YOUNG VOICES |
By Hailey McConnell
First published in The Lutrinae
Cal State Monterey Bay is four years away from a carbon neutrality deadline, a goal for the CSUs that is meant to curb the climate crisis and promote sustainability. That goal will not be met.
To be carbon neutral, the campus will need to balance the amount of carbon it emits with the amount of carbon that it puts into reservoirs. Essentially, it is equaling out carbon emission with a source that will take in the carbon, like trees taking in carbon emitted by campus transportation.
“So back in 2007 we began our process toward carbon neutrality, and back at that time, it was just signing on to the second nature President’s commitment for carbon neutrality… . In 2009, we set 2030 as our carbon neutrality date,” said Derek Martin, the associate director of the Safety, Risk, and Sustainability Office.
“This date aligns with when climate scientists say humans need to halve carbon emissions to have a chance to stay under 1.5 degrees centigrade of global warming. This long window of time may sound like we’ve had plenty of time to reach this goal, however, the distant nature, I’d argue, made meeting this goal harder,” said Martin.
From price and urgency negotiations to changes in recording data methods, the goal of carbon neutrality has seen unanticipated obstacles in the past 19 years that have delayed the achievement.
Carbon emissions from a college campus come primarily from fossil fuels consumed through the central boiler systems, vast electricity use, vehicles and even housing and dining services. Decarbonizing this equipment takes cost-consultation and time. CSUMB has been in the process of negotiating for a renewable energy project.
“We are in the initial phases of building more solar panels on campus, which is very exciting. It’s the initial step… a request for proposals,” Martin said, “…then the solar companies will bid on that to then build the panels on campus.
“And so we’re looking to build between two and four megawatts of more solar power on campus, which if one megawatt is about 15% of campus, adding an additional two would be 30% more. So it would be up to 45%.
“It will all depend on what the proposals come back as, what technology is used, how many solar panels we can cram into the area we have (the lot at the intersection of Butler and 7th Avenue). So there’s a little question between two and four right now, what that would be, but we’re in the earliest stages of that, and tentatively that’s going to be about a four- to five-year process, unfortunately, but that would hit us right at 2030,” said Martin.
The process of consultation alone for a renewable energy source could take up to five years, including the negotiation of prices and where or how this alternative source of energy will be best suited on campus. All of these considerations elongate the process.
Additionally, while solar panels are a source of renewable energy that reduce dependence on fossil fuels, electricity generation from the burning of fossil fuels is only a portion of campus emissions.
Heating and cooling is another main source of carbon emissions on a college campus, a chiller plant provides hot water, heats spaces and supports HVAC systems in campus buildings.
CSUMB installed a heat recovery chiller plant in 2023, a system that replaced a previous chiller plant.
“The previous chiller plant ejected heat to cool its building, while the new one delivers that heat to the building’s hot water system where it is reused – a process that has reduced the burning of natural gas for the campus,” said Walter Ryce, public information officer, in a statement on the facilities management department.
There is a recorded 6% reduction in natural gas consumption as of 2026 because of the heat recovery chiller plant. This type of plant is included in CSUMB’s master plan for carbon neutrality, along with two other plants to encompass the entire campus. This project had an approximate $3 million cost and 12-month period of installation, these criterias create roadblocks.
“Carbon neutrality has had to contend with all manner of immediate crises; budget cuts, a pandemic, enrollment spikes and dips, among all sorts of other short-term crises so that distant end date for carbon neutrality can make it feel not as urgent,” said Martin.
Sustainability goals have been negotiated across a wide variety of issues for the past 19 years, slowing the progress toward carbon neutrality. However, the ever expanding issue of measuring carbon emissions creates a bigger problem divided into three scopes.
Scope one is the emissions generated on campus property and scope two are emissions from purchased electricity on a grid system outside of property limits. These are the categories that CSUMB measures for their personal responsibility, emissions that they can control because the third scope is indirect emissions from campus employees and students.
“It gets bigger every year. We get better at measuring things like, ‘Oh, wait, that just exploded this once again, into more and more emissions.’ But I think it’s also a good thing to remember that our daily actions have all of these emissions that are associated with them, even if we can’t bring it to zero at the moment,” said Martin.
The goal for carbon neutrality was set as a prediction for the CSUs to help mediate the climate crisis, there are no immediate consequences for not making the deadline. Additionally, while progress moved slower than anticipated, CSUMB for fiscal year 2025, had around 6,031 MTCO2e, which is roughly an 11% total reduction campus wide.
“Our planet is dying, which is not infactual but if we look at the planet, it will survive in some way, shape or form. It will bounce back from this,” said Martin. “It might take thousands of years, but really the short term impact is, can we as a human species survive?”
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