For ACUPCC institutions, climate neutrality is defined to include reducing, eliminating, or offsetting the GHG emissions associated with the operation of fleet vehicles; student, faculty and staff commuting; and business air travel. Even schools which have not made a total commitment to addressing these emissions will be interested in reducing them and other environmental, social, and public health impacts associated with these campus-related activities. Of the three, commuting generally involves the largest carbon footprint. It poses a huge challenge.

The Transportation section of AASHE's Resource Center has an abundance of resources on transportation solutions including an extensive listing of campus alternative transportation websites. The Transportation Demand Management Encyclopedia and the Transportation Demand Management and Telework Clearinghouse are also helpful resources.

5.7.1 Fleet Vehicles and Campus Buses

Facilities managers can address GHG emissions associated with fleet vehicles in a variety of ways which include:

• Buying only the most fuel efficient vehicles
• Choosing the most fuel efficient vehicle appropriate to the task
• Using vehicles which run on alternative fuels like electricity, biodiesel or compressed natural gas
• Implementing policies to reduce vehicle miles driven
• Implementing a no-idling policy

The latter is an issue on campuses where some facilities staff may leave their vehicles running much of the day during colder winter months to keep them warm and comfortable even though they are only driving them a few minutes a day. You can see whether this is happening by direct observation or by analyzing data on vehicle mileage and gas fill-ups (if your facilities unit keeps this information). If winter mpg drops to single digits, it may be due to excessive idling.

Campuses may be in the habit of buying fuel inefficient vehicles for a variety of reasons. For example, it may be assumed, mistakenly, that all facilities staff need to drive around in trucks or four wheel drive vehicles. Some state-affiliated schools may find that state contracts make it cheaper to buy larger fuel inefficient vehicles. These barriers and others to buying highly fuel efficient vehicles need to be addressed and overcome.

Electric vehicles, even those powered by a regional electric grid that is not especially clean, tend to be less carbon-intensive than standard gasoline-powered vehicles. Small GEM type electrics are better suited to warmer climates or to summer-only use in campuses with cold winters. Facilities staff could also ride bicycles to meetings on other parts of the campus if the dress code is relaxed. Wearing informal clothing also makes it possible to air condition less – another benefit to your “low carbon bottom-line.”

Using biodiesel for fleet vehicles raises some issues. Remember that B20 biodiesel fuel is only 20% biodiesel and 80% conventional diesel fuel, and even the biodiesel portion is probably not fully carbon-free because fossil fuels may be consumed in its manufacture or shipping. Switching to biodiesel blends which are richer in biodiesel is desirable though can be problematic in colder climates due to the increased viscosity of biodiesel as the temperature drops. One solution might be to use B100 (100% biodiesel) during the summer months and switch back to B20 during colder weather.

Biodiesel is a good fit for campus buses as well as larger facilities vehicles. While most college and university facilities units will not be interested in manufacturing their own biodiesel (since it is an extra task and they are probably already short-staffed), some have been approached by students and faculty interested in seeing campus food service waste fryer grease converted to biodiesel to run campus buses or fleet vehicles. Such an arrangement would have significant educational value. Conceivably, a campus-based biodiesel production facility could be designed, operated, and monitored by students under faculty and facilities supervision.

Conversion of fleet vehicles to compressed natural gas generally requires the installation of a CNG refueling station on or very near campus. This can be an expensive undertaking – though might be subsidized by state energy offices that are promoting alternatively fueled vehicles or by local natural gas utilities interested in selling more natural gas. Duel-fuel CNG vehicles can be purchased or existing gasoline-powered vehicles can be kit-converted to CNG. Campus buses also can be CNG powered. If campus bussing is provided on contract by an outside vendor, then new contract language specifying an alternative fuel will be required next time this service goes out to bid.

Operating a car, truck or bus on CNG will reduce GHG emissions by about 25% compared to gasoline operation. There can be substantial cost savings associated with using CNG vehicles (in comparison to gasoline) but this benefit vanishes when gasoline prices are low and natural gas prices are high. Assuming gasoline and CNG vehicles operate at roughly the same efficiency, $2 a gallon gasoline roughly equals $7/MCF natural gas.

5.7.2 Commuting

The larger transportation problem is commuting. At most colleges and universities, commuters dominate and typically arrive and depart from campus in single occupancy vehicles – many with poor fuel economy. Commuting by students, faculty and staff may add up to many millions of miles of driving per year at larger schools – and thus represent a substantial part of the campus carbon footprint.

Here are some strategies for reducing commuting and its GHG impact:

Raise awareness of transportation alternatives

• Create an effective transportation and climate change awareness program
  • Team up with your campus transportation office to create this program
  • Include messaging with billing statements for campus parking permits
  • Highlight the seriousness of climate change, the carbon footprint of commuting, strategies commuters can use to reduce GHG emissions, and your school’s climate goals
  • Provide alternatives to single car/truck commuting
  • Encourage the use of high efficiency vehicles when car/truck commuting is unavoidable
  • Let your audience know about incentives for using alternatives

Increase use of public transit by students, faculty and staff

• Better publicize existing public transit options
• Work with your regional transit authority to add public transit routes
• Increase the frequency of public transit service
• Extend late night public transit service
• Provide free public transit passes or subsidize public transit fare
• Move suburban or rural campuses to downtown urban locations to facilitate the use of public transit! (OK, this is probably not practical but it highlights the potential very large and difficult-to-ever-remedy carbon footprints associated with campuses built in locations not served or not easily served by public transit)

Increase carpooling

• Establish rideshare program to safely match interested drivers and carpool riders
• Provide incentives for carpooling, e.g. priority parking, reduced parking fees, etc.
• Provide emergency ride home service for carpoolers

**Increase bicycling **

• Make campus bicycle-friendly
  • Establish bicycle-friendly campus policies that actively encourage and reward bicycling and don’t penalize it (an example of the latter would be a policy that forbids students from locking their bikes to light poles or trees – it may be hard to believe but such policies exist!)
  • Create an extensive and effective network of campus bike paths
  • Address campus bicycling safety issues
  • Install or increase the number of secure bike racks on campus
  • Provide weather-protected bike racks and bicycle lockers
  • Establish an on-campus bicycle repair shop and free air pump
  • Equip buses with bike racks, and instruct riders how to use them
  • Create or join local bicycle sharing programs
• Make bicycle commuting more practical
  • Work with local communities to improve and expand the network of local bike paths and bicycling safety
  • Create safe bicycling commuter routes to campus through the surrounding community, especially from areas with a high density of off-campus student housing
  • Provide shower facilities for bicycle commuters
  • Relax formal or informal dress codes to accommodate bicycle commuters

Reduce on-campus driving

• Make campus more bicycle and pedestrian friendly
• Improve scheduling and routes of campus buses
• Locate new buildings to encourage walking and bicycling
• Minimize or don’t provide additional parking for new buildings
• Consider banning cars for on-campus resident freshman and other students

Reduce the need to single occupancy vehicle (SOV) commute

• Move electrons not people and vehicles
  • Increase telecommuting
  • Increase distance learning
• Build more on-campus housing (which ironically will reduce your campus’ commuter carbon footprint while increasing your campus housing carbon footprint)
• Work to improve neighborhood safety and privately owned off-campus housing near campus in order to make it more likely that students living off campus will chose to live near campus
• De-bundle transportation fees that package parking, bus and transportation fees all together so faculty, staff and students who do not bring a car to campus can pay less
• Pay employees not to drive
• Provide shuttle service to nearby off campus student housing developments and neighborhoods
• Create employee van pools
• Allow compressed work weeks, i.e. 4 ten-hour days/wk instead of 5 eight-hour days/wk to eliminate one commute per week
• Explore alternative course scheduling to reduce the number of days per week most students need to come to campus

**Re-focus campus parking policy **

• Stop building new parking lots and ramps
• Redirect money which would be spent on new parking lots or ramps to “transportation demand management” measures that reduce commuting and save money compared to expanding on-campus parking
• Begin charging for or increase the cost of on-campus parking

Reduce the carbon-intensity of vehicles used for commuting

• Encourage the purchase and use of highly fuel efficient personal vehicles through awareness and incentive programs (an example of the latter would be reducing parking fees for commuters who drive more fuel efficient vehicles)
• Establish a program to allow or require students, faculty and staff to pay for their own commuting carbon offsets

Other Strategies

• Prioritize energy efficient low carbon transportation planning in campus master plans
• Create a campus transportation committee charged with responsibility for shrinking the carbon footprint of campus commuting
• Establish or contract with car-sharing programs/companies to make it easier for people to avoid car ownership (and thus drive less)
• Contact elected officials and tell them we need a carbon tax! (This may seen farfetched but it’s here to illustrate an important point, namely, that we need larger policy changes to help us significantly reduce our carbon footprints. Colleges and universities typically participate in the political process when it is in their interest to do so. This is such a case.)

5.7.3 Air Travel

Addressing the business air travel component of your school’s carbon footprint involves setting up a mechanism to track official campus business air travel, calculating the GHG emissions associated with those flights, and then mitigating or offsetting the emissions.

The Clean Air-Cool Planet Campus Carbon Calculator is able to calculate and include air travel-related emissions in your campus GHG emissions inventory.

The simplest option you have for mitigating these emissions is encouraging less air travel. Providing easy access to teleconferencing would help make it easier and far cheaper for faculty and staff to connect with colleagues electronically. A more controversial step would be to mandate less travel, though with budget cuts affecting schools nationwide there simply may be less money allowed for air travel.