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[PDF Download of Speech]
Remarks by University of Maryland President C. D. Mote, Jr.
Fourth Smart & Sustainable Campus Conference
Monday, April 6, 2009 8-8:30 AM
Inn and Conference Center at UMUC
Thank you to the Environmental Protection Agency for partnering with us on this conference. The EPA is a long term partner of a number of programs on campus. I believe that Matthew Dalbey is here from the EPA�s Smart Growth program �he is a senior policy analyst in the Agency�s Development, Community, and Environment Division. Welcome to you, Dr. Dalbey.
I would also like to welcome Christine Ervin, the first President and CEO of the US Green Building Council, and former Assistant Secretary of Energy under President Clinton. She has a wealth of experience on topics related to sustainability and will be our keynote speaker today.
Welcome to all of our guests. If this is your first visit to the University of Maryland, I hope you will take the chance to look around. I am very pleased that there is so much interest in this conference, our fourth time hosting it on our campus. So far we have people registered from 95 campuses, 43 businesses and 33 states. I would like to talk to you about how I view the role of universities as leaders in the sustainability movement. Then I will give you a brief look at how Maryland�s commitment to sustainability influences our operations, academics and research.
First, on the topic of leadership; I probably do not have to tell you how much of a role universities play in leading society towards the future. The most obvious way is that we influence students who will ultimately make policy decisions and direct corporations. So, education and programming around sustainability are planting important seeds for the future. We also influence people who come in contact with the University. They may come to an athletic event here, or they may have a child studying here, or they hear a story on the news about the campus. There is much indirect impact from universities. That is why we need to be out in front on this issue. For just that reason, in 2007 I signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, to pave the way for solutions to climate change issues. Over 600 college and university presidents have signed on. Working together we can have a much larger presence on this issue than we can in isolation.
As a campus, the University of Maryland has tried to lead in several ways. The University of Maryland has written sustainability into its 10-year Strategic Plan that was finalized just last year. Getting campus consensus on this was important because we have a lot of diverse stakeholders who need to be pulling in the same direction on this. The University of Maryland has committed itself to greening its campus and to becoming �widely recognized as a national model for a Green University.� The University has also set up an Office of Sustainability to coordinate all of our activities. A lot of the nuts and bolts of our campus changes are being hammered out by our Climate Action Plan Workgroup. This group consists of 55 people representing faculty, students and staff from over 40 units. They are developing our Climate Action Plan, which is currently in draft form and is being reviewed by the Faculty Senate. It will be on line for comments from the larger campus community this afternoon.
The campus has also completed its first greenhouse gas inventory which identified precisely where we are creating the most greenhouse gases. Our second one is currently in progress through our Center for Integrative Environmental Research. We have also committed to Green Construction: all of our new buildings will be LEED Silver rated, such as our new Knight Hall that will house our College of Journalism. And on the topic of construction, our East Campus project �a $900 M project-- is a �smart growth� redevelopment project that will create a new town center. Part of �smart growth� is allowing people to live close to where they work, thus cutting down on emissions from long commutes. The site is also close to public transportation.
Operationally the University of Maryland has done a number of things just this year that are reducing our carbon footprint. Just last week the Maryland Board of Public Works approved a $20 million contract to upgrade electrical, mechanical and plumbing equipment to more efficient models. This investment in eco-friendly technology will save nearly $30 million in energy costs over the next 15 years. It will also eliminate over fifty thousand tons of carbon emissions over that same period. Last year we conducted energy audits of our buildings to see how we could best reduce energy consumption. We have elected to use energy performance contracts, which do not require up front capital. The companies are repaid through the savings in utility bills over the term of the contract. Using these contracts should create about $ 1.7 million dollars of savings each year. (That is about the same as planting more than 20,000 trees each year).
We are purchasing hybrid buses for our shuttle bus fleet, and conducting a pilot project that allows local residents to ride our Shuttle buses for free. More good news this year is that our campus was officially designated as an arboretum and botanical garden with 6,600 trees and more than 50 species. This status evolved from a long-term collaboration between Facilities Management and the Department of Plant Sciences and Landscape Architecture. It is an excellent example of academic and operational units collaborating on sustainability.
Speaking of academics, students are really embracing sustainability and clamoring for more focus on it. As a result, new programs spring up each year. This year a new Department of Environmental Science and Technology was established and a new Master�s of Engineering in Sustainable Energy Engineering was developed. It is the first in the nation. A new Master�s in Real Estate Development with a greater focus on sustainable development came out of our School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation this past year. These add to several existing majors that focus on the environment: an Environmental Science and Technology major which focuses on technological solutions to environmental problems, and our Environmental Science and Policy major that focuses on regulatory solutions. Our relatively new EcoHouse, a living-learning community, doubled its size this year over last �a sign of how much student interest there is. Faculty from a variety of fields are also working to educate themselves about the environment. The Chesapeake Project, which begins this May, is a two-day workshop designed to encourage faculty members to integrate sustainability across the academic disciplines.
The University of Maryland has a number of research centers dedicated to research on the environment and climate change. We are involved in collaborations at the state, national and global levels. For example, Our Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER) has been studying the economic impacts of Maryland participating in the 10- state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. CIER is helping to calculate economic impacts of climate change on a dozen different states, and serving the Maryland Governor�s Climate Change Commission. Partnering with federal and state agencies has been very productive for the University of Maryland. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began construction of its nascent National Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in the M Square Research Park. NOAA was drawn to the University of Maryland in part because of other successful collaborations with our faculty. Our Earth System Science and Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) is partnering nationally and internationally on a number of projects. With its NASA and NOAA partners it is developing models to better predict the location, timeframe and severity of climate change. The director of ESSIC, Tony Busalacchi, is also the Chair of the Joint Scientific Committee of World Climate Research Programme. The Committee is holding their 30th meeting here at the University of Maryland this week.
Finally, I would like to give you an example of laboratory research that has produced a breakthrough in biofuels production. Based on University of Maryland faculty research, a new company, Zymetis has patented a process that can convert large volumes of all kinds of plant products and paper trash, into ethanol and other biofuel. Using bacteria from the Chesapeake Bay, it could potentially lead to the production of 75 billion gallons a year of carbon-neutral ethanol. Zymetis was the winner of the 2008 Greater Washington Board of Trade�s Green Business Award in Innovation and was granted $50,000 from Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund for its further development.
I do not have time to tell you about all of the environmental programs and initiatives that we have on campus. This was just a snap shot, but I hope you can see that we are striving to be leaders in this field. On the campus our Strategic Plan�s focus on sustainability shows how highly we prioritize our responsibility to create a sustainable future. My signature on the President�s Climate Commitment allows us to work with other universities on this goal, and keep us accountable to high standards. Our international partnerships allow us to tackle this issue at the broadest levels.
I think that we would all agree that sustainability needs a multi-pronged approach. Here at the University of Maryland we are working from several different angles: academics, research, and operations. I have given just a few examples of this today. Equally important, the University of Maryland is actively participating in local, national and global dialogue about the directions that sustainability needs to take. The questions that evolve from these dialogues are the most important tools in guiding us into a sustainable future. I am very pleased to see so many people committed to these same goals. Thank you for joining us today.
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