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

Stacy Gloss and Meredith Moore met on 4/27 to discuss the following:

1. DFA Student project on E-waste recycling poster was added to portal on 4/27/2022.
2. Environmental Justice Next Steps by August 2022:
   
   1. Make 1 – 2 page fact sheet about EJ Planning
   2. Define plan for outreach this summer
   3. Implement the plan
3. Capstone project on carbon offsets
   
   1. Obtain final deliverables on carbon offset project to include in iCAP portal
4. Sustainability Clinic (Leading on Sustainability Issues)
   
   1. Socializing sustainability clinic to faculty; identify potentially interested faculty
5. Community Conversations on Sustainability (Leading on Sustainability Issues)
   
   1. This is a newish idea that Meredith will socialize to iSEE and others and we can start working on it this summer. 

From: Heidi Leuszler <HLeuszler at parkland.edu>
Subject: Tree Map partnership

Hello all, I hope this finds you and yours well!

I am on the Sustainable Campus Committee at Parkland College and we are discussing updating our campus tree map and digitizing it. I am including all of you in this email because I am wondering if we do not have to recreate the wheel and can join an existing tree map in our community.

I have worked with https://www.opentreemap.org/ in the past, but the $3000 price tag per year is rather steep for us. Do any of you use this program?

In a quick search, I found the following local Tree Inventory maps (all of which Parkland campus is missing from):

City of Urbana https://urbanail.treekeepersoftware.com/index.cfm?deviceWidth=1920

UIUC campus https://illinoisedu.treekeepersoftware.com/index.cfm?deviceWidth=1920

City of Champaign ROW Trees https://cityofchampaign.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=7e979451571143abbf5befb6eeb9b01b

City of Champaign  https://gis-cityofchampaign.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/cityofchampaign::city-owned-trees/explore?location=40.130930%2C-88.279305%2C13.85 

Champaign Park District https://cparkdistirct.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=88afa8b642a1464585eaad55a999dd5a

Urbana Park District https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aaX3IOinNA&t=23s (but I could not find public access to the inventory)

Is it possible we can add our campus data to an existing map? Perhaps we all partner and can add city, park, and campus data to make a more comprehensive community map.

If you are interested in this, have thoughts, know a better person to contact, etc., let me know and we can get a meeting together to discuss possibilities.

Thank you!

My best,

Heidi

Present: Meredith Moore, Morgan White, and Stacy Gloss

Gloss reported on the following:

• Green Infrastructure Mapping: Lisa Merrifield met with Illinois EPA and partners at the end of March to discuss the mapping project. Meetings will be held with NCSA soon about feasibility and next steps.
• Gloss notified Lisa Merrifield that she is available to help with Biodiversity Plan
• DFA advising on-going. Their upcoming presentation is April 27 on E-waste in Siebel Center for Design
• Final report from Ann Witmer's capstone course is expected: A student consulting team is developing a report on renewable energy technologies that can be adopted through a campus local-offset program
• Gloss and Moore will present  to GEEB on April 26 on environmental justice

Discussed:

• SSC semesterly reporting requirement for NGICP training is due July 1; Gloss will email campus NGICP participants.
• Sustainability Clinic recommendation meeting next steps;
• Working to understand Extension's role in environmental concerns / environmental justice.  White, Gloss, and Moore will work to meet with Shibu Kar as an introduction between the Resilience Team and Extension on iCAP resilience goals, environmental justice planning, and support for programs like a sustainability clinic

Tasks (Gloss):

• Help with agenda for next resilience team meeting & update the gantt chart for meeting resilience goals
• Attend next Land & Water team meeting if available (related to potential campus master plan for rainwater management & relationship to/with community coordinated rainwater master plan)
• Attend the iWG meeting as resilience team rep for Environmental Justice iCAP recommendation

The Disaster Planning and Preparedness interest group meeting was held on January 25, 2022.

The agenda includes:

• Introduction to Extension disaster preparedness programming, both in Illinois and across the country
• Successful models for Extension-Faculty applied research partnerships
• ISEE perspective on collaboration potential
• Extension identified applied research and outreach gaps
• Open discussion of potential topics for applied research and pathways to partnership
• Identification of people who are interested in continued discussions on topic specific projects and partnerships

The email attached below contains more information.

Stacy Gloss, Meredith Moore, Morgan White, and Scott Tess met to discuss Resilience Team work. 

We discussed:

• NGICP presentation scheduled for December 10 with presentations by Heidi Leuzler and Eliana Brown
• NGICP SSC Step II Application to be submitted 11/19/21
• Carbon Offset Program development. Discussed that "local" for this objective means within boundaries of Champaign County.  Next questions to answer are: Why, What, How for developing a local carbon offset program.

11/17/2021

Present: Tony Mancuso, Meredith Moore, Eric Green, & Stacy Gloss

A meeting was held to discuss student engagement, green jobs, and career planning.

Agenda items included: 

1) Possible potential for interviewing iSEE Fellows Minor Grads about their current careers - involving the communications department.

2) Possible idea for introducing a mentoring program. The idea is to have iSEE fellows grads who are settled into careers serve as mentors for undergraduate fellows in the minor. A program like this would need to have more intentional development and administrative support.

3) Getting green jobs certifications information onto the iSEE website under the Education Portal https://sustainability.illinois.edu/education/student-resources/.

Stacy & Tony will work on this.

Gloss met with the public works director and planning director for the City of Savoy to discuss Vision Zero and transportation planning on 11/9/2021.