The University released its long-awaited Climate Action Plan last week, offering the most comprehensive roadmap to date outlining how GW will attempt to dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
The plan – which took a little more than one year to complete – places emphasis on personal accountability from the GW community in order to reduce the amount of carbon the University produces, said Meghan Chapple-Brown, director of the Office of Sustainability.
By 2025, the University said it hopes to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent. It hopes to reach neutrality by 2040.
“The commitments that we have made, the focus has been how do we reduce [our emissions] ourselves,” Chapple-Brown said. “How do we hold ourselves accountable. How do we do as much as possible on site.”
GW says its plan is different than other universities because is is taking aim at its own emmissions, rather than buying renewable energy in other areas, or buying trees to plant in forests across the world.
“There is more accountability, there’s more traceability, so we know what we’re taking care of,” Chapple-Brown said of the University’s plan. “Whereas if we do offsets, it’s hard to know how effective those offsets are. Is that forest you invested in still around, or has it been destroyed in the past five years, or will it be destroyed in the next five years? So it’s very much accountable.”
Besides promoting changes like turning off lights and computers when not in use, unplugging cell phone chargers and participating in things like the Eco-Challenge and Recyclemania in order to reduce water and energy consumption – other reduction strategies include improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings across campus, as well as reducing the amount of emissions made from travel.
The plan outlines potential incentives for GW community members who travel by car to campus on a daily basis in order to encourage more environmentally-friendly commuting options like biking or taking public transportation.
Over the next 30 years, the CAP implementation will cost “tens of millions of dollars” Chapple-Brown said, adding that the emissions reducing technologies the University will implement in buildings across campus, and the cost of promoting sustainable living habits will ultimately pay for themselves in energy savings later on down the road.
Part of the funding for emissions reducing technologies will come from a $2 million Green Campus Fund.
Aside from reducing the amount of emissions the University produces, the CAP also outlines GW’s goal to utilize research centers at the University to find new ways to become a more sustainable campus, and promote these new sustainable practices to others across the globe.
The CAP details a goal to utilize GW laboratories – like the Solar Institute on GW’s Virginia Campus – for testing low-emissions energy technologies.
Education is another pillar of the CAP, with a goal of creating a curriculum that focuses on sustainability and that “fully engages the academic research, teaching and service missions of the University,” according to the CAP, ultimately producing a “culture of change” at GW, Chapple-Brown said.
Progress on the amount of greenhouse gas reductions will be released on a yearly basis, Chapple-Brown said, and implementation of the CAP’s basic principles will be carried out by the people tasked with creating the plan. The CAP’s creators came from the office of every vice president at the University in order to ensure the CAP was comprehensive said Sophie Waskow, the stakeholder engagement coordinator of the Office of Sustainability.