Colorado Signs Affordability Bill into Law
The recently signed bill will allocate an additional $100 million in state funding for Colorado’s colleges and universities to help offset several years of recession-driven cuts. As part of the legislation, Colorado’s universities and colleges agreed not to raise tuition by more than six percent a year.
Duke U to Build Rainwater Reclamation Pond
Developed after the worst-on-record 2007 drought, the on-campus, highly visible pond will collect rainwater from 22 percent of campus, and will be used in machinery that cools many campus buildings.
Humboldt State U Adopts Investment Pledge
The recently embraced Humboldt Investment Pledge, adopted through the university's Advancement Foundation Board, comes on the heels of stakeholder meetings including students and lays out a 10-point pledge with goals for investment activity that limit its holdings in fossil fuel companies.
Keene State College Averts Plastic Bottles
Fifteen buildings across campus have recently received water bottle refilling stations, which encourage the campus community to use their own bottles and will decrease the amount bottles recycled and sent to the landfill.
Minnesota State U Moorhead Adds Bike Repair Station
Helping to reduce the university's overall carbon footprint, the fix it station, replete with tools, air pump and QR code tip manual, was a student-driven project partially paid for by the green fee fund.
Mount Marty College Wins Recycling Grant
As part of a grant by Keep America Beautiful and The Coca-Cola Foundation, the college will receive 40 additional recycling containers and implement a plan focused on the act of recycling and educational outreach.
Trent U Designated Fair Trade Campus
On behalf of its social sustainability efforts, Fairtrade Canada has recognized the university for sourcing Fairtrade-certified products for campus services and for the University’s ongoing efforts to spread awareness about fair trade issues among students and staff.
U Colorado Boulder Buildings Achieve LEED Gold
The two buildings feature low-flow plumbing, efficient lighting, efficient heating and cooling systems, energy efficient windows, and power outlets in the student rooms that cut off electricity when rooms are unoccupied. Approximately 80 percent of all of the construction waste from the buildings was diverted from landfills.
U Maryland College Develops Sustainability Plan
The university's College of Behavioral and Social Sciences new sustainability plan complements its Climate Action Plan and was designed to serve as a guide for other colleges to join BSOS in this effort to improve the sustainability of the campus and community as a whole. The publication features the vision and background, objectives, implementation plan and metrics.
U Winnipeg Selected for Climate Change Project
The university's Richardson College for the Environment has been selected by Natural Resources Canada to co-ordinate a $500,000, three-year project on climate change called the Prairies Regional Adaptation Collaborative. The collaborative project will focus on agriculture, energy, mining, forestry and water as they relate to climate change.
15 Schools Selected to Participate in Keep America Beautiful Prog
Keep America Beautiful's Give and Go 2014 program is a partnership with Goodwill Industries and select colleges and universities to implement effective collection drives during the spring move out period at the end of the term when students leave campus housing. Selected 2014 schools include College of Charleston; Creighton University; Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis; Northern Illinois University; Pacific Lutheran University; Radford University; Southern Oregon University; Texas A&M University; Texas Tech University; The University of Toledo; Trinity University; University of Georgia;; University of Louisville; University of Missouri at Kansas City; University of San Diego; and University of St Thomas.
Auburn U Installs Utility Tracking Devices
In an effort to understand the impacts of projects on the university's utility systems and conserve resources and funds, the new meters for electricity, natural gas and water are wirelessly connected to a centralized system that digitally tracks hourly consumption.
Dalhousie U Releases Natural Environment Plan
The new plan represents four years of collaborative research that will formally recoginize vegetation, beneficial wildlife, water and air quality in campus natural environment management activities. Using surveys and interviews to determine management priorities from constituents, the plan is organized into three sections: planning, implementation, and operation and management review.
Energy Dept Announces Home Student Design Competition Winners
Grand winners of the U.S. Department of Energy's Challenge Home Student Design Competition are State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in partnership with Onondaga Community College and Ryerson University. In its inaugural year, 28 teams from U.S. and Canadian universities competed to develop cost-effective zero energy ready homes for mainstream builders. Other categories include Best Design Solution Integration, Best Technical Integration, Best Presentation, Best Production Home Integration and Special Recognition for Subject Area Excellence.
EPA Recognizes Teams of Sustainable Design Expo & P3 Competition
In a recent press release, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced seven winning student teams of EPA’s People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) phase II awards for innovative and sustainable designs to help solve today’s complex environmental problems at the 10th annual National Sustainable Design Expo. The winners of the $90,000 seed funding are Cornell University; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; Iowa State University; Purdue University at Indiana; State University of New York at Stony Brook; University of Tennessee at Knoxville; and University of Wisconsin at Madison.
EPA Releases Quarterly List of Top 30 Green Power Partners
The top 30 list represents the largest green power users among higher education institutions within the Green Power Partnership. The combined green power use of these organizations amounts to more than two billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually, which is equivalent to avoiding the carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity use of more than 190,000 average American homes annually.
EPA Releases Winners of Second Annual Campus RainWorks Challenge
Recently announced are four winners of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's competition to engage college and university students in reinventing the nation's water infrastructure and developing innovative green infrastructure systems to reduce stormwater pollution and build resilience to climate change. The winners are University of Florida at Gainsville; Kansas State Univerity; Michigan State University; and Mississippi State University.
Georgetown U $5M National Energy Competition Goes Live
The Georgetown University Energy Prize will offer $5 million in 2017 to one eligible community develop and implement plans for replicable, scalable and continual reductions in the per-capita energy consumed from local natural gas and electric utilities.
Macalester College Awarded $650K Sustainability Grant
The $650,000 Margaret A. Cargill Foundation grant is aimed at expanding sustainability and sustainable thinking beyond Environmental Studies and the Sustainability Office and potential projects include engaging faculty in creating new courses with a focus on sustainability, incorporating the topic into a future International Roundtable, training faculty, staff and students, establishing a sustainability fellowship, and hiring additional student workers in the sustainability office.
North Carolina State U Launches Sustainable Business Initiative
The university's Poole College of Management launched the North Carolina Sustainability Connection, which will showcase the innovation and impact of sustainable businesses across North Carolina and to connect entrepreneurs, business people, communities and citizens.
Rocky Mountain College Erects Solar Array
In hopes that the project will spur other environmental steps, the college's Environmental Club, which led the project, raised more than $65,000 toward the construction of the solar electricity installation.
Southern Illinois U Deploys Solar Charging Picnic Table
The recently installed picnic table, made of recycled plastics, gives students the ability to charge electronic devices at a solar-powered charging station. The station lights up at night and stores enough energy for two cloudy days.
Southern Oregon U Gains LEED Gold Building
The new residential and dining complex features solar water heating and photovoltaic electricity generation, water-conserving plumbing fixtures, lighting sensors, reduced on-site parking and non-potable water for landscaping.
Texas A&M U Solicits Student Feedback on Transportation
In light of the projected growth of campus, the university's Transportation Services hopes to improve bicycle-pedestrian infrastructure in the fall by offering forums for stakeholders to voice concerns about the current biking situation.
U Buffalo Releases Sustainability Dashboard
A key component to help the university achieve its commitment to become climate neutral by 2030, the recently launched dashboard tracks real-time electricity use in more than 145 buildings, and uploads monthly data on water consumption, solar-power generation, natural gas use.
U Maryland Building Attains LEED Silver
The science and research building features daylighting, energy-efficient lighting and fixtures, materials including rapidly-renewing sources or recycled content, reduced water use, a green roof, and bioremediation of water runoff.
U Maryland Commits to Carbon Reduction Initiatives
The university recently committed to reduce electricity use on campus by 20 percent by 2020, offset new greenhouse gas emissions from new construction through energy-efficiency standards and renewable sources, and eliminate carbon emissions from purchased electricity by 2020 using strictly renewable sources.
U Oregon Offers Mobile Bike Repair Station
To provide help when and where it's needed, the mobile repair trike features a worktable pegboard of tools, and collapsible bike stands. The Student Sustainability Fund (SSF) granted the UO Bike Program $3,700 to build the bicycle.
Wake Forest U to Develop Well-Being Survey
The university’s administration and a few faculty members have been working on a survey that is designed to determine whether the college is helping its students find meaning and purpose in their lives. The university has six main areas it wants to explore: self-reported well-being; the level of meaning and purpose students find in their lives; “belongingness”; commitment to others; grit and perseverance; and physical health.
Washington U St. Louis Increases Solar Output
Furthering its environmental impact, the university's new commitment calls for an increase in solar output on all campuses by 1,150 percent. By fall, 379-kilowatts of photovoltaics will help subtract a calculated 385 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year from the school's carbon inventory.
Building Green Initiative Names Ten Greenest HBCUs
(U.S.): The Building Green Initiative at Clark Atlanta University ranked Historically Black Colleges and Universities based on administration, energy efficiency, green building, recycling, renewable energy generation, food, transportation, purchasing and student involvement. Of the 43 respondents to the survey, the top ten are (public schools) University of Maryland Eastern Shore; Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University; Elizabeth City State University; North Carolina Agricultural & Technical University; and (three-way tie) Morgan State University, Bowie State University and Mississippi Valley State University; (private) Spelman College; Howard University; Morehouse College; Livingstone College; and (tie) Claflin University and Clark Atlanta University.
California State U Fresno Introduces Water Conservation Plan
(U.S.): Due to the state's growing drought problem, the university recently announced plans to reduce its water consumption, two-thirds of which are used for campus and farmland irrigation, by 20 percent (60-65 million gallons) by using micro-sprinklers, soil sensors, water meters and drip irrigation.
Colorado State U Celebrates Energy Research Building Opening
(U.S.): The recently completed 100,000 square-foot Powerhouse Energy Campus, associated with 13 research centers across campus, features a greenhouse for biofuel feedstock development and an algae photobioreactor, rooftop solar arrays generating 20 kilowatts of electricity, a passive air conditioning system, energy efficient windows and LED lights.
Cornell U Upgrades Building Controls
(U.S.): After a recent energy study found the controls of an energy intensive laboratory building to be malfunctioning, the new installed controls will reduce maintenance-associated cost and provide energy savings.
Eastern Connecticut State U Wins National Award
(U.S.): The university's Institute for Sustainable Energy was recently selected to receive the 2014 Energy Star Partner of the Year Award from the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection for its energy efficiency efforts such as benchmarking and sharing of energy data and connecting towns and agencies with the energy incentive programs available in Connecticut, which helps to accelerate the installation of energy efficient equipment.
HKUST Buildings Receive BEAM Gold Award
(Hong Kong): Two residential buildings of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, awarded the Building Environmental Assessment Method Eco Building honor, feature energy efficient elevators, occupancy sensors, water-saving devices, green rooftops, solar panels, and recycled glass paving blocks.
HKUST Holds Opening Ceremony for Energy Institute
(Hong Kong): Building upon The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's programming and research in energy, the Energy Institute offers a multi-disciplinary platform for fostering energy-related research and curricular programs within the university and community.
Indiana U Bloomington Purchases Renewable Energy
(U.S.): The university's School of Public and Environmental Affairs is purchasing renewable energy certificates to offset its use of electricity from fossil fuels. The purchase covers the school’s academic energy use including classrooms, laboratories and offices through May 2015.
Michigan State U Honored by American Biogas Council
(U.S.): The university has been presented with the Project of the Year Award for its anaerobic digestion facility, which generates approximately 3,000 megawatts of renewable energy from processing organic waste from campus dining halls and university farms. This process diverts nearly 10,000 tons of material from landfills and wastewater facilities.
Montgomery County CC Introduces Wind Turbines
(U.S.): Dedicated on behalf of Earth Day were four 25-foot, vertical axis, 1-kilowatt wind turbines, which provide enough electrical output to power LED lights in one of the campus' parking lots.
