Guide
From Common Energy UVic
Building on Progress: A Guide to Moving UVic Beyond Climate-Neutral
The Guide is the output of the collaborative planning process. The Guide is the pay-off of huge amounts of hard work by hundreds of people. The Guide includes a host of strategies in all 6 of our focus areas and 3 comprehensive projects. Thank you all for the amazing job that you did. Thank you to UVic for the funding and support.
Click here for a pdf of the Guide: Building on Progress: A Guide for Moving UVic Beyond Climate-Neutral
Contents |
[edit] Sections
- Guide: Introduction and Reader's Guide to Moving UVic Beyond Climate-Neutral
- Guide: What is UVic already doing?
- Guide: Comprehensive Projects Introduction
- Guide: Revolving Green Fund
- Guide: Integrating Teaching and Learning
- Guide: University Challenge
- Guide: Focus Areas Introduction
- Guide: Buildings
- Guide: Transportation
- Guide: Food
- Guide: Energy
- Guide: Business
- Guide: Civic Engagement and Governance
- Guide: Appendix - Measuring Success
[edit] What's Next?
UVic is undertaking a planning process to create a Sustainability Policy and Plan. They have accepted the Guide as part of their consultation and will incorporate it into the process. We thank the Office of Campus Planning and Sustainaiblity for how open and collaborative they've been on this project - they've been amazing.
The process includes consultation sessions, online surveys, and a summit in late November. Now: we need to use the Guide to inform people of the possibilities at UVic, spark their own creativity, and get them to participate in the planning process. Want to get involved? Check out goBEYOND, email info@uvic.commonenergy.org, and/or come to our first Weekly Meeting.
[edit] Executive Summary
Going Beyond Climate-Neutral - Going beyond climate-neutral means doing more to solve the problems of climate change than we do to cause them. Education institutions have diverse capacities that give them a unique opportunity to go beyond climate-neutral. UVic has the research, education, operations, and people to catalyze climate-solutions in our home region. From transportation to buildings and from food to financing, UVic can help design, implement and drive practical local action.
Collaborative Process - The Guide was produced through the collaborative efforts of hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and regional partners. The process, called Common Ground, involved a series of lectures, conferences, and the efforts of nine working groups to craft strategies and solicit feedback. Collaborative planning is important for creating solutions to climate change because the challenge is interdisciplinary, actions need community support, and comprehensive solutions require new working relationships to be formed between students, staff, faculty, and regional partners.
This Guide is an answer to the core question that drove the planning process: How can we do more to solve the problems of climate change than we do to cause them?
Read the Introduction and UVic Today - A Reader’s Guide to Moving UVic Beyond Climate-Neutral for more information on UVic and beyond climate-neutrality.
[edit] Comprehensive Projects
Revolving Green Fund - Establish a fund that will finance sustainability initiatives and recycle savings from increased efficiency to finance new projects. Engage diverse stakeholders to raise funds and provide a model for the region.
Teaching and Learning - Create a network of students, faculty and regional partners working on local climate solutions. Focus that network on developing a climate-neutral region. Reward innovative sustainability teaching, expand opportunities to learn about sustainability, and give credit for them.
University Challenge - Support a departmental beyond climate-neutral challenge with communications, some staff time, and rewards.
[edit] Focus Areas
Buildings - Include the improvement to human productivity from green building in the cost-benefit analysis of building designs. Engage the community to collaboratively develop locally sustainable building designs. Initiate a long-term strategy to develop a sustainable built environment on campus based on those community-generated designs.
Food - Increase purchasing of local food and production of food on campus. Provide education and training opportunities in local food production. Increase the ratio of plant protein to meat protein in the campus diet. Reduce packaging, particularly from petroleum sources, and increase composting.
Transportation - Develop a zero-emission vehicle fleet and the infrastructure for plug-in hybrid stations on campus. Expand video and tele-conferencing options to reduce the demand for long-distance travel. Reduce single-occupancy vehicle traffic to campus by 10% per year through: improvements to cycling infrastructure, a parking system that automatically charges less per person in the vehicle, on-line rideshare, support for public transit improvements, and the creation of a campus-wide U-Pass. Pioneer a MobilityPass system that will build on the U-Pass to integrate other components of a sustainable transportation system.
Energy - Increase the energy efficiency of the campus by 20% by 2014 through a package of measures including: a campus-wide energy audit and investments from the Revolving Green Fund, a standard room temperature, concentrating night classes, and reducing heating at night and on weekends. Decrease the greenhouse gas intensity of the heating system by 25% by 2014 through zero-emissions alternatives to natural gas heating. Curb growing electricity demand through the installation of motion sensors for the lights and an energy efficient purchasing policy.
Business - Increase awareness of the indirect impacts of purchasing decisions, adopt triple-bottom line purchasing standards, and develop a multi-institutions Sustainable Purchasing Group to increase the supply of green products and sustainable business models. Evaluate UVic’s investments from a climate-risk perspective and adopt environmental, social, and governance standards. Establish a committee to draft a climate investment strategy and lead a Climate Investment Standard for universities in Canada.
Civic Engagement and Governance - Support efforts to create a collaborative online climate change resource for citizens. Establish a volunteer organizer to connect people with opportunities. Host workshops and support regional climate planning processes. Create a committee of students, staff, faculty, and regional partners that are involved in moving UVic beyond climate-neutral to share information and co-ordinate their efforts. Annually publish information on a broad range of beyond climate-neutral indicators.
[edit] Thanks to Participants and Sponsors
[edit] Participants
Thank you to the hundreds of students, staff, faculty, administrators and regional partners that have worked hard to make this report a reality. There are far too many individuals, involved in far too many ways, for us to give everyone the particular attention they deserve. Instead, here is an outline of the process, called Common Ground, that has created this report:
November 06: Connecting on Climate Change: a lecture and networking opportunity introduced Common Energy, the beyond climate-neutral goal, and the strategy and plan to collaboratively develop a plan to move UVic beyond climate-neutral.
January 07: Climate, Energy and Society: a lecture series from Dr. Andrew Weaver, Dr. Ned Djilali, and Dr. Kara Shaw that taught over a thousand people about the causes, consequences, and solutions for climate change.
February 07: Finding Common Ground on Climate Change: a participatory conference that opened the dialogue on problems and solutions in six key focus areas: food, energy, buildings, business, transportation, and finally civic engagement and governance. The conference introduced the processes core question: how can we do more to solve the problems of climate change than we do to cause them?
March 07: Working Groups Launched: Conference participants joined Working Groups for regular meetings to develop solutions in their areas. These groups continue to meet to the present day to plan practical actions to move UVic beyond climate-neutral.
June 07: Going Beyond Climate-Neutral: Planning for Climate Change Leadership with the University of Victoria: a progress report on the Working Group’s ideas to date was released to communicate the strategies as they develop and solicit feedback.
October 07: Going Beyond Climate-Neutral Conference: a major participatory conference with presentations on the beyond climate-neutral solutions from the Working Groups and extensive feedback and collaboration with participants to improve them.
Winter 08: Written Feedback from Campus and Community Members: Working Groups solicited and received extensive feedback on the beyond climate-neutral solutions from faculty and regional partners.
Spring 08: Building on Progress: A Guide to Moving UVic Beyond Climate-Neutral: This report synthesizes all of the planning and feedback to date.
The process has embodied the potential described in UVic’s official Vision: “that we strive to be “members of a diverse and dynamic learning community, we challenge one another to become thoughtful, engaged citizens and leaders, prepared to contribute to the betterment of a rapidly changing global society.”
[edit] Supporters
A special thanks to the following organizations for their generous support for this project: the University of Victoria, BC Ministry of Advanced Education, POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, Vancouver Foundation, University of Victoria Students Society, Office of Community Based Research, Capital Regional District, and the University of Victoria Sustainability Project.
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