The Michigan Daily sat down with Shana Weber, associate vice president for campus sustainability, to discuss carbon emissions goals and Campus Plan 2050. The Daily provided Weber with questions prior to the interview. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Michigan Daily: You first spoke to The Michigan Daily last January; what has changed in campus sustainability since then?
Shana Weber: Well, there’s a lot happening. I had the pleasure of stepping into a role where there had been a tremendous amount of work done already in thinking through what the institution’s priorities were and setting goals, carbon neutrality being one of them. In the last year, there have been a number of things that have come into fruition, and there’s two things I want to mention first. There’s Vision 2034 and the Campus Plan 2050. Climate action and sustainability work are central to both of those plans.
Another thing that happened in the last year is the completion of filling the senior level sustainability roles. Tony Denton has been here for a long time, but only in his current role at Michigan Medicine for a couple of years. Then, I came on board a year and a half ago as the AVP for campus sustainability. Approximately six months ago, Shalanda Baker came on board as the new vice provost for sustainability and climate action. With those three roles in place, we now have formalized an Executive Leadership Council for sustainability and climate action, which is really exciting to have the three of us working together to advance the work across the institution and in partnership with many others.
We are also about to start building a tremendous amount of solar power infrastructure on campus, which has been a long time coming. We’re just about to start construction of our next solar power purchase agreement, which is 80 megawatts. It’s going to help us reach our Scope 2 emissions goal. Then, there’s the campus solar, that’s 25 megawatts. We’re going to start seeing construction of that this spring and over the next three years. So those are very tangible, visible things that are going to start happening very soon. And then the other thing that continues to roll out is electrifying the bus fleet and other fleet vehicles on campus. We have eight EV buses on campus right now. Four more are under order now, and will be here this year. We’ll continue to roll through that as bus replacements are needed.
TMD: Last semester, the University unveiled the formal plan for Campus Plan 2050, which includes key geo-exchange and solar installations. How does the University plan to realize these plans?
SW: There’s been a lot of planning, and now we’re starting to move into a phase of those plans becoming real. So I mentioned solar already, there’s two parts to that. There’s the campus 25 megawatts and the off site, Michigan based, solar power purchase agreement, which is 80 megawatts. The two of those things combined, plus our current power purchase agreement, a wind farm, we’ll get to 100% reduction of our Scope 2 emissions. The original goal was 2025 to reach net zero Scope 2 emissions, but because of permitting delays in the state of Michigan, which impacted everyone, we weren’t able to get it built within 2025, but it will be under construction in 2025. With adjusting for those delays, it’ll now be January of 2027 when we hit the Scope 2 zero emissions goal.
TMD: In December, the University released details about its on-campus solar installations. Where will the first installations be, and how will this tie into the overall campus goals?
SW: The first installations will be on Facilities and Operations buildings on North Campus, and we’ll start there so that we can work out the installation process before we go to many of the other buildings on campus. From that first installation, we’ll learn how the installation process works, and then we’ll start to roll it out to other buildings. We have a set of buildings and parking structures that will have solar phased over three years. So by the end of 2025, we should hit about the 10 megawatt milestone and then continue to roll it out over the next year or two. In the end, it’s going to cover student life buildings, academic buildings, operational buildings and parking structures. The installations will be happening all over campus, but we’re going to start on North Campus initially.
TMD: What is the University looking at for ways to reduce Scope 2 emissions, in addition to solar?
SW: The other things that we have to do are to improve the efficiency of our existing buildings and make sure that the new buildings are fully electrified, so that they minimize the increase in the need for power, heating and cooling. Energy conservation work and deep energy retrofits are critical to this. Those programs will also continue. We’ve got the revolving energy fund that continues to do excellent work. We’ve got our Building Tune-Up program that continues to identify buildings that aren’t performing the way they could and making those fixes. All of that work continues, and we’ll have to actually ramp up that work as we really get into the carbon neutrality plan.
TMD: The University plans to release goals pertaining to Scope 3 emissions this year. What planning has gone into this process, and what can the campus community expect?
SW: We have an analysis and planning project underway now, and it includes input from students, faculty and staff. It’s really an assessment of where is it easy to collect data, where isn’t it easy to collect data, so that we know how to build those programs going forward and really laying the groundwork for the goal setting. We are about to roll into the phase of working with campus experts and input from different stakeholders on campus to set those goals. The way I think about this is it will probably be a first phase of goals. We’re really trying to identify where the highest impact areas are for us to act as an institution in the Scope 3 space and start with those. I think those are the areas where we’re going to see the goal setting focused on, but we’re not there yet. We’ll get there by the end of 2025.
TMD: In FY24, the University expanded its electric vehicle fleet to 56 vehicles. Where do electric vehicles fit into the University’s broader plans?
SW: We monitor the carbon footprint of our fleet. It’s actually a very small percentage of our overall Scope 1 carbon footprint, but it’s incredibly visible, and transportation systems are ubiquitous. This is a societal challenge: How do we think about mobility and transit systems to serve our communities better? So even though it’s a small part of our carbon footprint, it’s high impact and visible. It’s obviously an important thing to do because it also speaks to the campus as a demonstration site for scalable solutions. The same thing is true for the Connector, which will be fully electric. Once we procure our electricity from renewable sources, it will be a net zero asset to the campus. And, of course, it has all kinds of other benefits that are not directly related to carbon, in terms of livable towns and reducing traffic.
TMD: Has the University placed a greater emphasis on procuring electricity from external sources than on expanding its own on-campus power generation capabilities?
SW: The Central Power Plant produces electricity, steam and chilled water for the campus, so that system will stay in place. The vision is that, as we get closer to 2040, that system becomes more of a backup system. Now, we’re also staying open to other technological advances that aren’t market-ready at the moment but might be game changers in the future. We’re moving forward with plans that we know will work for bringing us to carbon neutrality, but we’re also going to be testing things along the way.
TMD: In the local November elections, the city of Ann Arbor passed a resolution creating a Sustainable Energy Utility, an opt-in plan to provide sustainable energy to participating businesses and homes. While the University is not subject to city resolutions, does the University plan to work with the city on this?
SW: I have a close partnership with their sustainability team at the city, and we’re always looking for opportunities to collaborate. There’s a number of conversations we’re having about moving forward with climate action together, but right now we don’t have a specific project or working relationship related to the utility.
TMD: The University has continued investment in carbon neutrality using green bonds; where have these investments taken place?
SW: These bonds are designed to help address climate risks by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from buildings and the transportation sector. Those green bonds are supporting the construction of green buildings on campus, installing renewable energy infrastructure and prioritizing clean transportation that directly advances decarbonization goals. There have been 300 million in green bonds issued, and right now, the plans are to allocate about 274 million of that to support green buildings, 20 million to support renewable energy projects and 6 million to support clean transportation.
TMD: What are some of the sustainability aspects of Vision 2034 and how they play into the university’s overall sustainability culture?
SW: I think it’s an incredible framework. For sustainability, climate action and environmental justice to be named as one of the four top priorities of the vision is extraordinary leadership. What I also love about Vision 2034 is how cross sectional it is. In other words, sustainability isn’t just siloed in that one priority area. We think about it as an enterprise that hits almost every dimension of the institution. For example, what can the role of sustainability and climate action be in supporting life-changing education? We tend to build utility infrastructure to be out of sight, out of mind. That has been prevalent in utility work for a long time, but we have this incredible opportunity to use this energy infrastructure transition as an educational vehicle, and make it visible. We can think really creatively about how that can be a destination site for learning about these systems that are out of sight.
Daily News Contributor Matthew Shanbom can be reached at shanbom@umich.edu.
The post Shana Weber, associate vice president for campus sustainability, talks emissions goals appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
Leave a Reply