Why Mount Holyoke
Sustainability
Climate Commitment

Climate Commitment

Climate change is a defining issue of our day. The global threat of warming temperatures, rising sea levels and extreme weather demands both serious study and decisive action to protect our Earth and its inhabitants. Researchers now recognize that individual action alone will not suffice to tackle the most significant environmental problems of today and that collaborative action will be required for success in addressing deeply rooted unsustainable patterns. As climate change continues to threaten our way of life, particularly the lives of those who are already burdened by other social inequities, the Mount Holyoke community is dedicated to doing our part to address the crisis at hand.

The Board of Trustees of Mount Holyoke College has endorsed the overarching goals of the College’s Sustainability Task Force, including the goal of becoming a carbon-neutral campus by 2037, Mount Holyoke’s bicentennial. Carbon neutrality is achieved by reducing the amount of carbon released to the atmosphere, primarily by increasing energy efficiency and converting to renewable energy sources. It is also achieved by balancing the remaining carbon released with an equivalent amount sequestered — that is, removed from the atmosphere and held in solid or liquid form — or offset by reducing emissions elsewhere.

We are pursuing our goal of reaching carbon neutrality by its bicentennial through a strategy of investing in energy efficiency, promoting energy conservation, retrofitting historic buildings and transitioning to carbon-neutral heating and electricity sources.

Fulfilling our commitment to climate justice

Our new commitment builds on actions taken in 2017 by Mount Holyoke and thousands of others to sign the “We Are Still In” declaration. This statement supports the Paris Agreement’s global commitment to climate action despite the U.S. government’s decision to withdraw, and urges elected officials to put a price on carbon in order to spur reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

While the college has committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2037 and has implemented a number of sustainability initiatives at the structural level, the Community Commitment to Climate Justice (CC2CJ) offers a way for everyone on campus, from students and administrators to staff and faculty, to get involved in the fight against climate disruption in ways that are ongoing and transformative for our community and beyond.

To date, there are significant sustainability plans taking shape across campus, yet these plans remain elusive to many. Goldberg, Gustafson and van der Linden have found that key factors in cultivating lasting change on climate action include

“active thinking about climate change via deep discussion with close members of one’s social network;
revised mental models that make it easier to understand, think about and feel motivated to act on climate change
reinforcement of pro-climate social norms so they become internalized over time.”

In this vein, the CC2CJ would bring together diverse actors from across campus to center conversations around environmental issues and to coordinate sustainability efforts across campus. More importantly, this commitment would build community around sustainability and justice issues in ways that can be empowering and institutionalized over time.

What

In a nod to the Paris Climate Agreement, the MHC CC2CJ seeks to enhance communication and coordination on sustainability efforts and identify commitments from the college’s primary stakeholders to address both carbon neutrality goals and sustainability actions. Where other climate action plans often have one committee responsible for setting goals across campus, MHC’s CC2CJ requires actions to be defined by the actors to incentivize long-term commitment and ultimately empower the community as a whole. We recognize that the commitments from each stakeholder will look different based on their abilities and levels of responsibility. For this reason, we rely on a transparent and sustained dialogue to develop goals that are agreeable to each stakeholder group and that can be revisited regularly.

Through the CC2CJ and the opportunities to pursue these commitments, we believe that this coordinated effort on sustainability goals will achieve many of the recommendations of the MHC Sustainability Task Force, including the following:

Increase awareness and communication on sustainability efforts and measures, including the interconnectedness of sustainability and justice
Center conversations on environmental and sustainability initiatives
Increase transparency around sustainability-related decision-making
Provide opportunities for organizing, community-building and communication
Provide opportunities for leadership, interdisciplinary studies and teamwork
Integrate a culture of sustainability across campus and empower community members

How

The CC2CJ is a place where every stakeholder on campus can contribute to a global movement through a local and meaningful approach. Because climate change affects us all, members from across the campus representing facilities, dining, LITS, staff council, administration, faculty and students are invited to contribute to a vision for our campus that would create an overall just and sustainable community. Involvement in the CC2CJ is meant to be impactful but also manageable. Members will gather three times over each academic year to 1) hear about sustainability initiatives occurring on campus; 2) identify new initiatives that their peers/colleagues may be interested in pursuing; 3) find support and resources for implementing new initiatives and 4) coordinate sustainability initiatives across campus.

Between meetings, participants in the CC2CJ will be asked to explore and communicate with their peers/colleagues to identify what initiatives people might be willing and able to commit to and help communicate initiatives already in the works. With an accountability structure that comes from outside the administration in which members begin to hold themselves accountable for their personal and collective actions, the community commitment will move us toward not only carbon neutrality but also a more just and empowered community.

Timeline

Year 1:

Kickoff, fall 2021
Check in to envision possible campus commitments, early spring 2022
Reconvene to discuss implementation of commitments, April 2022

Year 2:

Kickoff with increased participants to discuss implemented initiatives and envision new commitments, September 2022
Check in to identify successes and obstacles to initiatives, December 2022
Reconvene to discuss implementation of commitments, April 2023

Solar panels on a campus building

The College celebrated the installation of a photovoltaic array on Kendall Sports and Dance Complex on November 19, 2018. The installation was accomplished in collaboration with the South Hadley Electric Light Department (SHELD) and will generate an estimated 541,600 kilowatt hours of electricity each year — adding to SHELD’s renewable energy portfolio and supporting the College’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2037.

This is SHELD’s first large-scale commercial rooftop project. Power from the 1,472 panels feeds directly into the College’s electrical distribution system at Kendall Hall and will generate approximately 6% of campus electricity use annually.

The array provides an opportunity for students to study renewable energy through the College’s Campus Living Laboratory.

View a live feed of the power generated by the system

In the summer of 2023, Mount Holyoke launched a geothermal energy project to replace the College's fossil-fueled heating system with a geothermal one, and allow campus to become carbon neutral by 2037.

The College has maintained a greenhouse gas inventory since 1900. Prior to 2017, the inventory measured direct emissions of greenhouse gases, electrical use, fuel use for heating and hot water and fuel use for fleet transportation. With this renewed commitment, the College now uses the Sustainability Indicator Management and Analysis Platform, known as SIMAP, to track its carbon footprint. Developed by the University of New Hampshire, this platform is the leading tool used by colleges and universities for inventorying greenhouse gas emissions. Beginning in 2017 the College now tracks Scope 1 (direct emissions from campus operation, e.g., heat production), Scope 2 (indirect emissions from sources that are neither owned nor operated by the college, e.g., electricity), and Scope 3 (other emissions attributable to campus operation (e.g., business travel, employee and student commuting) using the methodology established by the President’s Climate Leadership Commitments.

Mount Holyoke established its first climate change goal in 2004, when it joined the fight against global warming by entering into a partnership with Clean Air – Cool Planet, a leading organization in the region dedicated to finding and promoting solutions to global warming.

In signing the 2004 agreement, the College agreed to set a target for greenhouse gas reductions that was consistent with those established by the 2001 Regional Climate Action Plan and adopted by the governors of the six New England states and the premiers of the five eastern Canadian provinces. The plan established short-term goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the region to 1990 levels by 2010 and to a level 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. The College met its 2010 Greenhouse Gas climate action goal of returning to 1990 emission levels by 2010.

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