New Clean Energy Master Plan provides roadmap for achieving CSULB’s climate neutrality goal
CSULB’s Office of Sustainability is actively working to ensure that the university achieves the goal laid out in the Climate Action Plan of reaching climate neutrality by 2030, but campus data, funding, and priorities are constantly changing, making it increasingly difficult to plan future projects. To avoid creating a static document that sits on a shelf due to out-of-date projections, the university worked with a team of consultants to create a Clean Energy Master Plan (CEMP) that is coupled with a dynamic, modifiable planning tool.
The tool is a sophisticated, Excel-based calculator that will allow the university to more accurately see how planned energy and construction projects would affect the university’s progress toward its climate neutrality goal. This program, the Scenario Analysis and Visual Insight (SAVI) tool, was a joint effort by the university’s Facilities Management department, Glumac, an engineering company that specializes in sustainable design, and consulting firms Arc Alternatives and Ecoshift.
By plugging in different values related to proposed new buildings, energy efficiency projects, or infrastructure improvements, the SAVI tool can be used to calculate the approximate net increase or decrease in campus greenhouse gas emissions.
Based on the anticipated project budget, the tool can also assign a cost for each ton of CO2 that would be reduced if the project were implemented. This will allow decision makers to identify the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by comparing different projects to one another or to other measures, such as purchasing carbon offsets.
Using the SAVI tool to help plan projects and investments will allow the university to more cohesively and methodically work toward climate neutrality.
Key recommendations in the Clean Energy Master Plan include focusing on investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and vehicle fleet projects.
Specifically, the CEMP recommends prioritizing installation of more solar panels, transitioning most diesel-fueled campus fleet vehicles to electric by 2030, and creating additional on-campus housing for students to reduce the number of students commuting.
Addressing greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle commutes was outside the scope of the CEMP, which primarily focused on energy and building projects. However, since commuter emissions are the university’s biggest obstacle to reaching climate neutrality, the consulting team have urged the university to develop a targeted vehicle emissions mitigation plan.
Although there’s now an in-depth energy plan to reach climate neutrality by 2030, the CEMP will need to be periodically updated in order to stay current with changes in campus needs, construction costs, technology, and the energy marketplace.
CSULB is currently the only California State University with access to the SAVI tool, giving The Beach a powerful roadmap for taking action on climate change as well as a real opportunity for leadership.
