Intermittent renewable energy and reduction of peak energy demand can be mitigated with energy storage solutions.  The Thermal Energy Storage Tank at F&S is a key feature of energy storage already existing on campus. The huge tank of 6.5 million gallons of chilled water has "Illinois" written on it and is easily visible from the entrance to campus at Kirby and Oak in Champaign.

Additional energy storage solutions are being researched and proposed for integration in the campus energy systems.

To combat the issue of food waste on campus, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign implemented Grind2Energy systems at the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year.

These systems operate similarly to kitchen garbage disposals. However, they are significantly more powerful than household disposals and run at 10.0 horsepower. Meanwhile, household disposals only operate around 0.5-3.0 horsepower.

In order to convert the food waste into energy:

The City of Champaign incorporates sustainability principles in their Comprehensive Plan, and has a targeted sustainability plan called "Champaign Growing Greener."  The City of Champaign’s sustainability plan Champaign Growing Greener, identifies goals, strategies and priorities in seven major areas of Sustainability: Green Economy, Water, Built Environment, Energy, Transportation Behavior, Solid Waste and Food and Urban Agriculture.

The Urbana Park District's Climate Action, Resilience, Education and Sustainability (CARES) Plan sets actionable goals for reducing the district's carbon footprint, offsetting local impacts of climate change, and improving air and water quality as well as biodiversity. This five-year plan, for 2021-2026, centers on breaking down information barriers and creating a healthier, safer, and more resilient community for all the humans, plants, and animals that call Urbana home.

Several colleges offer 100-level courses designed to onboard students and ease the transition into college life. By FY24, we aim to integrate a sustainability unit into each of these courses. We will pilot this program through, as an example, sections of the Grainger College of Engineering and the College of LAS. Each course will include a lesson designed to expose students to the iCAP goals and introduce practical applications of sustainability learning. For example, how can students, as members of campus and of society, apply sustainable practices to their education and daily lives? 

The Committee for Environmental Sustainability within Illinois Student Government (ISG) is investigating the prospect of including a sustainability GenEd credit for all students. ISG developed and passed a resolution in December 2019 (attached). The proposal was presented at the Sustainability Council meeting in spring 2021. 

The ISEE-ACES-F&S Sustainable Land Management Committee is designed to evaluate and incorporate sustainable land management practices at the University of Illinois South Farms on non-research land and beyond the campus boundaries on some of the University-owned land. This follows the recommendation made by the Agriculture, Land Use, Food, and Sequestration Sustainability Working Advisory Team and Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) Working Group.

THRUST is a registered student organization through the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign which works on the development of high powered rocketry with the goal of passing the Kármán Line. With over 100 active members in a multitude of disciplines we boast a diverse group of talented future engineers. The field of high powered rocketry is a complex field and thus THRUST is dedicated to preparing our members for their future in industry. In order to gain experience real hardware is required and is often times very expensive.

The UIUC campus has several research labs across campus, with amazing cutting-edge research underway and accomplished over the last 150+ years.  These research facilities are transformative for the global community, yet they also use a lot of energy and water and produce waste products.  This project aims to integrate the iCAP objectives in the research areas on campus, through an open and concensus-based discussion with sustainability staff and research staff, as well as interested students and researchers.

Food insecurity is a major public health issue in the United States, affecting over 1 million Illinoisans in 2018 and over 13 million Americans in 2019 (Feeding America, 2019; USDA, 2019). Furthermore, nearly 20% of greenhouse emissions come from livestock and around 70% of all land used for agricultural production is used for breeding and maintaining livestock (UN Report, 2006; FAO Report, 2012).