University of Arkansas Submits Climate Action Plan to Become 'Carbon Neutral'

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas is among the first institutions in the country to submit a long-range plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on campus to zero by the year 2040. The university’s Climate Action Plan was submitted as part of the agreement the university made when it signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment document in February 2007.

The University of Arkansas was among the first 100 colleges and universities to sign the document. Institutions that signed the commitment before September 2007 agreed to develop and submit a Climate Action Plan by Sept. 15, 2009. A number of those schools have asked for extensions, but the University of Arkansas actually submitted its plan a week before the deadline.

“As a university, it is our responsibility to be at the leading edge of change and to bring the intelligence, expertise, energy and imagination of our campus community to bear on the most difficult problems of the day,” said Chancellor G. David Gearhart. “We must see farther, think clearer, dream bigger and work harder to solve tomorrow’s problems today. Thirty years from now I hope that people will be able to look back and say the actions we are taking today helped make their world a better place.”

The Climate Action Plan details the steps the university will take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on campus to 10 percent below the current level by 2014 and to further limit emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2021.

“If we continued ‘business as usual’ policies, our studies show the university would produce the equivalent of 250,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in the year 2021,” said Nick Brown, executive assistant for sustainability. “The strategies we will pursue under the Climate Action Plan will cut those emissions in half.”

The ultimate goal of the plan is to make the University of Arkansas campus ‘carbon neutral’ by the year 2040.

The Climate Action Plan is the first of its kind for any public institution in Arkansas and the most wide-ranging and comprehensive fossil-energy reduction strategy in the state.

“The University of Arkansas made a commitment to sustainability even before 2007,” said Mike Johnson, associate vice chancellor for facilities. “We had plans and projects already under way, and that gave us a bit of a head start when it came to developing the Climate Action Plan.”

The university’s carbon emissions are mostly indirect and primarily come from two sources: the electricity that is purchased from AEP-Southwest Electric Power Co. and petroleum-based fuels. Reducing the amount of electricity used on campus, for example, will reduce the amount of carbon emitted by the coal-fired power plants that produce the electricity.

The short-term phase of the Climate Action Plan, covering the first five years, calls for a systematic effort to conserve electricity, water and fuel. Part of that plan is already being implemented under energy-savings performance contracts to upgrade buildings on campus. The plan includes implementation of campus policies to increase energy, fuel and water conservation, as well as solid waste recycling.

In the next seven years, the plan calls for increased use of renewable energy sources. This phase of the plan, and the final, long-term phase, are less detailed and will depend to a great extent on technological developments, government policies and other factors.

The Climate Action Plan has been developed over the past year through the work of the Campus Sustainability Council, student suggestions and community discussions. Some of the actions in the plan are already under way, while many others will have to approved by university administrators. The full text of the Climate Action Plan is available at: http://sustainability.uark.edu/University_of_Arkansas_Climate_Action_Plan.pdf.