5 Climate Action Plan 2020 Idea Winning Submissions.
Our campus community has great capacity for innovation and creativity. Between August and October 2015 an online public consultation took place where we asked the campus community for their ideas on what actions UBC could take to reduce our GHG emissions from 2007 levels by 67 per cent.
Campus + Community Planning, along with Energy and Water Services, have evaluated all of the idea proposals. Each proposal went through a pre-screening to ensure they were within scope and those, which passed, went through a multi-stakeholder evaluation.
Congratulations to the five winners: Patrick Leung, Simon Donner, Anthony Dean, Susan Xia, and Carolyn Anderson.
Patrick, a UBC alumnus, now works in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems helping with technology issues and building operations. Patrick’s idea: consolidate UBC-owned vehicles into a centrally managed and maintained fleet. This will provide the opportunity to decrease the total number of vehicles on campus (through car-sharing programs), invest in energy-efficient transportation technologies (due to economies of scale), and provide sustainable transportation research and innovation opportunities (particularly in transportation informatics systems).
Simon, an associate professor in the Department of Geography, got his idea after constantly turning down invitations to give talks and attend meeting in other cities because of the energy waste that comes with travelling. Simon’s idea: decrease GHG emissions from university related air travel. UBC would collect baseline data on air travel emissions from business and research-related travel and use this to create a university air travel action plan.
An alum of UBC’s graduating class of 1977 in engineering physics, Anthony is now retired after a career in business management. His idea: replace strobic exhaust fans located in various buildings with simple columnar stacks operating with low-powered fans.
Susan is a first year student pursuing a dual degree; a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance and a Master of Management. Her idea: to hold a student sustainable building design competition that emphasizes energy efficiency as a key component of sustainable building design. The competition would provide an educational opportunity for students to learn about energy efficiency in buildings while also encouraging partnerships between UBC students, faculty and staff.
In her 21st year as a staff person at UBC, Carolyn currently works for the Department of Physical Therapy. Her most pressing climate change issue is apathy. Her idea: form think tanks among building users that include future occupants in the design of new buildings. These groups would provide input on occupant needs during the building design process, resulting in more comfortable environments for students, faculty and staff.
An evaluation committee is assessing all ideas received from climate change researchers and through the four Ideas Workshops. Preferred options emerging from the analysis will be presented to the UBC Community for feedback in March 2016.