Hi Solar UC Advisory Committee,

The Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) has accepted the Solar Urbana-Champaign Advisory Committee’s recommendation and contracted with New Prairie Construction to install solar arrays for the second round of our group buy program.  MREA and New Prairie Construction have agreed to an amended fee schedule whereby New Prairie will be providing a rebate which will be paid to program participants who sign a contract for services by August 31, 2017 according to the following schedule: $.03/watt if the program reaches 50-150 kW of total capacity; $.06/watt for 150-250 kW; $.09/watt for installed capacity in excess of 250 kW. 

Please keep an eye on solarurbanachampaign.com as we will be announcing Solar Power Hours very soon.  Please share these event announcements through your networks and let us know of any ideas for additional public engagement.

Thanks!

Scott

Scott R. Tess

Environmental Sustainability Manager

City of Urbana, IL

P: 217-384-2381   -   F: 217-819-3167

706 S. Glover Ave. Urbana, IL 61802

Walk Score® – 61 out of 100

Bike Routes – www.urbanaillinois.us/bike-urbana

Plan Your Bus Trip – http://www.cumtd.com or 384-8188

At the ECBS SWATeam meeting on October 17,  Big Ten and Friends Mechanical and Energy Conference was discussed. Meeting with Jill Maxey, Associate Director for Space Analysis on Zero Growth for UIUC campus occured on September 26. Green Labs program is currently in progress. Illini Lights Out project is expected to be approved on October 21 by Student Sustaibability Committee with $1000 funding.

The Big Ten and Friends Sustainability group is collaborating on a Prospectus about how sustainability helps the universities accomplish several of their missions.  Each participating school was asked to note their high-level and visionary goal for the Prospectus and the Big Ten group as a whole.  Sustainability staff at UIUC offered the following goals:

What are your goals for using the outcomes of the Big Ten Prospectus at your institution?  “The University of Illinois Provost Office (budgetary authority) is interested in evaluating the appropriate funding model for our sustainability efforts, and we hope to use the outcomes from the Prospectus to help inform them about the importance and benefit of the overall sustainability efforts, and how it ties directly to the campus mission.”

What potential (think big!) do you see for our network as a whole?  How can this work help us leverage regional impacts, move all of our institutions forward, etc.? “We have been making great strides in sustainability, but campus continues to elevate other mission priorities over sustainability when achieving these goals is considered cumbersome or unfeasible. We hope that through this Prospectus, the Big Ten and, subsequently, campuses across the nation will see that sustainability is a mission-critical goal, and will not proceed with any action until it can be made sustainable. Could we also partner on various efforts, from Carbon Credits to recycled paper purchases to RECs, etc. to save money and effort? We should also update the website at http://greenbigten.msu.edu/index.html and https://wikispaces.psu.edu/display/Big10EnvStew/Big+Ten+Environmental+St....”

iSEE Director Evan DeLucia and Associate Director Madhu Khanna met with student representatives from the iMatterNow organization.  iSEE connected these students with on-campus student groups, including the Student Sustainability Leadership Council and the Students for Environmental Concerns.  The original email inquiry is below:

"Hello, Dr. DeLucia.

My name is Rebecca Laurent, and I am a sophomore studying NRES and Political Science. I wanted to talk with you about an initiative that I am working on.

I currently serve as the Regional Organizer for the Central US for an organization called iMatter, which was founded by a 13 year-old with the vision of giving young people a voice on the climate crisis. We recently kicked off a campaign, called iMatterNow, that is focused on achieving progress at the city-level. At the core of the campaign is a "Report Card" that assesses how well a city is doing in reducing emissions to the level needed to prevent the worst effects of climate change (based on a report by Jim Hansen that we must reduce emissions by 6% annually). Students complete the report card with municipal data in categories such as waste, carbon removal, and GHG emissions.

Eventually, the students present the results of the report card along with petition signatures they have collected in their school and community and ask that they pass a resolution or ordinance. The ultimate aim of the campaign is to have cities adopt a more aggressive Climate Action Plan in the context of achieving a higher grade on the "Report Card".

Students are doing the iMatterNow campaign in various cities across the US and in Toronto. I am working with high school students at Champaign Central and Urbana High School to bring this campaign to Champaign-Urbana. I hope to get UIUC students involved in this effort in the community as well as on campus. Recently, we have discussed making adjustments to the Report Card to evaluate universities as opposed to cities. 

If you are interested and available, I would love to speak with you or someone else at the ISEE about the local iMatterNow campaign and your thoughts on the report card and introducing the campaign to college campuses. Please let me know if this is a possibility! I will be on campus all summer, and I'm pretty flexible.

Thank you,

Rebecca Laurent

Defined resilience, along with describing various indicators of progress within our local community.

Dear all, Happy Friday! A couple of updates: 

• Partner Spreadsheet: Based on your feedback, I've created a google spreadsheet where you can share your notes, questions, progress, and metric selections with each other. I'll be including my notes from meetings with each of you as well.
• Check-in Call: We received another great suggestion to hold a call part-way through the process to support collaboration and communication among partners. We're shooting for the week of April 18th.
• Executive Leadership Summary: Next week, look for a 2-page executive summary of our progress on the Prospectus. We hope this document will help you initiate conversations with executive leadership allies at your institutions. More soon!

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions about the process. 

Best, 

Emilie (and Denice and Michael)

Dear Partners,  We hope this finds you well. After several conversations with the Metrics Working Group (see below for previous email detailing this process), we’ve developed a list of metrics aimed at measuring sustainability’s contribution to identified executive leadership priorities. We have framed the data request below with the following in mind:

• Time and resources are scarce: In every conversation regarding data collection, regardless of the forum (e.g., Metrics Working Group meetings, conversations with partner institutions, pre-AASHE meetings), we’ve heard concerns about the time and resources a data request might require. With this in mind, we’ve worked very hard to develop: 1) a request that is reasonable in size and customizable based on the unique context of each of our schools, and 2) a collection window that is reasonable given how busy the spring is for all of us.
• Process is more important than products: This request reflects the same investment in process and experimentation that has characterized the Prospectus to date. We have framed the data request to help us collectively explore the feasibility of collecting new metrics, the availability of data, and our preferences when offered choice. Instead of mandating a common set of metrics, we have prioritized a process that can provide us with strong examples of how/what data might be collected.  We believe this approach will best prepare us for conversations with executive leadership about how to move forward together.

With these conditions in mind, we are asking each partner institution to do the following:

• Based on the collection window (now-May 27, 2016), pick one metric for data collection within each priority area—six in total—from the attached spreadsheet. For each area, please choose between the following types of metrics:
  • Foundational quantitative: These are quantitative metrics most schools can reasonably collect in the window provided based on our estimates. These metrics may be new or they may rely on existing STARS data.
  • Aspirational quantitative: These are quantitative metrics we expect only a few schools will be able to collect in the window provided based on our estimates. We hope the innovators among us will already have started collecting (based on previous needs or projects), or will be willing to begin collecting data for these challenging, but potentially powerful metrics.
  • Create your own quantitative metric: Here we’re encouraging those of you who have not had the chance to provide input through the MWG or pre-AASHE meetings to develop or contribute innovative metrics for collection. We ask that you only use this option for strong, well-developed, outcome-oriented metrics.
  • Qualitative prompts: Here we have provided several prompts suggesting features or profiles on relevant figures, programs, or initiatives that help make an anecdotal case for sustainability’s contribution to mission level priorities. We encourage you to tell strong, bold, innovative stories here.
• Ensure your overall metric set includes the following:
• At least three quantitative metrics,
• At least one quantitative metric developed during the Prospectus process (outlined in the spreadsheet), and
• As many qualitative metrics as you like.
• Define sustainability (i.e., sustainability-related) broadly and based on your best judgment. Use existing definitions (e.g., STARS) where they make sense or create new ones. For example, you may find it necessary to define sustainability-related disciplines differently than sustainability-related co-curricular activities.   .
• Define your collection window for each metric based on your data availability. We’re not worried about comparability, so the period over which data was collected can vary from metric to metric.  
• Document how and why you’ve made each collection decision.
• Be creative and document your process:

Again, you will find the metrics options attached. (The second tab lists definitions of all important terms.) Tomorrow, we’ll be holding a call from 2-3 PM EST to field initial questions. RSVP here to join. Emilie will be reaching out to each institution individually beginning next week. You will also find a calendar below roughly outlining the remainder of the project.

We look forward to hearing your questions and feedback about this evolving process. And, please remember to RSVP for the Big Ten and Friends Sustainability Group Meet-up at the Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference on April 3, 2016.

Best,

Denice, Michael, and Emilie

TIMELINE:

• March 10: Data collection begins
• March 16-27: First partner institution check-ins with Emilie
• March 23: Optional: Begin preliminary conversations with executive leadership allies (more information to come)
• April 3: Pre-SSCC Big Ten and Friends Sustainability Group semi-annual meeting
• April 18-29: Second partner institution check-ins with Emilie, Denice, and Michael
• May 20: Preliminary Prospectus draft from Planning Team due to partners for feedback on structure/format
• May 27: Data request due
• June 1-July 1: Collaborate with partners on plans to utilize Prospectus findings at each institution (more information to come)
• June 17: Second Prospectus draft due to partners for feedback
• July 8: Final Prospectus draft due to partners
• (TBD): Convene Big Ten executive leadership gathering through CIC

Today’s RPC Technical Committee meeting included an overview of the study completed by RPC to identify a strategy to improve household hazardous waste (HHW) collection options in a seven-county east central Illinois region. Work on the study began in 2013 and was completed in 2015.

The take-away product of the RPC study is the Local Government Toolkit: Improving HHW Collection Options in Illinois. (The Toolkit and accompanying Background Report may soon become a published report by the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center).

The problem of providing a viable HHW collection option to our citizens has been a longstanding one. In Champaign County we waited six years before receiving the opportunity to hold an IEPA one-day HHW collection at significant cost in September 2012. We are waiting still (four years and counting) for another IEPA one-day HHW collection opportunity. In the meantime, no collection options exist for citizens for safe disposal of:

• Oil-based liquid paints, paint strippers, and thinners
• Herbicides and pesticides
• Lawn chemicals
• Insecticides
• Old gasoline
• Mercury-containing devices
• Drain and oven cleaners
• Spot remover
• Antifreeze
• Pool chemicals
• Household cleaning products
• Car cleaners
• Personal care products

Fortunately, some strides are being made locally by providing local options for safe disposal of unwanted pharmaceuticals.  We have a long way to go with regard to HHW collection options.

As an initial action, please distribute the attached Local Government Toolkit: Improving HHW Collection Options in Illinois for review to all stakeholders with a potential interest, including your planning agency, public works department, and local officials.

The Champaign County Sustainability Practitioners group recommended to form a leadership team to engage in the search for funding sources to support an agreed-upon strategy as a logical first step.

I look forward to receiving  your questions or comments about this upcoming initiative.  Thank you.  

Susan Monte, AICP

Planner

Champaign County Regional Planning Commission