On February 16, CCNet hosted Angela Adams, the Recycling Coordinator at the City of Champaign, to explain the proposed bag ban in the city; Pattsi Petrie, a Champaign County Board Member, to discuss local foods; Mike Monson, the Urbana Chief of Staff, to explain the Electrical Aggregation proposal; and Marya Ryan, from the Urbana Sustainability Advisory Commission to review the City of Urbana’s Climate Action Plan.

Staff facilitated meetings with students and staff about potential letters of support for the City of Champaign Single Use Disposable Paper and Plastic Bags study item.

In an effort to standardize emissions calculations throughout the community and county, staff met with transportation planners from the Regional Planning Commission to share information about calculating transportation emissions.

F&S worked with the College of Business’ Director of Information Management to provide detailed solar data from the Business Instructional Facility to a graduate student in ECE.

A team of MBA students in Madhu Viswanathan’s course worked with the Campus Bike Project to make recommendations about how the Campus Bike Project could become financially self-supporting.

Scholarship of Sustainability 10-part series began.

The Engineering 315, Learning in the Community UI Bikes (UIB) section submitted their project proposal for what the class will be working on this semester.  The UIB class has divided into three groups which will tackle three different bicycle-related projects this semester: 1.) the continuation of the bike sharing market analysis started last semester, including a campus-wide survey and several targeted focus groups; 2) the development of an online, interactive campus bicycle parking map using Google Maps; and 3) testing out various marketing tactics to encourage bike riders to park their bikes legally at designated bike parking, rather than on trees, signs, ramps, or fences.

Abbott Power Plant was granted an IEPA permit to co-fire biomass with coal until June 30, 2013.  F&S intends to do some test burns this spring with wood chips.  Wood chips have a good track record in stoker boilers, and we are fairly confident we can demonstrate a successful trial.  In addition, wood chips appear to be one of the most cost effective sources of biomass available at this time.

There 24 buildings currently on the Energy Dashboard. Information about electrical, heating, and cooling energy use is available on the website, but not every building has all three sources available at this point in the project.

Here are the recommended fix lists from each of the groups.

The Office of Sustainability hosted the first monthly CCNet Sustainability meeting of 2012 on January 19. The meeting had 39 attendees, including faculty, staff, students, local government employees, and members of the community. There was a presentation and discussion led by SEDAC about the organization’s work and national energy trends.  CCNet Meetings will continue throughout 2012, taking place at noon on the third Thursday of each month, at the Natural Resources Building, room 101.

Sustainability employees from campus, Urbana, Champaign and the Regional Planning Commission (RPC) continue to collaborate. In January, we discussed each agency’s respective greenhouse gas inventories. It was decided that Champaign and Urbana will include any University emissions which fall within their respective jurisdictional boundaries in their city-wide reports. For the purposes of local reporting, the University will be considered a separate entity that overlays both cities, similar to any other business entity, rather than a distinct jurisdiction. It was also decided that a separate meeting will be necessary to specifically address transportation-related emissions and how each entity is tracking and reporting on these.

The YMCA/YWCA on Wright Street requested a meeting to discuss their sustainability efforts and how the University may be able to assist. They are working on building improvements and changes to their parking and outdoor space. We gave them suggestions of people they may want to contact for input and advice.

Sustainability staff attended an Illinois Green Business Association (IGBA) networking event and talked with IGBA board members about potential future collaborations.

The City of Champaign Recycling Coordinator requested information about the impacts of plastic and paper bags on campus facilities and the campus waste stream. She also requested letters of support for a bag ban from student environmental groups.

Sustainability staff attend monthly conference calls/webinars of the Governor’s Green Universities and Colleges subcommittee.  In January, there was a presentation at ISTC about weatherization of campus buildings, and the disconnect between LEED certification and weatherization practices.

Funding was approved for several pavement improvements on campus streets.  These improvements will reduce gas consumption and corresponding emissions for vehicle traffic; restripe the bike lanes on a portion of Gregory Drive; extend the bike lanes on Fourth Street south to Kirby Avenue; add pedestrian countdown traffic signals at two signalized intersections; implement traffic calming measures, such as curb bump outs for increased pedestrian safety in key locations; and improve one block of the Illinois Marathon route on First Street, between Peabody Drive and Kirby Avenue.

Staff are participating in weekly conference calls with Zipcar to encourage the use of car sharing and active transportation on campus. A Zipcar winter welcome special offer was shared in the OS newsletter and through the OS twitter account.

The firm that was hired last fall to complete the Compost Feasibility Study, Foth, submitted a draft of their study to the University in early January for comments.  Immediately following, F&S applied for $250,000 from the F-SCRAP Grant from DCEO, for equipment and site improvements for the Large-Scale Food Waste Composting Facility.  In order to apply for the grant, the University was required to commit to funding the remaining portion of the facility’s proposed budget, and an emergency phone meeting was called by the Student Sustainability Committee to assign funding toward this. The committee voted in favor and granted $250,000 toward the project.  A draft plan for the compost facility was also developed and distributed to key stakeholders in mid-January for feedback. 

Sustainability staff met with Corporate Relations to discuss the potential for developing a database of sustainability research at Illinois.  Corporate Relations already has a database for water related research that is very detailed.  Future meetings are planned to move forward with this project.