How to Help Combat Global Warming, Campus by Campus
By Kristina M. Johnson and Samuel L. Stanley Jr.August 7, 2018
Michael Morgenstern
Since January 2007, there have been 117 weather-related disasters resulting in 2,400 lives lost and costing the United States $750 billion, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Compounding matters, in its 2017 compendium of studies examining the role of climate change in global weather, the American Meteorological Society found — for the first time — extreme events that would not have happened without increased greenhouse gases caused by humans. The last three years have been the hottest on record, resulting in extreme weather and climate-related events that cost a devastating $320 billion in 2017 alone.
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Michael Morgenstern
Since January 2007, there have been 117 weather-related disasters resulting in 2,400 lives lost and costing the United States $750 billion, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Compounding matters, in its 2017 compendium of studies examining the role of climate change in global weather, the American Meteorological Society found — for the first time — extreme events that would not have happened without increased greenhouse gases caused by humans. The last three years have been the hottest on record, resulting in extreme weather and climate-related events that cost a devastating $320 billion in 2017 alone.
The same destructive pattern has continued this year, with recent tornadoes in the American South, earthquakes in Oregon, and volcanic activity in Hawaii and Guatemala. If there was ever a time for definitive action to combat the impact of global warming, it is now.
But with the Trump administration questioning the very existence of climate change, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, and dismantling climate-control regulations established by previous administrations, we believe that solutions to global warming must come from the country’s 334 research universities. These institutions have a threefold mission of education, research, and service, the latter being an indissoluble contract with society at large.
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Every day, on hundreds of campuses, scientists dedicate their careers to understanding complex issues, predicting consequences, and testing solutions; students devote themselves to making their own mark in their chosen professions and on the larger world; and administrators commit to ensuring that their environment is welcoming and sustainable.
At no other place in the world do these cross-disciplinary minds come together more consistently than on university campuses. Climate scientists can predict long-range changes in weather patterns, but forecasting the social, economic, and other impacts of climate instability is harder, most notably because human behavior is less predictable. To be efficient, therefore, experts in myriad fields throughout academe must collaborate to mitigate the destructive effects of climate change. Beyond that, and with greater immediacy, higher-education institutions must commit fully to their own sustainability efforts, beginning with their physical plants. Here in New York, the state university system owns and operates more than 40 percent of the state’s buildings, and that means we bear 40 percent of the responsibility to meet Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive orders on clean energy, which require that state-owned buildings achieve a 20-percent reduction in energy use per square foot by 2020 and that state agencies secure 50 percent of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
SUNY is just about there. Even with an increase of our building footprint — From 64 million square feet to 105 million square feet — we reduced our carbon emissions, nearing the state energy-plan goal of a 40-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels.
This success has required some big steps — but ones that every university must take. This starts with a commitment to a minimum LEED silver certification and then zero-carbon emissions for all new construction. Twenty-five years ago, this would have increased the cost of the building by 25 percent. Today, it is plus or minus 4 percent, which means that the payback from reduced energy costs is quick. We must also retrofit older buildings with more efficient energy systems with better insulation, direct drive motors, and rooftop solar, for example. While there is an upfront cost, payback from the reduction in the cost of maintenance, operations, and electricity can happen in as little as three years.
Other universities are stepping up to meet this challenge. The California Institute of Technology, for example, has already achieved a 22-percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions since 2008 by focusing on energy efficiency and on-site distributed energy resources. Its physical plant has 2.8 million square feet of LEED certified buildings, with an additional 300,000 square feet under construction, including the first net-zero carbon building on campus.
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Beyond the campus, universities should forge partnerships with local and state governments. In a 2017 survey,, 68 percent of mayors said that cities should play a strong role in confronting climate change. This means universities may well have ready and willing local, regional, and state partners. At SUNY, for example, we have joined with the New York Power Authority and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to raise the energy resiliency of our campuses and the surrounding communities, to identify areas for improvement, and to make needed changes.
Using a similar approach, the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico is collaborating with the Ministry of Energy and other institutions on a number of programs, including Semana i, which involves 50,000 students and teachers and hundreds of companies and organizations working to rebuild the country in a sustainable way. The institution uses recycled water from its own water plant, provides donation bins for separating trash to public elementary schools, and plants trees in nearby communities.
The urgency for higher-education institutions to pick up the mantle of combating global warming led to the recent formation of the University Climate Change Coalition (UC3), a group of research universities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico dedicated to helping achieve a low-carbon future. Members have pledged to reduce their institutional carbon footprints, with commitments ranging from making more climate-friendly investments to becoming operationally carbon neutral, all in line with the goals of the Paris accord.
By assembling our own Paris accord of sorts, the institutions in the UC3 can represent a powerful force in fighting climate change. We can combine our knowledge and experience, developing best practices and sharing them with the cities around us. Each year, our graduates will take these practices into the world and apply them in their own workplaces and communities. There are 13 founding member institutions (including SUNY), a figure that represents only a small fraction of the thousands of colleges in the United States, and the world. That is why we are calling on all other institutions to fully commit to the goals of this effort.
In fact, each campus can make its own smaller improvements with a significant impact. The University of New Mexico provides heating, cooling, and electricity to hundreds of buildings through an innovative district energy system that uses energy-efficient cogeneration to produce both steam and electricity. The University of British Columbia uses its campus as a living lab model, an interconnected system that focuses on its ecological footprint through effective energy, water, waste, food systems and transportation management, as well as green building design and green research initiatives. At Stony Brook University, success has been found in nearly two dozen sustainability initiatives, including bike-sharing, battery recycling, and buses powered by electricity. Universities have long been starting points for progress. The combination of student enthusiasm with professorial insight is a force to be reckoned with, particularly when fueled by the resources and facilities of a research institution. Working together, our unique capacity for discovery, development, and transformation will be key to steering us all out of this current catastrophic path.
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Kristina M. Johnson is chancellor of the State University of New York system. Samuel L. Stanley Jr. is president of Stony Brook University.