see attached

Affordable and Sustainable
Solar Urbana Champaign is returning in 2020 with version 5.0! Offered by the City of Urbana, Prairie Rivers Network, and the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, home and business owners throughout Champaign County, Piatt County, and Vermillion County may participate in this program to help pool their buying power to secure significant discounts that make installing solar more affordable. Go here to check for updates on solarurbanachampaign.com and announcements on our forthcoming, socially-distant Solar Urbana-Champaign 5.0 bulk solar energy purchase program. 

This project will document existing trees on campus, using a GPS device and collecting tree details into the ArcGIS data layer.  The existing Tree Inventory was last updated in 2006, so it includes trees that have subsequently been removed and it is missing new trees that have been planted.  Through this project, the Tree Inventory will be updated to include all and only existing trees on campus.

Grind2Energy: Turning Campus Food Waste into Fuel

The 49,000 students educated at the University of Illinois can generate a lot of food waste. Most of it winds up in a landfill. But for students with a dining hall plan, food waste is ultimately turned into energy, helping the campus reduce its carbon footprint.

With the "Grind2Energy" system, food scraps are ground down and ultimately run through an anaerobic digester at the Urbana-Champaign Sanitary District, producing methane that is used for fuel to power the plant. The system was installed at Florida Avenue Residence Halls last fall, and others are in the works.

"Hopefully this small piece will be part of a bigger system down the road," said Thurman Etchison, Assistant Director of Housing Dining Services for Equipment and Facilities.

Join the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and iSEE for the annual Charles David Keeling Lecture. This year we feature noted atmospheric scientist and U of I alumna Katharine Hayhoe discussing “Climate Science in a Fact-Free World.” This "zero carbon" event is vailable on Zoom (Meeting ID: 722 887 599; Password: Keeling).

April 20, 4–5 PM • Zoom Tony Mancuso • Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE)

Earth Week Event: Annual Keeling Lecture by Katharine Hayhoe

https://www.facebook.com/events/216025282792996/ 

We currently have 94 hybrids in our fleet of 111 vehicles, which makes us 85% hybrid. However, we have 11 more hybrids being made right now as replacement vehicles that are supposed to start arriving in the next week. At that point, we’ll have 105 hybrids, making up 95% of the fleet. I know that’s starting now and will certainly be done by the end of the year, but I don’t the exact timeline (I would imagine within a few months we’ll have them all, though).

We did order the two hydrogen buses that will be arriving later this year and then go into service in 2021. We did design that fueling station to be scalable, because we feel really good about this technology and think it holds a lot of promise for us, so if it does work out, the station was designed to be modified and go from accommodating two buses to six or ten or twelve as easily as possible. So, if funding allows, I would be on the look-out for those. - MTD representative to F&S inquiry in April 2020

Many university employees want to set an example for students by taking environmental action at work, but they aren’t sure where to start. The Certified Green Office Program is designed to identify simple, inexpensive actions you can take in your workspace.

In its first four years, more than 50 offices and over 1,000 staff and faculty joined the Certified Green Office Program. In the program’s fifth year, we invite you and your office to make a pledge to reduce your use of resources and improve the overall sustainability of your office’s day-to-day practices.

Small actions make a big difference when many take those small actions. The Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) outlines campus plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and we believe everyone can play a part in achieving that goal through their day-to-day actions. With your help, we can reduce the environmental impact of this campus and strengthen its position as a national leader in sustainability.

Click here for more information about the Certified Green Office Program.

F&S has used both GEM (8?) and e-Ride (2) electric service vehicles as well as 8 other small, gas powered Low Speed Vehicles (LSVs), 2 each from 4 different manufacturers totaling 8 LSVs. I’ve attached an email that has a link to a story posted on Cars.com about our use. While a variety of vehicles were used they were pretty much all gone in 5-8 years for many reasons including capability, reliability, parts supplies, vendors going out of business and personnel concerns. None in service currently.

From July 2008, by Pete Varney:

The University did in fact purchase 8 vehicles, we are calling them "mini-trucks."  Chery is one of the OEMs.  We purchased two each of Tiger, Mag Intl, Vantage and Cushman (no longer selling in the US).  The desire is to test their effectiveness as a service vehicle on campus.  We have a large fleet of service vehicles (250+) and the majority of them never travel more that a couple of miles each day and never exceed the campus speed limit, 25 mph.

This has been a long and at sometimes, difficult, project to get rolling, but now includes electric vehicles (E-ride) as well.  All part of the University's goal of conserving energy and increasing sustainability.

https://www.cars.com/articles/chinese-part-of-mini-truck-mania-1420663272884/