Creating a Living Lab on Campus

In a world plagued by climate change, large institutions like Brown University have a unique opportunity—some say imperative—to create a more sustainable future. 

As program manager for the Living Labs program, Liz Guthrie is in charge of the new project at Brown University, researching how to engage all members of the community. The Living Labs program, run by the Office of Sustainability and Resiliency, will connect various parts of the university and push the school towards sustainability through collaboration between facilities, operations, and research, and provide learning opportunities for students, staff, and faculty. It’s “exciting,” said Guthrie. “It provides an opportunity to test solutions in a real world way.” 

The collaboration across departments is one way the university hopes to reach its sustainability goals. “We really felt there was a need to both bridge facilities and operations with research and learning opportunities for students, staff, and faculty,” Guthrie said. 

Engagement is a key element in the Living Labs Program. The hope is to have students engage with sustainability on campus in various ways, be it through research, events, grants, or even daily practices. 

As the program begins to take shape, Guthrie is collecting research on the directions the Office could take with Living Labs. Over the spring and summer months, the office will convene a committee to create a framework for the Living Labs program, with student input. 

In the fall, Guthrie hopes to have pilot projects and opportunities for the Brown community, such as courses, events, and activities. 

An example of the kind of work the Living Labs Program will encourage is the Sustainability Seed Grants. The grants, offered by the Office of Sustainability and Resiliency, are awarded to Brown students, faculty, and staff to do work which furthers the university’s sustainability goals.

Students at Brown have historically engaged in sustainable practices and driven the fight against climate change on campus. 

The Environmental Program House, established in 1985, is composed of students at Brown interested in living sustainable lifestyles. The program is split between two houses, North House and West House.

Another student group on campus, Students Learning Urban Gardening (SLUG), maintains a student garden. They practice urban farming and grow fresh produce. SCRAP, Brown’s student composting group, is located next to SLUG’s plot on Hope Street. Their goal is to educate the wider community about composting practices and provide Brown with a composting system.

Because of the increasing threat of climate change and environmental degradation, sustainability has become an important concern for large institutions such as Brown. The Office of Sustainability and Resiliency (formerly the Office of Sustainability), led by Jessica Berry, supports Brown’s efforts to create a more sustainable university.

“I think the biggest driver in what has changed in the past few years has been the adoption of the Strategic Sustainability Plan…this was a really key component to sustainability becoming a key priority for the university,” Berry said.

The Sustainability Strategic Plan, an outline of Brown’s goals for a more sustainable university, was created in March 2021 by Director of Sustainability Jessica Berry, Dean of the School of Professional Studies Leah VanWey, and Assistant Provost for Sustainability Stephen Porder, with the input of faculty, staff, students, and community members. 

“The President signed off on it as a key priority and key component to fulfilling the mission of Brown so that really gave my office the tools and kind of charge to move forward on a lot of different projects,” Berry said. 

Berry oversees the school’s utility budget, renewable energy portfolio, greenhouse gas emission inventory, and the general goals of the university. The Office works with divisions across the school, such as dining services, transportation, custodial services, and real estate, among others.

According to the plan, Brown will focus on five areas: greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, nutrient pollution, human health impacts, water impacts, and biodiversity loss. 

Climate change is the primary issue: Brown hopes to reach a 75% reduction in campus emissions by 2025, and net-zero emissions by 2040. This elimination will likely cost the school about $200 million—the university’s largest investment in sustainability. 

According to the United Nations, net-zero emissions is “cutting greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible, with any remaining emissions re-absorbed from the atmosphere, by oceans and forests for instance.”

Brown’s Plan divides emissions into three Scopes. Scopes 1 and 2 are included in the net-zero emissions target.

According to the Plan, Scope 1 is defined as “emissions associated with combustion of fossil fuels on campus.” Scope 2 emissions originate “from fossil fuel combustion that occurs off site, but which produces energy that Brown consumes.”

Scope 3 emissions, which Brown does not include in its reduction targets, are defined as “indirect emissions”, that is, upstream and downstream emissions, as well as “emissions associated with University-related activities”. This includes student, faculty, and staff travel, as well as methane leakage from combustion of natural gas. Methane leakage from the natural gas supply chain used for heating and electricity is a large contributor to Scope 3 emissions. The reduction of Scope 1 emissions through Brown’s net-zero pledge will also reduce Scope 3 methane emissions.

The Plan emphasizes improved education and engagement with the Brown community. The Living Labs Program is an example of university efforts to bring the university together in order to improve sustainability. 

The Plan acknowledges the impact the university has on the local community: “As Brown is a major landholder, employer and stakeholder in Providence, it is clear that the University’s efforts toward supporting a more sustainable world should not stop at the campus border”.

Much of the work in the Office is concerned with Brown’s plan to reduce carbon emissions to net-zero by 2040. Recent initiatives include reducing red meat in dining halls, as well as a policy requiring that any vehicles purchased by Brown must be electric. 

To inventory its greenhouse gas emissions, Brown partners with the Climate Registry, a non-profit organization which reports emissions. A third party then verifies these numbers. Other universities that use the Climate Registry include Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins.

Brown is trying to reach net-zero emissions in part by making purchase agreements with renewable energy projects to offset emissions. Carbon offsets are certificates connected with operations that lower the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. These “offset” Brown’s CO2 emissions with CO2 reductions off campus.

In 2019, the university made purchase agreements with renewable energy projects to offset all on-campus electricity. According to Brown’s sustainability website, forty percent of campus emissions come from electricity consumption. 

The first project is a collaboration between the energy company Constellation and Energy Development Partners to create a 50-megawatt solar facility in North Kingstown. This project is planned to offset about 70 percent of Brown’s annual fossil fuel energy consumption.

The second project is an 8-megawatt wind power project in Texas. This is projected to offset the rest of Brown’s energy consumption. The site began operating in 2020.

These two projects, along with energy efficiency efforts on campus and other renewable energy projects, are set to cut campus GHG emissions by 27,000 metric tons per year by the mid-2020s, which is the same as taking 5,800 cars off the road, reducing campus emissions by 67% from 2007. 

In addition to Brown’s emissions reduction goals, the university has also committed to reducing nitrogen and phosphorus pollution by 25% by 2025 and by 50% by 2030.

Brown’s nitrogen footprint mostly comes from red meat and dairy products it purchases for dining halls, or about 85% of the footprint. Reducing red meat consumption is the main method of reducing the university’s nitrogen footprint.

Brown is not the only university hoping to become more sustainable. As climate change becomes increasingly apparent and students demand more action, universities have started various sustainability initiatives.

Middlebury College, a private liberal arts school in Vermont, achieved carbon neutrality in 2016. The school first began its carbon footprint reduction in 2001. The proposal to reach carbon net-neutrality by 2016 was driven by student activism: in 2006, the goal was proposed by students, and in 2007, the Board of Trustees adopted the resolution to become carbon neutral by 2016. 

In 2008, the college built a biomass gasification plant, which burns locally sourced wood chips, a carbon neutral source of energy. The plant generates the majority of the campus’s heating and cooling, as well as 15-20% of the campus’s electricity. It is estimated that the switch from oil to biomass reduced the college’s footprint by 40-50%. 

Other sources that help Middlebury reach net-zero emissions include a biomethane digester, a solar farm, and a wind turbine. 

In addition to the biomass gasification plant, much of the school’s carbon footprint reduction comes from carbon credits. In 2014, Middlebury decided to conserve 2,100 acres of its Bread Loaf campus. A carbon accounting company called Blue Source quantified the carbon credits of this land, and the college now uses these credits to offset its carbon footprint.

Middlebury has further pledged to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2028, as outlined in the Middlebury Energy2028 mission. 

According to Berry, the university is on track to meet its goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “We are ahead of the game at the moment, as of FY21…for our meat reduction goal,” Berry said. “Certainly…on track to meet our greenhouse gas goals. Definitely.”

In the future, with the implementation of the Living Labs Program, the hope is that the university campus will itself become like a laboratory, where community members across disciplines are collaborating and experimenting with new ideas to make a more sustainable university.