On June 13th, New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced that nine universities have accepted his challenge to cut the city’s total greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2030 and promised to have their individual campuses reduce emissions by 30% in ten years. Each of the universities, known as the 2030 Challenge Partners, will create an inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions along with a plan for how they plan to achieve these reductions. The first nine 2030 Challenge Partners are Barnard, Columbia, Cooper Union, CUNY (23 campuses), Fordham, New York University, Pratt, St. John’s University, and The New School.
“I want to applaud these universities for accepting our challenge. Universities are really the right group to lead the charge on climate change,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “They are in the business of shaping the leaders of tomorrow – which means they have a huge stake in the future. These schools own a significant number of buildings throughout the five boroughs. Together, NYU, Columbia, and CUNY alone occupy about 38 million square feet of space – the equivalent of 43 Yankee stadiums, they are helping to make a sizable dent in the City’s overall emissions.”
The City will help facilitate communication between the challenge partners to share best practices and search for information needed to achieve targets efficiently. As almost 80% of the City’s overall emissions stem from energy use in buildings, 18% from governmental and institutional buildings, these universities are leading the way to a significant decrease the City’s overall emissions. The Mayor’s Office committed more than $80 million in the 2008 fiscal year executive budget for a program to increase building efficiency that will include retro-commissioning of buildings, energy audits, an assessment of operations and maintenance practices.
