Carbon Commitment Committee

Voting members present: Lindsay Andrews, Lety Cavazos, Tess Collins, Ed Dever, Scott Elmshaeuser, Perry Hystad, Keith Jayawickrama, Leela Magdaleno, Cinamon Moffett, Jacob Putney, Laura Rees, Andreas Schmidt, Drake Scrafford, Shelly Signs, Desiree Tullos, Beth Filar Williams, Erika Wolters
Ex-Officio member present: Brandon Trelstad – OSU Foundation
Guests present: Bill Ripple

Opening, Welcome, Short Announcements

• Approve January 10, 2023, meeting minutes. Minutes from the January meeting were approved.
• Announcements/Additions?
  • Fume Hoods campaign update? Stickers on fume hoods have been installed in Cordley Hall and in several other buildings. Brandon reports building managers were helpful in the process and stickers have been put in all appropriate places. Will monitor and do periodic walk-throughs to see if the stickers are having an impact (fumes closed when not in use). As new buildings install fume hoods, stickers will be installed. Linus Pauling Science center is a bit of a test center with Ross’s work to re-commission the building. Anticipate $80-90K per year of savings.
  • Meeting with College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) on March 24; meetings with other Colleges – Keith
  • Tess organized meeting with the OSU CVM Cabinet on March 24. Brandon, Keith, Beth, and Tess met later in the day to strategize and will attend the meeting next week.
  • Ed reported on an effort to schedule a meeting with College of Earth, Ocean, & Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS) which morphed into Ed giving a report on his own. The new Dean has not included sustainability/carbon reduction in the College’s top priorities. Ed will be meeting with them on his own to share info about Carbon Commitment Committee (C3).
  • Another College, when contacted, was also quite lukewarm at the proposal to meet with C3. Keith would like to get clarity on just what and how much Central Admin expects from the Colleges in terms of carbon emissions reduction, before we make additional pushes to schedule meetings. This question was asked at the meeting with Pres. Murthy, and from Paul Odenthal on March 7, and clarification is pending.
  • “Path to Carbon Neutrality” any updates – Brandon
  • No major updates. Unfortunately, have been unable to fill one position in the controls shop due to competition with private sector salaries. Was able to fill one position with an internal candidate, but one is unfilled. Might need to rewrite the position at a higher level in order to be more competitive in recruiting. Would be changing the classification for a position that would have ramifications not only at OSU but at other universities, making the process complicated. Would love to have 3-4 people in that position to keep everything maintained. (Maintained=efficient).

Working Groups – Discussion on Charge & Purpose

• Do we do still need these 3 groups? Should their focus shift, change? what are we missing? The groups were started back in 2019 and at that point made sense. From the February 20, 2019 Ad Hoc Committee on the OSU Carbon Commitment initial meeting work, we derived 4 themes that turned into working groups. But soon after we added the Transportation group to Conservation and Efficiency to make Conservation, Efficiency and Transportation (CET). The notes say the working groups are to establish meetings and report back to main group. Do not see any specific “charges” Also note, the June 10, 2019 meeting had great ideas but not all followed through.
• Discussion:
  • Brandon sees value in each of the groups to support his office.
  • CET workgroup might make sense to interface with Transportation Services on campus. Perhaps split transportation off from this group?
• Education group – has a list of recommended courses and topics for students. Education group does some assessment work around academics, but do not actually recommend how academics should work. education group could be more involved with getting students to advocate for more sustainability in curriculum and OSU operations. It seems that education group is at a transitional point.
• Ongoing need for Communication group, as we must submit an annual report to Faculty Senate and communicate other efforts by work groups and the C3.
• Perhaps groups can work more together for initiatives. For example, the education group did all the work for the lighting talks last year – the Communication group could have been pulled in to help marketing and promote. Perhaps working groups can feel empowered to call on other groups to help them as needed?
• Follow up: Education and Curriculum are agreeable to combining with Communications and Reporting. This would bring the number of workgroups to two. Discuss and potentially approve at next C3 meeting.
• Did the working groups meet since our last large group meeting?
  • Communications: Yes
  • Education and Curriculum: No
  • Conservation, Efficiency and Transportation: No

Follow-up from Meeting with President Murthy – Keith Jayawickrama

• Thoughts from meeting & next steps?
• Meeting went well. President Murthy indicated desire to focus less on carbon offsets and invest more on our campus efforts instead of external spending. Strategic plan needs to include focus on sustainability and reduction. Ed Dever is part of committee. President indicated interest in rearticulating a new goal year instead of 2025 that might be a reasonable goal. Start with CET and then bring to whole group if we are asked to identify a new target year. We will need to continue to purchase carbon offsets (less than 10%) to reach carbon neutrality in the next decade. We hope to taper down reliance on offsets in the future, opt-in travel programs and renewable energy certificates. Less than 100 tons of offsets are currently purchased. Expectations from leadership on strategic plan for OSU and then be ready to do some group work on recommends/requests. Maybe in 2 months we will have a better idea about how the strategic plan is looking. Perry suggested working with the OSU resource forests as investment option. President Murthy seemed interested in that idea as well.
• C3 2021-22 Annual report was requested by the OSU Board of Trustees, Faculty Senate President Kate McTavish forwarded the report to them.

Events

• Washington Oregon Cascadia Higher Education Sustainability Conference (WOHESC) – round robin
• Beth offered summary of conference “Great opportunity to connect with likeminded folks, excellent keynotes.”
• Shelly shared link to recordings:
  • Brandon’s welcome session which included President Murthy’s statements on OSU carbon reduction (she starts at 7:22 minutes).
  • Link to Kathleen Dean Moore’s keynote (32 minute long)

Keith attended sessions presented by many other colleges who shared their plans for carbon reduction (Portland Community College, Sacramento State University, U California Berkeley, University of Oregon, Agnes Scott College).

One thing that rose up networking and listening to OSU students at the conference, was their desire to have more robust opportunities to be involved. Brandon wants to talk with the Division of Student Affairs to support students who want a specific program to address student sustainability. Students want to get involved and have a place to go. ASOSU is not able to house a student-facing program focused on sustainability. Sustainability office is not equipped to handle all the students who would like to be involved. Leela will bring up a student facing program need with Student Affairs leadership. We will need a new student affairs rep for C3. Students feel like they don’t have access to be involved with sustainability. Students at other institutions have access to the board of directors to demand action on carbon and sustainability efforts. Need a convenient place for students to engage in this work.

Drake Scrafford, C3 student member, is involved with ASOSU- agenda being put forth by students to create a sustainability funding index. $100K in initial ask. Current President Mateo agreed to allocate an additional $25K. Not much of an agenda set yet for how the money will be spent. Would love to see a coalition or group of student clubs take the lead on efforts. https://asosu.oregonstate.edu/student-gov/sfc/deliberations scroll to Congressional Budget Priorities

Shelly shared a webinar held during the conference by the Office of Science and Technology Policy on March 8 to our attention[1]. Keith left the conference to watch it, noting other universities are reporting large investments in carbon emissions reduction, such as the University of Michigan: https://record.umich.edu/articles/u-m-publishes-climate-action-report-for-2022-fiscal-year/ Another university had made large cuts in their emissions by tapping into geothermal energy.

• Earth Day Events/Happenings
  • Communications working group ideas

Shelly shared March 16 as date to finalize vision for Earth week activities. Bingo approach, activity vs. booth. Various activities related to path to sustainability. Communication group will be meeting later this afternoon, we will be asking other workgroups to participate in developing concepts for activities. We will need Faculty Senate sign off to move forward on any C3 sponsored activities, so will have rough plan by end of the week. Anyone in other groups is welcome to join.

FY23 Annual Report Due at the End of June

• Tess & Jacob might take lead on report. Most committee reports are pretty short – 2 pages but we can have a longer report.

Next Meeting – May?   

• Add to meeting: Composting – how are others doing this in their units/ Laura shares College of Business plan.
• Finance & Administration?

Adjourned at 9:50 AM

Minutes prepared by Tess Collins