4) Cornell Goal of Achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2035

When/what started Cornell activism?

2001 Kyoto Now! Student Org protest in Day Hall. In 3 days, President Hunter Rawlings agreed to decrease Cornell carbon emissions with Kyoto protocol.

What was the first university in the US to commit to Kyoto protocol emission reductions?

Cornell

Sustainable Cornell Council (SCC) has 3 steering committees - what do each do?

• Carbon Neutral Campus Committee

• Campus Operations Committee

• Education and Engagement Committee

  

5 sources of Cornell campus energy future

• water (have a hydroelectric plant)

• solar

• wind

• lake source cooling in summer est 2000

• earth source heating in winter (bring water 3-5 km down, take heat up) - ?

Summary - options for heat/electricity supply

• Heating

  • Earth-Source Heat (ESH): uses deep earth source (4-6 km)

  • Ground-Source Heat Pump (GSHP): uses shallow ground source (400-500 feet)

  • Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP)

  • Biomass Combustion: to generate heat during peak loads

• Electric - Wind, Water, and Solar

What has alr been done in cornell?

• 15 solar arrays and a hydropower plant provide 100% renewable electricity on sunny days, all year

• Lake Source Cooling provides 100% fossil-fuel-free renewable cooling to campus from Cayuga Lake

• 28 green buildings, including 5 LEED Platinum Buildings with green roofing and solar arrays

• Grounds staff use a mobile solar trailer to power fossil-fuel free landscaping equipment

• 2022- CUBO(Borehole observatory) test well completed summer, revised climate action plan to include new energy pathways foreword

Net onsite CO2 emissions reduced by ___% since ___

42% since 2008

Emissions accounting Scopes

• scope 1 - how much CO2 - burning natural gas at campus power plant? (use natural gas burnt amount )

• scope 2 - how much coal/natural gas/hydroelectric, etc did you buy in another power plant?

• scope 3 - external associated emissions - transportation/buses etc (hardest to count)

Cornell 2035 climate action plan started bcuz

students raised their voices in 2001 for social justice/future

Cornell GHG inventories - Cornell committed to accounting for upstream additions of greenhouse gases from 2 sources

• methane leaked into atmosphere from fracking and

• transportation of natural gas (from Pennsylvania to Cornell power plant)

Upstream methane leakage is between ___K and ___ K metric tons of CO2 equivalents added to the atmosphere via upstream transport and transport

50K and 160 K metric tons of CO2 equivalents (CO2e)

160 K metric tons of Co2 equivalents from methane leaked upstream would …

almost double our GHG emissions.

Pros/cons of additional GHG Inventories

• PRO - when we reduce onsite emissions, we reduce leaked methane as well

• CON - Cornell has a large shadow upstream methane problem

  • until the natural gas power plant is shut down and replaced with a completely renewable source of heat and electricity

Earth Source Heat Project Video

Cornell plan to use deep geothermal energy - find rocks underwater and drill to get heat with the borehole

• use waste biomass from cornell cow and food waste on campas to convert into reneweable system

Cornell Uni Borehole Observatory (CUBO) info

made Summer 2022, drilled 2 miles deep with temperature 75-100 C at depth

CUBO Native Rock Permeability at Depth

Low permeability

Need hydraulic fracturing of rock to enhance existing water/heat transport between a pair of wells

permeability and connectivity of preexisting cracks in rocks similar to Cornell’s can be increased in a safe way so they can act as water pathways between wells!

Costs

accounting for methane leakage and offsetts of ancillary damages of CO2, business as usual is much more expensive than switching to earth source heat.

$71(heat/power solutions)< $85(usual) annually

Bottom Line sustainability decision making

• most important point is - Does the solution help Cornell fulfill its academic mission and Purpose? The Living Laboratory

  

Carbon Neutrality by 2035 - Courageous Leadership

• July 20th 1969 Apollo 11- JFK speech in 1961

Issues Remaining in Cornell

• 1. reduce upstream methane emissions created by using fracked natural gas to generate electricity and heat on campus.

• 2. Finding additional ways to get students involved with learning from “The Living Laboratory”

• 3. Improve climate change literacy among all Cornell students

Cornell tradition of doing the socially just thing first