Resiliency planning

Resilience is the ability of a system or community to survive disruption and to anticipate, adapt, and flourish in the face of change. As with the terms “sustainability” and “climate mitigation and adaptation,” “resilience” can encompass many things.

At GreenerU, resiliency is integral to our work to help institutions mitigate climate change. Recognizing that climate change affects everything, our focus is in helping institutions think through their building operations and programming to ensure that the technical aspects of preparedness are firmly wedded to the human experience.

With all of our work, we understand that for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience to be effective within complex systems such as university campuses, people are in the driver’s seat of leading these efforts.

Thus, what we do with institutions is twofold: first, we guide institutions through climate action, sustainability, resilience, and other strategic planning processes in concert with existing and/or emerging strategies to help an institution live into its mission. And second, we offer technical assessments and project management to implement energy-efficiency strategies that help institutions reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.

How we can help

1. Facilitation and assessments — GreenerU supports and facilitates inclusive and engaging processes for institutions’ resilience assessment using Second Nature’s Resilience Commitment guidelines. A resiliency assessment outlines and connects strengths and vulnerabilities with operations and systems within and beyond a campus and helps institutions identify areas for support and possibilities for synergies between operations, administration, and the community.
2. Planning and implementation — GreenerU facilitates planning processes and updates for institutions’ sustainability and climate action plans, building on best-practices to align with and support state, regional, and systems-level resilience and climate mitigation goals and strategies.
3. Scoping audits and energy systems planning — As part of our holistic technical solutions to building efficiency, GreenerU considers resiliency for energy systems and decarbonization. When looking at specific buildings and overall campus systems, aligning baseline data with existing resiliency standards of the institution, and electricity-, backup-, and climate-related resiliency risks factors into overall energy and climate action planning.
4. Energy efficiency implementation — GreenerU specializes in turnkey delivery of building-level energy projects. In a campus setting, these projects must align with campus-level energy infrastructure plans and objectives, including the use of renewables and microgrids. Our projects promote resiliency by reducing the amount of backup power needed, improving energy system efficiency, reducing reliance on grid power, and providing more flexibility in space usage.

It may not seem obvious, but energy efficiency measures are a critical way to prepare for climate crises. Reducing demand means there’s less dependence on backup power or energy storage required to run critical infrastructure systems. In addition, energy efficiency investments:

• Improve the reliability of critical equipment through upgrades and modernization
• Provide better indoor environmental quality and increase the flexibility of space usage
• Reduce the financial risk associated with utility price uncertainty
• Improve controls and institutions’ ability to respond to emergency events

While ultimately reversing the effects of climate change are a more ideal goal, mitigating the effects of climate change is a more realistic short-term solution as we navigate our way through multiple current and future crises.

Related content

• Beyond the pandemic: how resilience planning and energy efficiency can help us mitigate climate change now

Contact us to find out how you can incorporate resiliency planning into your institutional strategies today.