Thank you all for joining us as we learn and share best practices on campus sustainability. As theory share at Georgia Tech has made great strides to ensure our built environment meets the highest standards in sustainability across designing construction criteria. We have fine-tune design and construction standards. Call to Georgia Tech Yellow Book. Over 25 meters. We have converted ugly parking lots in the center of campus into active green spaces. You have an award-winning recycling program and leading program. And in 2008, we took the important leadership position to MIT, to carbon neutrality by 2050 at Georgia Tech as well position to achieve great things in sustainability leadership. Our new Institute strategic plan requires Georgia Tech to lead. By example. It requires us to demonstrate sustainability and the management of our campus. And it mandates that we develop and exit a climate action plan. Institutes strategic plan also sets a goal for Georgia Tech to advance to UN, Enable Development Goals. Drew our education, research, and service. Most recently to advance our institutes strategic plan goal. Moving forward throughout 2020 to Georgia Tech has committed to creating a carbon neutrality roadmap as a central stat of developing our campus master, our first campus master plan it over 20 years. In the context of what we've achieved and where we are going, including the development of our carbon neutrality. And next year, it is critical. We learn from our peers are doing exceptional work. My pleasure of introducing our next speaker, Dr. Julie Newman, Director of Sustainability at messed with technology, will share with us their multi-year effort to develop a climate action plan that encompasses an impressive scope across the higher education mission. And it has tremendous potential for meaningful impact. Let me introduce. Dr. Julie Newman hasn't worked in the field of sustainable development and sustainability for 20 years, do joined MIT as the institutes Earth's director sustainability. And the summer of 2013. For Dewey was recruited to be the founding director of the Office of Sustainability for Yale University. We came to heal from yours. Yeah, sure. Officers sustainability programs assisted with the development of the program since its inception in 1997. Really has numerous degrees in natural resource policy of the University of Michigan and MS and environmental policy of biology from us. And a PhD, a national resource and thermal studies from the University of New Hampshire. Her research has focused on the intersect and decision-making processes and organizational behavior and institutionalizing sustainability into higher education. Please join me in welcoming Julie to discuss MIT's leadership and sustainability and climate action. Alright, well, good afternoon. Thank you again for the invitation to share our work at MIT and some insights from my experience in the field. I really enjoyed hearing that introduction just now. So Gary, I'm sorry, we haven't met, but that was a wonderful intro and I think very relevant to some of the story that I'll tell today. I think there'll be a chance to buy some pieces together. And for a little context Of what I'll share with you today as and said that the off-state ability I'll share with the day's a third office I've launched. And the significance of that is each time I've learned how to do something a little bit different. Though as you head onto your journey. This is just another experience that I'll be sharing with you that can inform your thinking. But you get to leap-frog if you will, and frame it for, for Georgia Tech. So I bring an entrepreneurial skill set to the process with respect to how to launch a new program, build a staff, leverage funds beyond those allocated to me, distribute the leadership. That's one of the core principles that I, that I work with. You know, how to establish strategic partnerships and measure progress over time. And the burning question that I think and alluded to that's driven me for the past two decades that I consider is how OT our organizations be organized? A lot they behave, invest, partner, Engage. Other terms you may consider to advance the underlying principles of actions called for by sustainable development. And more recently, you know how to mitigate climate change and prepare for a changing climate. I'm sitting up here in the Northeast in a Nor'easter in, in October. We're in the midst of it right now. So particularly due to this hybrid environment, I've organized my presentation into two parts and hoping for some questions and some dialogue. Though first, I'm going to provide you with some brief insight into the sustainability platform that I've built an MIT. So you get that context. And second, I'll provide you with some insight and an update. Our recently released fast-forward plan for climate action for the next decade. And I think it might be useful to know that MIT has embrace sustainable development and climate change as defining challenges for the world citizens in the 21st century and for MIT. So please know that I was not brought to MIT to convince them about the importance of sustainability or climate. That's not my role, but my role rather is to look inward and provide the leadership to create a roadmap to advance the sustainability principles and climate action on the campus today and looking into the future. So with that said, let me get started here. So again, I'm going to go through these two parts. And I want to start off by sharing this image with you. So the platform I'm about to share with you was built on the feedback of an initial listening tour that I conducted of the institute from 2013 in 2013 going into 2014 when I arrived. And that became my foundational launching pad. And it's a good reminder how important it is to listen and understand the context. And when I find the time I hope to listen, I plan to listen again, coming out of this. As the pendulum swings back to understand what our new normal is, as we're all defining that there's going to be more listening that will be, be needed. We launched on the notion that we had to take the role of the individual campus, the city, the state, and the globe into consideration when understanding and solving for numerous sustainability issues and climate issues that we were going to be committed to advancing. It's as we all know, we don't we're not living on an island. The institute is not an island. And beyond that, it's got students coming and going. We've got quick cycles of graduate students, undergrads and longer cycles with staff and faculty as we know. So from climate mitigation, resiliency to consumption, waste management supply chains to food systems and human well-being. The framework guides our thinking and our actions. We seek to understand the interactions of economic systems local to global policy, infrastructure, technology, and behavior. To name a few of the dynamics in this bodes well with what the earlier presenter Gary was saying, it's a good question is always better than a brilliant answer. We ask a lot of questions in this role. And we recognize that we cannot solve for sustainability within the walls of our campus alone to something that's really important to keep in mind. So again, I was starting in office from, from the beginning, from the launch pad. And so within that Launchpad, I quickly organize to that was the outlook of 10 years beyond knowing that I couldn't do all of this at once. But what we're going to be our areas of impact. So initially they said low-carbon campus, and as you'll learn now we can actually say 0. But this started off with saying of, of organizing around some of the, what I heard, what was some of the vocabulary being used? What are some of the frameworks that people are familiar with? When I, when I arrived at MIT. So we organized around to a low-carbon campus and ensuring climate resiliency and resilient ecosystems. Material life cycles from procurement to waste, by ensuring that we were engaging with thriving networks of from, from local to global. And really beginning to frame what did we mean by healthy people and what role did health and human wellbeing play in building a sustainable campus? And one that we've expanded you thanks to the past couple of years, is really more, more deliberately integrating equity into that. Though that was always there for us. Though. Climate, buildings, energy mobility, looking at water, land, air procurement to waste and supply chains, and again, food and equity. So that gives you the framework. I won't be speaking to all of these today, but that's the bandwidth for my staff. The way I've organized my staff. I say one key takeaway from today as you're listening is to understand that one of the unique areas I was able to leapfrog into, if you will, was to really think about and constantly ask this era of question, is what are we solving for and how are we solving for sustainability at MIT and beyond. And so underlying all of the work that I share with you today is a methodology of collaboration between research on one side. And operations. And I live right in the middle here. I actually have appointment as a lecture, but I'm but my offices within the vice president of campus services and stewardship. And I created a dotted line to the provost, but I report at the moment through a VP of campus services. And we're looking and I've also committed to a robust data collection and analysis as a common thread. So really understanding for me to engage with researchers and my staff to engage with researchers. What you researchers need out of this? And what do the operational folks and campus infrastructure folks need out of this? And how do we bring and ask questions in a way that all can be served? So those are some of the examples I'll be able to share with you today. One of the most common areas right in the center of those 22 components as data, as access to data, and the ability and openness and creating processes in which we can ask these questions to get together. Sustainability people cannot sometimes get pigeonholed into what we assume the answer is, as opposed to having a space and creating the structures to ask the questions, make sure, you know, if it's solar panels or power purchase agreements. Is that the right answer for for our institute? So with that said, one of the first orders of business I dove into was ensuring that we are creating what some depth for me as the intelligent and sustainable campus. I wanted to make sure that if I was building this framework of access or researchers and operational folks to influence decision-making, to coursework. That we had a database that we're that all. No matter what position you were on at MIT, you were accessing the exact data to inform decision-making or to inform research in a partnership with IS and T. And I hired a data scientist. I was able to launch something called What we ended up calling the MIT sustainability data poor. You would be able to take a look at this just from the framework. Unfortunately, it's one of the agreements I had to seek was that only MIT people can access it, but that with their with their with their email. But that provided the privacy folks needed. But it doesn't require any licenses and it's accessible all 22 thousand folks as well as visiting folks coming to campus. So researchers alike, they all have access to the same operational, operational data to that has been game changing for us. And so these are just examples. I think we're up to 880 pool, excuse me, 18 dashboards. The first one was on energize MIT. And this gave, this was a real focus on buildings and understanding the implications of each building on our greenhouse gas inventory. And we now have our inventory embedded in this as well. But you get the idea of what kind of data is accessible. I'll share with you momentarily, but I built a whole course with a colleague on just this dashboard alone, which I'll share with you in a moment. So with that in mind, we committed to leveraging the campus as a test bed, I believe at Georgia Tech and many other institutions. It's another term would be campus as a living lab. And so we, we've committed to leveraging the campus as a test bed for teaching about complex problem-solving at different scales. And I was able to, a funder came through and gave me some initial seed funding for just an example of how to, how to incentivize faculty. And I'd say one of the big takeaways for MIT through the seed fund that, that really surprised everybody was that in my first round of of distributing the seed funds, you know, each year for the three years I had the funding. I'm now looking for more funding. We're able to we received over a million and a half to $2 million worth of grad of of, of proposals. There are just send this signal to the, to the administration that faculty are interested, willing, able, and see the value proposition of doing their work on campus. So these are just a couple of, of examples. There's a group that developed a zero-carbon heat exchange system. This is a, this was example of campus to, to, to marketplace they've actually created and launched. You can look it up. This is a water capture system. This is a, I met a guy whose office overlook the power plant and he was explaining his research and I said, Why did you do that here? He ended up building an amazing partnership with the head of utilities and the engineer to informed his thinking and they went off and they launched a new program or excuse me, a business called Infinite cooling can take a look at that, but it's a great example of what's possible on our campus as the most recent last, the last seed fund was three different research group coming out of COVID looking at, or excuse me, write the beginning of the COVID time, looking at supply chain, the life-cycle of our personal protective equipment so that we can then form how we purchase that, what we purchase and how we ought to be disposing of that in the future. And examples again, this is a course I teach, but there are many examples of classes that have now been built. Leveraging the campus as a classroom. As excuse me, leveraging the campus as a testbed, accessing the data that I shared with you earlier and then actually informing our thinking. So this class helped us commit to a net 0 Carbon campus. Then again, share with you in part two. Because it demonstrated after three years of students digging into the research, bringing administrators to the presentations and saying, Listen, it's possible for us to get there. We're going to have to figure out how we're going to fail, how much we want to invest. But it's possible that using classes, using students to really inform thinking for the, for the institute and back to the building. I think this is a great way to kind of bring closure to this part with what Gary presented earlier is that, you know, after all these years of committing to lead, we're now moving at least at MIT. We shifted to lead gold version 4 in 2015, 2016, as did the Cambridge. So that's actually warranted and back to the campus city globe, that's required within the city of Cambridge for new, new construction. And now we're integrating these posters and they're now for new areas where this display, this is in museum quality display. In our lead gold version 4 or leed Platinum buildings. Do that as folks come into the building, they get to understand what is this building, how was it built? What are the materials? What are the connectivity to transportation impact on water? How do we consider resilient ecosystems? And, and how do I live in the building? And that's the next phase that we're that we're in. Now. I want to bring closure to this part with a very complicated slide. So bear with me on this for a moment. But I think this is I wanted to after having some discussions, preparing for this with your own staff, I thought this might be interesting given the place that you're at. And then we'll open up to questions. If you were to say, let's take an x-ray of my process, this would be, this would be the X-ray, if you will. So I think deeply about change management processes. And I think deeply about what's the value proposition of an office of sustainability or VP of sustainability? Whatever that construct is for your, for your institute. And I would argue that are most effective group. And, and again, this is not meant to be an exhaustive, exhaustive list. But when I'm asked what do you know what's the value proposition I provide to MIT or to whatever Institute I met. I think about I play this role with my staff. We consider about how do with the ability to forecast and stay ahead of the curve on behalf of the institute. We consider and think about how do we assess and reduce risk affiliated with climate and sustainability? What are the scales of investment warranted for implementation and how do we assess that? And then how do we leverage strategic partnerships and enhance engagement? And again, there may be others you think of. This is an example of the trajectory that I've taken for MIT. But I think you could, you could apply this to many schools. You could think back and think about your own timeframe. And so phase one for me was launched in the office like I shared with you. These arrows represent these aren't numerical quite yet, but the level of staffing available and then the level of distributed leadership. So we launched the office, we came up with a number of reports, recommendations in that in those first two years, we move to implementation and started to identify other folks. There's a new energy efficiency manager, a position like Maria's focus on designing, construction, somebody within food services and so on. And then i, then we think about, okay, what, what committees, what research, what courses, networks, data is needed to inform the next, right? So while I'm here, while we're moving on implementation, I then move above this curve and start to look ahead of the curve and say, Let's make sure we're prepared for climate resiliency, an aggressive greenhouse gas commitment, stormwater management design standards, et cetera. So that plays out all the way along and each time I would, in this case, able to add more staffing and more distributed leadership. Unfortunately, I haven't added more staffing since this period of time. I have been able to distribute greater leadership along the way and helped build positions in other departments, which has a lot of what my goal is. I would say we're here now we've gotten to a place of a net-zero commitment. We've prepared for climate resiliency. The modeling I'll share with you are moving towards we don't have 0 waste is a commitment, but we're preparing for that. And again, preparing for climate, climate justice. And I'm starting to write now we're deep in implementation. And then a part of me is starting to prepare for how do I really actually scaling across the individual campus city globe. So that were the most effective place. So I want to pause with that. It's a lot to take in. Helps provide some insight in terms of, I think a unique role obscure sustainability staff at Georgia Tech and what role you want them to play in how we enable that in order to lead to the greatest level of distributed leadership across the institute. So I'm going to stop sharing and open up for Q and a. And then you guys signal to me a good time to will take maybe five minutes and I'll move on to part two. Okay. So Maria, and how would you like to do questions or you can do that? Bill. Also add them into chat. I don't keep an eye out for them and add those as as needed. But I did have some hospice start off with you guys to think about as much as you? Yes, Julie, I did love that last slide. I knew that was pretty much I appreciate it. I think having a contrast of those earlier slides where you showed the competing area, area of impact, which I think as soon as you see them you think, well, these ideas in competition with each other for resources, for staff and all those things. We think of them off as we do. One thing that takes resources. The other, though, is really interesting. But I got to this last slide. It was almost happy to see those areas. I'm broken up chronologically. So I guess my question is, how did you arrive at that at that murder? Or you are going to address everything. For example. I think the one I know about that and design standards were kind of in that second row, right, in that second step up on that cross. And how did how did you guys get to that? Yeah. Boy, that's a great question. Um, you know, in my listening tour, when I first arrived, I have to, they, i eth, from the outside. I was at Yale for nine years and familiar with MIT. So I thought MIT when I arrived, I didn't quite know where they were at operationally, to be honest. Given the the description of the job and what I was stepping into, they were on the verge of launching. The reason they created my position was they were on the verge of launching of all alone capital renewal of the campus in the kind of two to $4 billion range because they focus on MIT has been, had been very much focused on research, teaching, housing. And it was time to renew the campus and reinvest in the infrastructure. Dau phase one was clear that as we were doing deep retrofits and new construction design and construction had to we had to revisit the lead standards when I arrived, it was leed Silver. And we had to revisit what the standards were going to be and understand those implications. At the same time, when I was doing deep listening, I had just also come off of a project in New Haven looking at stormwater management as kind of the foundation of climb understanding climate resiliency. Though it was a combination of my understanding of the field, having been in it for awhile and arriving and listening to what was happening. Cambridge, what was the state of the campus? And recognizing that we had to quickly bring design standards up to speed. Understand the evolution of stretch codes at the state level. Make sure that we're understanding the implications of stormwater with relation to our work. As you know from your background, we're right next to the river, though. How are we anticipating our life aligned with the Charles over time? And the more I got to know the campus, the more I sat with some of the the internal engineers and said, you know, has the end. Again, I'm a policy person, not a physics person by CIT, has the underground infrastructure evolved with the with the above-ground infrastructure? And the answer was, Oh, that's again, kinda back to Gary's point. That's a great question. And so we started to really understand what was happening underground that we ought to anticipate. So that's where stormwater management came in and thinking above comply it so all of that is to say it was getting that strong foundation which we now have and systematize so that I didn't have to focus on that, if you will, do that, I could start working with researchers on thinking about how are we going to solve for net-zero? How are we going to prepare for a changing climate? So that's how I put those orders. Business. The other pieces that were there was already a lot of movement was around ways. That wasn't an area we focused on early on until we were ready to really, I wanted to build the relationships with procurement before dealing with way. So I wanted to make sure we can take a supply of material life cycle approach to waste management. So it was one of these things we we I knew that waste disposal was taken care of at one end, so I focused on procurement with my team. That I don't hope that answers your question, but it was really being quite deliberate in terms of current and looking out ahead based on my own understanding and based on reading I was doing. And I think it is very highly graphs given getting where we are in terms of our campus getting ready for my master primary one. Inequities. That's a great question. Yeah. So that's a fantastic question. So something that it's funny. It's the discussion all of my peers are having across the country behind the scenes. Because, you know, I'll just say I got into this field because I was I never quite fit that. I was always a misfit prior to the term sustainable development came around. I'm, uh, I came out of the Peace Corps. I was, I was an environmental, natural resource major and really interested in the intersection of equity economics, poverty, environment, policy, science. All of the pieces, right? Though for some people that would be a train wreck and you're headed for me. That was like my happy place where I could see and understand all the systems. And to your question, equity has been really, really, really difficult for, until recently, really bring to the forefront of our policy decisions. And so because that fit into somebody else's role at the Institute and I'd say coming out of the past two years, particularly coming out of coming out of COVID time. I nuts, I don't want to suggest we're out, but our impact of the implications of the equity issues that have emerged, Black Lives Matter has really enabled all of us to have a voice now to revisit our policies in the context of understanding food insecurity are transfer, access to transportation. How we're even designing our buildings, housing. The housing market around tiers is though challenging. The answer is we're getting there, but it's taken until now and this loosening in the system and a level of vulnerability in society to actually do that, to do that well. And I'm actually, I look to colleagues at Emory and others to help inform my thinking who've been a little bit ahead of the game on that front? I don't know if that helps. I'll just give you one example where it did come into play couple of years ago. Is MIT decided to, you know, rather than subsidize parking to the end to the, you know, As we all know, parking parking space, at least in the Northeast concoct about a $175 thousand to build, right? Though, an enormous cost to the institute and parking until sustainability came to the forefront has been deeply subsidized more so than our food systems. And so working with researchers and policy committee I was on, we put a proposal together called Access MIT, which gave access to free public transportation to all staff and faculty across the board. And equity played a large part in that. So it's still playing out in terms of how to tier parking. It's still playing out with respect to this new flex life that we all live. As you can see, I'm working from home on Tuesdays and it's it's still working itself out, but that that helped bring the notion of equity to the forefront. So we weren't just subsidizing parking for those of you who had a car, but rather focusing on subsidizing and encouraging public transportation and unique alternative ways to get to campus for everyone. And it had a huge impact on, on the campus. I'll pause with that. Thanks. Any other questions? And around the sky, was MRP standards with respect to operational data? As it usually is building performance, be cetera, mostly in place for the start of your timeline. There's not, you use any externally variables and errors or data architecture. Is there are more words. It was alive. I think. Yeah, I think I understand your question, but I think you said Scott, pause or stop me if this isn't what you're asking. I think I think the answer is know. If that's a yes-no, could think the answer is no. I had to build it from scratch. And having been in, I didn't want to buy a software either. So our buildings group uses something called e Builder. You probably have something similar. Yeah. So there was some software in place and mechanisms if this is what you're asking and what was clear was in order to level the playing field of the way the data was going to be accessed by researcher, student, and operational folks alike. We needed to build our own platform and To figure out how to live feed the energy data into the system. And I, when I think about scalability, I also wanted to make sure we were building up on a platform that anybody again with quotes can access. So it's built on an Amazon platform, which was what was recommended by I, s and t though it's in the cloud. Is that what you're asking Scott? Room I generally, yes. And curious. And every indices between 18 is internally homegrown. There's some replicability around that. Yeah. Just how you executed. I think you've already answered. Yeah. Maybe one piece I can add for clarity too, cuz I'm still working through this many, many years later. This actually bought this also is responsive to my campus city globe approach to everything is that there was a lot of trepidation, I think is the word I'm looking for you to make this data available, particularly to researchers. On the other hand, the city of Cambridge was, again, this is staying ahead of the curve. Ice. We stay in touch with the city of Cambridge. I built a strong working relationship. All the staff, as I hired them, everyone's required to sit. This is a sidebar but important to sit on committees for the city of Cambridge. So we're working closely with them and understand what's coming down the pipeline. That as we're thinking about growth and development and climate mitigation, we're really clear on what's coming at us. And one of the things that was coming down the pipeline very quickly was a building energy use disclosure ordinance, which a lot of cities that are moving towards aggressive greenhouse gas emission reductions and also managing development in their cities like Cambridge or we're moving to that. I didn't have a chance to see if you have that in Atlanta. So with that said, we were going to be on the verge of potentially being vulnerable, if you will, if we hadn't gotten all that data in place. Though, I was able to leverage that internally and say, let's just be all set. Let's make sure we're told the aligned on what our data is. And so when we do have to start reporting through the city of Cambridge, everyone has signed off on that data. So that's one way I was able to leverage that data out of the system. And then they started to realize like, you probably raise your hand, how many of you got calls from students the night before their project is due. And they've decided to do research on one of your buildings like I'm going to raise my hand. I still get it. Yeah. Okay. See the feedback I got once this data pool went up, all of those questions stopped. And so I got a lot of kudos for for be able to get that data online and nobody got those last minute calls and and urgent request for data for something because it was and they didn't have to go through the permissions of saying to their boss, Can I share this data with the student? Because it was all out there. And such great, so many great projects have come out of that in the level of transparency has enabled the operational and the faculty to work together in a way they hadn't seen before until I was able to really launched the testbed and bring these pieces together in a non, in a, in an open helpful way. So that's been game-changing. Do taking your question, Scott, that's on energy and then as soon as people became comfort, energy were able to publish waste. Both regulated, non-regulated water by transportation, Blue Bikes, tree inventory, lead buildings like all of that then started to proliferate in a way that would be turned into a helpful bearing of data versus our risky sharing of data. That said, it's still very internal, so we've made it to the internal level. I use. We do report publicly on all of our energy and greenhouse gas. We don't do so much on waste and I'm really trying to push that through the system so we can use that same framework we use on everything, energy and GHG to all of the areas and we have I haven't quite gotten there and I can explain fully why. But I'm working through it in a passage from there now. And it kind of is this oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, guy. So it requires that it's a $175 thousand a year. I mean, a 135 thousand hours. What a parking space. And these is that the number that you put out? Yeah. That's the lifecycle of like two. If we were to build a new garage which are workers enable us, hopefully not too that because of the density of the, of the of of where we are, it has to go underground at this point. And so the MRIs cost around is around 175 thousand dollars over the life cycle of that base. Color. I don't know what it is today because building costs, as we all know, have God, I bet you're still working is $11 a day. Staff faculty parking has moved to $11 a day. I don't AS and postdoc. Students have a different, students are discouraged from bringing cars right below the straight line. Payback for that, not take into account cost of money and all that stuff. Almost 50 years. Yeah, that skill sets, not even ever asked you what the ROI on a parking deck is? Has anybody asked me what an ROI know that's the argument I use for MIT reinvested in the NB TAs to we don't have to build more parking. Yeah. Yes. I really appreciate you giving me a stack. I'm going to try to figure it out. Data analysis here for a man because no one ever asks what's the ROI on a parking deck, but people are always asking what's the ROI on energy efficiency and its peers? Exactly, exactly. So those are the new kind of questions that we've asked, recognizing that people do still need to drive in different ways, the pigs. I'm sorry, is it Sean? I don't remember. Guess yet, Sean, that one of the big big wins that we made through this policy committee, It's kind of unbelievable. I is is exactly what you are picking up and just asking a whole new set of questions around our investments. And again, keeping equity in mind. So we're not just providing parking for those who have cars and can drive. And and thinking about how do we, how do we unsubsidized, if you will? Two things. One is that you use to if you were to park. And again, I have to go back a couple of years, but as in today's terms, I think it's if you were to buy a parking permit at MIT and this is all online. I'm not telling you something that's confidential. You can get online. I think it's like $1700 year. But the big win was to the big win was to move that to daily rate parking. In two years, we reduced our parking demand by 15 percent by moving it to daily rate and encouraging people to, you know, to find alternative mode. So like I there's two days a week. I had to pick up my son in this new time. And on the third day week, you can walk home and I bike to work on that day. Before you were paying for both. That makes sense. And other people have moved folate. It just public transportation, it just varies. We talk about freedom of it. You know, it's like, uh, it's, we call it a flexible commute, commute culture. On earth, my passion. And it's okay. The second part of the resume. Oh, yeah, thanks for the dialogue that I really, really appreciate that. All right. Let me go into the into climate and then we'll come back to questions again. All right, So for Part 2, everybody, I want to just give you some quick insight into our climate action and then we'll open it up to this discussion again. So just give me one moment here. Okay? Okay, So two things. Alright, this is what I was looking for though. For those of you interested in this, again, I'm only giving you a very brief insight into this. This is the website. It's called the name of the plan. Our most recent plan is fast-forward plan for climate action for the next decade. And this is where you can find it. You can go to climate dot, mit.edu or directly to this or just do a quick search for fast-forward MIT. Though that's what I'll be speaking to two in the next ten minutes here. So, so to begin, you know, MIT has boldly committed to meeting the world's climate challenge. And as you can see here, we've been challenged to go as far as we can, as fast as we can. We've committed to, similar to you guys, a net-zero carbon carbon emissions by 2050 in the world and a net 0 carbon emission, direct emissions by 2050 on the campus. And what's important some takeaways here for you to process there is that the Fast Forward plan is MIT's second Climate Action Plan. We didn't go from 0 to this, if you will. Both plans weren't formed and establish following a year long community input and debate process. And reflective of the most up-to-date climate science. We're committed to actually revisiting our plan every five years. And our first community input process took place in 2014. And our second one took place starting in the fall of 2019 with the hopes that we were going to complete this in 2020. And as you know, that didn't happen with the unanticipated pandemic though. But we carried it on, we shifted to a virtual platform. We just had a little bit of a bump there. And we ended up extending the dialogue through 2020, early 2021. This came out May 2021. And as we shifted to all virtual input sessions and we had over 20 sessions from research to investment divestment to to the role of curriculum coursework and of course, my host, the ones I hosted, we're on the role of the campus to what I'm sharing with you today are not all of the details, but rather a little bit of insight into the process and then what came out the other end. But for those of you interested in just what we're doing on research, on teaching, on technology, take a deep dive online. But what's most important though, is for all of this falls under the leadership of the VP of Research, Maria Zuber. And so and so this commitment though applies to all areas. So we go as far as we can, as fast as we can with the tools we have. Now, we're committed to investing, inventing, and developing new suite of tools, influencing including science and technology breakthroughs. And we're, we're completely committed to educate and empower the next generation of students. And so this applies to me, managing the campus and, and all of those managing everything from research, teaching, and policy development. So that's been terribly exciting if you were to take all the pieces which I've done here just to share the breadth of view with you, is that it's really organized into five areas and I'll walk through this with you so I'll share. What I'm going to focus on in a moment is reducing MIT's climate impact. That's, that's what I'm responsible for. But I'm working across the board with people who are focused on sparking innovation, educating the future generation, leveraging government action, and the new governance structure that we've just launched in September is there's a new climate steering committee and that has the VP of research on it. I believe the provost with a high level executive level, the executive vice president, treasurer to my report. Under that is a faculty committee that I actually sit on called the climate nucleus. They were quite clever with the term nucleus. And the role of this group is to unite and coordinate all of these efforts across the board. And so while I represent the nucleus, excuse me, I represent the campus on the nucleus, but my job on the nucleus is to also find new partnerships and figure out how do we help unification across these systems. And that was a lot of the feedback that we've gotten. The over 20 forums they held was, was we all still work in silos and how might we reconsider the interaction of of those silos. Okay. I guess one other takeaway for today as well, which you might tap into for future meetings, wouldn't be with me, but each of these areas has a faculty or administrative point person responsible for that. So deep levels of accountability are integrated into the plan this time around a little bit different than the last time. So again, for the sake of today, I'm going to focus on for the administrators in the room. Again, this is what the executive vice president, treasurer as accountable for on my behalf, if you will, that I'm working closely with the VP, the executive VP. But we make sure we have all of the funding and systems put in place to implement all of these commitments. Take note of that and if you have questions to breaking this down further, again, taking that part out of the table, there were actually 14 or so commitment outlined in the, in the plan. For the sake of presentation, I've just really highlighted this commitment to net 02020, to net 0 by 2026. That's assuming some kind of offsite investment. We can't get to 0 onsite by 2026, but then to 0 direct Mish, emissions reduction by 2050. A commitment to climate resilience and adaptation, ensuring that we have a climate resilient. Yeah, we can stand and exist with the, with the changing climate which is happening in real time. And of course, leveraging the campus as a test bed. So that's the framework within which I'm working. And I spent the summer now organizing and preparing to launch across these 14 areas. And I'll just give you some highlights without sharing all of them with you per se. But they all they're all online. So just some examples I just pulled out here. So outside of the net-zero, some examples are we're, we're committed to increasing renewable, primarily solar energy on campus by a minimum of 400%. And again, I don't know what yours is a good and gt is, but for us that's moving from a 100 kW to 500 by 2026, we're committed to publishing it. A carbon offset strategy for MIT sponsored travel. That was a real push from faculty. Not to mention a re-evaluation of travel that's taking place in real time. Look what we can do here, right without me flying to Atlanta on the EV front, we're committed to building a 0 emission fleet. Does for our buses were integrating and increasing EV charging stations from 120 to 360, which is an increase of 200% And we're committed to replacing excuse me, I said shuttle buses earlier, but looking to integrate EV and to our fleet purchases with a particular focus on light duty vehicles. The object to availability. We're finally looking to after many years of work behind the scenes for my office work be expanding the scope three, going public and transparent on travel and potentially commuting and then evaluating what we can begin to commit to. Embodied carbon is coming out as we're preparing for that. That's coming at us from the city. We're also looking to add in the greenhouse gas impact of some of our off-campus research sites around the state. This last area I'm calling climate leadership because we're finally prepared to set some goals around food waste and water. We've been asked to create, help create plans across all five schools. And we'll be launching a new working group that's going to be looking out to 2050. So now that the 14 workstreams are, are all activated. Only two of them have a 2022 deadline. But we've activated all of them at once because 2026 isn't that far off. We want to make sure we have the foundation to succeed in all of these. And so in summary, we have 14 commitment organized around the four campus strategies. I'm overseeing 17 team leads, but keep in mind, some of these folks are managing three of the workstreams. Myself included. We have 30 faculty and researchers now engaged in a new review group. Well, it will have about 75 active team members that will populate the 14 workstreams. And I'm slowly building up a team. I have half of the eight that I've set out to hire Climate Action Research students to help inform our thinking and keep us ahead of the curve. So that's the structure. In all my years that I've been in this field, I haven't ever actually launch such a large implementation structure that cuts across an entire EVP t governance structure and, and with strong ties to the academics and students. So this is new, stay tuned. It's very intensive. But I think this is the way to go. And I think this, that burning question I shared with you, this really starts to respond to what does an organization that's prepared for a changing climate, committed to sustainability look like, remember I'm a team of, I'm seven. I mean with one opening, but a team of seven alone can't manifest and implement across the whole board, you have to build capacity across the system. Now keep in mind that we're not, we're not starting from ground 0. We have many active workstreams initiated by the first climate action plan and collective efforts with my office and the VP of campus services and stewardship, the BPF and and all of those faculty that I name with a few exceptions, we have our long-term working relationships with and I'm familiar with much of their research. So we're now ready to integrate moving, moving forward. So I'm going to share some slides with you. I have to not to disappoint. I just want to be clear. Have questions. Technical questions I most likely won't be able to answer, but I'm happy to hear questions and always happy to connect you. The folks at MIT, though, let me give you the background here as you're her earlier, we have two greenhouse-gas goals that we set. Though it's a near and a long-term. One is net 0 by 2026, that's the green one here, the other 2050. So who's getting down to 0 emissions? The 2026 goal, hence, the green, assumes that will continue to reduce emissions on campus in the near term, but seek to reduce emissions at the grid level via some alternative power purchase agreement. We're already partnered with about six other institutes to start to explore that. And more. The 2050 goal cause for major game changing investments in the campus to reduce demand. Determine how to provide electricity heating, cooling to the campus, resulting in 0 emissions and more well-suited to take on this challenge. Several strategies already been developed and acted upon over the past five years and many more being assessed and designed and implemented. And real time. Though we've actually are opening up a new or new central utility plant. It's, it's actually accounts for 10 percent growth because it's going to be so much more efficient. But this really is seen, it's runs on natural gas. Got a lot of criticism. But our argument is that this is our bridge to the future because nobody wants to turn off their research heating or cooling or electricity at the moment. So this will provide a 100 percent of our electricity cleaner than the grid for the next 15 to 25 years. And so some examples of what we've been doing include efficient deep energy retrofits, some existing onsite solar. And we did do an initial power purchase agreement through consortium early on to test that out. And here's where we're at today is looking ahead to what all of those will be. So we're working on again, I just, you know, deep energy retrofits, new design. Looking at converting the campus distribution from steam to hot water and integrating increase on scale renewable energy. We're studying electrification of transportation, electrification of the campus. Ai enabled energy systems, the role of behavior change. I just launched a new lab program. And as I mentioned, electrification of buildings. So that gives you the example that this is going to take a village to figure this out. And on the reducing emissions in the world, it's looking at addressing broader emission boundaries for scope three impacts. What, how can we work with industry? And as I mentioned, looking at large-scale carbon reduction. So when you put these two together, this really frames how we're addressing net, net 0. Um, in, in the world. We're committed to mitigating our missions and leveraging the campus as a test bed to do so. And we are preparing for a changing climate at the same time. So we've been working hand in hand for the past four years with a program called the joint program on science and policy. And many members of the executive VP community from insurance to emergency management, to our engineers and utility members and planners. And the math you see here is data. This is actually on the data pool I share with you. This is accessible to the whole MIT community. Now, this is just a snapshot, but this is data collected on the MIT campus and integrated with the city of Cambridge because of our working relationship. And you see the boundary here cuz that's MIT. But we also know water has no boundaries. So we've had to build a deep trusting working relationship with the city, though that we understand how is what water is going to be flowing through the streets of Cambridge, or where might there be overflows from their pipes that are coming to us? And most of this is coming from the ground up. This is not a storm surge. This is not, this is not the Charles River overflowing onto the campus. These are the physics I was telling you about this is water coming yes. From the Charles but from from stormwater from heavy rainfall coming up through the through the pipes. Okay. So that's where it actually it's not here, but we have models that go out to 2070. The other piece that's new that we've been collecting that I mentioned is scope three data. So this is exit, pre COVID or travel and are accounting for our air travel that we assume it's going to expand our baseline at depending upon how we count for it. If were to just count air travel, another estimate of approximately 40 thousand metric tons. This would be for all faculty, staff, student research travel. This is not students who live in China and coming to campus. This is all MIT focus travel with respect to research, teaching, and staff roles. This is what it was in 2019 till some travel, but greatly reduced. So we're starting to ask what the new normal will be and then how do we account for that? Okay. So this is the area that, that I want to share with you. I'm going to give you some insight in terms of some of our campus interventions. But I'm not the one managing these projects, but this is my rule. I like to be in the helicopter if you will. So my role is to work across all the systems so and work with all the folks responsible for this and give them that systems level overview so that they understand that Yes, sir. Responsible for clean energy or increasing solar. But let's look at how they're interacting across the system. So again, this gives you insight into the unique role that I play on campus and putting the portfolio together. But now did just to bring you closer, closer to this examples of how we're going to account for. And this is ongoing modelling. What we think will be about up to 15 percent over the next 10 years would be in deep energy retrofits looking, these are the buildings that we're looking at, as you may or may not know, all of our buildings are numbered. I've adjusted to that. Pigs can be quite confusing. But gives you an example. This is cancer research, this is brain and cause, the one that you're looking at. And here there's, this is chemistry. So those are the, these are deep lab lab buildings. We're looking at converting legacy steam systems to medium temperature hot water distribution to enable a new energy era across the campus. They're serving, again, conservatively day five, but upwards towards the 10 or more percent, depending on how far we can go. And AI enabled sensors, this is the idea that, you know, what would it be like to have a nest across our buildings? And right now in this new era, where there are only a couple of people, there are only a handful of people in offices at a time right now with this new hybrid model. So really looking at understanding what is the new space consumption as the pendulum swings back to a new normal? And then where might we do a better job using AI to manage energy on, on campus? As I mentioned, solar on roofs. The blue dots here are existing and the red dots are projected and possibilities and that can account for potentially up to 3%. Like I mentioned, EV infrastructure from shuttle buses to increasing EV infrastructure on campus for, for commuters. And so same thing, identifying new, new places. We actually have a lot already, but looking at new places and look at EV infrastructure for shuttle systems. And actually I'll leave it at that as the examples, but I'm sure you can think of addition, but that gives you the array. And you can start to see where it takes real distributed leadership to bring closure on this front. I want to end by noting that we're in unprecedented times for many reasons you're familiar with and on a climate note. And I'm starting to see this as a hopeful note for the first time ever a commitment to a 0 emission future. And it is an effort to decelerate the rate of our changing climate is now aligned. For us at MIT, the city of Cambridge has a net 0 commitment and Boston, our state has a net 0 by 2050 commitment as well as nationally is moving towards net 0 with an interim commitment of 50 percent below 2005 levels by excuse me, yeah, 2 thousand bytes levels by 2030, I believe it is. And so this provides us with a real strategic opportunity to determine the most impactful mitigation strategies at MIT in the context of each level. So for example, if the state of Massachusetts, they're starting to consider codifying in a net-zero stretch code, then we don't We just need to prepare for that internally. We're not needing to think of what our own code is. Though, thinking about zoning coming out of the city of Cambridge regulatory at the, at the state level and what the investments in both renewable energy portfolio for Massachusetts IT and IS ISO New England. So I'm spending some time behind the scenes studying that. I can help inform how much should the investment B, and where do we invest internally. So I took the liberty and please, this might not be perfectly correct, but I did a little research over the weekend and got some information from your stuff is to think about, well, what would your net 0 and opportunities look like for Georgia Tech? You know what's happening and being called for within the city of Atlanta. You know, how is Georgia going to relate to the new US net 0 by 2050 in 50 percent emissions reductions by 2030. I'm watching what's happening in Congress carefully in terms of how they're going to hold states accountable for that too. That'll be really interesting fodder for you guys too. Think about how this might apply to you with respect to energy systems at the grid level, at the state level, at the infrastructure level. So I can't thank you enough for what you know, for this opportunity to speak with you and converse with you and learn from you. So I'm going to stop sharing and shift back two to all of you. So thank you. And I again, I want to come back to Gary's question is a good question is always better than a brilliant answer. So I want to give myself that opportunity to give you guys an opportunity to ask questions. In some of these areas, like I said, around the tech technical questions, I'm happy to follow up. Hey, gray. And for anyone who wants to understand where Georgia Tech's the opportunity here is we're at the beginning of developing our carbon neutrality roadmap. And so as part of our campus master plan, we will have that opportunity to better understand what, what that looks like and what that means for us. They've usually I'll take it offers what's your, what's your advice? Or an institution like Georgia Tech, who really is just like at the first stage of mapping this out and facilitating an internal dialogue around action maintenance at a broader scale. Writings from those done. It's a great question. Finding, finding common ground through. Again, however you do that best. There is, number one, though, that people are feeling opposed to one another. And once you find that common ground, it provides space to have more contentious dialogue. And let me give you an example. I mean, I spent the past couple of years, like I said, teaching this course. Let me tell you a quick funny story is one of my best colleagues wrote this op-ed piece to the MIT administration early on in my career at MIT. And really critiquing MIT for not doing enough, not committing to this, not doing that. He had just done some research on what other campuses were doing. And it was sent to me about 12 times. And I went and met with him. And he's just became he and I ironically actually were just assigned agree to be on a PhD committee together too. So it was really easy for me enough high to find common ground we founded because we're both return Peace Corps volunteers. We found common ground in different areas, in different areas around the student. We were a PhD student that we were overseeing. Being returned Peace Corps volunteer Latin America and other areas. And then we started open up this dialog of like, how can he help inform what we need to do at MIT? And then we build a whole course together. And it's fantastic because he's a, he's been at MIT for 40 plus years. Elliot, he's been saying 40 years since I got there and I've been there eight years. So he's been there for a long time. He's an engineer and I'm very much a policy person. I'm much more comfortable with gray areas as as we build plans. And I'm telling you it's one of the most dynamic courses that we've developed because we don't see eye to eye and because we've learned how to explore, how to solve for carbon neutrality through different perspectives. What the leverage points are. Then able to bring those different perspectives to the administration and two committees. And so fast-forwarding, I wanted to share that store because I now have his name is Tim. I now have a whole committee of Tim that I'm managing with about 25 faculty, DOM of which only want nuclear, some of which only want us to invest in EV infrastructure, some of which only want me to invest in. What was the latest one of them? Affordable housing like, that's all. And each of them come to the table and say, this is, this is what MIT should do. Not nuclear off the table, not solar or whatever it may be. But because of the relationships, a sustainability person can't be transactional only you have to build these deep relationships. You have to find common ground and not be afraid of those different perspectives. And as a result of that, we're able to figure out how to move forward together. And we're just going to be frank, like I said, we've set our goal to net 0 by 2026, indirect emissions by 202050. But, but we haven't published a plan because we're in the midst of, of, of building that plan right now in real time while also investing in the campus. Just to clarify, we did talk about EPA's power purchase agreements. Can you just explain what those are in more detail for those who may not know what they are and what significance they bring to helping MIT reach carbon neutrality. Yeah. Sorry, just to clarify. I think you just said EPA there. They're not either. Okay. Yeah. Ppa. Yes. The everybody well, yeah. For disagreeable. Though, these are complicated and still something we're working through. We have we, we created early on, we wanted to explore, we know we can't get to net 0 emissions in the near term as quickly as we would like at the, at the local level in a 100 plus year old campus. Then so, but we're determined to use our, our ability, our investment, our assets to invest in renewable energy on the grid. And also we wanted to explore, and most importantly, what can we do better together? And so the initial power purchase agreement is actually lead to a new solar plant in solar field in North Carolina. And it was built with Partners Healthcare and in based out of Boston and what we will group called Post Office Square, which is a small area in the Financial District, which, which was Inquisition to, couldn't have invested in this without MIT and Partners Healthcare. And so we've come to terms with the fact that, well, wall, how do we account for and help drive renewable energy at the national grid level? Because we can't do it in the city of Cambridge alone. We did some analysis and we would have to cover, it would take, or we would have to cover the campus in solar six times to even get to the place that we got to with North Carolina. They're complicated. I don't want to suggest by any means you just go ahead and do this. But what we did do was say, well, why don't we reach out and in our next one while the investee and reducing on-campus, how do we contribute to the, to the grid? And we started to reach out and say, well our next partnership. Let's look at how I can't say too much about it because it's just still under wraps and we're trying to figure it out. But the big takeaway is asking the same question. What can we do better together? How can we think about innovation at the grid level? How do we bring researchers into the mix to help inform what should MIT use in partnership to explore is an energy storage. Is it offshore wind? Is it a combination of looking across the grid and time zones of energy plus solar. We have faculty MIT that only want to look at nuclear. And so, and how do we partner with municipalities? So what can a university in it and a city do together? And can you actually cure a constructs? Or you could actually invest on behalf of this is where equity comes into. On behalf of the city to bring renewable energy to the city. Though it's asking all of those questions. We don't have all of the answers, but we've brought in a consultant, we've pulled together an initial found founding group to ask a series of hard questions. And then I brought in a group of researchers, like I said, from nuclear to nano people to, to economic developers to help inform our thinking on that. And to figure out how do we account for and Dr. emissions down at the grid level? And what, how do we frame additionality? How do we account for those emissions? Can we invest in just Massachusetts? Can we invest in ISO New England? But if we, if we were just focused on the, on the canvas, we wouldn't be bringing this amazing group of people together to ask these, these unique questions. Though that is the value proposition of a power purchasing. That it's not just palling up, you're ever source and saying Can you bring me renewable power and paying, paying the bill? It's really asking these deep questions about the transformation of the grip of the grid and understanding how energy flows from one grade to another, from one source, from other. If it's been so fascinating and really enlightening for all of us. We have a question in the room and a question on the chat. It'll take the one in the room peppers. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up as it relates to monitor internal organization, a local relationships as opposed to who they stay. Notes different whether you're a state or private institution, but I'm curious, are you all see it as a priority to be asking and the types of relationships. The state in the Northeast, Is that something you're thinking about moving forward? I'm an equity versa. Oh, yeah. All of that's on the table. But if we didn't put it out there, we wouldn't have these be having these discussions. So that's that's all on the table. So nobody is just saying, let's just run to the cheapest energy wind farm and excess or something. It's actually all deeply the first, the first is building a deep partnership. Though, one of the impetus for committing to net 0 by 2026 is that we're also surrounded by a couple of other institutions also committed to that. So again, part 1 was creating some shared goals. Partner to was reaching out and having institutions reach out to us and say, I can't get my institute to commit to net 0. Might we join your group on this and that would help expedite and accelerate our commitment to net-zero. Though it's really to your question. It's thinking about that scales of impact is what can we do? Boston, I mean, one of my pills when I was invited to Boston was there's 56 college and universities in the boss, the greater Boston area. And so part one of all of this is again, I don't think we'll bring all 56 in, but they're already a couple of Consortium's we've signed called the Green Ribbon Commission, which brings together developers in the universities and health care and museums and municipalities to think about how to solve for net-zero and prepare for a changing climate. Though it was really that mentality within the cities of Cambridge and Boston to think about, again, what can we do better together? How do we look at investments in local, the local economy? How do we look across the, the greater Boston area, massachusetts, New England, ISO, New England, and then do we need to look beyond that will be the question. So nothing's been determined, but all of that has been started. I mean, I think we're we're three years into these questions, to be honest, already, even though we hadn't fully gotten to the net-zero public commitment, I was already working. This is the head of the curve. We had already started to bring some partnerships together. Say let, let's ask some really hard questions. Let's understand how we might serve underserved communities. What is the impact on air quality? Might there be some opportunities for job leveraging? But none of this is in place of investing on campus. This is a both and we recognize to solve for climate change in the world, There's going to have to be a both and approach to this. It's not, Let's look outside and not make any changes on the inside. I hope that answers your question or a question online. How did your energy policies develop from her with your crime and acts and emphasis master plan efforts. Could you share those policy document and be clear, your 2050 goal eliminate all came already launched. Have the direct emissions goal with that, right? All Canvas site. Are you asking if the 2050 goal seeks to eliminate all campus submissions? Yeah, he knows is a clarifying question would eliminate all campus combustion engine anytime. And so I guess that's the word. That's what we're putting on the table to be asked, you know, aspirationally, that's what we're all trying to figure out. So we know that we can electrify. You know, there's a big push in the country to consider electrification. So we know we can electrify. Did we need to and we can unplug our power plants should we need to and and plug into the grid 15 years down the line if if that were an option. But when we're preparing for various scenarios at the moment, so the answer is yes, that's the goal and that's where all of the researchers, that's why it takes a village to figure this out. Then this new working group, I have Faculty Committee on the the power purchase agreement looking at our 2026 goal. And then in the next two months we'll be launching a 2050 team. Just start to study what those alternatives are with our hand in hand with our facilities, VP of campus services and stewardship group. So yes, that would be the goal. We don't know quite how we're getting there. That's why we're investing in steam to hot water deep energy retrofits to make sure we continue to ratchet down what our demand is. As we understand, I think the most challenging pieces as I'm understanding it and as I'm talking to other campuses looking at this is is heating and cooling in the Northeast and how that's going to happen. So lots. One example, I encourage you to look out with the Princeton that's looking at deep investments in geothermal exchange. Those are examples of what we're trying to explore is what's right for, you know, for MIT in a dense urban environment, in a changing climate, New England. Back to energy policy. Yeah, whatever we have tried to make sure we're absolutely transparent. So whatever I can't provide for you or you can't find online. There's we haven't published in net-zero plan yet because we're still developing it. But we'll do probably something similar that we did last time. Yeah, we do. We annually report out on our greenhouse gas emissions. Some of the key strategies and interventions we've used. We did provide a plan, so that's what we'll have to do next. There's a great plan I just worked on with the city of Cambridge. So I encourage you and there's other similar ones across the country. Though. We don't do this in isolation. I study what's happening in other places and we're looking for the right model for us. But yes, whatever we have on, I'm happy to share you so much, Julie. We are at time. So we really appreciate you taking this time saying give us a peak and what am I doing? Let's give one more round. Well, thank you. I'm sorry. I couldn't be with you in person, but thank you so much for this bold move to do this in this new context. So appreciate the opportunity. I love the fact that we can still dialogue and I can learn your names even if I can only see the back of your heads, the hood. Thank you so much. And please be in touch. Thank you, Maria. Thank you. Anne