Table of Contents

1. Clinton Climate Initiative and ACUPCC Partner on Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program
2. Creation Care in Higher Education
3. Choosing the Right Renewable Technology for Your Campus
4. Villanova University: A Curricular Commitment to Sustainability

Clinton Climate Initiative and ACUPCC Partner on Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program

The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and the ACUPCC have partnered to support signatories in reducing the energy use of campus buildings by executing large-scale building retrofit projects. CCI and ACUPCC have created and published an energy services performance contract (EPC) toolkit for higher education that helps signatories understand and prepare for large-scale building retrofit projects. For schools that have made the decision to take action and have internal capacity to support a project, CCI can provide pro bono support in planning, designing and implementing an energy efficient building retrofit project. Several signatory schools have already begun to implement projects under this partnership. Lee College, a public community college in Baytown, Texas, is currently working with CCI on upgrading its entire 35 building campus using a best practices EPC method. When completed at the beginning of 2010, this project will reduce the college's annual energy costs by 32% and will reduce CO2 emissions by 4,434 tons per year... Read more.

Creation Care in Higher Education

It was only a few years ago when my wife, Nancy, and I embarked on a life-altering call to help lead the Christian creation care movement and bring our lifestyle in line with our values, cutting our fossil fuel use by two-thirds and electricity use by nine-tenths. Little did we know that the work ahead would also lead us to dozens of college campuses and hundreds of church and faith communities. When we began our journey, I wrote a book called Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action (Chelsea Green/Zondervan). Drawing from my background in medicine, the book gained much more interest than we would ever have dreamed. We then formed a nonprofit, Blessed Earth, which offers practical resources for those hoping to downscale their lifestyles and be more active in stewarding the earth. One campus that we collaborated with is Houghton College, a faith-based liberal arts institution in upstate New York which invited me to be their first visiting scholar in creation care for the 2008-2009 academic year... Read more.

Choosing the Right Renewable Technology for Your Campus

In today's era of energy uncertainty, "green" is becoming the school color of many colleges and universities. Forward-thinking schools, such as the 650 signatory members of the ACUPCC, have made public resolutions to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions on campus, including potentially purchasing or producing at least 15 percent of their electricity from renewable resources. However, finding the right green technology to cut emissions and help ease economic strains can be extremely difficult, especially when it comes to renewable energy. The Honeywell Renewable Energy Scorecard, a first-of-its-kind selection tool that helps pinpoint the technology with the most significant environmental and economic drivers, looks at six proven renewable technologies, such as wind, solar, biomass and geothermal. And it provides a simple payback for each, giving organizations a financial forecast derived from calculating tax implications, rebates, subsidies and other incentives. The Scorecard confirmed that solar was a good fit for Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, which recently partnered with Honeywell on a power purchase agreement that is expected to save the school at least $200,000 in energy costs over the next 20 years... Read more.

Villanova University: A Curricular Commitment to Sustainability

Villanova launched an innovative Year of Sustainability in 2008-09 that involved the entire campus community--students, faculty, staff, and alumni alike. Through curricular development, along with research and service initiatives, the year highlighted our crucial and shared responsibility to care for the environment. The year was led by an interdisciplinary executive committee of faculty members in collaboration with the Presidents' Climate Commitment Core Team, and culminated in the International SustainAbility Conference featuring Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. "Our intention was that the year would help to bring a new era of environmental responsibility to our campus," said Dr. Francis Galgano of the Year of Sustainability Executive Committee. "Our hope was to strengthen the foundation of the Villanova Commitment to Sustainability for generations to come." Read more.