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University of California, Berkeley 2007 Campus Sustainability Leadership Award Application

Category

Four-year and graduate institutions over 7,500 student FTE

Lighting Retrofits in LeConte - Renovation of a historic building with energy efficiency lighting as part of a larger upgrade and improvement projects.

Contact

Fahmida Ahmed
Sustainability Specialist
317 University Hall,
Berkeley, CA
510-642-0074
fahmida@berkeley.edu

Governance & Administration

In 2007, the University of California System announced the adoption of a pioneering Policy on Sustainable Practices. With sustainability emerging as a key goal for UC Berkeley, the campus has made substantive strides in the past two years to integrate sustainability into campus decision making. On April 27, 2007, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau committed to reduce campus greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2014 – 6 years earlier than the target set by California Assembly Bill 32, the Global Solutions Warming Act.

This emissions target was based on recommendations from the Cal Climate Action Partnership (CalCAP). CalCAP is an exemplary and unique collaboration of over 30 faculty, administration, staff and students making up a steering committee chaired by the Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Facilities. Funded by the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability (CACS) and Berkeley Institute of the Environment (BIE), CalCAP convened in 2005 for the purpose of reducing GHG at UC Berkeley, and has:

• Added the university as a member to California Climate Action Registry ;
• Conducted a feasibility study built upon sustainability components to determine the emissions inventory, analyzed the financial feasibility of emissions reduction, and created an institutional model for emissions reduction in higher education;
• Established GHG reduction as a criterion for the campus decision making process.

CalCAP has demonstrated that reducing campus GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2014 can be met through the execution of identified projects such as infrastructure projects focused on energy efficiency, behavioral projects focused on energy conservation and greening of the electricity supply. These projects are attractive in their ability to return both monetary savings and emission reductions. In addition to being a member of AASHE’s American Colleges and Universities Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), UC Berkeley is committing to better understand the university’s carbon footprint and emissions reduction opportunities from faculty research.

Long committed to increasing environmental sustainability awareness on campus, CACS has made significant strides in advising and supporting staff and student sustainability projects on campus. With over 20 members from staff, students, faculty and alumni, CACS has integrated environmental sustainability with existing campus programs in education, research, operations and public service by authoring the Campus Sustainability Assessment 2005. CACS has also established the Chancellor’s Green Campus Fund (CGCF), which awards annual Green Fund Grants. CACS’ comprehensive Campus Sustainability Assessment 2005, comprised of 32 indicators (e.g. electricity consumption, wastewater, green building practices and policies) in 9 systems (e.g. energy, water, transportation, food), assesses where UC Berkeley stands with regard to sustainability and suggests future opportunities to increase its level of commitment and participation. In addition to the above, CACS 2006-2007 accomplishments have included organizing and hosting the 2007 Campus Sustainability Summit, and coordinating the Chancellor’s Sustainability Internship Program with 15 student interns working across 8 sustainability topic areas on campus and in the surrounding community.

Operations

The campus’ commitment to sustainability is visible daily – from 34 departments within the Administration purchasing at least 30% and departments within Facilities Services purchasing100% post-consumer waste recycled paper, to the various programs across departments that promote sustainability in energy, water, built environment, food, transportation, purchasing, waste and land use. Examples include:

Energy efficiency/conservation: Since 2005, over 2 million KWH of energy have been saved through installment of fluorescent light fixtures, lighting controls and sensors, and building metering. Best Practices Awards include:

• Overall Flex Your Power Award for the campus, 2005;
• Green Campus Program for energy efficiency - UC/CSU/CC Sustainability Conference (“Sustainability Conference”), 2005;
• Variable Air Volume tuning, monitoring based commissioning - Sustainability Conference, 2007.

In resident halls, Green Campus has been leading both the “incandescent for compact fluorescent” lamp exchanges and competitions for “Black Out Battles”. The CACS energy interns educated campus staff and faculty about energy conservation in targeted buildings in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In 2006, UC Berkeley Greek Theatre was the first major music venue in the country committed to offsetting carbon emissions during its concert season.

Green building: Per the Green Building and Clean Energy Standard (GBCE) and UC Board of Regents, all new campus facilities since 2005 have been designed and built to LEED-certification or above. Supported by a grant from Alameda County, the Early Childhood Education Center opened in January 2007 as one of the first examples. This very popular center incorporated green building policies and fetched a best practices design award in 2006 at the Sustainability Conference. A sustainable renovation of LeConte was completed in 2007; it has received several awards since.

Sustainability in dining, housing, recycling & transportation: Cal Dining opened the nation's first campus Organic Certified Kitchen and 100% organic salad bars in early 2006. Cal Dining became a certified green business, which included procurement of sustainable food options and reduction of food waste thorough composting and recycling. In the housing arena, the Green Campus Program, Campus Recycling and Refuse Services (CRRS) and Residential and Students Services Program (RSSP) teamed up in 2006 to offer students three new green living options, known as The Green Room Series. Since 2001, CRRS has managed the Residential Sustainability Education Coordinator program, coordinating the collection of over 100 tons of food waste annually for composting and post-consumer waste pilots from dining halls. Campus Custodial Services launched the use of Green Seal chemicals in 2006. The first Alternative Transportation Fair was organized in Spring 2007 to promote awareness of greener vehicles. The campus also published its first comprehensive Bicycle Plan in 2006, and staff bus pass use increased 33% in 2005-06 under the Campus Alternative Transit Program.

Water conservation: In 2007, the university and East Bay Municipal Utilities District launched a pilot project to improve irrigation and storm water management at Grinnell Glade. It will divert, clean and detail approximately 409,000 gallons of water annually. The campus housing unit has a water retrofit underway, including low flow shower heads and faucets.

Curriculum & Research

UC Berkeley is at the forefront of curricula and research in all components of sustainability. There are currently approximately 250 faculty members and 375 classes available to both undergraduate and graduate students that have the environment as their focus. Approximately 80 courses deal directly with sustainability, while the remainder deal with many diverse subject matters such as environmental policy and law, ecology and climate change. Sustainability related courses represent offerings from 30 different departments. There are currently 51 graduate and 35 undergraduate environmental degree programs offered at Berkeley, with energy research as a strong trend among many of these programs. Examples of UC Berkeley’s institutional and research leadership in energy innovation and policy include:

• The creation of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) in 2007. UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to lead an unprecedented $500 million research effort to develop biofuels.
• International conferences, such as the "Cap and Trade as a Tool for Climate Change Policy" conference, where Senator Dianne Feinstein delivered a keynote in February 2007.

About 32 student groups on campus are committed to sustainability and environmental protection. In conjunction with faculty members, they leverage campus resources with the goal of achieving sustainability. Some examples include:

• ASUC Sustainability Team: In the past 2 years, the students have put on 2 celebrations of Earth Weeks, with events and workshops covering global warming, environmental activism and social justice. In 2007, they launched "The Local", a produce stand that offers locally grown, pesticide-free fresh produce.
• Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC), which featured the international energy symposium in 2007, works to harness the strengths of students, faculty and research programs across the energy and natural resources sector.
• Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW), which works to reduce poverty and improve global sustainability, focusing on engineering issues surrounding appropriate technologies in development.

The integration of sustainability into Berkeley’s curriculum and research programs can be readily viewed through various research units and organizations on campus, of which there are 64 dedicated to the environment. Examples include:

• The Berkeley Institute of the Environment (BIE) strives to establish Berkeley as the premier teaching and research institution for environmental science, technology, management and policy. Recent research includes the Urban Sustainability Initiative, an international effort between UC Berkeley and a diverse range of public and private institutions worldwide to integrate cutting edge science into policies in the developing world. As of 2007, BIE also serves as the repository of all environmental activities (funded by CACS) on campus.
• The Institute of Urban and Regional Development (IURD) serves faculty and students conducting research into processes of urban and regional growth and decline. Current research focuses on sustainable development and regulation of urban growth and land use, evolving patterns of suburbanization and central city reconstruction.
• The Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) plays a leading role in research on transportation sustainability. Research focuses on transportation planning, logistics, traffic operations, infrastructure management, and transportation economics and finance.

Campus Culture

Sustainability related organizations provide a very important and popular avenue for students, staff and faculty to share information about issues, and generate and advocate new ideas for further movement toward research and campus sustainability. They provide a valuable forum for the exchange of ideas and development of networks to build knowledge and leadership capacity.

Over 60 student sustainability related organizations now exist on campus, varying widely in purpose and membership, but all dedicated to the greater mission of integrating sustainability into campus culture. Some examples include: Students for Greener Berkeley, Global Environment Theme House, Student Organic Gardening Association, Cal Climate Action Partnership, Education for Sustainable Living Project, Engineers Without Frontiers, and Green Architecture Research and Design, Berkeley Environmental Alumni Network and Rainforest Action Group. To highlight the first two:

• Students for a Greener Berkeley: SGB focuses on improving environmental policies and practices on campus. Their aim is to reduce UC Berkeley’s environmental footprint, be it energy use, paper consumption, water usage, waste, etc. They collaborate with other green groups on campus and encourage partnership from other organizations. Some of their more recent projects include Greening Your Campus Building.
• The Global Environment Theme House at UC Berkeley provides a living and learning environment for students interested in social, economic and scientific issues affecting Earth’s urban, rural and global environment. The goal of the program is to bring students and faculty together in a variety of structured and informal ways to explore issues such as global environmental change, management of natural resources, sustainable urban and rural environments, and environmental leadership.

UC Berkeley is proud of its progressive and environmentally friendly reputation, and endeavors to maintain student participation in these groups. This vibrant community provides valuable learning experiences for active students, and an opportunity to develop knowledge and skills relevant to generating positive change in the campus culture. At the 2007 Sustainability Summit hosted by CACS, the campus awarded various Green Grants for projects such as a campus energy-saving feasibility study, Design (studios) Students for a Sustainable Future, Engaging eco-conscious alumni, Rooftop plant-and-soil cover, Outdoor classrooms, Earth Week 2008 publicity and campus farmer's market. These projects are very telling of how ingrained sustainability is into the campus culture.

Perhaps the most important example of sustainability in the campus culture is The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF), which passed in the 2007 Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) Election at UC Berkeley with 69% of the vote. TGIF is a student-led initiative that will generate $200,000 per year for 10 years through a $5/semester student fee increase. The fund will be used to support sustainability on campus. A group of students who have participated in a diverse group of environmental organizations at Cal worked for more than 8 months to organize and pass the referendum, demonstrating that students, as the biggest constituents on campus, are really willing to tax themselves to promote sustainability for all.

Community Service & Outreach

The campus recognizes that it is a functioning part of a larger community. Recognizing its commitment to education, research and public service, the university takes an active role in educating and serving the community on the sustainability front. Since 2004, the campus has been hosting a “sustainability week” to promote and educate students, faculty, staff and the local community about energy and water conservation, reuse, recycling, consumption and sustainable transportation. Energy efficiency programs (e.g. exchanging incandescent for florescent lamps) were implemented so that students would move beyond the campus to educate their parents, relatives, friends and other community members about relatively easy and inexpensive ways of helping to foster a culture of sustainability.

Other recent accomplishments include:

• Formation of Sustainable Berkeley, a non-profit partnership between UC Berkeley, the City of Berkeley and the Berkeley Unified School District through which issues of mutual concern, specifically those relating to sustainability, can be addressed collectively in neutral territory.
• The Berkeley Sustainable Business Working Group, a partnership between UC Berkeley and the City of Berkeley Mayor’s Office, brings together 100 local businesses working toward making Berkeley a world leader in environmental innovation.
• The Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability interns worked with the Berkeley School District to reduce lighting use and disposal of unused drugs, and also helped with registering Green Restaurants in the city.
• Cal Day, the campus’s annual open house that again welcomed approximately 30,000 visitors, this year included an Energy Expo that highlighted campus sustainability activities and groups along with a lecture series focused on alternative energy research. (http://www.berkeley.edu/calday/2007/energy.shtml).

Other examples of campus and community outreach include:

• Cal Recycling and Refuse Services has initiated the Residential Sustainability Education Coordinator (RSEC) program to educate and inform first year students about the importance of a sustainable lifestyle and to make lasting proactive changes in the environment. The RSECs are a diverse group of residence hall students who educate their peers about the importance of preserving our environment, while instilling in them positive habits that aim to conserve our natural resources. RSECs meet with facility managers to discuss pertinent issues and attend bi-monthly meetings run by Student Sustainability Education Coordinators, where they design community outreach and implementation plans.
• The Green Room Series, with its main purpose of educating students, offers tours of its 3 facilities, The Green Room, The Green Apartment and The Green Suite, to all members of the campus community. The Green Room in Unit 1, one of the residence halls on campus, uses 35 percent less energy than any other in the building and emits 473 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide per year. The majority of appliances in the room, including the refrigerator and DVD player, are products that are Energy Star-certified. The room also includes a Brita filtration pitcher in the place of bottled water, fluorescent light bulbs, sustainable personal care products, refillable printer ink and organic cotton bedding. Many products were donated by local retailers or purchased from stores in the community.

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