In addition to encouraging students and professors to make sustainable decisions when traveling, an important project the Green Office has implemented is the ACT Program. If you haven’t heard of the program or are wondering about the project being funded by this semester’s program, here are all the details!
What is the ACT Program?
ACT stands for Academic Travel Carbon Trading, and it is a program with the goal of calculating, reducing, and offsetting our carbon emissions from the travel to and from the Academic Travel destinations.
How does the ACT Program work?
With the help of information provided by the AT professors, the GO calculates the carbon footprint from each semester’s AT courses, currently only looking at the emissions created from traveling to and from the destinations. This includes plane and train rides, as well as bus or train transfers to and from the airports.
Another important aspect of the ACT Program is to reduce the carbon footprint of AT trips. Within this aspect of the program, the GO works with AT professors in Sustainable Travel Workshops to discuss how to reduce emissions and how to make more sustainable travel choices. Our most recent workshop was November 22, in preparation for the Spring 2024 academic travels.
The last aspect of the program involves the opportunity to offset carbon emissions generated by AT trips through carbon credits that finance projects that reduce or eliminate carbon emissions elsewhere. Because the projects chosen by the ACT Program have thus far been situated on our campus, this method of financing is a form of stakeholder offsetting also referred to as insetting. By electing to inset, the ACT Program supports projects that reduce or eliminate emissions generated directly by our campus, making our campus more sustainable and helping our campus move closer to carbon neutrality.
What is the current ACT Project?
This semester, the carbon credits offered by the ACT Program finance the replacement of existing light bulbs with more energy-efficient versions in the North Campus Lowerre Academic Center, focusing on the hallways, office spaces, and top floor of the building. This project impacts our electricity use, which is a Scope 2 emission. In Switzerland, the good news is that much of the energy delivered to users is renewable. In Ticino, 55.75% of energy is hydroelectric energy and another 9.19% is based on other forms of renewable energy. However, approximately 35% of Ticino’s energy supply is not renewable. With this energy factor in mind, each new energy-efficient light bulb will save us 74 KwH and will reduce approximately 2.02 kg CO₂ emissions per light bulb.
When compared to last year’s usage rates, the change of lightbulbs will not completely offset the carbon emissions from the AT trips in just one year, but it will significantly lower our carbon emissions. Additionally, the bulbs have a lifespan of about 7 years, so the impact will continue beyond this year. It will take approximately 1.5 years for the new lights to offset a representative year of AT emissions to and from the travel destinations.
Written by Sonya Strauss
Photo credit: Alexandra Hoffman