PCCN Public Comment Summary
Over the course of its two-year process, the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality hosted a number of public fora and reviewed and considered more than 700 public comments, from more than 400 members of the U-M community. The commission reviewed 521 public comments following the release of its draft recommendations in December 2020. The commission then, armed with feedback, ideas, and perspectives from U-M students, staff, faculty, alumni, and community members, incorporated critical inputs into its final report.
In addition to public comments on the commission's draft final report and recommendations, the commission solicited public comments throughout its process. The following is a summary of ideas from online comments and Town Halls during the commission's two-year process.
Energy Supply
- Source all purchased electricity from a renewable energy Purchased Power Agreement
- Build innovative hot-water power plant (SESI at Stanford)
- Build district or building-level geothermal system (Ball State University)
- Install solar panels on campus (e.g., on rooftops, in or on parking lots)
- Generate steam sustainably (e.g., burn renewable biomass, waste digester)
- Decrease the numbers of emergency generators on campus
- Construct a molten salt reactor
- Partner with the City of Ann Arbor for increased buying power
- End any future expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure
- Alternative energy procurement sources
- Consider nuclear energy to provide electricity without releasing carbon
- Pledge Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon neutrality by 2030
Buildings & Grounds
- Adopt stringent building standards (e.g., Passive House, Living Building, Architecture 2020)
- Source low carbon materials for construction/renovations
- Add living roofs, green roofs or garden roofs to building design, especially new buildings
- Design all buildings to facilitate the inevitable switch to hot-water heating
- Stop building new buildings, use space more efficiently and consider how buildings can be repurposed
- Use carbon-neutral concrete
- More permeable surfaces
- Convert to all-electric grounds equipment
- Create an inventory of building space and scheduled construction
- Consider what a steady-state would look like in terms of UM’s footprint
- Work quickly to determine new building standards
- Build new buildings with sustainability measures in place so they don’t have to be retrofitted down the line
- Regulate and limit light pollution
- UM needs to create a ‘model’ project once the new standards are in place to show the community what a carbon-neutral building could look like, perhaps the new building in Detroit
- Ensure that donor influence does not stand in the way of sustainability standards
- Plant more trees and/or create a tree adoption program
- Build the new Clinical Inpatient Tower (CIT) to ensure its heating can be run by clean, sustainable energy
Energy Consumption
- Mandate and convert to LEDs in all buildings
- Mandate more stringent energy efficiency standards in all buildings
- Establish a revolving loan fund for energy efficiency projects
- Lengthen financial payback criteria for energy efficiency projects
- Expand existing Energy Management team to cover all campus buildings
- Include a system of sensors to activate and deactivate electrical current in buildings
- Install localized building controls for heat/coolness regulation
- Utilize existing space more efficiently
- Move to a system of centralized facility managers for all facilities to drive best practices
- Bill units directly for electricity to create more awareness and incentive to reduce electricity use
- Units should be responsible for long-term maintenance and operating costs
- Revisit emergency lighting standards
- Have individual schools do their own energy efficiency programs
Policy & Budgetary Issues
- Establish an internal carbon tax that includes all auxiliary units
- Subsidize Flint and Dearborn because they are given fewer resources
- Address decentralization – it’s an impediment to making progress
- Make carbon and sustainability reporting mandatory like DEI
- Create a fund for small scale office sustainability projects
- Be clear on budgeting needs for the carbon neutrality work, specifically for auxiliary units
Transportation Fleet & Infrastructure
- Convert to an EV fleet
- Install solar, storage, and fast EV charging portals
- Incentivize the use of bikes, electric bikes, scooters, etc.
- Provide incentives to use low carbon fleet rentals
- More bus routes (e.g., Commuter South should run on the weekends)
- More bike-friendly campus
- Create car-free zones
- Ban all idling vehicles at all loading docks
- Ban the purchase of non-electric vehicles by 2021
- Stop building parking lots
Commuting & Travel
- Accessible showers to incentivize zero-carbon commuting
- Sponsor/promote Commuter Challenge and Conquer the Cold
- Partner with AATA on transportation hubs from neighboring communities
- More and better public transit options
- Incentivize low carbon commuting
- Encourage faculty/staff to offset their commuting footprint
- Discourage university travel when not absolutely necessary
- Mandate faculty/staff to offset their work-related travel (travel disincentive)
- Don’t subsidize parking
- More and better remote parking lots with shuttles
- Better online meeting tools to aid working remotely
- Flex work schedules (e.g., 4 days in office, 1 at home)
- Encourage satellite site conference to minimize travel
- Help create more affordable housing in Ann Arbor
- Lead the push for a light rail along expressway corridors (US-23, I-96, I-94)
- Carbon offsets program specifically for university-sponsored travel
- Charge double for fossil fuel vehicle parking
- Evaluate remote work and hybrid work options
- Install more EV charging stations at University-owned facilities
Carbon Accounting Methodology
- Account for scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions
- Account for electricity transmission and distribution losses
- Account for methane leakage throughout the natural gas supply chain
- Consider using the social cost of carbon and the $/MTCO2e
Sequestration & Offsets
- Eliminate/drastically reduce lawns and associated irrigation
- Make landscapes sustainable (native plants, rain gardens, more trees, impervious surfaces)
- Convert to no-mow grass (e.g., buffalo grass) in low traffic areas
- Start a carbon farm (Duke – peat bog)
- Invest in forest carbon offsets
- Plant more trees
- Consider cheaper methods for achieving carbon neutrality, such as Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) permits and RFPs for nonlocal Power Purchase Agreements
- Rely minimally on the purchase of carbon offsets to reach carbon neutrality for Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon emissions.
Campus Culture
- Mandate a sustainability orientation for all new students, faculty, and staff
- Make socially-responsible investment options available in U-M retirement plans
- Expand investments in U-M’s campus culture and awareness program
- Invest in Planet Blue Ambassadors (PBA) program to facilitate individual behavior change incentives (like Stanford’s My Cardinal Green and UC-Boulder’s PIPS)
- Integrate PBA, MHealthy, and Wolverine Wellness into one highly visible program
- Use PBAs more deliberately & effectively as an agent of change
- Install highly visible dashboards with metrics on campus, in buildings and on the UM website
- Create a highly visible zero-carbon showpiece building
- Power Michigan Stadium with photovoltaics
- Run campus-wide competitions for low energy use
- Sponsor campus-wide climate change events (theme semesters, teach-ins, etc.)
- Extend the Planet Blue Ambassadors program to UM-Flint and Dearborn
- Provide zero-waste kits to new employees and students
- Ensure student recruitment by fossil fuel companies doesn’t unduly influence decision-making
- Ban any department, group from creating new paper forms
- Ban all paper forms by 2021
- Provide mandatory training on the basic scientific principles of climate change to the student body and faculty
External Collaboration & Partnerships
- Join University Climate Change Coalition and sign the President’s Climate Leadership Commitments
- Lobby for a national carbon fee and dividend plan
- Lobby for the U.S. to establish a Climate Corps (like Peace Corps for emissions reductions)
- Lobby State for more renewable energy development and research
- Partner with the City of Ann Arbor to buy our power together
- Join Ann Arbor 2030 District
- Engage community via City Studios
- Consult with Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council
- Engage boards of regional players, maybe bring them all together for a workshop
- Work with landlords to reduce waste, water and electricity usage
- Collaborate with student groups, including fraternities and sororities
- Invest in solar co-ops (big installations rather than roof by roof).
- Conduct community outreach activities (K-12, TeachOuts, etc.)
- Collaborate more with the City of Ann Arbor
- Involve more stakeholder experts (those with experience in implementation and finance)
- Provide leadership to other higher education institutions globally as they pledge carbon neutrality
- Align more closely with the City of Ann Arbor Climate Plan
U-M Communication
- Ensure regular community-wide messaging from the President
- Provide more information about sustainability initiatives on campus
- Provide a clear historical narrative of what has happened to date
- Get students (particularly new students) excited and engaged
- Connect sustainability to people’s daily experiences
- Get people to care and see the urgency of climate change
Education & Research
- Embed in education experience
- Mandate a climate/sustainability class for all students at the school/college level
- Start a carbon neutrality student investment fund
- Use U-M as a laboratory for students to study options, costs, and benefits in terms of carbon, economics, and other environmental impacts
- Incentivize and reward faculty to bring their sustainability research to bear on campus
- Get students growing plants
- Facilitate cross-learning with international students
- More sustainability-focused study-abroad programs
- Every department should offer/support/fund field-based sustainability work
- More online sustainability courses
- IPCC report should be presented to all students in discussion groups
- Provide incentives for students to get involved in climate research
- Develop heat pumps or geothermal heat pumps that will work in the Michigan Climate and can be scaled between single-family homes, apartment buildings and University buildings
Food
- Mandate meatless Mondays
- Make more nutritious vegetarian options available
- Make sustainable food sourcing goal more ambitious (e.g., 50% local, 50% reduction in meat consumption, strive for zero carbon footprint)
- Maximize efforts to bring more vegetarian-friendly restaurants to UM
- Require all food vendors to use compostable serve ware
- Provide UM dining chefs and catering service chefs with vegan and vegetarian cookery classes
- The University of London has removed all beef from its meals, Cambridge has cut its food-related emissions by 1/3 just by removing beef and lamb from its offerings
- Utilize Try It Tuesdays to make plant-based dishes irresistible
- Utilize discreet substitutes, like half plant-based and half beef burger
- Low carbon catering options
- Expand the student project (ranking foods by CO2 emissions) at North Quad to all dining halls
- Host a chef/student recipe contest to engage the community
- Utilize augmented reality and interactive media in the dining halls
- Challenge between dining halls to see which hall reduces their meat consumption the most
- Reduce purchases by U-M of meat, dairy, eggs, and fish by at least 50% and replace those foods with plants and plant-based proteins
- Build an affordable and accessible grocery store on or near U-M's campus
Purchasing
- Establish strict procurement requirements (incentivize low carbon purchasing)
- Use the Transition Pathways Initiative to assess companies’ progress towards climate goals, and factor this into procurement and decision-making
- Pursue the idea with UM procurement of having a list of “items” to purchase as speaker gifts and employee awards that aren’t stuff (e.g., tree planting, meals for needy, carbon offsets).
- Buy commonly used items in bulk and have departments request them to be delivered. This would eliminate many delivery truck trips and packaging from individual shipments
- Switch to PURPLE NITRILE and PURPLE NITRILE-XTRA Examination gloves to take advantage of the RIGHTCYCLE program
- Ban all single-serving coffee and coffee accessories like cream, stir sticks, sugar, etc.
- Limit rapid shipments (2 hr. to 2 days) of single or a limited number of items
Landfill Waste
- Expand composting and recycling
- Mandate all events are zero waste
- Ban all single-use/disposable materials everywhere on campus
- Eliminate giveaway trash from external vendors inside the stadium
- Look into Sierra Energy, a company that eliminates the need for landfills through gasification
- Partner with the city for year-round composting
- Compost all restroom paper towels
Environmental Justice
- Hire a dedicated environmental justice advisor to stay in line with Michigan’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion standards
- Each internal analysis team should have a student with a humanities/social science background to incorporate social justice considerations
- Position social justice at the center of UM’s carbon neutrality efforts, giving due weight to the disproportionate impacts of fossil fuel extraction and burning on historically marginalized communities
PCCN Process
- Start by committing to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035 (2030)
- Post the meeting notes quickly and transparently for the public
- Ensure commission members go to student advisory panel meetings
- Make information about key issues accessible to the public
- Include all members on campus in the process- and decision-making
- Learn from other committees (e.g., Labor Standards and Human Rights (Ravi Anupindi))
- Consult with external experts (e.g., community members, industry, etc.)
- Engage Michigan Medicine and North Campus
- Include people directly impacted by power plants
- Host public meetings regularly
- Report progress often
- Respect student perspectives
- Host more targeted Town Halls (e.g., by unit)
- Define “financially responsible”
- Seek the expertise of known firms that have helped cities transition toward carbon neutrality
- Publicly acknowledge the scientific basis of the PCCN's work; Convey and act with more urgency
- Restructure the Commission to have more full-time staff
- Understand why the recommendations in the 2015 President's Greenhouse Gas Committee Report were not all implemented
- Include more utility folks in the PCCN work and analysis
- Include local tribal groups in the PCCN work and compensate them for their work
Plan Implementation
- Ensure President/Provost/Deans/upper management lead the way
- Establish a Sustainability VP with broad purview
- Establish accountable, transparent, and effective mechanisms for implementation
- Include processes for re-visiting and revising previous and current actions
- Name and empower champions in all units
- Align policies, procedures, and systems with the vision
- Deliver education, training and action tools
- Establish metrics and milestones and provide regular feedback
- Reward and recognize local innovation
- Have strong outreach where lessons learned are broadcast widely and often
- Involve every unit/person on campus to rally our community for culture change
Outside PCCN Scope
- Stop the power plant expansion
- Divestment