BY KATIE MCVICKER | THE DAILY

The university’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) was finalized and signed by President Emmert earlier this month, meeting it’s Sept. 15 deadline. The Environmental Stewardship Advisory Committee (ESAC) called for student feedback on a working draft of the plan last spring.

“Climate change is a critical issue affecting our environment locally, regionally and globally,” said members of ESAC Sandra Archibald and Ruth Johnston in an e-mail to The Daily. “As a leading research University in the nation, our goal is to maintain our leadership position in environmental stewardship, and we demonstrate this with launching the new UW College of the Environment and developing our Climate Action Plan.”

The plan outlines several steps the school needs to take in order fulfill its obligations as a signatory of the American College & University President’s Climate Commitment, an effort to address global warming.

The University has been successful in lowering its total greenhouse gas emissions since 2000. Seattle City Light has provided the school with zero GHG emission electricity, and due to the campus’ energy conservation plan, steady energy use has been maintained in buildings regardless of increasing population and floor space. However, the UW still faces many obstacles.

Commuting faculty and students’ vehicles are among the main GHG emission culprits associated with the Seattle campus. To combat these machines the CAP proposes actions like providing faculty with incentives to buy zero or low-emission cars, develop better videoconferencing and long-distance education technologies to avoid unnecessary traveling and “greening” the UW vehicle fleet by placing limits on personal mileage reimbursement rates.

“Technologies for reducing carbon are indeed emergent, and we are in the process of evaluating the market development,” Archibald and Johnston said. “For example, carbon sequestration technology would be an area that we could look into for the UW Power Plant, the campus’ largest emission source, but this is just one possible technology that could emerge.”

The UW will also look into improved technologies for solar and wind energy.

Samantha Croffut, the 2008-2009 Chapter Chair of WashPIRG, thinks the biggest challenge facing the university right now is funding.

“We couldn’t reach the highest LEED standard (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for building the new HUB due to money constraints,” she said. “In the future, we would really like to see a student fee, similar to the removable U-PASS fee, attached to help reduce our carbon footprint as a school.”

The CAP does mention a “student green fee” as a possible means to finance some of its projects. The document states, “A $5.00/quarter fee assessed to each undergraduate and graduate student would generate about $700,000 annually to support Climate Action Plan initiatives. Students will need to organize this effort and gain approval through a student body election.”

Other funding options include finding available research grants and establishing a revolving loan fund.

“The plan definitely puts UW in the right direction,” said sophomore Wen-Chung Su, who represented the SEED (Students Expressing Environmental Dedication) organization during the planning process. “It gives the school a clear goal and something concrete to work on. What we hope to see is that UW follows the plan and sticks with it. It is not going to be simple, but it has to be done.”

As of now, a working team is already planning the next stage of the CAP, which is identifying priorities and developing implementation strategies.

Reach reporter Katie McVicker at news@dailyuw.com.