Huxley College of the Environment

Short-lived climate pollutants—such as black carbon, methane, tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons—are powerful climate warmers many times more potent than CO2 over their lifetimes. Because they are short-lived in the atmosphere, actions to reduce these super pollutants can have substantial, near-term climate, agricultural and health benefits and are an essential complement to CO2 reduction strategies. Policy-makers can announce regulatory or voluntary approaches to drastically reduce SLCPs, such as developing methane strategies or adopting rules on use of warming HFCs. Organizations can commit to engage with suppliers to provide training, conduct pollutant inventories, and establish systems for tracking, measuring, and monitoring these types of emissions. Analysis shows that SLCP emissions can be cost-effectively reduced by an estimated 40-50 percent by 2030.

Policymakers, companies and organizations are encouraged to accept the #SLCPChallenge of the U.S. Climate Alliance, which calls for ambitious action on SLCPs. Feel free to elaborate on your work towards reduction, along with your other efforts, in the "Other Commitments" field below.

While individual organization action is necessary, local and federal government action is also needed to reach global climate goals. Your organization can have a critical voice in advancing public policy. A commitment to responsible engagement in climate policy means that your organization commits to supporting public policy to: promote energy efficiency and renewable energy; increase investment in a clean energy economy; support climate change adaptation, or put a price on carbon.

Organizations making a commitment to reduce the climate impact of transportation should consider practices such as measuring transportation greenhouse gas emissions and setting reduction targets, switching fuels, optimizing the efficiency of shipping operations, and reducing transit- and travel-related greenhouse gas emissions. Businesses can develop a green transportation action plan to map the movement of goods to market and identify opportunities to increase efficiency. Organizations can buy hybrid and electric vehicles within their own fleet, and can reduce the footprint of their workforce through incentivizing public transportation, installing EV charging stations, promoting telework, and locating near transit centers.

Increasing your percentage of renewable energy sources is a key component of reducing overall GHG emissions. Installing onsite renewable generation, like solar panels, is a good long-term strategy if possible. But renewable energy can also be procured through Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), renewable power purchasing agreements (PPAs), and in some locations from retail electricity providers or local utilities that offers a high percentage of renewable power. Also consider becoming an EPA Green Power Partner.

Using proper verification protocols, campuses can use landholdings to sequester carbon. In the cases of large university landholders, this can provide significant “negative carbon emissions” if properly managed. This strategy could be cross-sectorally combined with a public land protection strategy.

The Resilience Assessment is a key process to understand current strengths and vulnerabilities of the campus and community. This should be completed through research, in person forums, or other processes to engage your stakeholders in this assessment.

Using your own preferred methodology, create a internal carbon price or tax to help incentivize and or fund carbon reduction efforts. This can be a parallel or separate effort to supporting national or local carbon pricing policies, with your institution as an example of the policy in action

Aligning college or university investments that are aligned with both the mission of the university and climate solutions can create significant win-win-win opportunities. Funding emerging innovations in clean energy through dedicating part of the investment portfolio can create new markets for climate solutions, help campuses meet socially-responsible climate targets through new products and services that reduce carbon emissions, and provide strong financial returns to meet fiduciary responsibility.

A Revolving Fund is a financing mechanism targeted to campus climate action projects that lower emissions, increase capacity for future projects, and reduce operating costs. Successful funds are at minimum 1% of the institution’s endowment value, or seeded at one million dollars. This is awarded as a Mark of Distinction for Second Nature Commitment Signatories.

To meet ambitious climate goals, campuses must find cost effective ways to decarbonize energy supply. Aggregations helps enable smaller institutions to access the market and larger institutions to diversify their energy portfolio in a financially meaningful way. Start this process through attending Aggregation workshops via Second Nature or other partners.This is awarded as a Mark of Distinction for Second Nature Commitment Signatories.

Many campus climate action plans have not been updated in nearly a decade and much in the world has changed since they were first created. Build off of existing examples of climate action plans within the private sector, and/or look at local, city, state, regional, or international examples to allign or exceed your climate goals with new updates. These revisions could also be done in conjunction with a cross-sector forum.

Commit to holding a public campus and community forum or workshop on shared climate action plan goal setting and/or resilience assessments. These forums will compare baseline targets and align the strengths of the respective sectors to drive solutions. This is awarded as a Mark of Distinction for Second Nature Commitment Signatories.

Examples: University Climate Change Coalition; Community Resilience Building

The Marks of Distinction recognize performance among a select group of higher education institutions. For campuses that are part of the Climate Leadership Network, performing exemplary activities that illustrate climate leadership is crucial to inspire new climate action with your students, alumni, and community.

President’s Climate Leadership Commitments are signed by Higher Education presidents and chancellors. They can sign either the Carbon or the Resilience Commitment, or the integrated Climate Commitment. The commitments require strong leadership to create a implementation structures on campuses, complete GHG inventories, develop climate action plans and consistently report on progress.

The natural systems upon which we depend are essential to life and critical for reducing the impacts of climate change on our communities. These systems are also under threat from human activity and climate change. Maintaining the resilience of natural and working lands is an important part of any GHG emission reduction strategy. It is also important to securing the well-being of communities, economies and ecosystems. Actions that secure and enhance the “carbon base,” such as land conservation, restoration, and improved management, also support watersheds and food systems, improve air quality, protect against urban heat islands and sea level rise, and preserve the beauty and function of natural areas and parks. Those that accept the NWL Challenge should commit to securing natural and working lands as a resilient net sink of carbon. This will take different forms for different actors. For example, local, sub-national and national jurisdictions might take a broad approach like that of the U.S. Climate Alliance. Landowners and managers may wish to focus on restoration and implementing climate-smart practices on their own lands. Businesses may look at their supply chains and customers as potential partners, and incorporate natural and working goals into their own climate change commitments and strategies.

The U.S. Climate Alliance States commit to taking actions that will reduce GHG emissions and increase carbon sequestration in forests, farms, rangelands, wetlands and urban greenspace, and integrating these pathways into state GHG mitigation plans by 2020. The Natural and Working Lands Challenge calls on other states, cities, nations, tribes, businesses and others to make the same commitment within their organizations. Feel free to elaborate on your work towards this challenge, along with your other efforts, in the "Other Commitments" field below.