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About this survey
In February 2020, SIUC signed the Second Nature Climate Commitment pledging to develop a comprehensive Climate Action Plan to achieve carbon neutrality as soon as possible and increase resilience in the face of climate change. This commitment supports the Sustainability pillar of the SIUC Imagine 2030 strategic plan and the sustainable infrastructure goal of the SIU System Strategic Plan.
The goal of this survey is to capture your opinions about potential ways our campus can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. This survey only aims to measure our campus collective interest and general familiarity with solutions that have been deployed or studied at other campuses. We will use this information as an early filter to accelerate solutions with broad support, focus our education and investigation efforts for solutions with open questions and quickly rule out solutions that are clear non-starters. Later steps in our process will include a more technical, quantitative analysis of promising solutions. Estimated time to complete: 10-20 minutes.
About this surveyEstimated time to complete: 5-10 minutes
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Southern Illinois University Carbondale
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Note: your email address is optional. Your email will not be shared nor associated with the survey results.
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(check all that apply)
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Please provide your input on the following list of potential sustainability actions.
You can click the icon to learn more about a specific topic.
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Green Building Standards
High-performance or "green" building standards are a set of procedures that promote best sustainability practices in building design and construction. Standards typically center around sustainable materials, resource efficiencies, and reducing waste, pollution, or other environmental impacts. One institution’s standards are created by adopting similar standards created by organizations such as the U.S. Green Building Council, which promotes the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. There are other local and national standards organizations such as the Living Building Challenge or Zero Net Energy Building that support the development of green buildings. Once established, an institution’s staff and partners align around their chosen standards for all future construction projects, thereby systematizing greener practices.
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Education & Behavior Change
This strategy consists of implementing an energy related behavior change program that will consist of education, technology and systems to enable occupants to be more aware of their individual impact on energy consumption and how their actions can detract from or contribute meeting GHG and energy goals.
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Green Labs
Green Lab programs are focused behavior change programs that address energy conservation, safety, and waste reduction opportunities. Programs may include designing experiments to minimize electricity and water usage, purchasing green supplies, maintaining lab equipment to maximize efficiency, utilizing green chemistry practices, sharing of lab space and equipment when feasible, and training of staff and students in green lab practices. Many of these best practices are often rolled up into a Green Labs Certification program to help guide labs in improving their environmental footprint. Done right, green lab practices can greatly reduce waste and energy consumption in labs without sacrificing the integrity or accuracy of scientific results.Green Lab programs are focused on changes people in the labs can make. Green Lab programs are most effective when paired with a related Smart Labs program.
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Space Management Optimization
More effective use of existing space holds the potential to reduce the material, energy and land resources consumed by new buildings and slow overall growth in terms of building square footage. The intent is to increase building space efficiency (i.e., people per gross square foot); utilization rates; and to build/renovate to consistent standards and to evaluated needs.
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Efficiency Revolving Fund
Revolving loan funds (RLFs) are pools of capital from which loans can be made for clean energy projects—as loans are repaid, the capital is then reloaned for another project. Assuming that defaults remain low, RLFs can be "evergreen" sources of capital that are recycled over and over again to fund projects well into the future. Funds required to "seed" the RLF can be acquired from internal or external sources. (https://www.energy.gov/eere/slsc/revolving-loan-funds)
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Strategic Energy Management (SEM) Program
Srategic energy management (SEM) is a long-term approach to energy efficiency that includes setting goals, tracking progress, and reporting results. A successful strategic energy management plan builds long-term relationships with energy users and targets persistent energy savings...For public buildings, strategic energy management reduces costs across many end uses and institutionalizes practices to sustain long-term savings. (https://www.energy.gov/eere/slsc/data-driven-strategic-energy-management)
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Sustainable Procurement
Campuses have the potential to use a lot of natural resources through the products they consume. Purchasing decisions are most often decentralized and focused first on cost. Updating procurement policies can reduce waste generated from product manufacturing and packaging as well as reduce carbon emissions from direct and indirect energy consumption. A focus on local purchasing can have a co-benefit of supporting local economic development.
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Grounds Management Policies / Practices
This strategy is focused on ensuring that grounds management practices and policies are consistent with the GHG objectives. Sample policies could speak to the types of plants that are planted and areas that require mowing or other GHG intense forms of maintenance. Also, land management policies that would enable carbon sequestration in trees and other long-lived plants could also be considered.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Endowment Divestment from Fossil Fuels
University endowments have a specific structure that is intended to indefinitely perpetuate a pool of investments to support the teaching, research, and public service missions. Traditional investments are chosen based on rate of return. Divestment is the opposite of an investment – it simply means getting rid of funds that do not align with institutional values. Fossil fuel divestment is a strategy to fight climate change by applying economic pressure.
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Plug-load Management
Strategies to remove or reduce energy demand from equipment that is drawing power when plugged-in but not in use.
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Lighting Retrofits
Replacing older light bulbs and light fixtures with modern, high-efficiency alternatives. Projects often include lighting control upgrades such as occupancy sensors, daylight monitors and scheduling controls.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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HVAC Upgrades
HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioner) systems are energy intensive and make up nearly a third of a building’s energy demands. Investing in HVAC upgrades increases the system’s overall efficiency thus cutting energy use and emissions while generating savings from reduced operational maintenance and energy bills. Upgrades can be capital intensive, but the resulting energy savings can provide high financial returns with little risk.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Building Envelope Upgrades
A building envelope consists of the walls, windows, foundation and roof and isolates the building’s climate from the exterior climate. The U.S. DOE claims that a building’s envelope accounts for “approximately 30% of the energy consumed in residential and commercial buildings and plays a key role in determining levels of comfort, natural lighting, ventilation, and how much energy is required to heat and cool a building.” Retrofitting a building’s envelope or designing a new building with the envelope in mind is essential to the building’s energy efficiency.
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Green Roofs
Green roofs use soil and vegetation as living insulation. Cool roofs reflect solar energy. Both reduce building energy use for heating and/or cooling.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Energy Recovery Ventilation
Energy recovery ventilation (ERV) is the energy recovery process in residential and commercial HVAC systems that exchanges the energy contained in normally exhausted air of a building or conditioned space, using it to treat (precondition) the incoming outdoor ventilation air.
Image Source: 'Ventilation unit with heat pump and ground - cooling' by Kobraklb is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
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(Retro-)Commissioning / Controls
Retro-commissioning is a systematic process to improve the efficiency of an existing building's installed equipment and systems specifically in buildings that have never been properly commissioned. It is often the first step in an upgrade process and can often resolve problems that occurred during design or construction, or address problems that have developed throughout the building's life as equipment has aged, or as building usage has changed.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Ongoing Commissioning
Ongoing or Continuous Commissioning® is an ongoing process undertaken by building operations to resolve building equipment operational problems, improve comfort, optimize energy use and identify operational and retrofit opportunities for commercial and institutional buildings. Properly applied Ongoing Commissioning can result in energy savings of 20% annually and a simple payback of 1-3 years. With ongoing monitoring of building management systems, reduced maintenance costs may also be realized.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Smart Labs
Laboratory spaces are often the most energy intensive spaces on campus, consuming 4 to 5 times the energy of typical commercial space, and accounting for up to 70% of a given campus’ energy footprint. This substantial impact makes laboratories a key focus area for energy, waste and carbon management. Smart Lab programs often address both energy conservation and waste reduction opportunities.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Smart Buildings
Digitalization and new technologies offer innovative approaches for CO2 reductions on campuses that have positive environmental, operational and economic impact. New technologies – self-learning buildings, remote analytics, and plug-to-grid integration – are fundamentally changing life on campus for all stakeholders. They are also accelerating the ability to deliver cleaner air, carbon-free energy, and sustainable, on-demand mobility. Colleges and universities are using IoT solutions and digitalization to automate operations, improve HVAC and enhance comfort, support fire protection and security, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Smart infrastructure technologies also can boost reputation, attract students, reduce costs, and better prepare graduates for a digital tomorrow via a digitally connected, efficient, and sustainable campus.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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District Heating and Cooling
District systems heat and cool space and water more efficiently. A central plant and pipe network channel hot water to many buildings, with lower emissions than distributed systems in each building.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Central Combined Heat and Power
Combined Heat and Power (CHP) is the concurrent production of electricity or mechanical power and useful thermal energy (heating and/or cooling) from a single source of energy. Using a variety of fuels to generate electricity or power at the point of use, heat that would normally be lost in the power generation is recovered to provide heating and/or cooling. CHP can operate at 65-75% efficiency, an improvement over the national average of ~50% for these services when separately provided.
Image Source: Image: Fovea, LLC
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Microgrid
A microgrid is a localized grouping of distributed electricity generation technologies, paired with energy storage or backup generation and tools to manage demand or “load.”
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Battery Storage
Battery storage technologies utilize batteries to store electricity during times of low demand for use when demand is high or during off-peak hours when electriciy costs are lower. Battery storage helps integrate intermittent renewable resources, such as solar or wind power, and provides power when it is needed for consumption. It can also play a key role in enhancing reliability when grid power may face adverse conditions.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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High-efficiency Heat Pumps
Heat pumps extract heat from the air and transfer it—from indoors out for cooling, or from outdoors in for heating. With high efficiency, they can dramatically lower building energy use.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Heat-trading Network
A Heat-trading Network is a type of district energy system that allow the sharing of heat between a LTHW system and a chilled-water system that serves multiple buildings. Low-temperature Hot Water (LTHW) is a design characteristic of a district energy system that uses low-temperature hot water (typically between 120 deg F and 180 deg F) to deliver heating energy to buildings. Hot water uses less energy and reduces heat losses in the distribution system relative to traditional steam-based systems. In a LTHW system, supply water is distributed via the piping network at temperatures lower than steam. This temperature is closer to the temperature of the surrounding area (e.g. the ground) which reduces the heat loss in the distribution system. LTHW systems also enable the integration of high-efficiency equipment and renewable heating sources, such as heat pumps, heat recovery chillers, solar-thermal arrays, and ground-source heating wells, allowing the system to move and reuse heat instead of making it twice.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Thermal Energy Storage
Thermal energy storage (TES) systems shift cooling energy usage to non-peak times. They chill storage media such as water, ice, or a phase-change material during periods of low cooling demand, such as at night, for use later to meet air-conditioning loads. Locations with high cooling demands or high peak energy pricing can benefit from a TES system by shifting cooling load to off peak hours.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Pipeline Quality Biogas
Biogas is methane produced by an assortment of renewable sources such as landfill waste, agricultural waste, livestock manue or institutional waste. This gas can can be collected, treated to remove contaminants and then used wherever natural gas is used. It is widely used to fuel natural gas powered vehicles.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Onsite Biomass
Biomass is a term used to decribe a number of organic materials that can be used as energy sources. This includes wood or crops that can be burned or "gasified" or it may be landfill and agricultural waste that produces methane as it decomposes. These are cost effective, onsite renewable fuels that can be incorporated into current Combined Heat and Power applications that have the potential to reduce waste disposal costs.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Fuel Cells
Fuel cells cleanly and efficiently combine hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air electrochemically to produce electricity, heat, and water. Most commercially available systems today use natural gas (CH4) as the source of hydrogen which emits 25% less GHG per MWh than a typical natural gas generator and 60% less than coal fired generation.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Onsite Solar - Hot Water
Solar hydronic systems can be used to heat hot water. These systems can off set the demand for natural gas and electricity that would have been used to heat water.
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Onsite Solar - Photovoltaics (PV)
On-site solar-photovoltaic systems are a proven way to effectively and efficiently generate electricity for facilities and electric vehicles. Systems can lower electric utility costs, hedge against rising energy costs, and reduce carbon emissions by lowering demand for grid-sourced electricity. The three most common types of systems are 1) rooftops systems, 2) solar carports, and 3) ground-mount systems. Rooftop Solar is a photovoltaic (PV) system mounted on a residential, commercial or industrial structure. Carports are solar PV systems installed over a parking lot or parking structure. Ground mount PV are solar panels installed on a racking system directly on the ground.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Ground Source Heating/Cooling (GeoExchange)
Ground source heating & cooling, sometimes referred to as GeoExchange, uses heat pumps that extract heat from the earth for heating or dump heat extracted from a building into the earth for cooling. Studies have shown that these systems, while more expensive to install, can achieve energy saving of 40-72% over air-source heat pumps or systems that use natural gas and fuel oil for heat. They also have been shown to have low maintenance costs and high reliability over the long term.
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Small Hydro
Small-scale hydro is an umbrella term defining hydroelectric power plants at the campus and small-municipality scale. Different than large-scale hydro plants, these plants are located in close proximity to the place where the power is used. Small-scale hydro has received more attention as a sustainable way of electrifying rural areas since it is less invasive to natural habitats.
Image Source: Image: Fovea, LLC
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Onsite Wind
Onsite or Small-scale wind utilizes turbines to capture wind energy on campus. Turbine heights and rotor sizes are considerably smaller than utility-scale projects.
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Waste to Energy
Waste-to-energy plants burn municipal solid waste (MSW), often called garbage or trash, to produce steam in a boiler that is used to generate electricity.
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Green Power Purchases (RECs)
A renewable energy certificate, (REC), is a market-based instrument that represents the property rights to the environmental, social and other non-power attributes of renewable electricity generation. This can represent carbon emission reduction or kilowatts of renewable energy. This can allow you to claim that the electricity you used was renewable or reduced carbon footprint.
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Utility-Scale Wind & Solar Power
As the cost of renewable energy becomes competitive with “brown” power, North American institutions of higher education are increasingly purchasing large-scale renewable energy, directly from utility-scale solar, wind, and hydro-electric power plants, and through utility-provided programs. These purchases deliver a host of environmental, economic, and other benefits, but navigating the market and successfully executing solutions is complex and requires a well-planned and implemented strategy. Large renewable energy contracts deliver benefits due to their scale, e.g. mitigating up to 100% of scope two greenhouse gas emissions, and achieving energy price risk and cost savings that are material to budgetary planning (unlike onsite solar, and community solar, which are typically able to provide only a small portion of the electricity required for a campus, and can therefore only offer small risk and economic benefits).
Image Source: 'Utility-scale Wind and Solar' by Second Nature, et al. is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
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Bikeability and Micro-mobility Programs
Micro-mobility devices include bicycles, e-bikes, electric scooters, electric skateboards, and shared bicycles. Common focus areas include more public showers and lockers for commuters, improved/ connected bike lanes, covered/ secure controlled bike storage, improved bike lanes to campus.
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Carpooling
Improved carpooling programs seek to minimize the number of single occupancy vehicles coming to campus. Common focus areas include carpool lots, limited free day passes for commuter, university organized carpool groups.
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Public Transport
Improved public transportation programs seek to transition the campus community from single occupancy vehicles. The institution can partner with the regional transportation organizations to ensure that students and employees can ride transit for free or at reduced rates. Another focus area is improving transit connections to campus.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Electric Vehicle Expansion (Fleet)
Replace existing diesel and gasoline fleet vehicles with electric vehicles.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Remote Work & Learn Options
Working or taking on-line courses from a remote location will reduce the number of commute trips to campus. Reduced campus commutes will result in less emissions related to transportation. Commuting to campus, particularly in single occupancy vehicles with internal combusion engines, has been proven to leave a large carbon footprint.
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--- Please make a selection. ---
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Waste Reduction
Waste reduction is not just reducing the amount of trash sent to a landfill. It is also increasing percentage of material reused or recyled, reducing disposal costs through streamlined waste management processes, increased efficiencies, increased awareness resulting in more waste reduction and diversion.
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Waste Diversion
Waste diversion is making sure your waste goes to the correct place. This can be managing waste to ensure that recylables are recyled, items that are still servicable can find a second use on campus, e-waste is handled properly and compostable waste is indeed composted.
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Composting
Food or agricultural waste can be captured, diverted from landfills and composed to create soil and useful soil ammendents.
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Environmental Management Systems
An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a framework that helps an organization achieve its environmental goals through consistent review, evaluation, and improvement of its environmental performance. The assumption is that this consistent review and evaluation will identify opportunities for improving and implementing the environmental performance of the organization. The EMS itself does not dictate a level of environmental performance that must be achieved; each organization's EMS is tailored to its own individual objectives and targets.
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Land Management Sequestration
Carbon sequestration is a the long-term storage of atmospheric carbon in oceans, soils, vegetation, and geologic formations. Proper land management and regenerative agricultural practices, such as tree planting, urban reforestation, and prairie restoration, can sequester carbon in the soil. These practices reduce agriculture's global warming impacts and can improve soi quality and crop yields.
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Carbon Offsets
One carbon offset represents the reduction of one ton of carbon dioxide or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases. These can be generated by organizitions operating in cap and trade regimes that exceed their carbon footprint reduction targets. Other organizations that did not meet carbon emission limits (cap) can purchase these.
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