Category Archives: Climate change

Campus – Climate Action and Inaction – Part 2

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Climate action on campuses is far too slow to help avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

Only 35% of college and university campuses are taking the necessary steps to be carbon neutral by 2050.  Another 30% will lag by 15 to 25 years.  All the rest are hardly moving.  Worst of all 35% of all undergrad and grad students attend institutions that have no climate action plans.  When will these campuses be carbon neutral?  Nearly never.

Here’s the snapshot.

Half of all US undergrad and graduate students attend institutions that will not achieve carbon neutrality until 2065 or later.  Almost all institutions tout sustainability as a core value, but for most this is a concept without a plan or measurable goals.  Much of US higher education has talked the talk but is failing to walk the walk.  Criteria and Methodology can be found here.

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Campus – Climate Action and Inaction – Part 1

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How rapidly are campuses carbon footprints shrinking to zero?  Some have already made it, while others are not just slow, they are in denial.

Sparked by a question from Bryan Alexander, I set out to try to answer this question, or at least get the lay of the land.  My idea was to see how well the institutions fit an innovation diffusion curve.  The concept is that diffusion of ideas and innovations (in this case shrinking a campus footprint to zero) fall into 5 cycles or cohorts from initial Innovators to Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and eventually Laggards.

Since there are more than 6,000 higher education institutions, I chose to look at 4-year public institutions, of which there are more than 800.  I narrowed the group for this preliminary estimate to the largest 42.  They enroll about a tenth of all undergraduates and graduate students.

I searched each institution’s website to see if they had a climate action plan.  I also used sustainability as the search term.  From these queries it was possible to determine if there was a current Climate Action Plan, what the planned carbon reduction targets were, what specific actions were planned, and how much progress toward the targets had been made.

Slightly more than half of the institutions are Innovators, Early Adopters, Early and Late Majorities. [graph] All have current climate action plans and are making varying levels of progress in shrinking their carbon footprints.  Another twelve percent can be categorized as Laggards.  They do not have current climate action plans but are working on them.  Unfortunately, after reviewing the data, I had to add a 6th category, even later than Laggards.  I’ll call them the Nearly Nevers.

The Nearly Nevers were one third of the group.  None of them have current climate action plans.  Many are members of various sustainability organizations such as the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education  but have taken little or no action to reduce their carbon footprints.

Perhaps some of the Laggards will accelerate their work.  Perhaps some of the Nearly Nevers will become Laggards in coming years.  Most of the Nearly Nevers have faculty members who study climate change issues, and have added sustainability content to their curriculum and student activities, but for now those institutions have demonstrated little or no action to reduce their carbon footprints.

In subsequent months, I will expand the number of institutions in my database to be able to make a more comprehensive assessment of campus climate plans.  As of now the answer to the question, “how quickly?” is: not quickly enough.  While the majority are moving in the right direction, nearly a third are making little to no progress.

Earlier posts on climate change

Campus Adapting

Campus – Accelerating to Net Zero

Campus – Adapting

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The first 21st-century pandemic, digital transformation and climate change are altering assumptions that have shaped physical campuses for hundreds of years.

Campuses are palimpsests, places on the earth reshaped layer upon layer, always in the process of becoming a different place.  Adapting a physical campus is a slow, incremental process. Pieces of earlier layers are retained as the whole is modified to meet changing requirements and environmental conditions.

The most visible adaptations accommodate growth in enrollment, research and new academic programs.  Other adaptations are systemic and virtually invisible.  Early steps in digital transformation and hybrid pedagogies were visible in bits of hardware popping up here and there.  Energy conservation was rarely visible while movement to zero-out carbon has only recently begun to change the physical appearance of campuses with living buildings.

State of campuses – Since early 2022, I have talked with scores of former colleagues and planning professionals about the physical state of campuses.  My sense of a changing campus came into focus from these conversations.

Everyone was emerging from constant pandemic threat.  The masks and plexiglass were disappearing, but no one was returning to a pre-March 2020 world.  As disruptions became long-lasting, the expectations of students, faculty, and staff for their campuses and their buildings were shifting.

Some building projects continued as if nothing had changed.  Other projects were paused to allow adaptation to hybrid pedagogies, remote officing, and more intermittent campus use patterns.  Nearly all my colleagues recognized the changing patterns of faculty, staff and students.  None were certain of the downstream consequences.  At the same time, they shared a growing awareness that the extremes of flooding and drought, air quality and heat of a changing climate were just beginning.

I share my colleagues’ uncertainty about how to respond to these converging forces, but we can begin to see a path in adaptation of existing and future facilities projects, building performance requirements, campus infrastructure, and land use.  Here is my take on these adaptations.

At the scale of the campus – Existing and future buildings are being redesigned to support hybrid pedagogies.  Underutilized classroom and office space is being reallocated for students and faculty, for those occasions when they find value in being on campus.  Building envelopes and systems are being redesigned to account for increasing temperature extremes and reduced air quality.  Offices for many administrative functions were moved off-campus years ago, and now are moving to hybrid models and home offices.

Climate action plans are reducing the carbon footprints of campuses. Land use impacts are ranging from divesting unneeded real estate to consideration of migration to higher ground.  Campus infrastructure is being modified to be more resilient to the consequences of drought and flood, heat and wind, and power and communication disruptions.

All these adaptations are happening incrementally, none quickly.  For example, while a classroom renovation project might take less than a year, major building projects usually take 5 to 7 years from inception to occupancy.  Infrastructure replacement and adaption projects can extend for a decade or more.

Beyond new construction, the physical changes to the parts and systems of the campus can go largely unnoticed.  The confluence of climate change, digital transformation and post-pandemic patterns may increase visibility as infrastructure and adaptation projects evolve.

Adaptations are underway in classrooms, study space and libraries, and faculty and administrative offices.  Many campuses are moving to carbon neutrality and resilience.

  • Even in the digitally hybridized future of higher education, there will be classrooms. They will be used by choice and when it makes a difference. 
  • In the future of higher education, there will be libraries and places for people to meet to share ideas, technology and visual forms of communication.
  • Patterns of campus use by students, teachers and staff have been ruptured. Physical presence has become a choice rather than a requirement.
  • Colleges and universities have an obligation to honor their mission and commitment to the future by urgently respond to climate change and becoming more resilient.

In the long history of campuses, adaptation to changes in design requirements and expectations has been constant and gradual.  As we approach the middle of the 21st century acceleration of both digital transformation and climate change is leading to different campuses. The physical campuses that continue to thrive will have reduced their carbon footprint to zero, adapted to changing climate and the hybridization of the institution.

Until recently the physical campus was the same as the institution.  They were the same organism, as shell and snail.  The campus was a direct reflection of the institution’s mission and scale.  The institution required physical places for all its students, faculty and staff.  These assumptions began to dim in relevance in the last decade of the 20th century, but the change was barely noticed.  Building programs were still tied to the rules of thumb and patterns of the past.

The disconnect between traditional building programs and the physical needs of the digitally transformed institution were laid bare in 2020.  The pandemic disrupted well understood patterns of use which were the reasons for campuses in the first place.  This disruption is changing building programs, the use of existing facilities and the campus itself as an expression of the institution.  The snail has escaped its shell.

The specifics of adapting the campus will be unique for every institution, and none of it will be easy.  There may be some with no climate threats and a willingness to ignore their carbon footprint.  These campuses may seem unchanged.  The band will play on, perhaps for a long time. For all the rest, campuses will be rebuilt to be carbon-zero and more resilient to the effects of climate change.

Campuses prepared for the middle of the 21st century will not be collections of historical artifacts relying on prior technologies plus new artifacts with new technologies.  These campuses and their existing buildings will be adapted to meet the needs of a community of increasingly transient students and scholars in a changing climate.

Campus planners are beginning to realize they are planning campuses for a planet that is measurably different. This adaptation will be an existential challenge for generations of students, educators, facilities professionals, administrators and boards.

It will be like rebuilding ships while at sea.