The Indiana Daily Student will aim to issue yearly updates on IU’s Climate Action Plan until its cessation. For more information on the plan itself, read the IDS’ breakdown.
A year after IU passed its climate action plan, the university is seeing a gradual liftoff of the proposal’s ambitions. Both administrators and activists would like faster progress on the path toward carbon neutrality by 2040, but administrators say they’re working with what they’ve got.
Jessica Davis, IU’s chief sustainability officer, said the plan’s successes are coming from the administrative realm. They were able to hire most of the positions they needed to fill — leadership roles and additional staff. They’re filling each campus’s sustainability committee, a key goal of the plan’s guide for implementation.
“The Climate Action Plan recommended the strategies,” Davis said. “But then actually moving from the recommendation to the implementation, there's quite a bit of research that needs to be done about what's the best way for IU to do that.”
This is where some student activists say IU is falling short. Soha Vora, president of Students for a New Green World, said she’s seen the university pass up on its in-house expertise on climate policy and research. Vora said she’d also like to see IU making more progress than it is — “especially because in the plan they didn't really give themselves any solid deadlines,” she said.
But Davis said IU is making steady progress. Parts of the plan are already springing into action. Among the most visible changes was the thermostat settings in campus buildings and dorms, implemented last year. It wasn’t a huge change, but helped promote energy efficiency throughout campus buildings. Those, in most cases, are now set to:
- 76 degrees in campus buildings during warmer weather
- 70 degrees in campus buildings during colder weather
- 74-78 degrees in student housing during warmer weather
- 68-72 degrees in student housing during colder weather
In the first year of the plan, Davis said, they’ve been working on securing grants from the Inflation Reduction Act — they’ve requested more than $100 million thus far, and are still waiting on whether they’re getting the funding. She said that since this funding isn’t guaranteed to keep coming in the future, it’s important they focus on it now. Grants they've applied for include:
- More than $20 million for solar power
- More than $10 million for vehicle electrification
- More than $70 million for heat recovery
On the university’s goal for carbon neutrality by 2040, it’ll need to rely on its current utility providers to decarbonize, too. Davis said they’ve met with the two largest energy providers to IU’s campuses — Duke Energy and AES Indiana.
But Vora said this aspect needs more creative solutions. IU is locked into its energy sources, she said, but by focusing on green energy and having contingency plans if the providers don’t decarbonize, it’ll be more likely to reach their 2040 goal.
As part of the plan, IU is also working to secure philanthropic funding. That’s proved difficult so far, for two reasons. The first is that the university still needs more research on specific projects, they won’t be able to just get generalized money for the plan. The other, a problem with some projects themselves, is that things like a new central heating plant “aren’t sexy,” Davis said.
“Because we're still in the research phase, we have some projects that we have already gone to the state or applied for grant funding,” she said. “But we have to develop specific projects that we know people who are willing to donate are interested in.”
Funding from the university itself also can make the implementation process seem slow, Davis said. Any spending more than $2 million has to go through the state of Indiana first for review and approval. That process can take a year to go through, and the state can strike down proposals at will.
“I understand the frustration of wanting to see something now,” Davis said. “But we also can't skip these processes. We have to follow them, and we know we're not the only university in that place as well.”
Vora, SNGW’s president, said that they’d still like more open dialogue with the university. She’d like to see further outreach, especially with IU’s faculty with expertise that could help the plan, in the years ahead.
To track the Climate Action Plan’s progress, check out IU’s progress website.
