Drexel commits to 'Green Globes'

By: Stephanie Takach

Posted: 2/20/09

Drexel University has become the first university in the country to commit to using "Green Globes," the Green Building Initiative's independent environmental impact monitoring system.

"Green Globes is more than a monitoring system; it's an environmental design and assessment tool," Mark Rossolo, director of state and local outreach for the Green Building Initiative, said. "What it does is it will take data and different criteria, which depends on [whether it is a] new or existing building."

According to Jim Tucker, senior vice president for Student Life and Administrative Services, Green Globes may also be a key component as Drexel establishes new guidelines and policies for all future construction projects.

"It is hoped that the versatility and on-line access to Green Globes will help educate, prompt discussion and foster research at Drexel," Tucker wrote in an e-mail.

Rossolo said the report factors in all different areas and creates a rating to determine how the university scored with each new building and also acts as sustainability consultancy and gives builders recommendations.

"Great thing about it is it gives you all these recommendations and you can look at it budget wise," Rossolo said. "In this case specifically, it will really help make the University as green as possible, given possible budget that Drexel has."

Rossolo added that though a few schools are using the program for a few projects, Drexel is the only university applying the program to its entire campus.

"We have other schools that are using Green Globes for one or two buildings but no other universities nationwide that are using it as a campus wide aspect and it's really unique and neat to see," Rossolo said.

According to Rossolo, LEED would be one program to which Green Globes can be compared in terms of equivalency.

"Technically, Green Globes and LEED are about 85 percent identical. The major difference is that we focus more on energy and energy efficiency and life cycle assessment, looking at how it's manufactured and how long it will be there," Rossolo said.

A comparison of costs using a typical Drexel construction project showed Green Globes to cost approximately .05 percent of the project costs, while the cost of pursuing LEED may be 1 percent, according to Tucker.

"Green Globes is a comparable sustainable building design certification but costs considerably less than LEED," Tucker wrote.

According to Carl 'Tobey' Oxholm, dean and chief executive officer of Drexel's Center for Graduate Studies in Sacramento, Green Globe and LEED are different but have the same basic goals.

"We are making specific commitments and putting the data on the web," Oxholm said. "Green Globes is not the same as LEED, but it has the same objective criteria."

According to Kelsey Gibbons, co-president of the Drexel Sierra Club, Green Globes can be an effective rating system if third-party verification is obtained. However, she said it does not set specific construction and design standards and as a result, is a very subjective system.

Another tool used to monitor a university's commitment to increased environmental sustainability is the President's Climate Commitment.

According to its web site, presidents signing the commitment are pledging to eliminate their campuses' greenhouse gas emissions over time. However, Drexel University is not one of the 613 signatories of the commitment.

Tucker said the senior vice presidents recommended to the president that he not sign the Climate Commitment.

According to Tucker, fewer than half of the institutions that signed the Commitment met the Sept. 15, 2008 deadline for submitting baseline inventories of their green house gas emissions, which illustrates that universities are having difficulties with the requirements.

He said it has also been reported that many of the figures that were submitted by institutions that signed the commitment were rough estimates and based on differing methodologies for calculations, making it difficult to normalize the data across institutions.

Oxholm said signing the President's Climate Commitment and committing to the gold standard of LEED was one of the first things Drexel Green investigated.

"I recommended that [President Papadakis] not sign," Oxholm said. "It's easy to say 'Let's go to zero [carbon emissions],' but it's very hard for an urban school with a lot of new buildings that is going from low rankings to high national rankings to say they are going there."

Oxholm said it is important to be accountable for projects, including finances, and that Green Globes displayed sufficient credibility.

"It's great to advertise as long as they follow through and actually do so," Gibbons said.

Gibbons said the Sierra Club is not requesting that Drexel do anything additional, but sign a written commitment form pledging Drexel to reduce its carbon emissions. She added that universities such as the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University have signed the President's Climate Commitment.

"We want it because there is a solid written commitment, not green washing, which is having more hype about sustainability rather than a process," Gibbons said.

Gibbons said universities could make their own commitment in the President's Climate Commitment and therefore it doesn't make sense for Drexel not to do it.

"It will reassure student organizations and the campus community," she said.

Specifically, the Sierra Club wants some sort of carbon reduction.

According to Tucker, Drexel plans to reduce carbon by providing and improving energy efficient systems focusing on areas of heavy consumption. Tucker said although these systems may cost Drexel more money to purchase, in the long run, Drexel will save on energy costs and will reduce its carbon footprint.

Gibbons said if Drexel doesn't establish a goal for carbon neutralization, it's much more likely to miss attaining it.

"Drexel claimed in their Princeton Review Green Survey (written in 2008) that they had already produced a 'publicly available greenhouse gas emissions inventory and adopted a climate action plan consistent with 80 percent greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 targets.' However, that inventory has not yet been completed, and there are no set goals for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," Gibbons wrote in an e-mail.

"Green Globes is only limited to capital projects and buildings," he said. "The Princeton Review has a lot more things in it."

Oxholm said Green Globes is a tool for monitoring capital investments, not academics. He also added that Drexel Green is broader than Green Globes, and has a self-test on how the school is doing with commitments.

"Every commitment we make, we honor," Oxholm said.

According to Tucker, Drexel's increasing enrollment and the significant number of projected new buildings to be constructed over the next five years makes it unreasonable and nearly impossible for Drexel to truthfully promise that it will cut carbon emissions to zero.

Tucker said the University hired Pennoni Associates to document Drexel's baseline, recommend an emissions reduction plan and to develop an ongoing data management plan for assessment. The information will eventually be made public on the Drexel Green web site when the report and recommendations are completed sometime in March 2009.

Gibbons also said the Sierra Club wants to see a cohesive unit such as an Office of Sustainability at Drexel and that Drexel Green could become that unit.