A goal for the University of Illinois’ campus, as set forth by the 2010 Illinois Climate Action Plan, is to reduce directly related agricultural emissions by 50 percent by 2020. In order to complete this goal, the campus must shift to more sustainable agricultural and animal production practices. Areas that need improvement include reductions in food waste and the energy required for food processing, preparation, and transportation.
Illinois Path is a vision to transform the Military Axis from its current use into a landscape that incorporates prairie, savanna, a wet prairie swale, and woodland. With implementation of the Illinois Path, the University has an opportunity to explicitly link the prairie ecosystem and the richness of its soils to the early agricultural legacy of this Land-Grant University represented by the Mumford House and the Morrow Plots.
The FLB basement roof is a plaza at ground level. It was built to accommodate greenery on the roof and did so from 2012 to 2014. The planters were filled with porous rock for ease of maintenance. The area still helps with rainwater runoff, however, plants could be added to the planters again to provide more benefits around the ground level of the building.
This project will provide a study to investigate the feasibility of installing an Anaerobic Methane Digester in the area of the University’s South Farms to capture renewable energy from beef, sheep and/or dairy cow waste. The study will assess the possibility of an on-site digester at one site, with one digester system of animal waste.
The goal of the ECE (Electrical and Computer Engineering Building project is to achieve Platinum LEED standards and be net zero for outside energy consumption. To meet that goal, engineers have proposed the use of solar panels atop the ECE building to offset the building’s energy consumption. Complexities of building design have resulted in the building being unable to support a sufficient number of solar arrays to generate the energy required to offset the building’s energy consumption.
In order to connect commuters with other commuters traveling from the same origin to campus, or from campus to the same destination, the University should provide a ride-matching program. Before this internet, there was a car-pool board on a wall in the Illini Union. Now, there are simple electronic tools for finding ride sharing partners. However, there is a need to be careful about who you select as a ride sharing contact. There are numerous programs that utilize social media to help review potential ridesharing partners before contacting them to share a ride. The campus needs to ide
Ride-sharing for business trips is a common solution for limited travel budgets. There is a natural implementation of ride-sharing when there are multiple staff traveling to the same destination at the same time. However, the University needs to encourage ride-sharing for employees from different origin locations and it needs to offer a solution for finding the rides available for car pooling.
Illinois Terminal (45 E. University Ave., Champaign) provides a central transfer point for the local MTD bus service, intercity buses, and Amtrak train service.
Greyhound, Burlington Trailways, Lex Express, Illini Express, and Megabus provide bus service to other cities from the Terminal.
Ride sharing is a form of transportation that uses a motor vehicle with more than one single occupant. Many transportation emissions are due to the high frequency of Single-Occupancy-Vehicle (SOV) trips. By sharing a ride with even one more person, via carpool or vanpool, the emissions from your trips are cut in half (one vehicle going 15 miles, compared with two vehicles going 15 miles each). This system is very cost effective, but it is less convenient to the typical campus commuter than driving a personal SOV. Therefore, campus should encourage ride sharing.
The University is exploring options to provide indoor storage for bicycles, both for regular daily use by cyclists, and for long-term storage options for students leaving on break. Currently University policies restrict campus buildings from allowing bicycles indoors, so these efforts will require policy changes as well as physical changes to create a safe and protected space indoors for bicycles.
