Draft: Climate Action Plan

*This draft of the University of Richmond's Climate Action Plan will be available for review and comment until December 4, 2009

Thank you for your interest in the University of Richmond’s Climate Action Plan (CAP).  The CAP is a comprehensive strategy the University of Richmond (UR) will follow to achieve climate neutrality.  Climate neutrality means that campus carbon emissions (greenhouse gases) will be net zero, based on reductions in energy use and mitigation projects.  This First Draft is the culmination of months of effort by the 30 members of the Sustainability Working Group and CAP subgroups.  Students, faculty, and staff from various disciplines comprise these groups and provide an array of opinions and ideas for achieving climate neutrality.

We are sharing this draft early in the process to solicit ideas from the campus community and to ensure transparency in our actions.  These pages will give you a sense of our targets and objectives as we move toward climate neutrality. 

We welcome your constructive suggestions.  When reviewing, please keep in mind caveats about this first draft:

• The final CAP will be a living document, reviewed and revised periodically as UR progresses toward climate neutrality.  New technologies, economic conditions, and changes in climate science will potentially necessitate changes to the university’s strategies.
• The target date for UR to become climate neutral is 2050. However, too many unknowns exist to allow realistic calculations beyond 2020.  As the CAP is periodically revised and more data become available, we will revisit these calculations.
• We continue to refine the data used to create the graphs and projections in this draft, so those numbers are NOT final. 
• Not every idea contained in this draft will make it to the final CAP.  Though many will, each idea is up for discussion and review.
• Though we encourage your ideas and comments, neither will all of them necessarily be contained in the final document.   Again, each idea will be reviewed for efficacy and feasibility here at UR.

Again, thank you for your interest and participation in this review process.  We look forward to receiving your input as UR moves toward achieving its goal of climate neutrality.