At the time of the study analysis, 1,018 institutions have registered for AASHE’s STARS program. Of these, only 672 are actively reporting their performance in sustainability and hold a STARS rating. Currently, only nine institutions hold a Platinum rating, and of these, five are located either in a RGGI state or California where a carbon trading program is in force. Similarly, out of 133 institutions with a Gold rating, 49 institutions are located either in a RGGI state or California, and the same goes for 46 out of 147 institutions with a Silver rating and 11 out of 47 institutions with a Bronze rating. Overall, 110 out of 330 institutions holding a rating higher than the Bronze rating are located either in a RGGI state or California (Figure 3).
Better performance of these institutions in the RGGI states and California toward climate change and carbon neutrality is evident of how important a state’s commitment to climate change is as for giving good inspirations and affecting everyone in it. This also aligns with previous research that California has been the science-based leader in the area of climate change with aggressive decarbonisation targets across public and private sectors (46,47). Put it differently, the poor performance of higher institutions may be an outcome of the low commitment of the state where the institution belongs to. Schmalensee and Stavins (48) emphasized that political considerations have important effects on carbon programs. While the political policy alone would not be sufficient, when combined with a complimentary strategy such as a carbon reduction initiative in a university, the impacts would be larger.
Weighted according to the number of campus users[1], nine institutions out of those 37 selected institutions in this study are found to produce higher amounts of waste per capita than the average amount a college student produces per year (640 lbs) (see Figure 4). Among these nine, four institutions (Stanford University, Univ. of California-Davis, Univ. of California-San Diego, and University of Rochester) are found to be strong outliers producing an average waste of over 1,000 lbs. However, the average amount of materials disposed of in a solid waste landfill or incinerator by all 37 institutions is 556.5 lbs even after these four outliers were taken into account, still being well below the average amount of 640 lbs. May not all schools show outstandingly good results, but on average, those who tried to earn even a Bronze rating performed far better than those who did not even try.
According to the self-reports submitted to AASHE, all 37 institutions are found to have moderate to vigorous waste zero, waste reduction, and waste neutrality goals. Accordingly, many of these institutions participate in the annual Campus Race to Zero Waste, formerly Recyclemania, a challenge designed to raise awareness and advance recycling and waste reduction solutions on campus (31). The overarching message of such efforts is to eliminate the linear model where wastes are produced and moved to landfills or incinerators and to promote the reduce, reuse, and recycle (3Rs) principle for a circular economy where waste becomes a resource again for everyday products.
While some types of climate change initiatives have been implemented to protect the environment and keep the campus green by many institutions, none of their initiatives are found to involve financial incentives which have been shown to be effective in changing behavior (26,41). Having said this, this study used internal carbon pricing as a mechanism to evaluate the cost of emitting on to emitters. By putting an explicit price on carbon, institutions can not only identify the costs of adding carbon emission to the atmosphere but also identify risks and opportunities and adjust strategy accordingly.
We selected two different monetary values for estimating the costs of carbon emissions: 1 )the average auction price ($16.84/tCO2e) in 2019 from the California's carbon cap-and-trade program (45), and 2) an internal carbon price ($40/tCO2e) set by Yale University for its pilot program mentioned earlier in this paper. When these prices are applied in a calculation, the costs incurred by the University of California, Berkeley, one of the lowest emitters among the 37 institutions, range from $74,371 to $436,196. In the case of the highest emitter among the 37 institutions, Stanford University, the costs it has to bear range from $140,451 to as high as $823,761 (see Table 1 for all 37 institutions).
In 2012, University of California, Berkeley spent $71.47 per tonne to dispose of wastes to landfills, and it would presumably cost higher today (49). When the 2012’s fee for waste management services applied, University of California, Berkeley would be spending over $500k to dispose of the current amount to landfills, and have a financial burden of $436,196 when calculated with a conservative price of $16.84/tCO2e due to the volume of its emissions. If the more rigorous unit cost of $40/tCO2e was taken, the financial burden would exceed the price of the disposal of the waste itself.
In many countries around the globe, the total cost to dispose of solid waste to landfills including collection, transport, treatment, and disposal to landfill ranges from $45-105 generally exceeding $100 per tonne (50,51). Beyond this, it is important that institutions take financial responsibility for their emission. By the approach of charging CO2 emission fees to their internal units (e.g. department), institutions can understand their own carbon footprint and channel the funds generated by this fee back into cleaner technologies and greener activities that support the low-carbon transition.
The combined tonne of CO2 emissions from the total waste landfilled by all 37 selected institutions is approximately 350,995 tons of CO2e. So, just how much do 350,995 tons mean in everyday terms? When using the U.S. EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator (43,44), that’s the same as the annual energy use of 40,503 homes and 44,763,172,311 smartphones charged. It is the same as the annual GHG emissions of 75,830 passenger vehicles. It is also the amount of GHS emissions that could be avoided annually if 14,934,686 trash bags of waste were recycled instead of landfilled.
If all 37 institutions, hypothetically, decide to implement internal carbon pricing at the price of $40/tCO2e for the total amount of emissions generated from their campus wastes, this will incur a fee of more than $14 million in USD. If the institutions decide to use this fee to fund the institutions’ emission reduction efforts such as installing solar panels, this fund is large enough to purchase and install more than 930 solar panels around the university campus given the upper bound of the price for the installation of an average-sized solar panel is $15,000 (52). These solar panels could bring an annual reduction of 3,570 metric tons of CO2[2]. This means that in its first year of operation alone, the total CO2 emissions from their waste would be reduced by 10% while creating energy large enough to power over 10,000 U.S. homes per year which would worth $27million in USD[3] (52,54).
If the fee of USD $14 million were used to plant trees instead to sequester carbon emissions, the fee is large enough to plant about 140,000 mid-size trees (55). Since one tree is known to absorb about 48 lbs of CO2 per year, 140,000 trees will sequester approximately 3,000 lbs of carbon annually. The point in fact, the fee created from internal carbon pricing can be a revenue or investment stream to fund the institution’s emission reduction efforts.
Table 1
Name of HEI
|
State
|
Materials disposed in a solid waste landfill or incinerator
|
weighted campus users* over 10,000
|
waste per CAPITA (lbs)
|
metric tons CO2 equivalent
|
CO2 Price at $16.84 USD
|
CO2 Price at $40 USD
|
University of Connecticut
|
CT
|
2,773.94
|
22,123.11
|
529.11
|
8,155.38
|
$55,620
|
$326,215
|
Yale University
|
CT
|
4,518.60
|
22,376.63
|
749.57
|
13,284.68
|
$90,602
|
$531,387
|
University of Delaware
|
DE
|
2,380.32
|
21,546.75
|
374.79
|
6,998.14
|
$47,727
|
$279,926
|
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
|
MD
|
1,109.00
|
12,929.70
|
308.65
|
3,260.46
|
$22,236
|
$130,418
|
University of Maryland, College Park
|
MD
|
3,992.90
|
37,473.58
|
595.25
|
11,739.13
|
$80,061
|
$469,565
|
Boston University
|
MA
|
5,827.00
|
29,490.75
|
705.48
|
17,131.38
|
$116,836
|
$685,255
|
University of Massachusetts Amherst
|
MA
|
3,207.00
|
27,479.50
|
595.25
|
9,428.58
|
$64,303
|
$377,143
|
University of New Hampshire
|
NH
|
1,352.70
|
14,704.50
|
352.74
|
3,976.94
|
$27,123
|
$159,078
|
Princeton University
|
NJ
|
2,792.00
|
13,291.50
|
859.80
|
8,208.48
|
$55,982
|
$328,339
|
Binghamton University
|
NY
|
1,694.18
|
16,323.90
|
330.69
|
4,980.89
|
$33,970
|
$199,236
|
Columbia University
|
NY
|
3,228.94
|
29,613.75
|
308.65
|
9,493.08
|
$64,743
|
$379,723
|
Cornell University
|
NY
|
3,349.61
|
27,819.25
|
661.39
|
9,847.85
|
$67,162
|
$393,914
|
New York University
|
NY
|
5,556.40
|
58,370.50
|
286.60
|
16,335.82
|
$111,410
|
$653,433
|
Rochester Institute of Technology
|
NY
|
1,692.37
|
14,644.50
|
462.97
|
4,975.57
|
$33,933
|
$199,023
|
Syracuse University
|
NY
|
3,424.00
|
18,738.75
|
749.57
|
10,066.56
|
$68,654
|
$402,662
|
University at Albany
|
NY
|
2,034.00
|
16,046.00
|
595.25
|
5,979.96
|
$40,783
|
$239,198
|
University at Buffalo
|
NY
|
2,487.69
|
28,026.50
|
352.74
|
7,313.81
|
$49,880
|
$292,552
|
University of Rochester
|
NY
|
8,611.65
|
24,657.13
|
1036.17
|
25,318.25
|
$172,670
|
$1,012,730
|
University of Vermont
|
VT
|
1,247.84
|
13,711.25
|
396.83
|
3,668.65
|
$25,020
|
$146,746
|
California Polytechnic State University
|
CA
|
2,143.00
|
19,117.00
|
418.88
|
6,300.42
|
$42,969
|
$252,017
|
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
|
CA
|
1,766.00
|
19,437.75
|
286.60
|
5,192.04
|
$35,410
|
$207,682
|
California State University, Chico
|
CA
|
1,146.17
|
13,995.25
|
330.69
|
3,369.74
|
$22,982
|
$134,790
|
California State University, East Bay
|
CA
|
1,391.69
|
12,115.50
|
462.97
|
4,091.57
|
$27,904
|
$163,663
|
California State University, Fullerton
|
CA
|
1,162.86
|
26,163.32
|
220.46
|
3,418.81
|
$23,316
|
$136,752
|
California State University, Los Angeles
|
CA
|
1,070.09
|
19,504.00
|
330.69
|
3,146.06
|
$21,456
|
$125,843
|
California State University, Northridge
|
CA
|
1,234.28
|
24,680.00
|
264.55
|
3,628.78
|
$24,748
|
$145,151
|
San Diego State University
|
CA
|
1,933.10
|
26,319.50
|
242.51
|
5,683.31
|
$38,760
|
$227,333
|
San Francisco State University
|
CA
|
1,684.70
|
21,958.28
|
507.06
|
4,953.02
|
$33,780
|
$198,121
|
San Jose State University
|
CA
|
1,517.00
|
22,754.50
|
639.34
|
4,459.98
|
$30,417
|
$178,399
|
Stanford University
|
CA
|
7,004.77
|
27,507.00
|
1433.00
|
20,594.02
|
$140,451
|
$823,761
|
University of California, Berkeley
|
CA
|
3,709.15
|
45,199.75
|
396.83
|
10,904.90
|
$74,371
|
$436,196
|
University of California, Davis
|
CA
|
6,774.00
|
37,051.00
|
1300.73
|
19,915.56
|
$135,824
|
$796,622
|
University of California, Irvine
|
CA
|
1,467.50
|
31,523.50
|
617.29
|
4,314.45
|
$29,425
|
$172,578
|
University of California, Los Angeles
|
CA
|
8,526.70
|
63,088.25
|
683.43
|
25,068.50
|
$170,967
|
$1,002,740
|
University of California, San Diego
|
CA
|
11,856.00
|
37,383.75
|
1102.31
|
34,856.64
|
$237,722
|
$1,394,266
|
University of California, Santa Barbara
|
CA
|
1,958.00
|
21,897.75
|
617.29
|
5,756.52
|
$39,259
|
$230,261
|
University of California, Santa Cruz
|
CA
|
1,760.90
|
20,028.50
|
485.02
|
5,177.05
|
$35,307
|
$207,082
|
Total
|
|
119,386.05
|
-
|
-
|
350,994.99
|
$2,393,786
|
$14,039,799
|