Vassar College

At a Glance

Industry

College or University

Project Types

Goals/Targets, Supply Chain, Sustainability and Energy Management Strategy

Year

2020

Location

Poughkeepsie, NY

Summary

Camila Bobroff worked with Vassar College to evaluate the 2020-2025 Climate Action Plan and develop an implementation plan to reduce air travel emissions.

Goals

In 2020, Vassar College drafted an updated Climate Action Plan to guide campus sustainability toward carbon neutrality by 2030. To maintain momentum toward their climate targets, Vassar recruited Camila Bobroff to assess their newly developed goals and action steps and develop an implementation plan for reducing Vassar’s air travel emissions, which make up the majority of Vassar’s Scope 3 emissions.

Solutions

Camila evaluated the Climate Action Plan through:

  • a global lens using the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals to determine if/how Vassar’s climate action steps align with the goals, and how to measure progress toward those goals, and

  • a local lens engaging stakeholders to develop a multi-criteria analysis with the goal of capturing impact relative to input for each action step.

Additionally, Camila developed roadmaps for implementing three critical steps to reducing air travel emissions at Vassar:

  1. Improving tracking and analyzing air travel emissions,

  2. Setting priorities for air travel, and

  3. Offsetting necessary air travel.

Camila developed a suite of public-facing deliverables, including fact sheets and informational videos, to engage the Vassar community in sustainability efforts on campus.

Impact

Camila produced a multi-criteria analysis tool, ranking Vassar’s climate action steps based on a set of criteria that measure impact and feasibility. This tool can be easily updated to evaluate future actions developed.

Camila also developed a set of recommendations for reducing air travel emissions and decreasing Scope 3 emissions by 85%.


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