Meeting Date: 
November 5, 2019
Date: 
11/05/2019 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm
Location: 
109 Gilkey Hall
Agenda: 
  1. Member recruitment – 10 minutes
  1. Updates from workgroups – 40 minutes
    • Committee member workgroup assignments
    • Conservation and Efficiency
      • Letter to OSU Foundation
      • Green Office Certifications
    • Education and Curriculum
      • Course activity “bundles” (was “model curriculum template” in last meeting)
    • Reporting and Communications
    • Transportation
      • Travel offsets
  1. Description of workgroups for the webpage – 5 minutes
    • Due date to send to Lety
  1. Adjustment of 2025 targets – 10 minutes
  1. Annual reporting process and timeline – 10 minutes
  1. Future meetings open to campus and advertised – 5 minutes
Minutes: 

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

 

ACTION ITEMS ARE IN BOLDED ITALICS

Jon Dorbolo asked if for next meeting we would like to have the Dean of Forestry come and talk about timber policies for 20-30 min to provide context. If there are any questions for the dean prior to the next meeting, send to Jon. 

Member recruitment (10 minutes)

  • Roster is up-to-date, but we still have a few gaps from apportionment units (Extension, College of Education, College of Science, Vet Med, among others). Some units such as UAOSU are not apportionment units and will be represented in other ways (ROTC actually is an apportionment unit).
  • Mechanism is to go to Senators of an apportionment unit and seek membership from interested participants. If it doesn’t work, we will use an administrative process.
  • Student participation? Pharmacy has students that are interested in participating in the committee. New students would probably work best in working groups, since growth is the goal of the committee.  Students are always welcome as guests and we need a new grad student rep. 

Updates from workgroups (40 minutes)

  • Committee member workgroup assignments
    • Revision of where members are plugged in to workgroups.
    • Workgroups are largely autonomous, and each will bring ideas to the main committee. Communication to main committee is key to achieve goals.
  • Conservation and Efficiency workgroup
    • Met 4-5 times total
    • Letter to OSU Foundation to prioritize fundraising for carbon reduction projects.
      • Purpose of the letter is to initiate conversation with the Foundation, introduce the C3 and share why the C3 is contacting the Foundation.
      • Different drafts in the BOX folder. Early drafts Included examples of the work the C3 committee is doing and an ask for partnering with them. The latest draft does not include specific examples since it is an introductory letter.
      • What is needed moving forward is finding out the avenue for how the Senate and C3 committee can work with the Foundation à there isn’t really an established process to communicate.
      • Foundation does not generate ideas, but they have stakeholders who are passionate about climate change.
      • The working group will work with Marlys to understand where and to whom the letter could be sent.
      • Zac and Brandon are setting up a meeting with the new and old Foundation CEOs to understand how the Foundation can help.
      • Communication/clarification is needed regarding the role of the OSU Foundation within OSU. People might not understand the purpose and the way the Foundation works, but there is a willingness to have that conversation.
      • Regarding projects on carbon reduction, the Foundation has done some work, mainly in projects regarding the construction of new facilities. Examples of this is the Forestry Complex and Kelley Engineering Center, where funds were allocated to achieved LEED certification. However, we are not aware of stand-alone targeted funds for carbon reduction projects.
      • The Sustainability Office and ASOSU had a CREATE project with the Foundation to raise funds to fix the Kelley solar thermal system.
      • For significant facilities projects, Foundation lists potential donors that might be interested. A conversation with Shawn and Mike is a great place to start.
      • ACTION ITEM: committee members review letter content. Send comments to Leela within a week two weeks from today (Nov. 19).
    • Green Office Certifications.
      • Developing green lab certification with CEOAS and a Green Greek track for that community. Both of these efforts (Labs and Greek) are based from the Green Office Certification.
      • Immediate goal is to get more units to use these tools, especially the Green Labs Certification. Sally Albright is the student leading the Green Labs effort. This is her Honors College thesis and she is piloting the effort this quarter. She’s looking for more wet labs to pilot the Green Lab Certification.
      • ACTION ITEM: Tell Brandon or Lety if you know a lab willing to participate in the pilot for Green Lab Certification.
  • Education and Curriculum
    • Slides shown in the meeting are in Box.
    • The workgroup discussed having a grant program in the humanities to further carbon reduction goal projects (for Honors and Grad programs). Students would design projects with carbon neutrality in mind. Funding to be determined.
    • For inclusion of sustainability content into the curriculum, the workgroup discussed curating content and making it available for university use, specifically targeted towards faculty whose expertise is not climate change. The goal is to curate “ready to use, grab and go” examples and bundle activities with a call to action. Material would include graphics, animations, state of the art that is vetted and curated and that faculty would be excited to use.
    • Course activity “bundles” (was “model curriculum template” in last meeting)
    • Next step is to keep meeting with CEOAS, as they have been discussing this topic, and putting together some initial material.
    • Sustainability Office has a module for the New2OSU program (program from the Center for Teaching & Learning) for new faculty that is targeted towards facilitating a way for faculty to include sustainability content in their curriculum. More coordination and promotion is needed (outside and within CTL)
    • Creating Bacc Core category on climate change. We need to have a unified message, there are too many requirements. Include planetary health in fitness category.
  • Reporting and Communications
    • The first report of the C3 committee to be presented at the January meeting of the Faculty Senate.
    • Members of this workgroup will connect with other workgroups to start attending other workgroup meetings.
    • In the December C3 meeting, an outline for the report will be presented.
    • In mid-December, this workgroup will send a draft of the report.
    • The content of the report will include information regarding what the C3 committee is, the goals and progress of the working groups, the state of OSU’s carbon emissions, among other topics.
    • This working group will meet this week.
  • Transportation
    • Discussion was mainly focused on travel offsets. Original plan was to go through travel agency, but OSU system is more complex than anticipated and it is not flexible. New software is in the works, and it will probably be available in about 2-3 years. In the meantime, to fund carbon offsets for air travel from some central budget, funding source to be determined.
    • Carbon offsets would be purchased from a verified third party. We cannot invest in enough OSU projects to offset carbon for the same price as market-based offsets, due to the scale of the offsets that are needed.
    • Enterprise car rentals has an option to offset carbon emissions. Since OSU has business with Enterprise, is this a feasible option OSU could include when reserving with Enterprise? Can we promote it?
    • ASOSU has pledge to offset carbon emissions from air travel funded through ASOSU and because of volume, it will be done in batches after travel occurs.
    • For university-wide operations, there is no process to track any unit travel to charge carbon offsets to the unit doing the travel.
    • The timeline to get new software works in favor of our goals to make it policy-based and systemic. Right now is a great time to do a communication campaign to build support and offer opt-in options to those who want to offset travel. 
    • If this were mandatory what does that mean? Is the cost incurred to the individual, unit, grant or contract, etc? There are limitations for each scenario.
    • The best option right now is to perhaps start giving people the opportunity to self-select and choose to pay for carbon offsets.

Description of workgroups for the webpage (5 minutes)

  • ACTION ITEM: Send Lety 3-4 sentences with the description of the working groups. 2 weeks from today, Nov 19th.
  • Goal is to start building a web presence. For the webpage, Brandon will be the editor, and Lety will create the webpage and arrange the content.
    • Agenda and meeting minutes should be public at the least. More content can be made public depending on the community requests.
    • Faculty Senate presence is needed for website.
    • Key is getting regular content in the website to gain interest, and encourage people to join in whatever way they can.
    • Once webpage is up and quality content is uploaded, it could perhaps be the main story in the OSU main website.
  • General communication can be facilitated through this committee so that working groups are not navigating the university on their own

Adjustment of 2025 targets (10 minutes)

  • Since 2009 OSU has had a commitment to be carbon neutral by 2025. With this goal harder and harder to reach, a new proposed goal from the Sustainability Office is 50% reduction by 2030, in alignment with IPPC guidelines.
  • Ed Ray has been asking more questions. In an Oct. 23 meeting the new goal was suggested to Ed Ray. He and Mike Green are both generally supportive.  
  • Since the original commitment was made in 2007, some success has been achieved but scalability is an issue.
  • OSU really likes to do 10-year plans, so Sustainability Office has created a 10-year carbon emissions reduction plan. The investment is composed of $1.2-1.3million per year, without carbon offsets. Offsets can be purchased and OSU could be carbon neutral by 2025 but offsets at that scale are not a long term solution.
  • The emissions reductions in the plan come in categories of cogeneration, purchased electricity, commuting, stationary sources.
  • Total dollar amount is $11M in 10 years. Funding mechanisms include internal bank, maybe Foundation, and other non-identified sources.
  • Carbon offsets would cost $5M for all 10 years to achieve the goal. However, this is considering the carbon offset price TODAY of $3/ton. This cost could change considerably, and pricing in California’s compliance market is nearly $16/ton today.
  • 10 years ago there was little support for any efforts like this.
  • We need to go to the community to get more support for this plan. People are not aware of this effort. It would be ideal if this plan would be mentioned in all President’s speeches.
  • The 10 year carbon plan is based on a 10-year retro-commissioning plan and capital forecasting plan from Capital Planning and Development.
  • $11M is a minimum investment for a maximum of 34% reduction. This is the bare minimum but based on the community’s interest we could set a higher goal. The limits are financial.
  • There is some interest within the student population to bring back a student fee that would help support this work.  The extent of that support is unknown. 
  • What’s the timeline for the remaining 50% emissions? Is there a plan for how to get to the rest of the way there? We don’t know quite yet.
  • Money is not budgeted right now but it is realistic to secure those amounts over the 10 year horizon, if the plan is good enough. 
  • ASOSU is working with the President to get a % of the new capital campaign dedicated to climate change.
  • President is interested in community feedback via a forum. This might require some support from C3 committee, or it could be a project for just the Sustainability Office.

Annual reporting process and timeline (10 minutes)

  • Discussed during working groups

Future meetings open to campus and advertised (5 minutes)

  • We want more voices to listen to and join.
  • Are there specific actions or components for outreach?
  • Promote the C3 committee on OSU Today
  • Could we change the name of the Committee? Carbon Reduction Task Force? We don’t need to use the full name of the committee. Usually the name “committee” has the connotation of people sitting and talking and not doing much.
  • We haven’t had anything to show people but now we have content.
  • If we invite people, there might be 5x more questions for each bullet item. If we get a large group we will change the format of the meetings. Maybe working group leads could meet, to keep group size manageable, with the full group coming together just a few times/year.
  • ACTION ITEM: DOODLE group for the full group for Dead Week fall term 2019.

 

Minutes prepared by Lety Cavazos