Sustainability through carbon neutrality
The historic Bingham House, which houses the Office of Sustainability at Ohio University. Photo by Sarah Donaldson.
In 2007, then-Ohio University President Roderick McDavis signed the American College and Universities Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), tethering Ohio U to a 68-year-long plan to achieve carbon neutrality and eliminate carbon emissions on campus.
The ACUPCC, now known as the Carbon Commitment, set the university’s carbon neutrality date for 2075.
Just 14 years later, the Office of Sustainability is confident that this goal can be reached by 2050.
Elaine Goetz, Ohio U’s director of energy management and sustainability and implementation liaison for the Carbon Commitment, said Ohio U is doing well compared to other institutions.
“We’re hitting it out of the ballpark, but then again, there are a lot of institutions that have already reached carbon neutrality,” Goetz said.
Ohio U is ranked as the 27th most green college in the country, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership and 142nd in Sierra’s Cool Schools list. The university has also been given a green rating of 95/99 by the Princeton Review and is internationally recognized with a silver rating through the STARS program.
“If we’re 52% of the way in reduced emissions, then we have 48% of the way to go,” Goetz said. “In terms of numbers, that’s still about 88,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.”
According to Goetz, carbon neutrality is the reduction or offsetting of carbon emissions in every aspect of the university’s functions through specified international protocols. In order to meet carbon neutrality, Ohio U must eliminate all emissions that are classified as scope one or two and parts of scope three.
Scope one emissions include direct emissions from energy usage, including heating, cooling, domestic hot water, refrigerants, fertilizers and transportation on campus. Scope two includes emissions from purchased electricity. Scope three emissions include commuting, business, travel, food, paper purchases, water and wastewater.
Since the creation of the Climate Action Plan in 2012, which details how the university’s plans to implement the Carbon Commitment, Ohio U has been tracking its emissions. According to Ohio U’s annual reports, from 2012 to 2019, Ohio U saw a 48% total decrease in scope one and two emissions.
This large decrease comes mostly from the 2012 decision to switch the university’s heating fuel source from coal to natural gas, which produces almost half the carbon dioxide, according to the Office of Sustainability. Ohio U does not plan to reach its carbon neutrality goal while using natural gas.
Ohio U has also purchased renewable energy certificates (RECs) for every megawatt hour of electricity that is used on the Athens main campus and regional campuses. This means that for every kilowatt hour of non-renewable energy that the university uses, it purchases an equivalent amount of energy produced by wind to offset its carbon emissions.
Energy usage is the largest producer of carbon emissions on campus, making up 65% of total emissions in 2018. While the university does produce its own renewable energy through solar panels installed on nine buildings around campus, Ohio U is still considering other forms of renewable energy sources to help improve campus sustainability.
According to the Office of Sustainability, this includes solar farms, wind farms, low-head hydroelectric power plants, solar thermal, geothermal systems, power purchase agreements and RECs.
Goetz projects that by the end of next year, scope two eliminations will be completely eliminated, while scope one is not far behind.
Ohio U’s biggest challenge to eliminating scope one emissions is heating and cooling,according to Goetz. The campus can be cooled with electric chillers and purchasing RECs to offset emissions, but heating is more difficult.
Heating campuses with hot water is the best option in terms of carbon neutrality, but the renovation is extensive. According to Goetz, it would require digging five miles of steam tunnels underneath the campus and running piping into every building. The total renovation has been estimated to cost over $400 million. Other options include switching to biofuel heating or creating a fossil fuel-free fire heating method.
On a lesser scale, Ohio U can install water-based or electric heating systems to heat new buildings individually as they are added to campus, but Goetz is still holding out for something more.
“None of these are really looking like they’re going to work, but as technologies develop, hopefully there will be something better that comes up,” Goetz said.
Transportation is the second largest production of carbon on campus, making up for 29% of total emissions as of 2018.
Ohio U has started to make the switch to electric vehicles and, depending on finances, will be purchasing more to help reduce the university’s carbon output. Goetz said the last piece of the carbon neutrality puzzle is waste.
“There are so many things that we waste that we can reuse, and we are piloting all kinds of processes for reusing our waste so that it doesn’t end up in the landfill emitting carbon,” Goetz said.
One example of this sort of circular economy is housed right within Ohio U’s Russ College of Engineering. Instead of throwing out the university’s plastics, the college collects and recycles them into 3D printing filaments.
Despite these improvements, it’s the last emissions, usually part of scope three, that are hardest to eliminate. These emissions are not usually caused by the university, but rather from students, staff and companies in cooperation with them.
According to Goetz, this is the stage of carbon neutrality where universities begin to purchase certified offsets to eliminate the carbon emissions they cannot otherwise get rid of — in other words, any type of emission produced by students and suppliers.
Goetz described these offsets as permanent and proven to counteract emissions by not producing any carbon. For many universities, the perfect carbon offset is tree planting.
“With every tree that you plant, based on the species and the age of the tree, assuming it's healthy, they know how much carbon it uptakes,” Goetz said. “If you can prove that you are planting a tree in a location where there is not a tree, then it can be verified that you are uptaking (a certain amount) of carbon.”
Ohio U has not yet resorted to purchasing offsets. But in the new draft of the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan, which details how the university plans to avoid emissions for the next five years, the Office of Sustainability is beginning to explore the idea of creating United Nations-approved carbon offsets on campus.
The plan will also outline new renewable energy milestones and energy systems which will be evaluated for sustainability and benefit to the campus community, environment and economy.
The draft was reviewed by the Board of Trustees April 9. According to Ohio U’s media relations manager Jim Sabin, the date for voting on the new Sustainability and Climate Action Plan has not been set.
“It’s hard to say that we’re going to get there at any certain date, but I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved so far,” Goetz said.
When asked what the plan is after Ohio U achieves carbon neutrality, Goetz described that the point of sustainability is to no longer need a sustainability office.
“The idea of sustainability is to work ourselves out of a job. Once it’s all incorporated into the operations of the university, then we don’t need a sustainability office. What comes after that is living sustainability instead of needing an office to guide us towards sustainable actions,” Goetz said.