Climate-Commitment Group Releases Annual Report, and Results Are Mixed

The American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment has released its 2008 annual report, and while the organization said that the number of participating colleges grew during the year from 467 to 605, it also acknowledged that nearly a quarter of member institutions had already fallen behind in meeting their obligations under the two-year-old commitment. (In the list of member institutions at the end of the report, you can see where your institution stands — or at least where it stood at the end of last year — if it has signed the commitment.)

An institution shown as in good standing had either “submitted all reports due by December 31, 2008, or received approval for an extension,” the report says. Among the prominent institutions listed as not in good standing at the year’s end are Alfred University, Auburn University, Colby College, Gettysburg College, the Maharishi University of Management, the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, North Carolina State University, Sewanee: the University of the South, Sweetbriar College, and the University of Arizona. (Some may have caught up on their obligations since.)

The Chronicle‘s Scott Carlson noted in a March 6 article that many of the climate commitment’s original signatories had failed to turn in first-round greenhouse-gas reports that were, for them, due last September. Dates on which reports required by the commitment are due are related to when each institution signed the commitment. Scott wrote: “Colleges that may have had ambitions for sustainability programs a year or two ago might now be reorienting their priorities in the economic downturn.”

The 2008 report says that more than 30 percent of American college students attend institutions that have signed the commitment. The report also made it clear that some of changes recommended by the commitment are much more popular with institutions than others.

For instance, nearly four-fifths of the colleges that have signed the commitment have agreed to buy “Energy Star” rated appliances, and more than 70 percent agreed to build new campus buildings at least to the equivalent of the silver rating in the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. But fewer than 10 percent agreed to offset all greenhouse-gas emissions generated by air travel paid for by the institution, or to support sustainability proposals at the stockholder meetings of companies in which the institution’s endowment is invested.