Please see the attached newsletter for the November updates from the EPA's SmartWay program. 

Stacy Gloss, Meredith Moore, Morgan White, and Scott Tess met to discuss Resilience Team work. 

We discussed:

• NGICP presentation scheduled for December 10 with presentations by Heidi Leuzler and Eliana Brown
• NGICP SSC Step II Application to be submitted 11/19/21
• Carbon Offset Program development. Discussed that "local" for this objective means within boundaries of Champaign County.  Next questions to answer are: Why, What, How for developing a local carbon offset program.

11/17/2021

Present: Morgan White, Meredith More, Eric Green, Tony Mancuso, Stacy Gloss

Gloss provided an overview of the local carbon offset objective as described in the iCAP. There was discussion that there are two sides to the issue. 1. The funding mechanism. 2. What projects are funded by off-setting faculty & staff travel impacts?

The team was asked to review the carbon offset programs by the University of California System and Duke University as two different models. The first is a campus-system internal model where funds are used to develop projects on campuses throughout the system. A university-system advisory board receives applications for projects and approves the projects that meet program requirements.  The Duke carbon offset initiative involves a portfolio of offsets including a methane capture waste-to-energy at an industrial farm,  urban tree planting program, avoided conversion, wetland restoration, and a pilot program for residential energy efficiency piloted in 2012 --- these programs happen off-campus.

We agreed that there is an economies-of-scale issue with local off-sets to overcome. For local-community-based projects, the cost per off-set is going to be higher than aggregating funds into one industrial scale project or program. An carbon-off-set company, for example, might contact a city and offer $1.00 per tree for off-sets, but it costs over $400 to install and maintain a tree.  (A program like this appears to generate a very small added value to the paid organization.)

U of I campus renewable energy & energy efficiency projects can be tracked by the campus energy office. For community off-sets, an agency (university or otherwise) would need to set up a mechanism to collect and distribute funds for community-based projects, perhaps through a non-for-profit interface. Projects can include urban tree-planting, renewable energy, energy efficiency, prairie restoration etc. 3rd party verification is needed.

As a next step, this team and others must define "local" in "local offset program" in order to meet this objective in the iCAP. Is the program going to be internal to campus, or include the local community as recipients of funds community projects?

This team must also interpret what the iCAP is saying to off-set. 

• Annual business air-travel by faculty & staff? 
• Vehicle miles driven by faculty & staff on University business?
• All electricity & heat generated by carbon sources for the University of Illinois?

These questions are fundamental to designing and implementing a local-carbon-offset program.  

11/17/2021

Present: Tony Mancuso, Meredith Moore, Eric Green, & Stacy Gloss

A meeting was held to discuss student engagement, green jobs, and career planning.

Agenda items included: 

1) Possible potential for interviewing iSEE Fellows Minor Grads about their current careers - involving the communications department.

2) Possible idea for introducing a mentoring program. The idea is to have iSEE fellows grads who are settled into careers serve as mentors for undergraduate fellows in the minor. A program like this would need to have more intentional development and administrative support.

3) Getting green jobs certifications information onto the iSEE website under the Education Portal https://sustainability.illinois.edu/education/student-resources/.

Stacy & Tony will work on this.

The following message was sent to Morgan White to share with Carbon Credit Fund Administrators by Thurman Etchison, the Assistant Director of Dining - Facilities and Equipment, on November 18, 2021. The email & attachments contain important information regarding the potential installation of a Grind2Energy system at LAR:

Carbon Credit Fund Administrators,

Housing Dining Services is seeking funds to add a Grind 2 Energy system to our Lincoln Avenue Dining Hall. Grind 2 Energy is a system that allows us to put our food waste into a pumpable slurry so that it may be taken to an anerobic digester at the Urbana-Champaign Sanitary District. These systems replace the aerobic digesters we previously had in our dining units. The aerobic digesters had issues with the effluent not meeting EPA standards.

This system would be our fifth and likely final system as we would have one at every residential dining location. These are operational at Ikenberry, PAR, FAR and ISR. Currently, University Housing does not have resources to fund this project due to the impact of COVID on our budget. We would reach out to the Student Sustainability Committee for funding but for us to do the infrastructure work and have the unit installed prior to the next school year, we need to start before the next round of submissions.

The use of Grind 2 Energy has been a very successful program for us. It meets our needs, keeps us in compliance with regulatory bodies, is comparable in costs to other methods of disposal. It is very sustainable in terms of the environment. To date, we have diverted 289 tons of food waste even though there was limited use until this school year.

The amount we are requesting is $133,538.00. A simple breakdown of our expected costs is below. As our tradespeople have installed the 4 previous units, we believe this number to be very accurate. Our last unit came in within $1000 of our estimate.

LAR Grind 2 Energy – Preliminary Budget Cost

• LAR Grind 2 Energy System (equipment and labor)…..................................................................... $86,000
  • (Rigging fees)........................................................................................................................... $4,650
• Concrete Slab Work (existing planter modifications site work & new concrete slab)….................... $23,100
• New Wall at Table (Demolition, floor work, ceiling work, MEP & new wall)…................................... $19,788
• TOTAL:                                                                                                                                              $133,538

I would like to add that these units are highly visible on campus and it is our intention to start highlighting the metrics in our dining units via electronic messaging. This may include digital displays, The Housing Insider and social media platforms. There is also great deal of interest in biogas impact from these units. I have met with 2 groups of students from the CEE 190 class about these units in the past month.

In short, this program reduces carbon emissions, produces fertilizer and creates energy. The systems are highly reliable and have had almost no issues to date. Please see the attachments for additional info.

Thank you for your consideration, 

THURMAN ETCHISON

Assistant Director of Dining - Facilities and Equipment

From: Collins, Halie Jean <haliejc at illinois.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2021 11:46 AM
To: Kim, Qu <qkim at illinois.edu>
Cc: Fister, Quinn <bfister2 at illinois.edu>; Kim, Yeon <yjk at illinois.edu>
Subject: SSC Sustainability Mural

Hello, 

My name is Halie Collins, and I am studying Civil and Environmental Engineering student. Through my last 3 years on campus, I have realized that there is not much student art being represented on the Engineering campus. Art inspires creativity, a trait that is extremely important to be innovative and successful in the engineering field. Because of this, I have reached out to Student Sustainability Committee and Illinois Facilities and Services about installing a Sustainability Mural on the Engineering campus. My teammates and I have already submitted a step 1 application for funding through SSC and we are now working on site acquisition. We have also received support from Morgan White who is the Sustainability Director at F&S.  

The vision we have for the mural is something that inspires creativity and inspires students to become more sustainable. We would also like to feature campus sustainability initiatives in the mural for educational purposes. We also believe this mural should be visible for prospective students because more and more engineering students are interested in pursuing a career in sustainability and green technology.  

We would greatly appreciate building manager contacts in the Engineering Department, or if you could forward this email to any building/Department that would be interested in installing a sustainability mural. Funding would be fully provided by SSC and other sources. 

To this email, I have attached our SSC step 1 proposal and have copied other members working on this project. Thank you!  

​Halie Collins 

The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign 

Illinois Solar Decathlon President

Civil and Environmental Engineering | Class of 2023

haliejc2 at illinois.edu 

___________________________________________________________________

From: Kim, Qu <qkim@illinois.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2021 9:36 AM
To: Collins, Halie Jean <haliejc2@illinois.edu>
Cc: Fister, Quinn <bfister2@illinois.edu>; Kim, Yeon <yjk4@illinois.edu>; White, Morgan <mbwhite@illinois.edu>; Kim, Qu <qkim@illinois.edu>
Subject: RE: SSC Sustainability Mural

Dear Halie:

I am writing an email to reconnect about your request.

If you do not have an example of the mural, but you need possible locations for your submission, you could list the following buildings as possible locations to be determined in the future.

• Engineering Hall
• ECEB
• CEEB- New Civil Hydro
• New MEB

Hope this is helpful.

Regards,

Qu

"The current schedule at Astronomy is 6:00am – 11:59pm, 7 days a week, Sunday – Saturday, which is the COVID schedule that we are running on units across campus." -David Hardin (11-17-2021)

On 16th November, 2021, all the members involved in the Walkability audit met to discuss the progress of the audit. The process of data collection is currently underway. The results collected so far using the ArcGIS 123 survey app was shown during the meeting. The analysis of the data collected will be done in Spring 2022.

A graphic sweatshirt was designed as an incentive for volunteers for contributing to the audit. The design elements of the merchandise were discussed during the meeting. Several aspects of the design are specific to the walkability audit. In order to purchase 50 sweatshirts an SSC (Student Sustainability committee) grant application is being written for a $2000 funding request. The graphic sweatshirt will have the name of the audit, logo of UIUC and a relevant graphic of walking infrastructure of the campus.

(Image of sweatshirt design is enclosed in the attached files)