What have you learned from preparing a climate action plan?
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Some campuses have now finished their climate action plans to meet either internal GHG reduction goals or the ACUPCC. wonder what big lessons come to mind that campuses can pass along to those still in the CAP planning process? Here's a couple that come to mind from my experience:
-Get the CFO and/or budget director involved early. The mitigation opportunties you identify will need to be financially vetted. Get the budget folks to help vett them--or at least tell you what parameters they want to see fleshed out.
- Get the students and faculty to weigh in early and often too. You need their support and advocacy. Put some community members on your team too. Good for external relations.
- Create GHG emission projections based on a simple, facilty based model. This will allow you to manipulate Scope 1 and 2 emission projections easily--and they are the biggest part of your footprint.
- Present the downside of doing nothing in financial terms too--not just in the Business As Usual GHG projection. It's important to discuss all the ways inaction costs the campus money.
-Don't get wrapped around the axle of preparing the perfect and all inclusive GHG inventory. Stick to CO2 from energy by looking at your energy bills and you will catch 80% of it right away. That's where to work. Fill in the other stuff as it comes to light.
No doubt many other lessons come to mind--and maybe somebody thinks these are wrong. Well, the floor is yours! What's your sense of this issue--or a new issue on climate action?
For those who have completed their plan, about how many staff hours would you say it took? How long was the process? How many people were on your committee? Did you have a project manager dedicated to the plan?
Thanks.
Hey Terry
For the plans I know about, the number of hours varies widely. I would hate to estimate the low end, but I know of a couple of plans that were done in ~3-4 months with only 1-2 people working on them off and on. The flip side is a plan that took two years and 30+ people, a 20% project manager and lots and lots of meetings.
A lot of it depends on how much you know about your emissions already--and how tight you want to get with projections. My sense is--as discussed above--that if you spend most of your effort on the big ticket items like scope 1 and 2, you can estimate some outcomes and get to a plan pretty quickly. Digging way in to scope 3 (commuting, jet travel) can slow things down but some level of knowledge is important.
My advice is to read some of the plans already filed on the ACUPCC website and get a sense of what level of complexity is appropriate for your campus.
Anyone have other thoughts?
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Great suggestions Dave!
An important clarification to your last point is that for Associate's and Tribal colleges, energy bills aren't likely to catch 80% of emissions. According to the submissions from signatories of the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment, emissions from commuting comprise around 50% of total emissions for the average associate's or tribal colleges. It's true that commuting is a Scope 3 emissions source and so is sometimes left out, but this kind of data shows why such emissions are important to consider.