For the Spring 2022 semester, the President's Sustainability Steering Committee is focused on campus carbon emissions planning. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates.
UT Austin Sustainability Plan
The first ever sustainability plan for UT-Austin was adopted in 2016. The President's Sustainability Steering Committee (PSSC) is committed to periodic updates to the Sustainability Plan to guide UT sustainability efforts over the coming years. Keep an eye on this page for opportunities to give input and feedback on UT's sustainability priorities, goals, and strategies.
Review the 2016 Sustainabilty Master Plan, the 2018 update, and the 2020 update.
Plan Outline
In April 2021, the PSSC approved the following draft campus sustainability plan sections and goal statements.
Engagement: By 2025, each major university unit has adopted a sustainability plan. With over 30 major units, including auxiliaries such as Athletics, this goal is intended to enable individual colleges and large units to define and prioritize sustainability initiatives as appropriate to their disciplines and specific activities. The Office of Sustainability and Organization Effectiveness will collaborate to facilitate unit-level planning.
Academics: By 2025, the university curriculum will provide all undergraduate and graduate students with an understanding of, and proficiency in, sustainability within their discipline. Several colleges and departments already define sustainability specific to their degree plans, while others have utilized course development award funds from the Mitchell Foundation to increase their offerings.
Emissions: By 2033, campus operations are carbon neutral. The opportunities for UT Austin to be a leader in the global Energy Transition were recently highlighted at symposia by the Social Innovation Initiative as well as during UT Energy Week 2021 hosted by the Energy Institute. The committee believes that a conversation about reducing our own campus emissions is an opportunity to lead by example. While the current campus district energy system is a model of efficiency and low emissions for a natural gas power plant, as shown in the 2019 Campus Greenhouse Gas Inventory, the conversations about applying emerging technologies, financial tools and academic integrations to our own campus are just beginning.
Operations: The fourth section of the campus sustainability plan will focus on operations and is intended to identify strategies to strengthen existing sustainability and stewardship efforts across several areas of environmental impact in energy, water, buildings, landscape, food systems, mobility and the purchase of supplies and materials and diversion of waste. Operational strategies will build on the efforts that led to UT achieving STARS Gold in 2020.
Stay Up-to-Date
Sign up for Texas Sustainability's Bleed Orange, Live Green e-newsletter. Sent a couple times per semester, this is the best way to stay up-to-date on the Sustainability Plan and additional opportunities to provide input. You can also follow Texas Sustainability on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.