Authored by:
Alex French
M.Sc. in Environmental Policy
Clarkson University
As higher education shifts toward long-term decarbonization, institutions risk reducing accountability while weakening climate mitigation.
Some universities are moving away from carbon neutrality commitments and instead prioritizing direct decarbonization. According to Second Nature’s 2017-18 Impact Report, 33 campuses had committed to carbon neutrality by 2025. Today, only 16 are listed as carbon neutral. The others have backed away from their commitment to focus on decarbonization. This strategy, while it is well-intentioned, takes a narrow view of the science and economics of climate mitigation, and has the potential to swiftly remove accountability. Abandoning climate neutrality in favor of long-range decarbonization allows universities to pollute for free and avoid the reputational risks that surround carbon markets. This new strategy also costs more while achieving less.
From Carbon Neutrality to Polluting for Free
Instead of continuing to offset their emissions while reducing them, institutions like Duke University, Clarkson University, UC Berkeley and others are pivoting toward “deep decarbonization” strategies that focus almost entirely on reducing their own campus emissions over time. Setting a decarbonization goal for 2050 without carbon neutrality allows unchecked emissions for 24 more years.
Duke University pledged in 2007 to achieve carbon neutrality by 2024. It succeeded, reducing emissions significantly and offsetting the rest. Now it is moving on from that model after only a couple of years of paying for mitigation via the voluntary carbon market (VCM).
At Clarkson University, where I previously worked in sustainability, I watched a similar shift unfold. We had a carbon neutrality commitment with a deadline of 2025. That gave us over a decade to reduce our easiest to mitigate emissions on campus. In 2023 former Clarkson President Marc Christenson resigned our Second Nature Climate Commitment, but this time with no date or accountability.
Universities are not abandoning climate action—but they are redefining
it in a way that allows them to continue emitting greenhouse
gases for decades without compensating for them.
Under carbon neutrality, institutions have to take responsibility for their emissions every year. Under redefined deep decarbonization strategies, universities argue that their limited climate dollars are better spent on their own infrastructure than on offsetting their unmitigated emissions through the VCM. This may be an acknowledgment that it is politically easier to spend money internally, even if that money is not efficient at mitigation.
Recent research by Alexander Barron and colleagues shows that many universities are reducing emissions, even without carbon neutrality commitments, through infrastructure upgrades, electrification, and efficiency improvements. In other words, decarbonization is already possible and happening today.
But pollution follows a bell curve, known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve: as communities grow wealthier, pollution rises, peaks, and then declines as cleaner technologies replace older systems and as more affluent communities demand a cleaner ecosystem. The United States is already on the downward side of that curve. As equipment reaches the end of its life, it is replaced with more efficient systems. As the grid gets cleaner, emissions fall.
That raises a critical question: how much of the current push for “deep decarbonization” represents real, additional climate action? And how much reflects a baseline trend that would have occurred anyway? When you replace a 30-year-old boiler, your emissions are going to drop. That is not climate action, it is your baseline pollution curve. Additional decarbonization beyond that business as usual work, can only shave off the end of the tail of that pollution curve. This type of investment is often the most expensive in terms of $/CO2.
Prioritizing direct decarbonization over carbon neutrality commitments misses a critical point. Universities are not measuring the “additionality” of their climate investments beyond their baseline decarbonization. Under this framework, universities can replace an HVAC system that needs to be replaced, and send out a press release regarding the environmental improvements of a business-as-usual scenario.
The VCM on the other hand, is held to a much higher standard when it comes to transparency and additionality. High quality carbon projects must prove that emissions reductions and removals go beyond business as usual. In response to criticism, the VCM has rapidly matured. Independent firms such as Calyx Global and BeZero Carbon now scrutinize projects and inform consumers of project quality. Calyx Global has calculated “right-sizing” discounts for project types that have risks of overcrediting. Overcrediting means a project is issued more carbon credits than the project has actually achieved – one of the most controversial aspects of carbon markets. With right-sizing, consumers can confidently retire a conservative amount of carbon and avoid the risk that your mitigation dollars did not do what they were supposed to do. Meanwhile the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market is establishing market-wide standards through its Core Carbon Principles program. This work has led to shifts in demand for certain credits over others. As a result, registries face intense pressure to justify methodologies and avoid overcrediting.
The reputational risk of engaging with the market as it matures
is understandable, but it is not a reason to abstain from
near term accountability as it pertains to climate action.
Carbon markets are driving an economic ecosystem where profits are determined by the ability to generate high quality carbon reductions at the lowest cost. Higher education engagement, with expertise in research, workforce development, and outreach, is needed to scale this climate mitigation market.
While it is understandably difficult for a university administration to justify voluntarily sending money outside of the institution, the strategy of deep decarbonization on campus is more expensive and it is not going to work to stabilize the climate.
The Cost Problem No One Is Talking About
There is a fundamental economic issue with direct decarbonization: marginal returns. The early stages of the work are relatively inexpensive (think of LEDs and ROIs). But as institutions push deeper, the cost per ton of emissions reduced rises sharply.
At Clarkson, a high-efficiency district chiller cost millions more than a conventional replacement, translating to over $200 per ton of CO₂ reduced by my estimate. In another example, a proposed geothermal system for Clarkson would have cost $25M but only reduce emissions by 1,000 tons/year. These projects are great for press releases and campus admissions tours, but Clarkson would still be emitting over 10,000 tons/year that are not accounted for. A full decarbonization at Clarkson would cost dozens of millions of dollars. Do we want to continue down this road? Should we throw functioning HVAC systems away that have already been paid for and prematurely replace them? At what mitigation cost will we decide that instead of spending that money on ourselves we will spend that money where it is both needed and effective?
In contrast, high-quality carbon credits are often available for $10 to $25 per ton. Clarkson could purchase a portfolio of credits each year, increasing demand and decreasing supply of available credits. Alternatively Clarkson could approach the problem as a project developer. Locally, we could spend $1-2M ten miles down the road and build anaerobic digesters over dairy manure lagoons that are venting methane 24/7. Flaring the methane could make Clarkson carbon neutral for the next two decades. If there are excess credits they could be sold to alumni to recoup some of the cost. This would give us time to decarbonize. Internationally, Clarkson could invest in ecological restoration for a community in Ethiopia, or we could build a landfill gas capture and destruction system in Mexico, etc. These options can achieve the same climate impact, at a fraction of the cost, as replacing functioning equipment on campuses.
The Micro and Macro Economics of Carbon Markets
At the microeconomic level, carbon neutrality allows universities to hold themselves accountable for all of their emissions while minimizing costs. We cannot afford to fully decarbonize today, but over the next few decades all of our energy infrastructure will have to be replaced. At that time it is more cost-effective to fuel switch.
Focusing wholesale on a fuel switching approach now forces institutions into
a far more expensive pathway, where each additional ton of reduction comes
at a higher and higher cost—while leaving current emissions unaddressed.
At the macroeconomic level, the implications are more significant. If every higher education institution were accountable for all of its emissions, it would create consistent, durable demand for carbon credits. That demand would send a clear price signal to the market, incentivizing project developers to expand their workforce and build new mitigation projects globally. That means more investment in the low hanging fruit of climate mitigation with activities like methane abatement, ecological restoration, low carbon cement, clean energy in energy poor communities, etc.
The Environmental Justice Consequence
Spending all of our mitigation money on ourselves won’t work. We need to invest where emissions are growing and where mitigation is cost effective. If we want to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change, the most effective strategy is not to shave off the tail end of the pollution curve in wealthy regions, it is to reduce the peak for the global majority, where the worst impacts of climate change are being felt. Carbon markets can do exactly that.
When universities abandon carbon neutrality, they withdraw funding from these global mitigation opportunities. The result is a profound environmental justice issue:
- Less investment in the global south where mitigation is generally more cost-effective and has the greatest social and ecological cobenefits
- More spending on affluent communities where emissions are already declining
The atmosphere responds to cumulative emissions, regardless of where they originate.
You can pay hundreds of dollars per ton to mitigate within your ivory tower, or you can pay tens of dollars per ton to mitigate in a poorer community where emissions are still rising.
It is in our interest to financially help those billions of people to not be as pollutive as the global north was in their development. The goal would be to have pollution curves in developing nations peak lower than they would under a business-as-usual scenario. The VCM gives us the opportunity to do that. Direct decarbonization without near term accountability for emissions does not.
A Better Path Forward
There are roughly 4,000 colleges and universities in the USA but only 16 institutions are currently taking responsibility for their emissions and claiming carbon neutrality under Second Nature’s commitment. This opinion piece is not meant to target Clarkson, Duke, or the other deep decarbonization institutions. These schools have been amongst the leaders in climate mitigation for the higher education sector. Instead, my hope is to show, through a little context, that there is a better path forward. This is not an argument against decarbonization. Universities should absolutely reduce their own emissions. But abandoning carbon neutrality in the near term is a mistake. A more effective approach would combine:
- Continued on-campus decarbonization: More specifically, commit to replacing fossil equipment with renewable powered equipment as infrastructure meets its end of life and needs replacement.
- Commitments to no new fossil fuel infrastructure: Don’t purchase a new HVAC system that will lock the institution into gas consumption for another 20-30 years.
- Use high-quality or “right-sized” carbon credits to mitigate all of your current emissions: Ensure that the net impact of your operating budget is not forcing climate warming. Ensure that a significant percentage of your carbon portfolio includes credits originating in the global south.
Our goal should be to achieve more with the finite financial resources we have, not to spend more money to achieve less climate action impact. By walking away from carbon neutrality, we risk embracing a strategy that is less accountable in the near term, less efficient in the allocation of resources, and less just in its global impact.
Have a Reaction? Engage Via Two Upcoming Events:
Attend Second Nature’s upcoming Webinar: Unify For Climate: The Next Generation of Climate Action in Higher Education
August 25, 2026 | 3 p.m. ET
About the Webinar:
Higher education is being called on to deliver climate solutions at a scale no single institution can achieve alone, while navigating increasing pressure around impact, value, and trust. This session will explore Unify for Climate, a call to action aligning higher education’s diverse strengths around climate solutions with measurable societal impact.
Join us to learn from a panel of institutional leaders on:
- How campuses are approaching climate action in this moment
- Where alignment across institutions can accelerate progress
- What it looks like to connect individual efforts to sector-wide impact
Speaker Profiles:
- Alex French – Project Manager, CUHeat Program, Clarkson University
- Aurora Sharrard – Assistant Vice Chancellor for Sustainability, University of Pittsburgh
- Ferris Kawar – Director of Sustainability, Santa Monica College
Member Discussion: Climate Action Accountability for Higher Education
October 8, 2026 | 3 PM EST
This meeting will provide space for Second Nature members to discuss and engage in respectful debate about what accountability looks like for higher education when it comes to climate action today. We will explore both the recent updates from SBTi prioritizing short term targets, and the recent op-ed from member Alex French entitled: Some Universities are Abandoning Carbon Neutrality- and Calling it Progress. Our goal will be to collectively consider how institutions can position themselves to be accountable according to standards of science and economics, and with appropriate consideration of environmental justice.
In the context of Second Nature’s updates to the climate commitments and updated climate action guidance through Unify for Climate, this space will also be appropriate for discussing how institutions can balance direct emissions mitigation through decarbonization with near-term accountability measures, such as those offered by carbon neutrality commitments.
