University Aims for Carbon Neutrality and Decarbonization in New Climate Action Plan

The Office of Environmental Sustainability, in collaboration with several university departments and student organizations including Honors Student Government, is currently developing Loyola’s 2025-2035 Climate Action Plan, referred to as CAP 2.0. 

Second-year environmental policy major Andrew Conover, a student intern working with the Office of Sustainability, presented information about the objectives of CAP 2.0 to members of the Honors Student Government Nov. 21 in Francis Hall.

The 2015-2025 Climate Action Plan — CAP 1.0 — guided the university to achieving 100% carbon neutrality through energy-efficient building design, the installation of two geothermal energy systems and a power purchase agreement with the Double Black Diamond solar farm, The Phoenix previously reported. 

Founding Dean of the School of Environmental Sustainability Nancy Tuchman said CAP 1.0 eliminated 85% of the university’s carbon emissions. The remaining 15% come from natural gas burned to power building furnaces. 

The university is 100% carbon-neutral because it employs a company called Tradewater to collect and destroy refrigerant gasses in car radiators and other appliances.

These refrigerant gasses contribute tens of thousands times more to global warming than carbon dioxide when they leak into Earth’s atmosphere, according to Director of Sustainability Aaron Durnbaugh.

Tradewater purchases and incinerates refrigerants from other countries — including Chile, Thailand and Saudi Arabia — and sells their services in the form of certificates, called carbon credits, which Loyola purchases to offset remaining natural gas emissions.

Loyola’s contract with Tradewater expires in three years, according to Conover. In light of this, Conover and Tuchman said a major goal of CAP 2.0 is decarbonization — replacing natural gas-powered furnaces with more efficient air-source and water-source heat pumps powered by electricity.

“If we can move all of our energy requirements to electricity, and then get that electricity from the Double Black Diamond, then we’re completely decarbonized because we’re not using any fossil fuels to run our operations,” Tuchman said. “That’s a super ambitious but very exciting goal for the university, and everybody’s pretty excited about having that be our next north star after reaching carbon neutrality.”

Tuchman, Conover and Durnbaugh said the other major goal of CAP 2.0 is the reduction of Scope 3 carbon emissions — indirect emissions outside of the university’s control, such as airline emissions from study abroad, commuter student travel, automobile emissions and purchased goods including groceries. 

The preliminary planning of CAP 2.0 began last summer when Durnbaugh and other faculty in the Office of Sustainability discussed and researched possible decarbonization and Scope 3 reduction efforts with the Facilities, Purchasing and Investment departments. 

The results of these investigations are summarized in a series of reports on the Sustainability Committee’s website. 

One of the reports describes “embodied carbon” — emissions from the manufacturing of concrete, steel and wood used in construction — as another type of Scope 3 carbon emissions.  

In his presentation to the Honors Student Government, Conover said an effective strategy to reduce embodied carbon emissions by up to 50-80% is “adaptive reuse” — reusing existing parts of a building to renovate and repurpose its interior instead of burning of fossil fuels to replace the building’s exterior. 

As the school year began, the Office of Sustainability’s focus shifted to gathering opinions from students and other stakeholders about which goals CAP 2.0 should prioritize. 

The Office of Sustainability has two teams of student interns — the materials team, which brainstorms measures to improve recycling and composting on campus, and the student engagement team, according to Conover.

Conover, a member of the student engagement team, said he and other interns visited the organization fair held in Gentile Arena during Welcome Week. There, the interns garnered interest from student organizations to participate in discussion sessions pertaining to CAP 2.0. 

“The students being as active here as they are, I really don’t see any way that we could be disappointed,” Conover said. “So it’s really exciting. I just push people to actually utilize the resources they have at their disposal for the development of the plan.”

One such resource is a QR code to a CAP 2.0 survey posted on flyers in numerous campus buildings. Conover and Durnbaugh strongly encourage all students and stakeholders to fill out the survey because it provides the Office of Sustainability with valuable community opinions on the decarbonization and Scope 3 improvements Loyola should make.

“Based on the feedback we get from the survey and these focus groups that Andrew has been leading and different staff and faculty groups, we’re hoping that’s going to turn into the meat and potatoes of the next Climate Action Plan,” Durnbaugh said.

Conover said students can also write feedback and opinions on sticky notes and place them on a board in the hallway of the School of Environmental Sustainability.

Once the student feedback phase is complete, Conover said he’ll analyze the survey data and recommend actions based on the survey participants’ responses. Durnbaugh said these proposed actions will be sent to the Sustainability Committee for review and revision. The building decarbonization plans must be approved by a Facilities Committee on the Board of Trustees. 

After the plan is approved, Durnbaugh said he hopes a draft of CAP 2.0 will become publicly available by the middle of spring semester. 

“We could get feedback in the late spring semester and make those revisions and approve it in the summer and have it ready for next year,” Durnbaugh said. “That would be my ideal timeline, but I can’t say I’m 100% confident we’ll meet that timeline.”

However, Durnbaugh said a delay in the release of CAP 2.0 would allow more time for additional rounds of student feedback aggregation and for reflection on how to build on the university’s past advancements in sustainability.

“We’re thinking into the future and what we should focus on for the next 10 years and how do we get Loyola up to speed on things like Scope 3, like deep decarbonization, like how Loyola’s values are reflected in the Climate Action Plan,” Durnbaugh said. “So it’s kind of challenging because you’re looking backwards and forwards at the same time, but it’s important and it’s fun, and I’m pretty excited about what comes next.”