2023-24 Environmental Council Committees

Designing an Energy Dashboard and Residence Hall Game

This Committee will pursue three parallel efforts that support one another:

• Consider Middlebury’s Environmental data available online. Design one or more dashboards that will display these data in a  meaningful and understandable way for the entire campus and for each building.  For example, the dashboards could show current energy use, comparisons to various baselines, and other views that would be of interest to the community and the building occupants. One of the steps in the design should be to survey students, faculty, and staff about what “meaningful” and “understandable” mean. Examples of existing energy dashboards can be found here (see page 10 of final report).
• Develop the rules of a “game”, that is cooperative in nature among occupants of a  residence hall and “competitive” between different residence halls. The  “game” goal should be to foster greater awareness and action around energy conservation and efficiency. The game should have the players rely on the information available in the dashboards to inform their actions.  
• Create a plan by which the game could be piloted with several dorms during the winter-spring period as a trial to test the effectiveness and appeal of the game. This evaluation should be carried out through a survey that will be developed by the committee as part of the game development.
   

Beyond Energy2028: What Will the World Need from Middlebury Then?

Energy2028 is Middlebury’s current response to the climate crisis. It has four goals, adopted in 2019:

• 100% renewable energy sources
• Reduce energy consumption by 25%
• Divest the endowment from fossil fuels
• Integrate these efforts into the educational mission

Since the adoption of these goals we have added a crosscutting theme of equity and justice to help assure that their implementation is guided with consideration of relevant principles and values.

Progress toward Energy2028’s goals is moving forward and as we approach the halfway point in 2024 we want to take some time to imagine what the future could be like around 2028 and to consider what might be needed from Middlebury by then to address the changes that climate  change could bring. This effort will help inform how we go about achieving Energy2028 and provide perspectives on how the College orients itself going into a new phase of leadership in addressing the climate crisis.

This committee will pick up on work done by the Environmental Council in 2022-23 to engage the greater college community in imagining what the world could look like as we approach 2028 and how this vision relates to the goal line for the college’s Energy2028 initiative.

This year’s goals:

• Last year the EC committee interviewed 15 local leaders and climate actors and created Beyond2028 scenarios illustrating the visions of the interviewees. This year’s committee will use these interviews, together with UVM’s Vermont Climate Assessment, to create a plan for a series of conversations, online and in person,  about different strategies and actions the college and its partners could pursue as they plan a more resilient and effective response to the climate crisis.
• The committee will (1) develop an outreach and engagement plan, and (2) schedule to connect with different groups on and off campus. The goal is to share the Beyond2028 scenarios and to solicit further questions about the future as well as ideas for how to better prepare and respond to climate change.
• Finally, the committee will document the outreach and engagement efforts, and create a report summarizing the results, the ideas, and recommendations that were collected from the outreach effort.
  
   

The State of Sustainability at Middlebury and What’s Next?

Middlebury conducts a triannual audit using the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS) developed by the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. We are one of 1,106 higher education institutions who use this tool and 576 have earned a STARS rating. Our most recent submission in July, 2022 was given a Gold rating. We use this assessment tool as a way to track our progress over time in implementing sustainability across Middlebury and to help us focus on areas where we could improve.

This Committee will inform students, faculty, and staff about the current state of sustainability progress at the college using Middlebury’s most recent STARS report as a starting point.  As part of the process, it will solicit feedback about what the community values most and what future progress they’d like to see made in terms of the STARS assessment.

This year’s goals are:

• Become familiar with the STARS reporting system and Middlebury’s most recent submission (2022).
• Work with the materials developed last year by Sustainability Solutions Lab interns to create a portfolio of different outreach tools and items that will inform students, faculty and staff about (1) what sustainability looks like at Middlebury and (2) Middlebury’s progress in addressing the STARS criteria.
• Create a set of tools that will allow members of the Middlebury College community to provide their questions, comments and ideas about what’s most important to them with regard to progress on sustainability issues.
• Develop a summary of the responses and priorities expressed by participants to help shape Middlebury’s sustainability agenda going forward.