Climate action planning: a spectrum of approaches

As anyone working in the sustainability field will confirm, there is no single word or term that garners universal agreement as to the definition of a “climate action plan.”

Fifty-five years ago, at the first Earth Day, the rallying cries were to address the degradation of the air, earth, and water. “We are facing an environmental crisis,” activists said.

At the time, pollution was a hot button issue. The 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” raised awareness—and fear—among everyday Americans who came to understand that toxic pesticides were seeping into the groundwater, destroying the ecosystem, and causing the deaths of flora and fauna alike. That led to the first Clean Air Act, which passed in 1963.

In 1970, President Nixon established the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Countless pieces of legislation have been enacted since then, addressing wetlands protections and acid rain and brownfields remediation and much, much more. In the 1980s, we worried about the hole in the ozone layer. In the 1990s, we lost sleep over global warming and deforestation. All of this gradually led to a generalized anxiety over climate change, a rise in average global temperatures, and extreme weather events.

Today, we focus our attention on taking action on climate.

On the human-centric end of the spectrum: sustainability planning

Sustainability planning is probably the oldest form of climate action plan and has traditionally encompassed a human-centric approach.

When GreenerU was founded in 2009, it was still several years before we guided our first strategic planning client in 2016—Columbia University—through a sustainability planning process. The term “sustainability planning” encompassed a range of relevant areas of focus within an academic institution beyond carbon reduction.

In this case, as is frequently the case with academic plans, the plan started with centering sustainability goals and strategies around the institution’s mission of “advancing Columbia’s core educational, research, and outreach missions to demonstrate its leadership around the world” as well as “developing a culture of sustainability.” In other words, reducing energy use, replacing fossil-fuel-fired equipment, and transitioning to renewable energy sources for campus operations was only a fraction of Columbia’s total approach.

Likewise, our work with East Carolina University in developing their sustainability plan in 2017 encompassed a strong set of academic and research goals. While ECU developed emissions reduction goals, a greater focus was placed on taking advantage of opportunities to use the campus as a living laboratory and increasing sustainability literacy among the student body.

Several GreenerU clients developed sustainability-focused plans, including Concord Academy, Mount Holyoke College, The Fenn School, Interlochen Center for the Arts, the University at Albany, and the Concord Free Public Library.

Sustainability with an emissions focus: the climate action plan

Attention to the climate crisis began to come into sharp focus after the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, where there was an international declaration to prevent a global temperature rise of 2ºC (3.6ºF). This led to a greater emphasis on tackling greenhouse gas emissions, which was reflected in institutional climate planning efforts.

While both sustainability and climate action plans may start with an inventory of baseline data—e.g., via AASHE STARS for higher-education institutions or GreenerU’s Climate Assessment Tool for K12 schools—climate action planning may use a greenhouse gas emissions-focused approach guided by The GHG Protocol, for example. Both approaches will include sustainability data, but an emissions-focused approach may be to set goals for Scope 3 emissions reductions in categories such as waste and purchased goods and services.

Creating a climate action plan made sense for UMass Chan Medical School, for example. Without an undergraduate educational component, UMass Chan focused its planning efforts on facilities-related emissions reduction areas such as water and grounds, materials management, transportation, and buildings and energy.

Adding resilience and climate justice to the mix

Increasingly, climate action planning processes and results reflect the widespread recognition that climate change disproportionately impacts populations that hold the least responsibility for its causes. Community organizations are stepping up to include resilience and climate justice goals in their plans.

Portland Community College was an early adopter in the realm of recognizing the importance of inclusivity, equity, diversity, and climate justice throughout their planning process. PCC developed a Climate Action Equity Guide for the planning process, using a Critical Race Theory litmus test called “Take Five.” This guides decision-makers to apply the following lenses to discussions and outcomes:

1. Centrality and intersectionality of race and racism
2. Challenge to dominant ideology
3. Commitment to social justice
4. Centrality of experimental knowledge
5. Interdisciplinary perspective

With a close connection to climate justice, PCC’s resultant climate action plan includes five resilience goals that include developing a campus vulnerability assessment, ensuring that essential campus operations can continue in the wake of extreme weather events, and ensuring that the campus can provide shelter and safety to vulnerable communities.

Similarly, Historic New England’s climate action planning process began with three sustainability pillars confirmed by the organization’s board of directors: climate justice, resilience, and mitigation. For Historic New England’s 38 sites throughout New England, climate resilience is a crucial component as historic properties are threatened by soil erosion, rising sea levels, flooding, extreme heat, wind, and other changing climate conditions.

In the words of Historic New England’s Vice President of Property Care and Climate Action Ben Haavik, the organization’s unique approach embraces “what’s old is new again”—in other words, understanding the wisdom of previous generations in using tried-and-true techniques for building ventilation, stormwater management, and weatherization.

Historic New England also recognizes its properties’ and their owners’ historic roles in racial injustices and applies that lens to present-day climate justice goals and strategies. At the 18th-century Casey Farm in Saunderstown, Rhode Island—a working farm—climate justice goals include increasing rainwater capture to reduce the burden on the town’s freshwater supply; broader outreach to underserved communities to provide education and training on farming practices; and advocacy for easy-access public transit to the site. As with all Historic New England properties, Casey Farm’s buildings are undergoing renovations to improve wheelchair accessibility.

The road to zero emissions: decarbonization planning

Decarbonization planning has emerged in recognition that behavior change programs and individuals’ conservation efforts alone will not result in the kinds of substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that will solve the global climate crisis. With transportation, electricity production, and industry being the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, a whole shift in approach is needed to make a clean energy transition.

Decarbonization is often linked to campus master plans, which are detailed roadmaps of how a campus’s built environment will grow and change over time. These plans can include building retrofits and reuse cases, new construction, demolition, and expansion.

Closely tied to campus master plans are energy master plans, which provide direction on how campus energy needs will be met. Developing decarbonization plans in conjunction with or as a response to campus master plans and energy master plans is helpful to address campus growth without placing an increased burden on the electrical grid or continuing to rely on fossil fuels for heating and domestic hot water needs.

Decarbonization planning can differ from climate action planning in that it involves a much deeper investigation of a campus’s district heating and cooling system and proposing detailed solutions to convert these systems at both the district and building levels to be fossil-fuel free.

Working with Swarthmore College, GreenerU facilitated a stakeholder process in partnership with the engineering firm Introba to develop a decarbonization roadmap that identified key campus values and priorities that informed decision-making. This process ultimately led to recommendations for a series of energy-conservation measures, lifecycle cost assessments, energy storage, and a geothermal-exchange central plant.

Similarly, we worked with a medical school campus alongside Arup to address a different set of complexities associated with running a regional hospital as well as conducting sensitive laboratory research. For this institution, converting to all-electric solutions and operating from the grid was not a viable option—energy demand and grid unreliability were non-starters for a medical campus. Thus, a full spectrum of solutions were explored, including energy-conservation measures, micronuclear power, hydrogen, biofuels, solar, and energy storage.

It’s all sustainability planning

The term “sustainable” can sometimes be a catch-all—it can refer to environmental solutions, yes, but also the economy, work-life balance, long-distance relationships, or the number of hours you need to sleep each night. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals broadly define sustainability in an effort to ensure that justice, planetary health, and humanitarianism are essential components of a vision for an Earth that future generations will inherit.

No matter what you call your planning process, climate action planning on any part of the spectrum is enormously helpful in myriad ways. Stakeholder-engaged processes can result in plans that reflect the values and perspectives of many individuals who will ultimately help to implement a plan. Plans also signal to funders that your organization or institution has done the work to focus its efforts and take action on issues related to climate.

So whether you call it a tomato or a tomato…it’s always best to have a plan.

GreenerU has experience with climate action planning processes across the whole spectrum. We would love to help you with yours.

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