In September, Associate Director for Space Utilization Jill Maxey met with faculty and staff interested in the status of the Net Zero Growth Space Policy.  She explained the calculations involved in setting up the Space Bank, and the anticipated usage going forward in future years.

Sarthak Prasad created a poster to be presented at the Professional Science Masters (PSM) Poster Session on October 5, 2016.

The main focus of this meeting was preparing the information for a poster. The poster will be presented at the Campus Sustainability Celebration in October of 2016. The team's objectives and any updates on projects will be included on the poster. 

Attached are the PWR SWATeam meeting minutes and agenda for September 13th, 2016. At the monthly meeting, we discussed the Illini Gadget Garage and how this team may be able to help spread the word about this project once it is up and running. Ideas were also generated pertaining to information that will be displayed on posters for the upcoming Campus Sustainability Celebration on October 26, 2016. 

This policy proposal was taken to the University Administration SAVPAC committee that decided not to implement it at this time.  Associate director for campus sustainability, Ben McCall gave the SWATeam two reasons: 1) the UA representatives thought this should perhaps be handled at the campus level, and 2) they thought the paper purchased on campus was already primarily paper with recycled content. 

Ben, Dave Grogan, and Cindy Klein-Benai at the UI Chicago Office of Sustainability are working to provide additional information to the committee, regarding the impact of the proposed policy.

Met with the university Facilities and Services officials and LED staff on Wednesday, September 21, 2016, to discuss the progress of LED Campus projects so far. The main focus of the meeting was Exit signs in the buildings. Meeting was hosted by Mogan Johnston, and attended by Ken Buenting, Brian Finet, Steven Bainbridge, and Patty Douglas.

A general assessment was conducted from the period of January 2016 to January 2016, identifying the state of sustainability communication channels. During this time, statistics, major developments, and observations were recorded to understand the performance of communication to the general public.

See the attached file for collected data.

Here is a status file sent to the SWATeams as input to their evaluation efforts, in preparation of the Campus Sustainability Celebration.

At the ECBS SWATeam initial meeting Marian Huhman was elected as a new chair. Recruting more proposals for education of other students about energy conservation was discussed.  The "Illini Lights Out" Program pilot last semester was very successful and should be a year-long program. Engaging the whole campus for the "Green Labs" Program is needed. More funding for energy conservation was discussed. The completion of 2015 iCAP tasks poster templete is expected by September 23.

This was the first meeting of the Fall 2016 semester. Discussion was focused on non-potable water and meeting schedule for the rest of the semester. 

iSEE reported to the SWATeam that they have reached out to NCSA to discuss incorporating a clean energy Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) in the next supercomputing grant application and agreement. 

Minnesota has been tracking bicycle commutes for the past few years using Radio-Frequency Identification tags (RFID tags). The progam has been successful at making it quick and easy for bicycle commuters to log their trips on to campus and enter them in to raffles or gain wellness points.

More information here:

http://www.derozap.com/gopherzap/

and,

https://www.derozap.com/zaptwincities/

Interesting program to watch as it has a positive impact on the Minneapolis/St. Paul mode-share.

First SWATeam of the ’16-17 School year. New Team Chair, Brent Lewis was chosen.  During this meeting team discussed what they liked and wanted to continue from last semester. Also, summer updates were discussed during this meeting.

9/09/16

Summary: This meeting was our inaugural meeting for the year. On the agenda today was the creation of a team description, a review of ongoing projects, and planning for future meetings.

In attendance:

    Josh Feldman

    Claire Dondival

Ankit Singhai

Yangfeng Ouyang

Pete Varney

Lily Wilcox - Active Transportation Coordinator

Olivia Webb - Sustainability Programs Coordinator

Topics Covered:

Team Description

We collectively crafted our team description for the iCAP portal, which can be found at:  https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project/transportation-swateam.

Project Slides

Renewable Fleet Study:

Claire and Petehelped foster a discussion about the current types of alternative fuels for campus fleet vehicles. Currently, natural gas is the only type of fuel seriously looked at. One concern was that the gas CNG, while possible to implement, would be somewhat costly and have little payback unless driven many miles. Electric vehicles were brought up, but are currently not part of the market. Biodiesel was also mentioned, but its performance in cold weather is a concern.

Staff Mode Shift:

Lily discussed the ways that this project will reduce single occupancy vehicles. One idea looked at was bike sharing, which has been tried by Purdue but does not have much payback economically. Lily also discussed “It’s your MTD too”, which features social bus-riding trips which introduce MTD to campus employees.

Bike Plan:

This was a summary of effort to make campus more bike-friendly. This would include having more, and better, bike parking. UIUC was recently recognized as a bronze-level Bike Friendly University by the League of American Bicyclists.

Future Meetings

We decided that every other Friday at 1pm is a good time to hold meetings. We will be holding meetings in the National Soybean Research Laboratory. Our clerk Josh will send out reminders.

In support of the U.S. Department of Energy's SunShot initiative, NREL is offering no-cost technical assistance to universities seeking to go solar.

http://www.nrel.gov/tech_deployment/tools_universities.html

The Champaign County Pollinator Coalition group had their first meeting on September 7, 2016, from 1:30 - 3 pm. The main topics of discussion included the needs, concerns, and decisions.