Climate Commitment Update with Mary Whitney ’91
This article was originally published in the Winter 2022 edition of the Chatham Recorder Alumni Magazine. To view more digital Recorder stories, click here.
Assistant Professor of Practice of Sustainability Mary Whitney ’91
As a signatory of the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, Chatham has pledged to work toward carbon neutrality by 2025. We sat down with University Sustainability Director and Assistant Professor of Practice of Sustainability Mary Whitney ’91 for an update.
Started in 2006, the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) is an effort to address global warming by creating a network of colleges and universities that have committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the research and educational efforts of higher education to equip society to re-stabilize the Earth’s climate. Chatham signed the commitment in 2007.
With regard to the accomplishments we’ve made, what are you most proud of?
I am the most proud that Chatham is actually making real reductions in our carbon emissions. A lot of universities that are part of the Climate Commitment have gone the offset route but Chatham is still trying to first make real reductions in our emissions before we purchase offsets for what we cannot eliminate.
Have students been involved in helping us achieve our goals?
I work with students a lot on projects in the Office of Sustainability that revolve around tracking our emissions and planning for reduced emissions. The Performance Excellence in Electricity Renewal (PEER) assessment that we did was about the capabilities of the microgrid at Eden Hall Campus. That was done as several different levels of student projects: as a class, as a master’s thesis, as internships, and also just as student employment, depending on what people needed. Some people say, “I already did my internship, but I really want to work on this!” and I say “I can just hire you!”. We do a ton of stuff like that—we’ve conducted the greenhouse gas audit as classes too, many times. Right now, as we speak, I have a student who is calculating the carbon footprint of our athletics program. That’ll be his master’s thesis.
“Since 2007, Chatham has reduced our total net emissions by 36% per full-time student and 28% per 1,000 square feet. These reductions are even more impressive since Chatham has increased the number of students and physical campus locations. ”
What do you see as our biggest challenges going forward?
The biggest challenge that we have left to getting to zero carbon emissions in 2025 is our natural gas-related emissions —mostly the microturbines, steam boilers, the hot water heaters, things like that. It’s about 3,700 tons of carbon that is directly released by running the boilers, the steam systems at Shadyside. This number also includes the gasoline in the transportation fleet (vans and shuttles), but it is a small percentage—about eight percent. Ninety-two percent of what’s left of our footprint is the boilers and the natural gas. The kitchen, and the steam boilers, and the houses that have natural gas heat. That’s our biggest challenge because that’s not easily reduced. The solar thermal systems that we have on Fickes and Woodland and Orchard Hall are very difficult to buy now. There was a big gap in the federal administration where none of the research and development for solar thermal was supported, so there’s a technology gap of eight years or so that has not been overcome yet. Literally, I cannot go buy a system like that anymore. I have to try to find other solutions or we’ll probably have to do offsets at one point. Originally we planned on buying thermal systems for every building, but the market is not there to support that.
What are the main takeaways from the chart?
I’d point you to the chart where you can see the change in emissions versus the baseline. This will tell you what is the percentage change of our emissions, and some of it has gone up, but if you look per 1,000 sq or per FTE (full-time equivalent), you can see that it shows that when we started in 2007, per thousand square feet, our emissions have gone down 6.81 percent, but we have a whole new campus! We have Orchard Hall, the Field Labs, the Dairy Barn, the Esther Barazzone Center—those buildings literally didn’t exist when we started. We’ve grown quite a bit. And per FTE, it’s even more amazing: it’s almost down 17 percent per student.
Offsets
“It’s not always possible to have zero carbon emissions, but you can try to get close,” says Whitney. “The idea of offsets is that because you’re committed to this bigger project of planet-wide carbon reduction, you can essentially use your money to underwrite projects that reduce carbon somewhere else. For example, you can plant trees in a deforested area in another part of the world that because you’re paying for it to happen, the reduction in carbon that comes from those trees gets credited back to you.”