The university's Climate Change Task Force is halfway
home. Now comes the hard part.
The task force, convened in January by President
William R. Brody, continues to brainstorm
initiatives and projects — some of which have already
been set in motion — aimed at the reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions derived from university
operations.
President Brody convened the task force to help guide
the development of the university's new
climate change policy that focuses on practical, innovative
and economically viable approaches to
confront this environmental threat, with the long-term
vision of carbon neutrality.
The task force was specifically charged with
developing within one year a comprehensive
strategic plan and creating an interdisciplinary working
group of experts who will focus on innovative
and novel approaches related to climate change. Its
membership includes a number of people from
outside Johns Hopkins.
The task force's leadership recently met to discuss
the group's progress to date. Ben Hobbs,
task force chair and a Schad Professor of Environmental
Management in the Whiting School's
Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering,
said there's been no shortfall of wonderful
ideas, both big and small, but the group realizes that at
some point it will have to begin to narrow down
its list of recommendations.
"Right now we are continuing the process of
identifying opportunities to help us reduce our
carbon footprint," Hobbs said. "But we are being very
selective. What looks good now might not look
good down the road. We also don't want to just reach for
the low-hanging fruit but identify measures
that we can put in place that will have a lasting,
significant impact."
As part of the climate change policy, adopted by
President Brody last July, Johns Hopkins
wants to help lead the way to confront global warming
through the reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions and the development of more-Earth-friendly
technologies. The policy also calls for JHU to
harvest its strengths in science, technology, public health
and public policy to find solutions to climate
change on a global level.
The task force has looked inward to what the
university is contributing to global warming. It's
also looking at what Johns Hopkins can do for the
community, the nation and the world in terms of
being an intellectual leader, a creator of new knowledge
and an educator in the realm of climate
change.
Due to the enormity of its charge, the task force was
broken up into three working groups:
Tactics and Strategies, Community Partnerships, and
Innovation and Research. The working groups
have been meeting monthly.
Tactics and Strategies, chaired by Larry Kilduff,
executive director of the Office of
Facilities
Management, will help develop a broad collection of
technical measures, behavioral incentives and
innovative approaches to reducing carbon emissions on the
JHU campuses.
Over the past three months, the group has collected a
vast amount of data at the building level,
including energy consumption by type (steam, chilled water,
electricity, water); categorized buildings
by type and primary use; recorded current hours of
operation; and compiled lists of energy
conservation measures already taken by each building. The
data will enable engineering and technical
staff to identify those buildings where opportunities exist
to implement more energy-conserving
measures.
The group has already helped push forward two
significant initiatives.
In 2009, the university plans to build a cogeneration
power plant on the Homewood campus to
supply a significant portion of the campus's energy needs.
The proposed plant, which will run on natural
gas, will generate not less than 3.5 megawatts of
electricity — roughly 20 percent of the campus's
current peak requirements. It will save the university $1.5
million annually and, because JHU will
purchase less electricity from regional coal-burning power
plants, will reduce the campus's carbon
footprint.
"Cogeneration" refers to creation of both power and
heat. The plant's turbine drives a
generator that creates electricity; meanwhile, a heat
recovery unit captures the turbine's exhaust to
make steam used to supply hot water and heat to
buildings.
The new plant will be an addition to the existing
campus power house, next to Whitehead Hall.
Johns Hopkins Medicine also recently announced plans
to build a cogeneration plant on the East
Baltimore campus, sometime within the next two years.
"Combined heat and power just makes an awful lot of
sense," Hobbs said. "It increases our
efficiency by turning out electricity, heat and cooling
from the same source."
The Tactics and Strategies working group also called
for the hiring of an engineering firm that
will soon undertake a comprehensive look at the
university's inventory of buildings as part of an effort
to determine JHU's carbon footprint, both current and
projected.
"Previously, we looked into buildings on a sort of ad
hoc basis," Hobbs said. "This firm selected
will offer a consistent methodology and evaluation of our
buildings that, we expect, will offer payoffs
down the road."
The Community Partnerships group will develop and
nurture relationships with state, city and
community organizations to explore ways to enhance shared
goals, transfer knowledge and collaborate
on efforts related to climate change. The group is chaired
by Frederick W. Puddester, senior
associate dean for finance and administration in the
Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
Puddester said that the group is generating a list of
projects and initiatives in which the
university can engage the students and the community. Much
of what his group has examined, he said,
revolves around behavior modification.
"For example, how do we encourage taking your bike to
work or carpooling, or living near your
work? These are some of the things we are looking at," he
said. "The students also have some
wonderful ideas. We want to put in place a process to
review student projects and prioritize them,
perhaps find criteria to determine how quickly a concept
can pay back carbon reductions."
Puddester said that his group might ultimately
recommend a series of relatively small gestures
that, when combined, will make a significant impact. He
mentioned partnering with a local nonprofit to
offer energy efficiency appraisals of homes in the
surrounding community, a "green revolving fund"
that reinvests cost-saving initiatives and making
modifications to on-campus vending machines to
reduce their energy consumption.
"There's ways to do that," he said. "It may not seem
like a significant gesture, but you start
working on these machines and people walk by to see what
you're doing, and they'll go, 'I didn't know
you could do that. You're right. We don't need it to do
that in the middle of the night.' It's about
getting people involved and connected to this overall
effort."
The Innovation and Research group, chaired by Darryn
Waugh, a professor in the Krieger
School's Department of
Earth and Planetary Sciences, will seek to spur
creativity, innovation and new
avenues of scholarship by re-examining various aspects of
climate change from a multidisciplinary
perspective. Hobbs said that this group has looked into
undergraduate and graduate programs in
sustainability and submitted a proposal to the provost's
Framework for the Future Discovery Working
Group. In May, Provost Kristina Johnson put out a call for
initiatives in research, scholarship,
creativity, teaching and practice that have the capacity to
make major breakthroughs at the
boundaries and frontiers of disciplinary knowledge.
The Climate Change Task Force works in consort with
the Johns Hopkins Sustainability
Committee, a 16-member group formed in 2006 to head a
universitywide effort to greatly improve
Johns Hopkins' environmental profile.
During the next several months, the task force will
continue to look into the feasibility of more-
energy-efficient facilities (existing and planned),
alternative fuel use, the addition of climate-related
courses to the curriculum, collaborative efforts with the
community and other schools, and other
proposals.
Hobbs said that the task force is looking for ideas
and input. To make suggestions, leave
comments or ask questions, go to
www.sustainability.jhu.edu/task_force.html.
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