carbon reduction roadmap

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CLIENT:  University of Chicago               DATE:  2015 - Ongoing             LOCATION:  Chicago, IL

PROJECT SCOPE:  Strategic academic and research initiative, leading to a series of high-impact carbon footprint reduction projects.  MIST conceived of and co-leads initiative. 

DESCRIPTION:  The Campus as a Laboratory (CaaL) Initiative is based on the idea that, to truly be at the forefront, not only must UChicago work to understand the world’s current natural resource use and potential trajectories; it must also focus on understanding and reducing the resource use of its own campuses. Using the campus as a test bed, students, faculty and staff combine to bring the collective brainpower of the University to bear on researching, creating and implementing facility retrofit projects and building operations improvements that lower UChicago's carbon footprint.  

SERVICES PERFORMED:  Strategic Planning, Facilitation, Advising, Education, Project Management, Communications

PARTNERS: Computation Institute, UChicago Departments: Office of the Provost, Facilities Services, Environmental Studies, Student Government, Energy Policy Institute, Urban Labs

RESULTS:  To date:

  • Correlated UChicago internal structure and team dynamics against sustainability results to assess effectiveness
  • Created inter-disciplinary University sustainability leadership group and re-worked governance structure
  • 4 carbon reduction projects addressing energy, food, waste and behavior
  • An open-source database of campus energy use from 2013-present
  • Creating a CaaL Internship Program to allow for deeper investigations of CaaL related research

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