence halls. I am also grateful to the chairs of the Art and Art History, Psychology, History, Political Science, and Philosophy departments as well as the Directors for the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies, the Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education, and the New York State Inclusive Recreation Resource Center for their time and efforts in filling out the committee’s survey on departmental actions supporting sustainability. Much of the data on curricular and programmatic activities cited in Chapter Three comes directly from these responses and could not have been collected without their assistance. In addition, I would like to thank Dr. Beth Klein from the Childhood/Early Childhood Education Department who provided valuable insight and helped to review the sections of this report relating to local foods production.
Finally, I would like to thank all those who took the time to fill out and return the Campus Carbon Intensity Survey, the faculty who agreed to hand these surveys out in your classes, and Haley Zurell, the secretary for the Geology and Physics Departments, for her help in entering the data from the more than one thousand surveys that were returned. Without all of your help, none of the transportation or food analysis in this report could have been completed.
Brice Smith Cortland, New York September 2011
AASHE - Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education -- an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit organization intended to empower colleges and universities to play a leadership role in transforming society to being more sustainable.
ACUPCC - American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment -- a voluntary institutional commitment to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from campus operations by mid-century and to promote research and educational efforts aimed at addressing the threat of anthropogenic climate disruption.
ASC - Auxiliary Services Corporation -- a not-for-profit, campus-based organization that provides services to the community such as running the dining halls and the College Store.
BTU - British Thermal Unit -- a unit of energy equivalent to the amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit
C-SAVE - The SUNY Cortland Environmental Science Club (formally Cortland Students Advocating for a Valuable Environment)
CO2 - Carbon dioxide -- the most prevalent and important of the greenhouse gases associated with anthropogenic global climate disruption
CO2-equivalent - The amount of carbon dioxide that would have the same effect as a given amount of non-CO2 greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide (N2O) or methane (CH4). This takes into account the different heat trapping ability (the so-called "global warming potential") of the various greenhouse gases and puts them all into a common unit to ease comparisons.
Dth - Decatherm -- a unit of energy usually used for natural gas (1 Dth is equal to 1,000,000 BTU)
EIA - U.S. Energy Information Administration -- a research and reporting arm of the U.S. Department of Energy
EO 24 - Executive Order #24 -- an executive order signed by then Governor David Paterson on August 6, 2009 which sets forth a goal of achieving 80 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emission by 2050 and creates a Climate Action Council charged with crafting a State level climate action plan.
EPA - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
GHG - Greenhouse gas -- any of a group of heat trapping gases associated with human caused disruption of the climate including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. There are currently at least 18 such gasses listed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as long-lived greenhouse gases.
HDD - Heating Degree Day -- a measure used to quantify the heating demand of buildings. Roughly it measures how cold the air is over a given time period compared to the temperature set points used for heating
IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- an international body of experts established in 1988 as part of the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nationals Environment Programme tasked with reviewing the latest scientific information and producing reports and assessments relating to climate change, its causes, consequences, and potential solutions
kcal - kilocalorie -- a unit of energy equivalent to the amount of heat required oen kilogram of water on degree Celsius (1 kcal is equal to 3.97 BTU and is also equal to one "food calorie")
kWh - kilowatt-hour -- a unit of energy usually used for electricity (1 kWh is equal to 3,412 BTU)
LEED - Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design -- a certification scheme developed by the U.S. Green Building Council to enable buildings to be rated based on their environmental impacts. The four levels of LEED certification are, in increasing of performance; (1) certified, (2) silver, (3) gold, and (4) platinum.
SCRA - SUNY Cortland Recreation Association
STARS - Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System -- a self-reporting system designed by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education intended to allow colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance against a common set of metrics.
UNFCCC - United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change -- an international treaty aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions to prevent dangerous levels of climate change. The treaty was ratified by the United States in 1992 and entered force in 1994. The chief protocol to the treaty laying out specific and binding emissions reduction targets is the Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1998 by then President Clinton, but was never ratified by the U.S. Senate.
The largest single contributor to both the primary energy use on campus as well as to the campus’s greenhouse gas emissions is the heating system. Heating accounts for nearly three-fifths of the campus’s primary energy and more than one third of its greenhouse gases. As such, we will begin by examining the current heating system and the recent efforts to improve its efficiency and reduce demand.
Many changes to the infrastructure and to the operation of buildings have been made to lower the amount of energy required for heating, including changing the temperature points during the heating and cooling season and the addition of a heat pump to the Professional Studies Building. Due to these and other initiatives, the amount of energy required for heating has been falling over the past 20 years. While there is significant volatility year to year, the general trend is clear and averages out to reductions of about one percent per year. With heating usage, however, care must be taken to avoid attributing lower energy use due to warmer weather to actual improvements in efficiency.
Historically, SUNY Cortland primarily used natural gas (95%) for heating, with a small portion from fuel oil. Heating costs have risen since 1998, but recent years show a 35% price decrease from the peak in 2006-07 to approximately $10 per decatherm (Dth) in 2009-10
Assumptions Underlying the Calculation of Future Emissions
The emissions from burning natural gas and fuel oil are generally taken to be fixed numbers set by the amount of carbon in the fuel and we have treated them as such for the purposes of this assessment. However, this may not remain a valid assumption in the future if there is a large-scale use of hydraulic fracture drilling (i.e. hydrofracking) to release natural gas from shale formations such as the Marcellus Shale. This is a real potential concern for the campus, given both the amount of land in Cortland County that has been leased for gas exploration as well as predictions from the EIA that over the next 20 years nearly 40 percent of all-natural gas produced in the U.S. will come from shale deposits.
The Projected Future Demand for Heating
There are three principal considerations that must be made.
- We will adopt future demand reductions of about one percent per year as the target goal. This would result in cumulative savings of just over 30 percent by 2050 and would be equivalent to a reduction in future heating demand by about 38,000 decatherms per year by mid-century. Achieving this goal involves strategies like better heat recovery systems, passive solar energy capture, and efficient building practice.
- We have already begun the process of switching the upper campus buildings from a reliance on the Central Heating Plant to the use of satellite natural gas boilers. This change, which is scheduled to take place over the next few years, will result in dramatic reductions in the amount of energy required for heating the buildings on upper campus. Specifically, this project is projected to reduce the natural gas consumption for these buildings by as much as 40 percent.
- The addition of new square footage to the campus. SUNY Cortland has recently added significant amounts of new space to the Professional Studies Building and to the New Education Building and it has plans to add further square footage with the planned Bowers Hall renovations and the construction of the new Student Life Center. Each of these new or expanded buildings brings with them new demands for energy.
The Future Cost of Conventional Energy Resources
Despite historical trends, future natural gas prices are expected to remain stable through 2025 due to increased domestic supply. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts a modest 0.03 percent average price increase between 2010 and 2025. Afterward, natural gas prices are projected to rise at about 0.8 percent annually. However, this stability relies on shale gas from hydrofracking, which may impact greenhouse gas emission estimates. In contrast, EIA forecasts a significant doubling of commercial fuel oil prices by 2035, but SUNY Cortland’s reliance on fuel oil for heating should result in gradual cost increases.
Emissions are not reduced all the way to zero in our proposal, not due to the continued use of conventional fuels, but rather SUNY Cortland is too land constrained to rely very heavily on geothermal heating. Therefore, it must receive a large share of its heating from the combustion of biomass.
The wedges and their share of total emissions reduction attributable are:
- Conservation / Efficiency = 32 percent
- Heat pumps = 32 percent
- Switching to biomass boilers = 34 percent
- Solar thermal hot water = 6 percent
Between 2015 and 2050 the proposed pathway would result in cumulative savings amounting to just over 121,100 tons of CO2 with an average annual reduction of roughly 3,460 tons per year. The final overall cost of the heating system changes we propose through 2050 would amount to roughly $4.6 million over the next three and a half decades with a peak investment of just over $10.4 million being reached in 2039.These costs do not include those of the electricity required to run the geothermal heat pumps as those costs are included in the figures for the electricity sector. The cost of the proposed improvements to the heating system would amount to roughly $38 per ton CO2 on average.
Goal – Improve campus fleet efficiency and provide electric vehicle infrastructure for campus community
Purchased two minibuses in 2016 and 2017
2018 Status
- Conducted commuter behavior survey in Spring 2018
- Developed a draft of EV policy
- Budget for EV infrastructure equipment
2019 Status
- Based on budget – minimum of 2 charging stations will be installed in 2019
Commuting by SUNY Cortland community members contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, with daily commuting accounting for over four-fifths of total transportation-related emissions, even when campus buses are included. To address this, we’ve analyzed survey data to determine key parameters:
Average Round-Trip Distance:
- Part-time adjunct faculty tend to live further away from campus than full-time faculty.
- The commuting distance increases from junior to senior year and then again from seniors to graduate students.
- The total commuting distance, the staff and administrators are the largest single source of transportation emissions.
Frequency of Commuting:
- First year and sophomore students drive very little on average.
- Staff and administrators dominate the overall commuting distance due both to their higher average driving distance and the greater number of weeks per year on average in which they commute to campus
Unlike the heating and electricity sectors, which the University can directly control, the transportation sector relies heavily on personal commuting. This makes it a challenging area to model and address. Considering the willingness of the campus community to participate in making changes, part of the carbon intensity survey asked participants about their willingness to make personal efforts to improve the sustainability of campus transportation system. Compared to changing eating habits, there is somewhat less support for altering commuting patterns due to their complexity. However, the average willingness score was 3.6, indicating a neutral to willing attitude overall.
Despite the willingness to change there are limited options available that would reduce the total amount of commuting due to the rural nature of Cortland County. Three potential strategies are available for making reductions in the amount of vehicle miles
- Disincentivizing driving to campus
- Examine parking permit pricing and policy
- Enhance walking and biking culture
- Bike storage area
- Community Bike Project
- Increase number of full-time faculty
- Full-time faculty commute short distances to school on average as many living within walking distance, thus contribute no commuting distance at all.
- Changes to methods of course delivery
- Expanding use of online courses have the potential to recue faculty and student travel to campus
The model was organized around a variety of strategies to be combined to meet the desired level of greenhouse gas reduction. The wedges and their share of total emissions reduction attributable are:
- Switching buses to propane = 1.1 percent
- Switching buses to biodiesel = 4.4 percent
- Increased use of electric cars on-campus = 3.6 percent
- Use of electric cars for commuting = 13 percent
- Reduction in commuting through carpool, etc. (i.e. conservation) = 19 percent
- Increased fuel economy of commuter fleet (i.e. efficiency) = 59 percent
Between 2015 and 2050 the proposed pathway would result in cumulative savings amounting to just over 55,250 tons of CO2 with an average annual reduction of roughly 1,580 tons per year.
These reductions would require a projected total cost of $37.5 million. Of that, approximately $20.9 million would come from on-campus expenditures while the remaining $16.6 million must be supplied by commuters. This level of overall investment could be expected to result in cumulative savings of roughly 402,700 tons through 2050 or average annual reductions of more than 11,500 tons per year. This is an amount equivalent to removing nearly 4,100 new cars from the road or of reducing our current carbon footprint by just over two-fifths.
Conclusion
It seems possible to achieve the College's goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 85 percent by 2050 at a cost that, while not trivial, is within the scope of what is reasonable. These costs are within the College's budget, especially with considering potential future savings from reduced energy expenditure.
Reductions will come exclusively from increases in the efficiency of energy use, reductions in consumption through conservation efforts, and from reducing the use of fossil fuels both directly as a source of primary energy and indirectly though their use in the production of conventionally grown foods. By 2050, the roadmap laid out would replace more than 99 percent of fossil fuels used in heating and electrical sectors - meaning that greater than 95 percent of all primary energy consumed by the College would come from renewable resources like solar, wind, and biomass by mid-century. These changes would save 464,700 tons of CO2 at a cost of $42.3 million over 35 years.
Recommendations
Recommendation One: The College should commit itself to achieving the 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2014 relative to 2006-07 levels set forth as a goal in the 2007 SUNY policy on energy conservation and sustainability.
Recommendation Two: The College should commit to updating the entire climate action plan, including preparing a new carbon footprint, at least once every two years.
Recommendation Three: The college should prepare an annual report outlining the progress made during the year on implementing the emission reductions envisioned by the most recent version of the climate action plan as well as the success of fundraising efforts for future plans.
Recommendation Four: The Campus Sustainability Coordinator and the Physical Plant Energy Manager should present the annual progress report and updated climate action plans to the campus at multiple venues at the start of each school year, including: a Sandwich Seminar, a presentation to the Student Government Association, or a presentation at a Physical Plant staff meeting. This would ensure that the campus remains up-to-date on the progress made.
Recommendation Five: A permanent standing committee should be established by President Bitterbaum with a specific charge to, in consultation with all relevant stakeholders, prepare five-year funding plans to ensure that adequate monies are available to make the required investments outlined in the climate action plan.
Recommendation Six: The Auxiliary Services Corporation (ASC) should seek to create a general sustainable foods procurement policy to allow local farmers and agricultural producers to have a clearer sense of what we are planning and what we are seeking in terms of foods and other products over the near to medium term.