Architects and Administrators Discuss Resistance to Sustainability on Campus

Minneapolis — I led a discussion of sustainability on Monday at the annual meeting of the Society for College and University Planning. The lunchtime group, comprising institutional people and architects (along with consultants), was small, but the discussion was lively and frank. And at times it felt confessional, like a support-group meeting. (For that reason, I’ll keep the names and institutions anonymous here.)

The conversation focused on the economic constraints on some sustainability efforts, the advantages that tight money might bring in helping to make the argument for sustainability, and the role that education can play—education of both students and administrators—in sustainability efforts.

Two officials of public universities, one from the South and one from the Southwest, said they faced big challenges in taking on sustainability efforts in this economy, particularly in meeting their plans for climate neutrality under the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. Like a lot of colleges with tight budgets, their institutions are joining with energy-services companies to get the work done, although one administrator related an interesting story about his college’s attitude about ESCO’s: He had to hire a prominent accounting firm to help make the case to the Board of Trustees, to show that the energy-services contract was actually a good deal. The board was persuaded by the accounting firm’s report—but this official had presented the very same calculations and conclusions, and his argument had been rejected.

He told the accounting firm about the college’s plan to be climate-neutral by 2020. “You like dreaming, don’t you?” someone from the firm replied. His retort: “Don’t tell me that. That’s not your job. Just help me figure out how to do it.”

That led to a discussion of revolving loans and ways to make money from going green. An architect noted that a big chunk of Harvard University’s loan-fund program has gone toward educational programs, and that savings could be realized there. Students, after all, are big users of energy in the choices of what they bring to college; plug loads in dormitories and other buildings have increased sharply in recent years.

The architects noted a need to find ways to measure success. Others in the group bemoaned the lack of energy metering and submetering on campuses. Someone asked if colleges have found successful ways to charge departments for energy use. One mentioned a program at the University of Birmingham, in England, where, he said, departments get a flat amount to pay for their energy for the year and get to keep whatever they don’t spend.

Someone from an elite college said the conversation on sustainability has focused too much on buildings. The real challenge, she said, is getting administrators to think differently about land use and town-gown relationships. For example, she would like to see her university put money into parking garages to reduce the sprawl of the campus. But that’s a hard sell.

The architects, too, were interested in seeing colleges establish town-gown relationships based on sustainability, in particular on infrastructure and other municipal needs, like wastewater treatment. (There are celebrated examples of these relationships, like Oberlin College’s ambitious plan to build a green arts district.)

But one architect complained that attitudes about sustainability among administrators—even at colleges celebrated in the press for their green sensibilities—have a long way to go. He told about working at a prominent Southern institution, where he was asked by administrators to help make the case against putting up a green building. While he succeeded in persuading them that building green was the right thing to do, he said, “there is a lot of resistance.”