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iSEE is offering seed funding to help faculty & instructors incorporate sustainability into the classroom in 2022-23. Levenick Teaching Sustainability Fellows can get $1,000 to integrate sustainability into an existing course or $2,000 to develop a new course, as well as resource support. 100- and 200-level courses encouraged.
Application deadline Jan. 31, 2022.
In the middle of 2021, there was a discussion about adding a sensor station at the far south of South Farms to track the water quality in the Embarras.
The original scope included installing the sensor during the Fall 2021 semester as a part of Arthur Schmidt's Field Class. However, obstacles, such as purchasing additional materials and the change in weather, have shifted this timeline.
As of Mid-November, Arthur Schmidt and his colleague, Jacob, are teaching a new sensors class in the Spring 2022 semester. The new timeline hopes to get the installation included in the Sensors Class curriculum, with installation occurring in the early half of 2022.
From: Ricci, Marcus <mericci@urbanaillinois.us>
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2021 1:32 PM
To: icap-resilience at lists.illinois.edu
Subject: RE: [icap-resilience] Revolving Loan Fund example for evaluation
*** Email From An External Source ***
Today’s Lunchtime Stroll Through the Internet: “Local Carbon Offset Programs.”
I hit on “The Offset Project” which started off in 2010 as a not-for-profit program in Monterey Bay, to fund sustainability programs that reduce carbon emissions: https://theoffsetproject.org/programs-and-services/local-offset-projects/top-local-offset-projects/.
They eventually morphed into a for-profit group that helps/services others to do the same: http://www.bluestrikeenvironmental.com/. One of their clients was UC Santa Cruz and the City of Watsonville, the latter of which instituted a Carbon Fund Ordinance which “establishes a Carbon Fee to be charged to all development projects except single family residential alterations, temporary buildings, and/or building area that is not used as conditioned space. The goal of the Carbon Fund Ordinance is to encourage the implementation of renewable energy in development projects. The money collected from the Carbon Fund Fee are placed in a separate account to be used for citywide greenhouse gas reduction projects.” https://www.cityofwatsonville.org/1765/Carbon-Fund-Ordinance
So, if we (someone) wanted to pick their brains (for free) Kristin from Blue Strike Environmental would be willing to chat with us, and provide the Power Point presentations they used at City of Watsonville.
The UC Santa Cruz Carbon Fund sounds similar to UIUC’s sustainability funds, so it could be used, in general, to pay for offsetting carbon: https://sustainability.ucsc.edu/engage/funding/carbon-fund/about/index.html.
By the way, I *really* dislike the use of the word “offset.” I feel that an offset is when you are paying for emitting something, when what we are trying to do (I think?) is actually *reduce* carbon emissions.
Merriam-Webster: : to cancel or reduce the effect of (something) : to create an equal balance between two things
Are we trying to reduce the emissions themselves? Or allowing all of the emissions and just fixing their effects?
Be safe, stay healthy,
Marcus
Marcus Ricci, AICP
Planner II
Community Services Department | City of Urbana
400 S Vine St | Urbana, Illinois 61801
217.328.8283
Scott Tess shared these resources for local projects:
https://www.green-e.org/certified-resources/carbon-offsets
https://www.climateactionreserve.org/how/voluntary-offset-program/
The Sustainability Council met on 11-29-21. The presentation is attached and the agenda was as follows:
The following sustainability topics will be added to the new student campus tours!
Stacy Gloss, Meredith Moore, Morgan White, and Scott Tess met to discuss Resilience Team work.
We discussed:
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.
These questions are fundamental to designing and implementing a local-carbon-offset program.
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
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
The University of Illinois has two submittals that are recognized as finalists for the 2021 Sustainability Awards:
More information can be found at https://www.aashe.org/news/meet-the-2021-sustainability-award-finalists/.
The Sustainability Sub-Council met on November 10, 2021 in preparation of the Sustainability Council meeting. The primary agenda items included:
The slide deck is attached with meeting minutes to follow.
What do giant grasses, micro grids, deep wells, and hydrogen-powered buses all have in common? They are all part of a clean energy future that is being imagined, created, and tested here at UIUC. The breadth of our energy research portfolio, across all of the campus and the broader C-U community, is truly impressive. Here are just a few examples:
Solar Farm 2.0 will soon be home to a newly awarded, $10M project led by Madhu Khanna to optimize the design of "Agrivoltaics," or fields with both crops and solar panels to maintain crop production, produce renewable energy, and increase farm profitability. A few miles to the east, the Energy Farm boasts extensive test plots to study how to grow and use plants as biofuel. The farm is using a biomass boiler to replace propane as the fuel source for its main research greenhouse. The Energy Farm is also home to one of dozens of geothermal wells on campus that are helping scientists like Yu-Feng Lin develop better geothermal systems, while on the north side of campus, the new Campus Instructional Facility is heated and cooled with a state-of-the art geothermal system. Nuclear power is expected to play an important role in meeting our campus ICAP goals, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hosted a hearing last week to seek input on our plans to site a next-generation, micronuclear reactor near the Abbott Power Plant. Integrating renewable energy sources into the power grid presents unique challenges, and Illinois power system researchers, including Alejandro Domínguez-García, are working to develop microgrid technology to address issues of reliability and resilience. Meanwhile, researchers such as Petros Sofronis are working on a bold new vision for national leadership in the emerging hydrogen economy. (It might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but the CUMTD just launched two hydrogen-powered, zero-emission buses—the first in the state!)
There is only one way I can wrap up a message about our campus energy research: The future looks bright, indeed!
Sincerely,
Susan
Attached is the Data Sources Powerpoint by Morgan White.
F&S, the Division of Public Safety, and the Champaign Fire Department will conduct a spill containment exercise on the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 2. Event organizers will place the dye in storm drains near the university's oil storage tanks on South Oak Street to simulate a large oil spill from the fuel farm during this year's mock scenario. The exercise is required annually by the U.S. EPA.
November 2, 8 am • South Campus and the Embarras River Watershed
Bill Walsh • Facilities & Services
The 2021 biennial Champaign County Stormwater Partnership Green Infrastructure and Erosion Control Conference took place on October 20th.
The following email provides some context and resources with more information about the event.
The program and the media post for the conference are attached below.
------------------------------
From: Liggett, Betsy Jo
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2021 9:59 AM
To: Stillwell, Brett
Cc: White, Morgan; Wilcoxen, David B; Ruhter, Colleen; Liggett, Betsy Jo
Subject: Green Infrastructure & Erosion Control Conference
Good morning Brett!
I wanted to share an upcoming conference opportunity with you and others in DIA. F&S Safety and Compliance is a member of the Champaign County Stormwater Partnership to help meet goals for our campus stormwater municipality permit. One of the permit Public Education and Outreach goals is to host a biennial stormwater conference. We have several speakers this year one of which is a member from Green Sports Alliance (GSA) who will speak about the GSA program and provide examples of what other organizations/universities have done to meet the program missions. Green Sports Alliance
Please share with others and join us October 20, 2021 for the free biennial Champaign County Stormwater Partnership Green Infrastructure and Erosion Control Conference. This year the conference will be virtual instead of at the iHotel and Conference Center, however Professional Development Hours are still available. Attendance is limited and you can register at the following link Champaign County Stormwater Conference - CHAMPAIGN COUNTY STORMWATER PARTNERSHIP (ccstormwater.org)
Thank you!
Betsy
Yuhze Zhang, leader of the Master plan team in EPA Rainworks Challenge 2021, asked Brent Lewis, UIUC's campus landscape architect, for some data for the challenge. Data asked for includes campus storm peak runoff, existing green infrastructure, turf lawn irrigation.
More information regarding the data can be found in the email chain attached below.
Another participant of the EPA Rainworks Challenge, Matthew Rodriguez, also requested data.
This email chain is attached below.
The Water Reuse Handbook is also attached below (attachment from both email chains).
Resilience Meeting Notes 10/15/2021 for meeting between Stacy Gloss, Meredith Moore, and Morgan White
UIUC SOLAR SITES OPEN HOUSE - October 15, 1:00-2:30 pm
Ever wonder how far the university has come in solar energy use? Come out to the UIUC Solar Sites Open House hosted on Topia, an interactive online platform, to learn about different buildings and areas across campus that are producing solar energy! During the Open House, Morgan White will provide a guided tour to virtually visit ten locations on campus. Learn more about the amazing solar installations on campus!
This event will take place online from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. on Friday, October 15, 2021, at https://topia.io/uiuc-solar-sites.*
*Chrome browser on desktop or laptop required.
The pdf attached below contains data that was submitted on the panels and inverters in Solar Farm 2.0.
10/5 Carbon Offsets Meeting: Stacy Gloss and Eric Green briefly discussed Carbon Offsets. An intern or 2 will be lined up for the Spring who could potentially work on a literature review as related to this objective.
