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See also: UBC Okanagan page

According to the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, [1], the University of British Columbia (UBC) [2] is "a global centre of research and learning with state-of-the-art facilities on campuses in Point Grey and downtown Vancouver, as well as the new UBC Okanagan in Kelowna. Students pursue learning and research opportunities in 12 faculties: agricultural sciences, applied science, arts, business, dentistry, education, forestry, graduate studies, law, medicine, pharmaceutical sciences and science." UBC is the third largest university in Canada.

UBC is a world leader among universities for sustainability research and innovation. They have met Canada's Kyoto Accord target five years early [3] and are now "aggressively advancing activities" associated with the government of British Columbia’s legislated Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008, pg. 4^[1]).

Please add to this "Place" page as information becomes available, so that in sharing information we can learn from each other and strengthen our effectiveness in carbon-neutral and beyond carbon-neutral planning.

Contents 1 External Climate Change Commitments 2 Beyond Carbon Neutral Planning Contacts 3 Carbon Neutral and Beyond-Carbon Neutral Planning Initiatives 3.1 Policy 3.2 Institutional Structure 3.3 GHG Inventory 3.4 Buildings 3.5 Energy 3.6 Transportation 3.7 Food 3.8 Waste 3.9 Purchasing 3.10 Investments 3.11 Budgeting 3.12 Offsets 3.13 Education and Research 3.14 Civic and Community Engagement 3.15 Other

External Climate Change Commitments

• University and College Presidents' Climate Change Statement of Action for Canada.
• BC Hydro Power Smart Leaders
• Talloires Declaration
• CSA GHG Registry (Gold winner)

Beyond Carbon Neutral Planning Contacts

• UBC Climate Action Partnership - This collaborative, student-led sustainability network brings together student groups including the Alma Mater Society, the Graduate Student Society, the UBC Okanagan Student Union and Common Energy. [4]
• Common Energy UBC
• UBC Alma Mater Society
• UBC Sustainability Office (whose administrative expenditures are entirely funded by money saved from its water and energy-saving programs^[2])

Carbon Neutral and Beyond-Carbon Neutral Planning Initiatives

Policy

• UBC names sustainability in both its vision and its mission [5].
• UBC is developing a Climate Action Plan in order to meet and go beyond the BC government's requirement of carbon-neutrality by 2010.
• Their Sustainability policy, passed in 1997, was the first of its kind in Canada ^[3], and commits UBC to "ensure integration of ecological, economic and social considerations at all levels of strategic planning and operations within the University" ^[4].

Institutional Structure

UBC "undertook a participatory planning process to move UBC beyond climate neutral. Students, staff, faculty and administrators at the university are collaborating to integrate teaching, learning, research and community partnerships into UBC's GHG emission reduction plan" (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008, p. 13^[1]).

• A Climate Technical Advisory Team will provide technical oversight and coordination on the preparation of a comprehensive plan to move the university in GHG emission reductions
• A Climate action team will be formed within the UBC Sustainability Office
• The UBC Sustainability Office will be responsible for compiling an annual GHG inventory report.
• UBC's award-winning Sustainability Coordinator Program connects the Sustainability Office with UBC's 300 departments through the work of Sustainability Coordinators who volunteer two to four hours per month during their work time to educate, inspire, and support environmentally-friendly choices.

GHG Inventory

Begun in 2006, a GHG Inventory was completed for Point Grey and Okanagan campuses. They adopted the GHG Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (CARS) and inventoried those GHG emissions over which they had financial and operational control (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008 p. 10^[1]). They included scope 1 and 2 emissions, and as many scope 3 emissions as feasible, including embodied energy, wastes, business air travel and commuter travel. (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008^[1]).

Buildings

• UBC has long been a leader in campus green buildings. Check out the video on UBC's many green buildings, including the C. K. Choi building, the Liu Centre for Global Studies, and the Life Sciences Building. Also see http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/greenbuilding.html for more information on UBC's green buildings.
• The UBC Project Renew initiative "renovates rather than demolishes aging infrastructure, saved nearly $89 million in construction costs as compared to new construction, and prevented 6,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from being released in the atmosphere" (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008, pg. 3^[1]).
• A new project will demonstrate Passivhaus standards, (much more stringent than LEED standards), that reduces energy use and GHG emissions by 90% and uses on-site renewable energy technologies ^[1].

Energy

• The $34 million UBC ECOTrek program, an energy and water infrastructure upgrade project, resulting in emission reductions of approximately 8,000 tonnes a year. (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008 (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008 ^[1]). ECOTrek II will be launching soon.
• Integrated Grid Study (net-zero campus) is a 10 year strategy to replace the aging energy (electricity and heating/cooling) and water distribution infrastructure "with the target of creating a sustainable integrated clean energy and water micro-grid that will generate and distribute energy and collect, treat and recycle water such that UBC becomes the first net-zero energy and water campus" (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008^[1]).

Transportation

The TREK Program Centre is UBC's Transportation Demand Management Department, which works to improve sustainable transportation choices, including transit, carpooling, walking and cycling. The Transportation Choices webpage offers information on many options, including:

• U-Pass (which has resulted in emission reductions of 16,000 tonnes a year) (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008^[1]).
• Cycling - UBC provides on-campus resources like a fleet of campus bikes, repair equipment, end of trip facilities like showers and secure lockers
• Carpooling and vehicle rentals
• Emergency rides home for those who do not travel by single-occupancy vehicles

See UBC's Transportation Research and Report page for more detailed information.

Food

UBC Food Services have many food sustainability initiatives, including:

• Purchasing produce from the UBC farm
• Preferential procurement of local food and low-impact packaging products (eg: all eggs are now from local, free range hens, and all apples will soon be BC-grown and organic)
• Seafood purchasing has switched from species being unsustainably harvested to non-endangered species caught using sustainable fishing practices, according to Ocean Wise standards.

Waste

UBC Waste Management "provides both waste management services and waste reduction education to the UBC campus community" through initiatives such as:

• Recycling Program
• Composting Program
• E-Waste Recycling
• Reuse of surplus equipment

Waste oil from food services are also collected and made into biodiesel [6].

Purchasing

As part of their commitment to sustainability, UBC’s Supply Management Group has recently switched to 30% post-consumer-waste (PCW) paper, and successfully negotiated the same price that was previously paid for paper containing no recycled content (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008, p. 13^[1]).

Investments

Budgeting

Offsets

Education and Research

• UBC is a leader in sustainability research in Canada. See UBC SO's research page for a listing of climate change-related research centres and researchers. As one example,
  • • The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) "will be a world-leading demonstration and research project on climate change mitigation and adaptation. The building will be carbon neutral, will demonstrate a wide array of sustainability features, will be a living laboratory for research into the behavioural and policy dimensions of strong emissions reduction, and will pioneer partnerships with the private, public and NGO sectors" (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008, pg. 18^[1]).
• UBC is one of the participating institutions in the Pacific institute for Climate Solutions

Civic and Community Engagement

• UBC is committed "to demonstrating excellence in sustainability in community partnerships" and wishes "to establish alliances with the Province and other recognized leaders to lead the way in the design of climate solutions, and bring about the changes required to make the transition to a zero-carbon future" (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008, pg. 4^[1]).
• The UBC Sustainability Office will offer to present the climate-change work it has done over the past decade to strategic university partners, university associations and municipal partners in the spirit of knowledge exchange and mobilization (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008, pg. 15^[1]).
• UBC offers the Summer Institute in Sustainability, an intensive professional development program targeted to administrators in colleges, universities, municipalities and large companies, where UBC sustainability initiatives are used as demonstration sites and case studies.
• UBC "will create a competition where students, faculty members and members of the wider community are able to submit short strategic proposals to reduce GHG liabilities across the campuses" (Leadership and the Climate Agenda, 2008, pg. 15^[1]).

Other

University Town will be a pedestrian oriented, compact community, designed with Smart Growth principles development which aims to cut down on commutes made to the campus, and support the Greater Vancouver Regional District's Liveable Region Strategic Plan.

References

1. ↑ ^{1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13} UBC Sustainability Office, 2008. Leadership and the Climate Agenda: Discussion Paper. http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/pdfs/ubc_climate.discussion.pdf. Accessed August 2008.
2. ↑ University of British Columbia Sustainability Office, 2006. Annual Report: Progress Towards a Sustainable Campus. http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/pdfs/ar/2006sust_ar.pdf. Accessed August 2008.
3. ↑ Owens, Cameron, and Moore, Janet. 2008. Taking Stock 2008: The current state of sustainability in BC Universities and Colleges. Walking the Talk - BC Working Group and Network on Sustainability Education. http://www.walkingthetalk.bc.ca/files/TakingStock2008_0.pdf. Accessed August 2008
4. ↑ UBC Board of Governors. 1997. Policy No. 5: Sustainable Development. http://www.universitycounsel.ubc.ca/policies/policy5.pdf. Accessed August 2008.