DRAFT White Paper: "Recommendations for Initiating a Local Carbon Offsets Pilot Program for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign"

Submitted by Stacy Gloss on May 9, 2022

Conclusions & Recommendations reported below:

The University of Illinois iCAP calls for reducing emissions from unavoidable travel by purchasing carbon offsets and creating a local carbon offset program.  Program planning and oversight can be achieved with the formation of a committee on carbon offsets and local offsets. Concurrently, the chancellors office should delegate where a carbon-off-set account would be housed – the account needs to be set up to receive and administer funds for competitive projects.

The most that the iCAP Resilience Committee could do is submit a recommendation to the iWG to convene a campus working group for a local offset program directed by the Chancellor’s office and/or central Sustainability Council; and direct the set-up of an account to receive and administer funds.  Sustainability professionals hired at the University of Illinois could administer the program with oversight from the carbon offsets working group/committee.

Edits or comments to this paper should be submitted to sgloss@illinois.edu for review by the iCAP Resilience committee.

The document can be viewed here: https://uofi.box.com/s/w007s43qyhtdcbjbmzb4asjt70weueyq