After brainstorming around their tables, Summit participants reported their “Campus Priorities” back to the group. Not surprisingly, curbing the impact of paper, disparate and underutilized research servers, transportation, business travel, and server emissions were high on the list. Most groups also mentioned raising awareness around green issues on campus and changing campus attitudes to make sure that all departments – from purchasing to dining to facilities – implement policies that keep the environment in mind.
Here’s a look at their complete list:
- LEED certification for new buildings
- Campus inventory of “where we are”
- Push energy incentives to end users
- Curbing emissions from transportation
- Conduct proper analyses of efforts, perhaps with the help of consultants
- Virtual meetings and classes
- Sustainable landscaping (fertilizers, lawn mowers)
- Changes to cut ICT emissions
- Waste reduction and better disposal efforts
- Investing green strategies – what do we do with our endowment funds?
- Rethinking professional travels
- Student cars on campus
- Raising awareness and education around personal impact on environment
- Recycling, composting
- Using green products for operations
- Awareness of our own actions
- Potential for e-books to cut down on paper
- Engaging and mobilizing students around green initiatives
- Growing food on campus
- Environmentally managed research centers
- Building data centers off site
- Assess carbon footprint, construction policies, personal attitudes, recycling
- Looking at human resources – carpooling, jobsharing, telecommuting
- Do we have a policy on green issues?
- Looking into cloud computing, virtualization
- Research on social/behavioral aspects of policies/initiatives/efforts
- Purchasing policies/contracts that encourage people to make green choices
- Establishing CO2 baseline
- Real-time feedback on individual consumption
- Energy literacy
- Virtualization and consolidation
- Balancing virtualization with security and disaster recovery
- Rethinking class schedules – what can be taught off campus?
- Incentives for “doing the right thing”
- Benchmarking or taking inventories on current consumption
- Hydro-refresh cycles to bring in more energy efficient appliances
- Educating the leadership that IT is an important part of the green conversation
- How do you determine the impact of reducing emissions by reducing commuting?
- Almost every implementation of energy reduction includes IT yet IT isn’t usually part of the discussion; How do we elevate the role of IT?
- Ensuring the green agenda doesn’t slow the research agenda
