By Walter Simpson, Retired UB Energy Officer

Hello Campus Climateers!

The momentous time has arrived, the launch of our campus climate action planning guide wiki! As you read this, we are cracking a bottle of champagne on the bow of this heavily laden ship and sending it off to you – in the hope that this new resource will help you and your school's climate action program shrink your campus carbon footprint.

You will find the CAP wiki right here: http://www.aashe.org/wiki/climate-planning-guide.

The intent of this wiki is to fill a climate action planning "resource gap" by providing a guide which is much more "how-to" oriented and comprehensive than existing campus greenhouse gas emissions reduction resources. Those resources are excellent but don’t provide a lot of detail on how to actually get to climate neutrality. While developed with the support of the ACUPCC, this CAP wiki is intended to be helpful to all colleges and universities with an interest in reducing GHG emissions.

The wiki's initial text is the product of researching various energy and GHG emissions strategies and other aspects of the ACUPCC; reviewing and drawing from existing campus climate action resources and my own experience as energy officer at the University at Buffalo; and final editing based on very helpful input and suggestions from expert staff at AASHE and Second Nature and from a number of expert peer reviewers (listed below).

While this campus climate action planning guide will eventually be released as a conventional 100 page, 36,000 word publication via the AASHE and ACUPCC websites, we are first releasing it as a wiki to capitalize on the benefits of collaboration. The wiki format allows a greater sharing of ideas and mutual learning. Through interaction with the wiki you can participate in its further development.

If all thiswiki talkis confusing, please let me clarify. You probably have heard of and used the most famous wiki, namely,Wikipedia, an on-line encyclopedia that readers contribute to and edit. Well, our wiki will work much the same. It is set up as a series of web pages designed to allow readers to add or edit content. Instructions for doing so can be found here: http://www.aashe.org/wiki/wiki-help-guide

The CAP wiki will be moderated by AASHE to ensure that contributions are meaningful and credible – to maintain the wiki’s quality and usefulness. We hope that this interactive resource will become a locus for collaborative action and community building by many people committed to reducing college and university GHG emissions.

To give you a sense of the extensive ground the CAP wiki covers, please take a look at its table of contents:

1. Introduction – Why Do a Campus Climate Action Plan?
2. Creating an Institutional Structure for Your Climate Action Plan
3. Prioritizing Education, Research, and Public Engagement
4. Determining Your Carbon Footprint and Emissions Trajectory
5. Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Strategies
   • Energy Conservation and Efficiency
   • Appropriate Heating and Power Plant Fuel Choices
   • On-Site Renewable Energy Technologies
   • Buy Green Power
   • Maximize Space Utilization to Minimize or Avoid New Construction
   • Design and Construct Only the Greenest, Most Energy Efficient New Buildings
   • Sustainable Transportation Solutions
   • Other GHG Mitigation Strategies (waste disposal, purchasing, food)
   • Carbon Offsets to Address Remaining Emissions
6. Project Evaluation and Ranking
7. Setting Emissions Targets and Measuring Progress
8. Financing Campus Climate Action
9. Structuring Your Plan and Getting It Approved
10. Implementing Your Campus Climate Action Plan
11. Concluding Remarks
12. Campus Climate Action Plan Resources

As you can see, there's a lot here.Please dig in and have fun! Add and edit! And send me and Toni Nelson (toni@aashe.org) your comments.

I would especially like to thank thededicated peer-reviewerswho took time out from their day jobs to read through and commented on this book-length document. The reviewers were:

• Fahmida Ahmed, Stanford University
• Jennifer Andrews, Clean Air-Cool Planet
• Jack Byrne, Middlebury College
• Julian Dautremont-Smith, AASHE
• Georges Dyer, Second Nature
• David Eagan, National Wildlife Federation-Campus Ecology
• Louise Gava, St. Lawrence University
• Bob Kennedy, Einhorn, Yaffee, and Prescott
• Toni Nelson, AASHE
• Julie Newman, Yale University
• Jim Simon, University at Buffalo

Thank you all – much appreciated!

In case you prefer to begin with a "Cliff Notes" version of the CAP guide, please see an article I just had published in APPA'sFacilities Managersmagazine, entitled "Climate Neutrality – Yes We Can! It’s a Big Challenge But Here's How to Do It." You might find this article to be a quick, helpful overview before immersing yourself in the detail of the wiki. And you can use it as a handout, too, in the event you ever get into a discussion or argument with a skeptic who scoffs at the notion of climate neutrality, saying it can’t be done. Well, yes it can and here's how!

Let me just finish up with mention of my upcoming blog ("Getting the Most Out of an Energy Performance Contract") and a rundown of those previously posted. Once posted, blogs can be found here in the AASHE blog.

Earlier already-posted blogs include (in chronological order):

• No One Said Achieving Climate Neutrality Was Going to be Easy
• Excellent Climate Action Planning Resources Abound
• Creating an Institutional Structure for Your Climate Action Plan
• Energizing Your CAP Team + Tips on Hiring a Consultant
• Calculating Your Campus Carbon Footprint: It's Not as Hard as You Think
• How to Get the Most Out of Your Greenhouse Gas Inventory
• Creating a Comprehensive Campus Energy Conservation Program
• Implementing Low Cost or No Cost Operational Energy Savings   
• Energy Pigs – What Are They? What to Do about Them?
• Getting the Most Out of an Energy Performance Contract

I hope the blogs and now the CAP wiki enhance your efforts to reduce campus GHG emissions—along that important road to climate neutrality.

Walter Simpson

Buffalo, NY

enconser@buffalo.edu

Walter Simpson, CEM, LEED AP, retired 26 year University at Buffalo Energy Officer and director of UB Green, is working with AASHE and the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment to develop climate action planning resources.