Many of Indiana's most popular colleges and universities are working to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But how — and how quickly — varies from one institution to the next.
Indiana University aims to be carbon neutral by 2040. University of Notre Dame, Ball State University and Indiana State University hope to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Purdue University still doesn’t have a climate action plan and is now the only Big Ten school without one.
Indiana Public Broadcasting looked at what climate progress has taken place at Purdue and IU in 2024.
Indiana University begins implementing its climate action plan
This past year IU selected committees to start implementing that plan on its campuses.
IU Chief Sustainability Officer Jessica Davis said 2024 has mostly been about studying what it will take to do the projects IU identified and how much they’ll cost. Among other things, that includes how to use waste heat to power IU’s buildings.
“A simple example at home is your laptop probably gets warm as you use it. That heat is wasted off — is just vented out into your home. So we have that at a lot bigger scales at the university, whether it's through a data center or through a central heating plant," Davis said.
READ MORE: Students worry Indiana University dragging its feet to enact climate plan, IU disagrees
Davis said IU is also looking into how best to electrify university vehicles and campus buses — and how to ensure there are enough charging stations in the right places.
She said the university is also working to make new buildings at IU Indianapolis solar-ready as well as taking a critical look at the solar installations IU already has and how to improve them.
Davis said the university saw a lot of success with energy efficiency projects in its buildings — even before the implementation committees started their work — like setting minimum and maximum temperatures for buildings during certain times of the year.
She said two such energy efficiency projects have resulted in lowering the university’s emissions by the equivalent of 27,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year — which would be like taking 6,415 cars off the road.
IU has faced criticism for how long it’s taken the university to start implementing its climate action plan. Davis said many people don’t realize that it takes the university an average of about four years to complete many of these projects — including about a year for consulting work, a year to secure funding, and two years to actually do the work.
IU created a workshop series to help educate students, faculty and staff about how the process works.
“A lot of folks have ideas for how to do this, but they don't understand the intricacies and the complexities of what it actually takes to get something from an idea to done and dusted. You know, it's easy to raise your hand and say electrify the fleet. It's a completely different story to actually do it,” Davis said.
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Purdue University lacks a climate action plan, despite student support
Purdue University is now the only Big Ten school that doesn’t have a climate action plan.
A group led by students wants peers, faculty and staff to sign a petition asking the university to commit to a plan by the end of 2025 — with a goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2040.
Amelia Eicher-Miller is a sophomore in mechanical engineering and part of the Purdue Climate Action Collective. She said even Indiana University has one now — and that’s just embarrassing.
“We’re this university who really prides ourselves on being innovators and engineers and like discovering new solutions, but yet we still kind of can't even commit to this thing which everybody else is doing," Eicher-Miller said.
Michael Johnston is an English professor at Purdue and part of the PCAC. He said Purdue does have a sustainability master plan, but it only applies to the department that oversees academic and administrative buildings and grounds.
That excludes places like residence halls and dining areas. It also doesn’t mention initiatives that don’t involve buildings — like electric buses.
"A climate action plan would start by coming from the top down, would start by having the whole university behind it through administration. And that would allow us to bring a lot of different entities together," Johnston said.
He said there is progress happening on campus, but not at the administrative level.
"So there definitely is progress in the sense that, you know, culture is changing. Students and faculty are becoming more aware of the need for conservation practices and such," he said.
Rebecca is our energy and environment reporter. Contact her at rthiele@iu.edu or follow her on Twitter at @beckythiele.