Transportation SWAT Team Feedback
The first bit of feedback given by a member of the audience was about electric vehicles. These are not specifically talked about in the summary of the report. An infrastructure would be needed in order for these to work well. It is something that could be looked into in future meetings. Along with this, it was noted that the University is currently developing five stations for type two charging with plans for type one charging to be active within the next week. It cannot be ignored how the energy is generated as well. Emissions are still produced by generating electricity to power the vehicles. Another audience member gave an idea about having a parking incentive to people who are driving from a distance and parking at a station. There are people currently on campus who park at a charging station and take a shuttle the rest of the way. It was suggested that the parking rate could be reduced for these people who are commuting with electric cars and taking a shuttle further to promote this practice.

It was inquired about the fact that all types of fuel has hydrocarbons in them and all will affect the environment. The answer to this is that there are different amounts of environmental impacts based on what molecule is the byproduct of the fuel source. The topic of offsets was discussed and what ways were being considered for keeping them local. Currently, the team has not come up with a lot of ideas of how to do this but in the coming months a more comprehensive strategy will be developed to start this process. Traditional offsets would apply to this like having more plant matter and renovating buildings to be more efficient.

Air travel was the final topic of discussion during the forum. It was commented on about how air travel is a function of the global reach as a campus and the more air travel that there is, the more global reach the campus has. A suggestion along with this was to have a carbon tax on air travel that could be used for offset funding. The estimations for projects can include this carbon tax and allow for the campus to improve, get more funding, and travel more while still offsetting the carbon emissions. Wotjek mentioned to the forum that the team would like air travel to broken down from absolute air travel into departmental. This would allow departments to see their own progress and account for fluctuating numbers in a department. Also, this can be used to provide incentives for efficiency of air travel on a departmental basis.

Good Morning, Bruce:

Please see the attached 2014 iCAP emission chapter with notes from University Dining.

In addition, we are confirming our purchasing volume for within 100 miles of campus.  Last year we were at 17%.

Thank you,

Dawn

Dawn Aubrey, Ph.D., MBA, FMP, CEC, CCA
Associate Director of Housing for Dining Services                                               

Drew O'Bryan replaced Nishant Makhijani on the iCAP Working Group, as the new head of the Student Sustainability Leadership Council.

see file

This looks great

My only comment would be to replace the cooling towers in the first slide with cooling towers from the UIUC Campus.

I can send a picture tomorrow morning from my office.

All the other pics on that slide appear to be from the UIUC campus which is good and adds credibility to the presentation.

As I have said before I will be out Monday through Wednesday at a required meeting with the Illinois Commerce Commission.

Please accept me best wishes for good luck and success on Wednesday

Please email if you have any questions or issues

Thanks

Keith

Hello All,

I've attached the presentation for this Wednesday's event. Please let me know if there needs to be any changes.

I've also included the most recent version of our iCAP recommendations. This draft includes revisions from Kishore and Keith. All are still welcome to make suggestions, but please do so soon (feel free to make them on the Google Doc. or a Word Doc. sent over email).

Best regards,

Amy Liu

Dear Egen gang,

    Here’s a first draft of our chapter.    You can email comments or transmit them verbally at our meeting on Monday at noon, Loomis 430A as usual. 

                Scott

Hi Scott,

I am not an expert on this, by any means, but I have heard from previous biomass investigations that the on campus facility would need a lot more acreage for biomass storage than currently feasible at the existing Abbott Power Plant site.

Thanks,

Morgan

From: Willenbrock, Scott S
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2014 9:30 AM
To: Johnston, Morgan B
Subject: syngas

Morgan,

     Thanks for sending the biomass document.   I haven’t had time to even look at it!    But let me ask you a question that has been running through my head:

Here are two alternative ways to burn biomass:

1.       Truck it to campus and burn it directly in a biomass facility.   The biomass is essentially replacing coal in this scheme.

2.       Truck it to a location off campus, gasify it, pipe it through a new pipeline to campus, and burn it on campus.   In this scheme the biomass is essentially replacing natural gas.

My question is this: what are the advantages of 2. compared to 1.?

                Scott

From: Johnston, Morgan B
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2014 4:38 PM
To: Purchasing Waste and Recycling SWATeam; Guth, David Christian; Aubrey, Dawn
Subject: reusable cups

Hello Purchasing, Waste, and Recycling SWATeam, David (for the Union), and Dawn (for Dining Services),

I would like to pass along this information about reusable cups that could replace single-use coffee cups around campus.  What do you think about this product?

Thanks,

Morgan

From: Justin Hanseth
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 1:34 PM
To: Johnston, Morgan B
Subject: Pleasure meeting you at ACUPCC Summit

Morgan,

Great meeting you in Boston last week at the ACUPCC Climate Leadership Summit. 

You asked for more information about SUSTAIN® and mentioned UIUC may be a good candidate for such a program to reduce waste and increase student engagement on campus.  See attached for more info.

As a refresher, we make the Starbucks $1 Reusable Recyclable coffee cup sold in every Starbucks store, and I am interested in partnering with a forward-thinking university to pilot a SUSTAIN® campus program.  It sounded like UIUC is a leader in sustainability, so I perhaps it would have an interest in being one of the first campuses in the country to implement a program like ours. 

Want to connect for a call in the next couple weeks to continue our conversation?  I would love to learn more about the great programs you have developed on campus. 

My best,

Justin Hanseth

Justin Hanseth,  Business Development Lead - Sustain

MAIN 206 999 6736 - FAX 206 441 2823

2401 Elliott Ave. 4th Floor, Seattle, WA 98121-3300

PMI - Aladdin - Stanley - Sustain - www.pmi-worldwide.com/SUSTAIN

Sustain® is a registered trademark of PMI. Property of PMI - Confidential - Do Not Duplicate - Do Not Distribute

PMI ASKS THAT YOU PLEASE CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENT BEFORE PRINTING THIS E-MAIL.

see file

Hello Team!

Attached is a very rough draft from our discussion on Tuesday.  We were small in number, but made some good progress.  We divided our reporting into three area – Agriculture and Land Use, Food Systems, and Sequestration.  Please look over and provide your comments as soon as possible.  One of us will be making a presentation on Wednesday so time is of the essence!

Enjoy the remainder of your weekend.

Best,

Bruce

Please note my comments in track changes format.

Please call or email if you have any questions

Keith

Thanks for the excellent discussion on Monday about the first draft of the iCAP section on Purchasing, Waste and Recycling.  I tried to reflect the comments in the attached revised draft, provided in clean and marked versions. 

Because Casey and I need to prepare a presentation for October 22 on our draft, please send me comments by Monday, October 20 at 9 am.

Hope you are happy with our progress.  Thanks and best wishes. - Warren Lavey

Dear Ben

I am pleased to provide you with our consensus final report.

I was able to address the concerns your raised regarding (1) clarifying the nature of purchased off-sets, and (2) making it clear that we are not necessarily requesting a new OFFICE be established for Sustainable Transportation, rather we would like to see a director of Sustainable Transportation appointed.

Regarding the specification of revised targets.  Our committee had extended discussions on this topic and our position is stated in the report as follows;

"Our committee recognizes that the 2015 goal of reducing carbon emissions by 30 percent relative to the 2008 baseline is unrealistic. Similar concerns can also be raised regarding the more distal targets.  It is the position of our committee that insufficient information is available to provide adjusted transportation emission targets at this point in time. Until such time as substantive decisions have been made regarding strategies to reduce carbon emissions and/or to allow the purchase of carbon offsets, it will be difficult to develop more specific data-based targets for transportation emissions."

We understand that you would have preferred to have new and explicit targets set for intervening years between 2015 and 2050 but it is the position of our committee that there is insufficient data to develop such predictions.  If you or other committees want to take up this task, we would not object.

Thank you for your help on this important and exciting project.

On behalf of the entire committee,

Sincerely

Wojtek

The first draft of the SWAT iCAP revisions contains all the information that has been put into writing so far. Please see if you agree with the organization, content, and language of this document, though the latter has underwent very few changes. As far as content goes, I attempted to make the depth of information consistent throughout.

I welcome any comments and additions; please share them by highlighting the target text and clicking insert>comment. This is just the easiest way to ensure that your contributions are easily tracked and accounted for.  - Amy Liu

Dear all,

Adding to Kishore's, attached are the text contributions (word conversion and pdf) for storm water, organized re heirarchy of Goals, Objectives, and Strategies set out in the 'Sustainable Transportation example template'. I hope these meet our team's writing objectives in content, quality, and tone. 

Amy, please let me know if you have any issues/questions integrating them with the main body of text. Unfortunately, and I extend very sincere apologies - but I am required to attend thesis reviews tomorrow, and the student for whom I chair a committee presents exactly at noon!

I will look forward to seeing/hearing or reading what comes of tomorrow's meeting. And will look forward to the iCAP forum.

Thank you,

Mary Pat

Good morning, all.

An issue that came up in my mind that I did not want to bring up yesterday for fears it would derail conversation/take up too much time: I think it is critical that the iCAP and its policies apply to the Auxiliaries on campus – Housing, Intercollegiate Athletics, Recreation, etc. If you think about the State Farm Center and Memorial Hall, and all of the housing and dining halls, they are a *significant* generator/handler of purchases and waste. Does/will the iCAP and its policies apply to them.

And I think it is great that someone else (Morgan) suggested that our contracts with vendors include items that we want them to address in their bids and work with campus: recycling, use of sustainable/recyclable materials, reporting requirements, etc.

Great conversation yesterday!

Until next time,

Marcus

Hi all,

Sorry for the lateness, but here's just a VERY rough draft outline that we can maybe use for our iCAP recommendations. I'm sure I'm missing lots of points, but I thought we could at least work off of it during our meeting.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YnC5b12vAL02XMCbHWLrIVB-u54CbKHdz_MvxMiJtKQ/edit?usp=sharing

Alex He