This report, issued jointly with This is Planet Ed, the Aspen Institute, and the MIT Office of Sustainability, reviews provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that can support higher education’s role in addressing climate change.

The University Climate Change Coalition (UC3)’s first policy topic of interest as indicated by Ohio State University President Michael V. Drake and supported by his colleagues is carbon pricing. UC3 convened subject matter experts from across North America to discuss Higher Education’s Role in Advancing Carbon Pricing. This preliminary brief includes a menu of options for college and university leaders who want to engage on this issue internally on their campuses or externally with cross-sector partners.

A statistics-driven look into why project location impacts the ability to hedge against rising electricity costs.

This technical brief explores the impact of a renewable project’s location relative to the location of a campus’s load in hedging against rising electricity costs.

Higher education is uniquely positioned to both expand and benefit from climate leadership. Many universities and colleges have substantially stepped up their commitments and efforts to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG). However, the ‘climate gap’ toward reaching these commitments is widening, as campuses become more technology and electricity intensive. Large-scale renewable energy (LSRE) provides higher education with an attractive solution to close this gap and show climate leadership, while reducing long-term electricity cost and managing risk.

This white paper, created in partnership with CustomerFirst Renewables, walks through the opportunities and challenges of LSRE projects, how to set them up, and firsts steps.

On April 3-4, 2014, Second Nature and Hampshire College convened a group of high-level stakeholders to explore a wide variety of approaches to aligning higher education and foundation endowment investment portfolios with their institutional mission and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. 

Associated with a conference exploring what it means for colleges and universities to invest intentionally, we developed a primer for participants to establish a baseline understanding of key issues related to aligning investment practices with institutional values.  It provides a high-level overview of sustainability investing, including a brief history, and a select list of key resources and relevant organizations.