12/4/20 Advisory Committee meeting

Attendees: Michelle Perez, Jen Bowser, Keith Pezzoli, Barbara Hamilton, Ken Hall, Steve Jackson, Walt Kanzler, Natalie Tran

Agenda

1)UCSD Academic Senate Climate Task Force Recommendations Summary (Keith Pezzoli) and Updates from Operational Recommendations (Michelle Perez)

2)UCSD Sustainable Building Policy update (Walter Kanzler)

3)Draft Carbon Offset Policy and other recommended policy updates to the UC Sustainable Practices Policy (Michelle Perez)

4)STARS and other sustainability related surveys (Michelle Perez)

5)UCSD Annual Sustainability Awards (Michelle Perez/Jen Bowser)

AS Climate Task Force - Keith

• Adam Aron and Keith Pezzoli were initial co-chairs, will become a formal non-voting committee in Academic Senate

• Developed a series of reports and recommendations

  • 34 recommendations in the notes of the slides

• Climate crisis action update

  • Senate campus committees on climate change

    • No UC has an academic committee based on the climate crisis until UCSD

      • UCSD has a non-voting member on the academic senate

  • Fossil-free finance challenges

    • Divestment of the pension and endowment

    • Banking

    • Insurance

  • Carbon offsets

  • Petition to electrify the UC system

  • Expand campus green infrastructure

• Green New Deal at UCSD

  • 4 campaigns led by students on campus

Barbara 

• Developing a climate resiliency workshop for medical and academic campus

UCSD operational sustainability updates - Michelle

• UCSD's carbon emissions have stayed flat over the past several years, even with UCSD's growth

• Downward trend of our GHG/sqft over past several years

• This year, increased waste diversion by 5% + waste generated per user also decreased

  • Recycler of the Year by City of SD

  • Other recent events on campus that were zero waste

• Transportation - alternative commuting

  • % alternative commuting decreased in 2020 (thanks to COVID)

  • Received platinum diamond award

• Transportation - sustainable fleet

  • Over 70% sustainable vehicles (including hybrid) over past 5 years, this year

    • 15th greenest fleets

• Food

  • UCSD has met or exceed 20% sustainable food goal for 4th year in a row

    • UC will be adopting stricter standards and set new goals for 2030

• Sustainability programs

  • Certified 100th lab in July, most in UC system

  • Created own in-house assessment tool

12th Annual Sustainability Awards - Jen

• Had to do it virtually due to COVID, can watch ceremony on the Sustainability website

• Will probably be online - Should we continue these awards? What should its format be / how should people be recognized?

  • People agree it should be continued, but can be streamlined/scaled back to adapt

  • Can have covid-related recognitions + have a medical center category

UCSD Sustainable Building Policy Update - Walt

• Over 400 LEED certified buildings

• Most are Gold, above minimum requirements

• New rating systems like Living Building Challenge

• Green Building Policy that's been in effect since 2007

  • Wanted to create a more technical complementary policy for design and build teams - incorporate policy in new design guidelines update - affect outcomes on projects

  • Creating district energy calculator

STARS - Michelle

• Must submit a report on campus sustainability data by March 2021 for STARS

  • Connected with Princeton Review

• 2 surveys to send out (in the new year):

  • Assessing UCSD's sustainability culture

  • Assessing UCSD's sustainability literacy

• How do we collect representative samples?

  • When surveying campus groups

  • Reach out to Teaching Learning Commons?

  • Add sample questions?