The Sustainable Carolina Podcast
The Sustainable Carolina Podcast
Spring 2021 Sustainability News with Chief Sustainability Officer Mike Piehler
I’m Vik Agabekov, the Program Manager for Sustainable Carolina and this week I am joined by our Chief Sustainability Officer and Director of the UNC Institute for the Environment, Mike Piehler.
We are going in depth on the flurry of sustainability news that happened in April and unpacking the transition to sustainable Carolina, outlining the Climate Action Plan Draft, and looking behind the scenes on the brand new Champion Sustainability Fund.
Stay tuned and hear it on the sustainable Carolina Podcast!
Launched in fall 2020, Sustainable Carolina is the University’s comprehensive initiative to advance and amplify all sustainability activities, including reducing the University’s environmental footprint through three goals: net zero water usage, zero waste to landfills and net zero greenhouse gas emissions. Led by Chief Sustainability Officer Michael Piehler, Sustainable Carolina will advance these goals through collaborative partnerships across operations, academics, and research.
Vik Agabekov 0:08
We've learned a lot in over 225 years at UNC Chapel Hill through collective innovation and discovery. But what does it mean to be sustainable for the everyday Tar Heel Today? That's the question we're exploring. Every episode, we take a look at the next steps forward in our campus sustainability journey together. My name is Vik, and this is the Sustainable Carolina podcast.
Vik Agabekov 0:36
I'm Vik Agabekov and I'm the program manager for Sustainable Carolina. This week, I'm joined by our chief Sustainability Officer and director of the Institute for the Environment, Mike Piehler. We're going in depth on the flurry of sustainability news that happened in April and unpacking the transition to Sustainable Carolina, outlining the Climate Action Plan draft. And looking behind the scenes on the brand new Champion Sustainability Fund. Stay tuned and hear it on the Sustainable Carolina podcast.
Vik Agabekov 1:08
Moving on to our first topic, this afternoon, we're talking about the Sustainable Carolina transition. So this is something relatively big for the university. It's been in the works for a while now. And a lot of things had to come together to get us to this point. The fi rst seed that represents this transition to a lot of people on campus is the formation of the Carolina Sustainability Council. So Mike, could you talk about the history of the formation, some of the flows that had to happen for it to become a reality?
Mike Piehler 1:41
Absolutely. In April of 2020, I started a conversation with the Chancellor around his vision for sustainability for the university moving forward. And the centerpiece for his vision was the Carolina Sustainability Council. And we had conversations about what that organization might look like, who might serve on the council, and how it could really be the foundational piece for our sustainability efforts. So shortly before Earth Day, we came to a shared agreement on what we thought it might look like, and announcements were made about the formation of the Council and my chairing it, which was a really exciting time for me for certain, and really was just the beginning of what's been this action packed year. The Council is diverse by every measure, it has representation from the College of Arts and Sciences, from the Business School, from the Law School. It has undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff. It has experts who work in a range of areas, from energy to water to waste, and work broadly on issues about society and efficiency and sustainability. It is a really effective and thoughtful group. And when we first put it together, we knew that it was the right people, but in the year or so that it's been meeting, it's just proven to be absolutely the right group of people.
Vik Agabekov 2:59
So what's one of the things that the Sustainability Council is doing differently to make it more accessible than previous councils that are similar to this at the university or that other schools are doing? What's a way that it's boosting openness and visibility,
Mike Piehler 3:13
We have a very clear set of announcements that precede each meeting, we've also made all the meetings accessible through livestream on YouTube, which I think has been a big help. And we have following each meeting, communicated the key findings and the key topics that will be talked about as we go forward. Through our undergraduate members, we have formed a environmental coalition, which brings together the leaders of student organizations throughout campus to meet monthly and to have a way to connect directly to the council. And I think that that was one of the challenges that I noticed early on even prior to having any sense that I would end up in this role was that there's amazing work being done across campus by undergraduates. And these individual groups sometimes don't know what one another are doing. And certainly at that time, didn't have a great connection up through the administration. So that's something that we sought to remedy very quickly. And I think that we've done a pretty good job that the right structure is there. But like everything, there's room for some fine tuning,
Vik Agabekov 4:15
What's one thing that students can look for in this council to ensure continuity year after year? Because as students cycle in and out, it can be one of those things that's difficult to keep up with. How can they stay on top of things? How can they see exactly what they need to be seeing?
Mike Piehler 4:31
So I think that's that's the challenge of having this amazing asset of our students, but who necessarily turnover through time, what we've tried to do is have enough structures in place that sustain themselves independent of who's in them. So we have these set roles for undergraduates, and while the individual gifts of each student will be manifested in the council, their representation will be part of our structure, and hopefully you'll be able to allow a retention, a kind of an institutional knowledge. And then an assurance to the students that this is a part of this council, this is a foregone conclusion that there is undergraduate student representation, and that there is this formal connection through the environmental coalition
Vik Agabekov 5:16
Bouncing to a more institutional component of the transition to Sustainable Carolina. Of course, your appointment as the chief Sustainability Officer, can you talk about your experience in the selection process, the immediate vision that you are seeking to bring into reality, and some of the highlights that you've seen in your role so far, because this is one of those key cornerstones of the transition to Sustainable Carolina,
Mike Piehler 5:45
It really is, it's an important thing. And it's not something that I would have foreseen if I looked at what I was doing, say, a year and a half ago, and I credit the chancellor, his vision was, Let's announce the sustainability Council. Let's get it going. And then we'll talk about the Chief Sustainability Officer position and see, see where everyone is in their thinking. And I certainly appreciated that rather than take on the whole thing at once and make a bunch of decisions at the same time, it was, it was put into series where first we built the council, we became really comfortable with that being a tremendous asset. And then thought about my potential role as chief Sustainability Officer, which is outside the box. I mean, I'm a career environmental researcher, I certainly am well versed in issues around sustainability, but I'm not a sustainability professional. So in some ways, it was, it was not necessarily what you would have guessed and not the most obvious choice. But I think we all became comfortable with the fact that the version of sustainability that we were building was something that I was well suited to help guide.
Vik Agabekov 6:49
And you certainly bring a very unique perspective. And it's something that you hope to see at a lot of universities, but it's definitely limited in implementation. And so we're pretty lucky to have this, this situation, this outcome at UNC.
Mike Piehler 7:01
Well I feel really fortunate. It's not , not a conventional choice. But I think , knock wood, a we continue to accomplish interesting things. And I think it does give us a set of perspectives and a set of opportunities. That might be more difficult if the person in this job or not a faculty member with an active research program and with a real perspective on environmental research. So I see that as ,as a strength and the the challenges that I face not having the full technical background in some of these areas, I'm making up for fast learning quickly about things don't have native training in. And that part has been a lot of fun. So I do think that having a faculty member in the chief Sustainability Officer position is an advantage in many ways. And the first one, I think the primary one is that it makes the connection between the research, education and service missions of the university, a really straightforward one, that that's a very accessible link. And that was something as I was serving as director of the Institute for the environment that I said was that we had this opportunity to walk the walk and talk the talk around sustainability. And I guess I probably said it one too many times. Because here we are charged to do just that. But it's an exciting opportunity. And it is a distinctive one. There are other universities in the country that have similar setups, but it's not that common. And I'm excited to see where it can take us.
Vik Agabekov 8:23
Our next major piece of the puzzle for the Sustainable Carolina transition is of course, the movement of the professional staff and the reorganization there. So this is going to be a team of very dedicated and passionate people we are going to be you know, at the forefront answering questions, doing analyses, meeting with campus partners, staying engaged with local community matters, etc. And so this is kind of a new, almost like a show of force for lack of a better phrase, to really underscore that sustainability is not going away on campus. It is being rebirthed, kind of like a phoenix. And we're here and we're ready to get going. And things like this podcast are a great example of that. We're thinking of new channels to reach our campus audiences. We're looking for ways to deliver content and answer questions in a lot of our segments, whether it's faculty, students or staff. Can you talk a little bit about the transition for the professional staff? And what are some of the things that we might be on the lookout for in the future.
Mike Piehler 9:26
Like the rest of this process, it's been a deliberate step by step process, not everything happening all at once and again, I credit the Chancellor with saying, just work through the pieces one at a time and see where you end up. And that was certainly the case with thinking about the professional staff. In the past we've had amazing sustainability professionals distributed throughout the university and we still do, but we came to a conclusion that it would be a good idea to bring a core group together as a unit they brand under our new Sustainable Carolina brand and to Have a place where that group could work to do the things you described, to facilitate, to create synergies, to provide motivation, to be a point for providing the up to date information on sustainability at universities, and helping direct the small city that is our university and trying to be as sustainable as it possibly can be. So it took a little while, there was some orientation for me some learning to understand where things were, where they'd been, what the rationale was, and think through what our, what our reform group might look like. And eventually, after a period of time of thinking about that, understanding our assets, conversations with the chancellor, and with Vice Chancellor for finance and operations, Nate Knuffman, we came up with a plan that would bring the core group together and place them in the Institute for the Environment. And this is probably not coincidentally where I was working at the time as director. But it wasn't just the reaction of let's put it where I am to make it simpler, it was really the result of a lot of thought about where would this group be most empowered, and most effective, the group can benefit from the wonderful communications that already exist within the Institute for the Environment, the community engagement, some of the specific research programs. And then also things like the Development Group, which as we move forward with sustainability, we're really interested in exploring possibilities for both individual and corporate and foundation philanthropy. So it was another one of those parts of the process that took a little while. But at the end of the day, I think it's really exciting to have this group together, to have the vision of exactly whom it will be, and when we're going to have ourselves fully fleshed out. So it's going to be four people as we have it scoped out. Now, two of those people are already there, I'm sitting across the table from one of them. But we have additional plans in the very near future, to staff back out with a sustainability analyst who will be a really empirical person who will help us with the mathematical side of the things that we're doing and the, the modeling that we have to do to project in the future on all sorts of issues, particularly around greenhouse gases, water and waste. And then finally, we'll have community engagement and education person who will be the fourth member of the team. So we're excited about the group, I think it is in exactly the right spot. And we're now just working towards building our important relationships with, as I said, the people on the ground who are doing the work that makes the difference in sustainability, mostly on the operation side.
Vik Agabekov 12:38
Right. And one of the things that we're hoping to do through that is, of course, bring the lens of visibility to their work and really elevate them and make them as recognized as we possibly can. Because a lot of these partners really make the world go round. At Sustainable Carolina, I'm sure you can agree we're very interested in lifting them up as much as we can.
Mike Piehler 12:59
Absolutely. Thinking about the new framework for sustainability, Sustainable Carolina, a big part of that is having a broad lens and looking at sustainability, for all the many things that it encompasses. And there are remarkable things going on throughout campus. Some of them are really well known, but others are not known at all. So part of our job, as you say, is to shine a light on the remarkable accomplishments. And also to see who is doing remarkable things and what's limiting they're doing more remarkable things. So it's it's an exciting position to be in. They're incredible people working across the university and all of the realms that were concerned with around sustainability. And this, the partnership with those people I think is core to our success. And fortunately, we're off to a fast start in that regard.
Vik Agabekov 13:49
So next, we're going to shift gears a little bit and dive into the details of our updated Climate Action Plan draft, which is another way that we're making the sustainability conversation something that everyone can be a part of. For those of you tuning in the Climate Action Plan draft is accepting public feedback until June 15. It is available on our website at sustainable.unc.edu. So Mike, let's talk about this Climate Action Plan release. Some of the history for our listeners is you UNC's original Climate Action Plan was released in 2009. And this follows a lengthy period of kind of simmering in terms of climate action and global trends intensifying. So we had the Paris Climate accord around the same time, we were a signatory member of ACUPCC, which was our first greenhouse gas neutrality goal, being net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. And the original 2009 Climate Action Plan was something that was drafted through a lengthy process including committees, reviews, and in summary, the recommendations that it included, were very accurate for the time being. This was an era where the university still had incandescent light bulbs, and were transitioning to compact fluorescents, which is not a current trend in sustainability. We've moved past that, thankfully. But the same theme is reflected across some of the other recommendations within the Climate Action Plan. These strategies were very concrete and well thought out at the time. But we're way past-due for an update. The current Climate Action Plan draft that we've just released is a product of looking at new campus projects, new opportunities in terms of policy, looking at the policy landscape moving forward within North Carolina and the United States. And of course, it's making note of new technologies that are available now that weren't available back then. And of course, the technological question, something no one has a crystal ball for. If we did know what was coming in the world of technology, we might be able to plan much more aggressive action. And so some of the previous Climate Action Plan had wiggle room for technologies that didn't end up materializing. So the first point that I'd like to talk with you about is the very nature of our rethinking of this Climate Action Plan. We're pivoting it to be a living document, something that is not only very accessible, but is dynamically updated with new technologies, with new data, with new science as it comes out so that it's the most accurate, refreshed and up to date Climate Action Plan that we can possibly have, which was certainly not the model for the 2009 Climate Action Plan. Can you speak a little bit about the living nature of this document, why it's important to you in particular, and what you hope that it will accomplish?
Mike Piehler 16:33
Absolutely. And I start thinking first about the 2009 Climate Action Plan, which as you said, had some, for now, looking like fairly specific goals that may be seen as a little bit esoteric or focused, but really were of the time. But if you look at the time, since the 2009, Climate Action Plan, and you look at the goals set out in it, a lot of the strategies were enacted. And really at the core, it is a Climate Action Plan. And in the time that that plan was in effect, our university grew by 27%, and our emissions decreased by 24%. And our coal use the Cogen Plant decreased by 44%. So those are all positive progress. And for me, that's where I started with the 2009 Climate Action Plan was, there were some successes, however, as you say, I think of this time is a document that isn't going to be as specific and is going to be focused on broader goals and a core set of goals, which include thinking a whole lot about our emissions, thinking a whole lot about our energy use, and thinking an awful lot about our sources of energy and trying to find our way to our eventual goal of being Net Zero. And that is, I think the the fundamental way that we wanted to shape this new plan, because of the era in which we live, that we can have documents online, that are easier to interact with, that are simpler to update, I think we can keep this document evergreen. And I think that will be really helpful as it helps steer all of our policies and activities in this area at the university. So that that feels very positive.
Vik Agabekov 18:17
So next, the largest goals within this updated Climate Action Plan draft that we've put out the ones that stick out to pretty much everybody. And for good reason. Can you kind of dissect each one of these goals, let's break down some of the technical aspects and really make sure that we're covering all of our bases here.
Mike Piehler 18:35
Absolutely. And our goal with this plan was to be ambitious and bold, but also to be realistic. So having a living document allows us to update it as technology advances, or other opportunities present themselves or if something goes wrong if we make an assumption, and it turns out to be one that wasn't cracked, and it pushes us back a little bit. All of that's going to be communicated really clearly. So these core goals, as you pointed out, we're looking at our energy use intensity. And looking at net zero, the the 40% reduction by 2025 is in line with the governor's executive order at and one that we feel it's appropriate as a state university to match that goal. If you're going to become greenhouse gas neutral, you can do it by switching energy sources. But critically, you really need to reduce your energy use. So we have great successes in the past. And we're going to talk in a little while about some exciting new ways that we're going to help fuel this energies and density reduction. But we are confident that we can meet this goal. And we have tested using simulations that have a set of very plausible assumptions about increasing energy efficiency, and we are very confident we can get there. We also as you said have moved up our goal to be net zero by 10 years to 2040. This is really ambitious when the listeners go on to look at our climate Action Plan, if you haven't already, you'll see in 2014, we get to a 79% reduction as compared to our 2007 baseline. And that remaining 21% is likely in the end to be mostly offset. And so what that means that there are sources that just can't go away. So things like travel for research or study abroad, travel, or other activities that that generate emissions, and probably still will in 2040. No matter how the world changes, technologically, there'll be a handful of activities at the end, that we will will have to offset but all of that is well within our plan. And all of that is understood. And our goal is to put out these ambitious new goals and plans, have them be rational and tenable. But also have them be as aggressive as we possibly can. We're very sensitive to releasing timelines, that right now we have the most information we can about how terrible they are, and how likely they are to be achieved.
Vik Agabekov 21:00
Drilling in a little bit deeper on the Climate Action Plan, draft, a lot of people see a Climate Action Plan, and they say, okay, so these are very high-level things. They're institutional decisions, you know, what are the concrete tactical steps that are going to be taken? And how does our Climate Action Plan draft look to address those?
Mike Piehler 21:20
So the majority of this new Climate Action Plan, the top level, the high level activities tend to be institutional, they tend to be looking at our stationary sources of emissions, they look towards improving our fuels to be those that have lower levels of emissions, and eventually moving towards having renewable energy sources replacing everything we can. It's well known that our university has a Cogeneration plant. And the main thing that that Cogeneration plant provides us is steam, and you can't buy steam from Duke Energy, you have to produce it yourself. So organizations that need steam have to have a way to generate it. And that's what we use our cogeneration plant for. So a great deal of our goals within the Climate Action Plan are directly related to that plant, and doing everything we can to move as quickly away from coal as we can, and doing everything we can to transition to other sources of electricity as they become available to us. So we have to work with our partners at Duke Energy to look for those renewable sources. And there are a series of possibilities ways we can find renewable sources for the university. One of them is through bill called House Bill 589, which includes a program called the green source advantage. And that is a specific outlay of renewable energy through solar that is accessible to just a subset of users. And among them are universities. So we're working really hard through programs like the Green Source Advantage to access renewable energy for the university. And we'll continue to do that and to look for additional opportunities. And those are the highest level because they're the primary sources right now of our emissions. But hopefully, as we fairly quickly have success in some of these areas, the other sources are going to become apparent. And we're prepared for that we're not just taking these sources, one at a time, we're looking at plans and ideas for much farther down the line as you get to Scope Three the emissions that are a result of people's individual actions. We have ongoing studies with students at Carolina who have amazing ideas for possibilities to decrease those emissions through, largely through changes in individual behavior.
Vik Agabekov 23:42
So to capture all of our Climate Action Plan news in in a few short sentences, we're basically looking at a very transparent framework in guiding us to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. and reducing our emissions by 40% by 2025. And so this is something again, we're encouraging everyone to take a look at on our website at sustainable.unc.edu. And please leave your feedback! Because we will be collecting public feedback and incorporating it into the final Climate Action Plan draft, which we will also be releasing on our website.
Mike Piehler 24:19
And I think that's an interesting thing that we haven't talked about yet - that this Climate Action Plan is born of the pandemic. And so we didn't have the opportunity that we would have loved to have had to engage directly with all the stakeholders, have meetings of large groups of people to talk about these things, and really hash out people's reactions to specific parts. And we have this system set up that we think is quite effective to allow you to interact with the document in a really specific way. We're reading your feedback as it comes in. We hear it and for the most part, it is things that we anticipated, and we believe that interest in this process is critical to its success. And so we thank everyone and definitely please keep leaving that feedback.
Vik Agabekov 25:01
So the final piece of the Sustainable Carolina transition, one of the most exciting and newest developments is, of course, the announcement of the Champion Sustainability Fund, which is kind of groundbreaking to our, our sustainability structure here on campus. And so I want to kind of clear the floor and let you talk about anything and everything related to this fund. It is a very exciting development that everyone on campus that's a part of our community should be thrilled about.
Mike Piehler 25:31
I completely agree. And like so many great things. It has its foundation in lots of work in the past. It is a revolving Green Fund, which I'll define in just a second. But there have been conversations about the potential for a revolving Green Fund on campus for some time. So I think we're fortunate that we are here at this time in place where several things came together that allowed us to launch a really exciting, really robust fund with a really cool name, the champion sustainability fund. Our university has a long standing and really positive partnership with Hanes brands. It is both an apparel providing contract and also an embellishment, doing logos and things like that. And through that relationship, we found ourselves having conversations about the organization's shared interest in sustainability. So as luck would have at the time was one where Hanes brands had just launched a really ambitious new sustainability program that was focused on people products and planet. And we had just relaunched our sustainability activities. At that point, I think the council was up and going, I believe that I had been identified as the chief Sustainability Officer. But we began these conversations that revealed really quickly that we had a huge amount of overlap and shared interest in the ideas around sustainability. And sustainability is something that's just what you should do, because it's ethically and morally right. But also sustainability as largely an efficiency, that if you're smart, and you are doing things that are sustainable, is probably going to be beneficial to you in terms of your operations, whether you're a company, or whether you're a university. So those conversations became very exciting very quickly, it was actually Hanes brands who first thought of this idea of the green revolving fund. And we had to convince ourselves that we thought it was something that we could do within the framework of a large university. And while we don't think it's going to be simple, we do think we can take it on. So the idea of a green revolving fund is that you start with a block of money. And in this case, we are extremely grateful to Hanes brands for a million dollar gift to the university to support this activity. So you take this block that you start with, and you invest in efficiencies. So for example, my office has fluorescent bulbs, and so in my office, we could put LEDs. And there would be some delta in the bill that we pay every month for power. And you set up a mechanism for your savings on your power bill to some portion of it to go back to the the revolving fund, and some portion to go to the groups who enacted the efficiency practices. So it's really a multiple win thing, you're investing a large amount of money into efficiency on campus, you are hopefully getting a good return on that investment. And you're reinvesting that savings back into your fund, which allows you to invest again in efficiencies, and yield more of a savings, but also eventually, as it builds up, and in many cases at universities who work in this space a lot as well, these funds build up into the 10s of millions of dollars. So then you could imagine you not only have a really effective pot of money to invest in efficiencies and yield savings, but you also have a pot of money that allows you to invest broadly in sustainability activities. So it is a brand new gift, less than a month that we've had it, but exceptionally exciting, and really exciting because the partnership with Hanes is not transactional at all. We continue, We'll have a an internship program. We already have our inaugural intern for this year. And we have very frequent conversations about additional things that we might be able to do to connect these two organizations. So Hanes is a proud North Carolina company. And certainly Carolina's a proud part of our state. So it's a really nice connection between two organizations that hold prominent roles and are very proud of their North Carolina-ness.
Vik Agabekov 29:40
Well said. So what are the things that students in particular can be on the lookout for? As far as news goes with this Champions Sustainability Fund. As they're coming in for the Fall maybe, what is the roadway look like?
Mike Piehler 29:53
So it'll take a little while to mature and get traction to where the investment inefficiency are returning revenue back to the fund. So I think an instant return on activities funded by the green revolving fund may not be this year. But there certainly will be a clear announcement about the availability of the internship program, which is remarkable, it is an opportunity for students to work in the Hanes sustainability group. And not only to have a summer opportunity that is well-compensated, but the idea is to find people whose schedule allows them to work through the following school year. So it's really an extended internship that will give, I think, an amazing opportunity to the right student. And honestly, an amazing return to Hanes as well, because Carolina students are remarkable and can do amazing things in a short period of time. But you don't have the constraint of just a short summer, so I think having an eye open for that internship programs deadline, which will likely be somewhere around the turn of the year, perhaps shortly before in December, will be one thing students can look for. But also, I think it'll be interesting to follow the development of the program and see how it works. Identifying projects and working with the hosts who will be implementing these sustainability programs. And seeing how, how long does it take for a program like this to mature, we're fortunate and that there has been some planning done at the university before, so we certainly benefit from those activities. And we benefit from looking to our peers and seeing those that have worked really well. But I do think like anything, it will be an interesting process to watch the maturation of the fund itself.
Vik Agabekov 31:35
That sounds good, something that people should definitely keep an eye out for and something that we'll be posting about to our website, as well as our other news developments, which we'll have a handful of coming up this summer. So that about wraps up our first ever podcast episode, very excited to be sharing this kind of content with you. And we hope that this channel will be a great way for us to interface with the campus community, it'll be a very accessible way to get sustainability news. The two major things I want all of our listeners to be aware of is the Climate Action Plan feedback, which we have open until June 15. Please read our plan, please leave your feedback. We've got multiple feedback categories of items for all of your thoughts. Please send them in, we read every single piece and they will be crucial for writing our final draft of the Climate Action Plan. And the last thing I'll leave you with is we're just starting this podcast so please share it with your friends on whatever platform that they use for podcast streaming. Please write us a note if you enjoyed this kind of material, and we'll have a new episode coming up pretty soon. So here is Sustainable Carolina signing off.
Mike Piehler 32:42
Thank you all very much. And thank you, Vik.
Vik Agabekov 32:44
Thanks, Mike. And thank you for listening to the Sustainable Carolina podcast.