Members of the campus community are invited to attend a virtual event to learn more about the future of climate change and how Vanderbilt will play a unique role in identifying and modeling solutions.
The event on Tuesday, June 15, begins at 12:15 p.m. CT.
Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and Vice Chancellor for Administration Eric Kopstain will be joined by Michael Greenstone, distinguished environmental economist and director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, to share details of Vanderbilt’s new collaboration with Climate Vault.
Attendees will hear firsthand how a series of innovative solutions, which includes this new and exciting collaboration, will put Vanderbilt on track to become the first member of the Association of American Universities to achieve carbon neutrality this spring—decades ahead of its initial sustainability goal.
“Climate change is one of the world’s greatest challenges, and research universities can and must play a unique role in identifying and modeling solutions,” Diermeier said in last month’s announcement of the collaboration. “At Vanderbilt, this means constantly asking ourselves how we can accomplish more—and then serving as a laboratory for innovation to reduce our total carbon footprint. This announcement commits Vanderbilt to accelerating our efforts to find novel solutions in this area. Climate Vault offers a bridge for our work, giving us a greater immediate impact on the problem and also stimulating much-needed research in carbon removal technologies that can have far-reaching benefits for the future.”
The collaboration serves as a big step for the institution, but Vanderbilt leaders continue to consider and evaluate ways to make the university’s footprint more sustainable in the years to come.
“By no means does this stop the work we are already doing or our future efforts. Our approach to climate change on our campus has been to explore every possible avenue to reduce our footprint. We’ve invested in on-site clean and off-site large-scale renewable energy, and this unique carbon reduction effort with Climate Vault adds to our portfolio of solutions,” Kopstain said.
“We are investing in actions that make change happen. This collaboration helps us do that, and we hope that it also sparks other innovative approaches that catalyze new carbon removal innovations and technology from our faculty and students.”
Additional work Vanderbilt has been doing on campus and in the Nashville community around sustainability includes:
- Improving on-site clean energy
- Decreasing carbon footprint from vehicles
- Increasing green spaces on campus
- Reducing waste consumption
- Investing in sustainable infrastructure
Learn more about Vanderbilt’s sustainability efforts on the FutureVU Sustainability website.