• PEI bought 20,000,000 kwh for FY15. 
• They are MISO Wind RECs. 
• Without Petascale, this represents 5.28% of projected electricity demand. 
• Including Petascale, this represents 4.25% of projected electricity demand.  
• A half year of the solar farm would bring this up to 5%.
• The REC cost was $ 1.25 / MWH for a total of $27,000.

Good morning all,

To get air travel emissions, miles must be entered into the Clean Air-Cool Planet calculator. 

Mileage data is not tracked for our campus. So, I request air travel dollar data from OBFS.  This number has become more reliable in recent years because of the T-card implementation.

Air travel dollars are converted into miles using the passenger yield (fares per mile) data from Airlines for America. 

In fy 2013, dollars spent on air travel was $9,283,105.82.  Passenger yield was $0.1514 (this is fy 12, apparently fy 13 was not yet available).

Divide the two, and you get 61,477,522

Best,

Stephanie

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is pursuing development of a large-scale food waste composting facility on the University’s property, in order to compost food waste from University dining halls.  This interest is precipitated by the commitment made by the University in the 2010 Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP): “The University will commit to… a large‐scale food composting project by 2012.” The new facility will initially receive and process all acceptable pre- and post-consumer food waste from six dining halls on campus, as well as supplementary landscape waste as necessary carbon bulking material from Campus Grounds. In the future, if needed, the system may accept additional landscape waste from the city of Champaign as well as livestock bedding and other animal-related organic waste from the University’s Agricultural and Animal Sciences Departments. The finished product will provide rich compost material to agricultural projects on campus such as the Sustainable Student Farm, as well as to campus grounds and athletic fields.

Background

The University of Illinois is dedicated to composting across the board.  There are three main academic campuses at Urbana, Springfield, and Chicago and two medical campuses at Peoria and Rockford.  We are in communication with all of these sites about the future of composting at the University.  This is an exciting opportunity for the sustainability contacts to work together and support each other in a major sustainability initiative.  Additionally, the University Extension office has a long history of supporting sustainability and has numerous resources for composting operations that we can call upon as the project progresses. 

In 2008, the Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, pledging to become carbon neutral by the year 2050.  As part of this commitment, the University published “Illinois: A Climate Action Plan (iCAP)” in May 2010, describing several projects related to various aspects of campus sustainability.  This document is available online at http://sustainability.illinois.edu/iCAP.html.  

The Procurement and Waste aspects of campus sustainability are highlighted on page five of the iCAP.  It states “The University will commit to a Zero Waste campus policy by 2012, a large-scale food composting project by 2012, and target an increase in the University’s waste diversion rate to 75 percent by 2020.”  The specific project is listed on page 34 item 4 under Agricultural targets, as “Incorporate a large-scale food composting project by 2012.” 

The composting project also has significant support from campus leadership represented by Associate Chancellor Pradeep Khanna, Facilities & Services as represented by Tracy Osby the Waste Management Coordinator and Jack Dempsey the Executive Director, and the students as represented by the Student Sustainability Committee.  The Office of Sustainability works closely with Facilities and Services to assist with the various projects in the Climate Action Plan, and will assist with project implementation and promotional information.

Currently, approximately 1411 tons of food-waste is collected annually from the five major Dining Halls on campus.  Unfortunately, all of this waste is sent to the Clinton Landfill.  There was a small pilot composting project which diverted about five percent of this waste during the short pilot test phase, but it has not been in operation for the last year.  The proposed Large-Scale Food Waste Composting Facility will divert 100 percent of this food-waste and utilize Grounds department landscape waste to generate approximately 2,822 tons of high-quality compost annually.  The compost material will be used solely on University land, including the campus grounds, athletic fields, and the Sustainable Student Farm project.  Future expansion of composting operations could incorporate the animal waste at the Beef and Sheep Facility, which is directly south of the Compost Facility.   At that time, the finished product may be used on certain crop sciences lands.

I am providing an updated schedule for the RFP related to a wind-power PPA for UIUC.  The change reflects a request by one vendor to extend the response period by one week.  Because of that, we have made other slight modifications to target dates for some of the milestones, but the original completion date of April 30, 2015 is maintained.

If you have any question, please let me know.  Dan Mortland

Attached please find the first formal recommendation from the iCAP Working Group (iWG) on the Wind Power Purchase Agreement.

iSEE leaders provided an introduction to the SSLC

Six Objectives: Facilitate communication, facilitate collaboration, provide a forum for student leaders to voice their opinions to iSEE and thereby to the campus administration, help identify students who can serve on iSEE working groups or advisory groups, help identify potential interns, encourage more awareness about sustainability among student body

Unofficial objective: Create political will/pressure to implement sustainability initiatives

Topics covered:

• 2010 iCAP progress toward 2015 objectives
• iSEE Congress
• Zero Waste Game Day
• SSLC organizational structure

On July 29, the iCAP Working Group (iWG) met for the first time. Read more about that first meeting in the attached minutes.

Today recycling containers were placed on the trash bin at Ikenberry Commons.  The purpose is to collect and recycle all the nitrile gloves used by food service employees.  The weight of the gloves will be recorded to measure environmental impact.