Ad Hoc Committee on the OSU Carbon Commitment

Voting members present: Roberto Albertani, Marlys Amundson, Lety Cavazos, Tess Collins, Ed Dever, Jon Dorbolo, Jillian Gregg, Kim Hannigan-Downs, Keith Jayawickrama, Leela Magdaleno, Shelly Signs, Brandon Trelstad, Maddie Moyano, Beth Filar Williams
Voting members absent: Amy Bourne, Jeff Gautschi, Chris Kulah, Qinglai Meng, Gary Miller, Cinamon Moffett, Jacob Putney, Marianne Vydra

Welcome, note-taker assignment, brief self-introductions

Working group reports 

• Conservation, Efficiency & Transportation 
  • Obtained $75,000 grant for solar installation on library. Total project is about $400,000. A major challenge is figuring out a way to get the tax credits. College of Engineering also looking to a solar installation on the wave lab.
  • Had a few more green certifications roll in for offices and labs but could still use help from C3 getting other units to participate.Library completed their certification a couple months ago and is so far our highest score yet.
  • Processed in June a small amount of travel carbon offsets for FY20.Once again, the Library was the big purchaser, offsetting just about all of their travel for the year. Forestry also contributed.
  • Completed an energy audit of Richardson Hall and have a number of measures to implement and have uncovered further issues in the last month.May be moving to implementation around March 2021.
• Education and Curriculum 
  • Has worked on climate modules for the BACC core. Sustainability Office is working on offering a diploma on sustainability. Also developed a resource of climate change information for faculty to use in their classes. Look in the Box folder: C3 Climate Change Lesson Finder. Q: Can we promote this and make it known to the community? It was suggested that Zotero could be an adaptable tool to share information, in addition to uploading periodically to websites (Faculty Senate, updates likely to be slow; Sustainability Office, faster). Looking to develop a list of experts who might speak on climate issues via Zoom.
• Reporting and Communications 
  • Next report to Faculty Senate due July 2021
  • Forum: Get the 2025 carbon neutral goal out to the community. Include calls to action and things that community can do. Keith suggested an event in the winter quarter 2020-21 (January?). About 1-hour duration, delivered remotely. Try to get a University higher administrator (VP or V-Provost level).  Brandon thought we had not had a public event like this since about 2009 or 2010. Would need broad support by C3 to be successful.
  • Send suggestions by October 15.

C3 Membership 

• New member selection process discussion (review of Faculty Senate language, discussion, and vote)
• Faculty Senate admin is contacting units to fill gaps.
  • Mixed reception to the idea of defaulting C3 membership recruitment to Faculty Senate putting out a call for interest each spring and then picking committee members for us. There was a desire to be selective and intentional regarding committee members.
  • Engineering is the biggest College but only has one representative. We have nearly 30,000 students but only one student representative. Keith wondered if this was adequate representation.
• Question: Is there any interest in updating committee name to be more descriptive, gain attention from OSU community. We may be asking the Faculty Senate to change the selection process so could address a name change at the same time 
  • “Ad Hoc” part might be dropped from the title. We will remain an Ad Hoc committee, but don’t need to emphasize it, just as Standing Committees don’t necessarily include “Standing Committee” in their name
  • Carbon Committee? Carbon-Neutral committee?
  • Please send your suggestions.

Guidelines for workgroups and full committee

• Discuss and approve if possible 
  • Those in attendance were supportive of C3 meeting twice per academic quarter and once in the summer. There was interest in (a) making the C3 meetings more like working meetings and (b) breakout rooms assuming we continue on the Zoom platform.
  • Could take out the sentence regarding Working Group Coordinators meeting once a quarter
  • C3 interest list: We have a Qualtrics survey on the Faculty Senate website. We will have a spot for non-members to express interest.
  • In addition to [email protected], could develop an expanded list for people who are interested but not official members.
  • Again, please send in comments.

Other news or business

• S.O. and Facilities Services has been able to get a lot done on the energy saving front. Working to create a revolving funding project for energy saving projects. “Discovered” $860,000 in an old tax credit project. Brandon hopes to draw on that for small projects These are used for studies which make the economic case for investing in retrofitting. In the case of Richardson Hall, the College had to come up with the money for the energy study and that can be a barrier.
• Heating and cooling schedules have been fine tuned. Some buildings were operating on “full occupancy” mode 24/7. Expect to save about 10,000 tons of carbon emissions in FY20 and down about 15,000 tons compared to FY17.Pandemic utility savings of about $1.2 million for March-August. Down about 10 million KW hours. People are not experiencing a noticeable change in building comfort levels. Can we keep it up? There has been a mandate from higher administrators to pursue energy savings.
• Brandon is happy to give full C3 or interested members a detailed presentation on energy saving opportunities and mechanisms.

Next meeting date – week of November 30-December 4?

• Agreed. Set date and time via Doodle poll

Adjourned at 4:30

Minutes prepared by Keith Jayawickrama