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The Project Library: An Online Forum of Sustainability, Collaboration and Innovation
By Clint Basham, 2012 Clean Air-Cool Planet Climate Fellow
It has been almost nine weeks since we all met at the Wells Estuarine Research Reserve in Wells, Maine for the 2012 Climate Fellows BBQ. It was exciting to meet Clean Air Cool Planet’s (CA-CP) staff and fellows and discuss the pressing issues of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Since those first conversations a wide variety of exciting work has already been accomplished. My work has taken me back to Flagstaff, Arizona where I work remotely. The latest monsoon weather has broken up the dry Arizona heat but the rains came after countless wildfires destroyed thousands of acres of forest and hundreds of homes here in the southwest. In the news we’ve seen the wildfire season ablaze in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Nevada, and California. The news reports the immediate danger and risk to people and places but rarely attributes the growing fire risk to climate change. It is our responsibility to communicate the science in outreach and educational programs, make ground on policy changes, and implement sustainability projects nationwide and CA-CP staff and fellows are doing just that with our work to find solutions to the effects of a changing climate.
My project this summer is centered on the launch of the new online Campus Carbon Calculator. I am designing The Project Library component of the calculator. This is essentially an online database of high-impact, cost-effective carbon reduction strategies used to achieve carbon neutrality on campus. These types of projects and the necessary physical and financial information are input into the Solutions Module of the calculator, effectively populating The Project Library with the wide rage of different projects being developed on campuses throughout the nation. The Project Library is an online forum of sustainability collaboration and innovation.
What is the Campus Carbon Calculator?
CA-CP Campus Carbon Calculator has been helping institutes of higher education (IHEs) calculate their carbon footprints for over twelve years. The tool was originally designed to help IHEs measure, track and project carbon emissions. Thousands of campuses have used the tool to develop their baseline emissions. In 2009, CA-CP launched the Solutions Module of the calculator. This allowed the calculator to expand from an emissions inventory tool to a much more powerful climate action-planning tool. Once the baseline GHG inventory is realized IHEs can more efficiently apply emissions reduction strategies to the sectors that make most sense. The Solutions Module provides a tool for analysis and allows the IHE to list a host of projects and associated information: capital and ongoing costs, financing mechanisms, and anticipated changes in fuel use or other GHG-producing activities. With that information, the tool allows schools to calculate the savings over time or the net present value, rate of return, total emissions reductions, emissions reductions per dollar, or per capita emissions reductions, and look at a graphical representation of the business as usual emissions and how the portfolio of projects reduces that emissions scenario. IHEs now have the power to validate sustainability action and make the most efficient decisions to achieve long-term goals.
What is The Project Library?
The Project Library is to be the next step in nationwide sustainability analysis. The launch of the online tool will initiate the beginning of a comprehensive database of sustainability projects. As the Solutions Module is utilized there will be an exponential growth in the available information for sustainability projects. The Project Library will be a site in which to search, compare and contrast all the projects used in each IHE’s Solutions Module. As this information grows IHEs will be able to determine the most efficient and effective projects that will satisfy a more comprehensive, reality-based and actionable Climate Action Plan (CAP). It is CA-CP’s goal to create a powerful tool that IHEs can access and contribute to with increasing ease and develop a network of projects that can be used as case studies to inform other markets of the best available sustainability practices. The following are the three main goals of CA-CP’s Project Library.
- To provide a tool for each individual IHE to list a portfolio of projects with enough information to allow the school to prioritize phases of action to instigate immediate forward progress and to maximize the impact of their investments in campus sustainability.
- To accumulate all information from all projects from all schools in one location with easy search methods that provide the IHE with the means to identify the projects that fit the priorities of any school with any budget and all needs.
- As projects of similar size and scope are completed, through comparative analysis the average costs and benefits will be available for more accurate and transparent assessment of priorities.
I hope to achieve a strong framework for The Project Library by the end of the summer. This will allow future staff and fellows to continue this work and prepare it for the online launch in 2013. I will be presenting my work at the AASHE conference in Los Angeles in October. The title of my presentation is, Mining Our Collective Experience: A New Tool for Illuminating and Prioritizing High-Impact, Cost-Effective Carbon Reduction Strategies. I will also be using the presentation as a focus group to further the work, so, anyone attending the conference please attend my presentation and contribute any ideas.
Filed under: Campus Climate Action, Climate Fellows Tagged: Campus Carbon Calculator, climate action planing, climate fellows, colleges, greenhouse gas inventories, universities, wildfires 
2012-12-10 17:42:36
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