Rice is tops in Texas for sustainability

BY JENNIFER EVANS
Rice News staff

Rice University is at the head of the class in Texas for sustainability, according to the 2010 College Sustainability Report Card issued this month by the Sustainable Endowments Institute. Earning an overall B on the report card, Rice also was named a “campus sustainability leader” in this annual evaluation of campus and endowment sustainability activities at schools in the U.S. and Canada.

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The report card assessed 332 schools’ policies and practices on an A-to-F grading scale in the categories of administration, climate change and energy, food and recycling, green building, transportation, student involvement, endowment transparency, shareholder engagement and investment priorities. The overall grade is an average of the university’s scores in the nine categories; the highest overall grade earned by any school this year was an A-minus.

Rice has earned a higher grade each year since the first report card was issued in 2007; last year it earned a B-minus. ”I’m pleased that the Sustainable Endowments Institute recognizes the trajectory that we’re on,” said Richard Johnson, director of sustainability at Rice. ”This success is a product of top-level administration commitment and years of constructive student engagement.”

In the categories, Rice received A’s in transportation, climate change and energy, green building, and investment priorities. The university also earned high marks in food and recycling and in student involvement.

In transportation, a category in which Rice improved from a B last year, the institute noted that the university subsidizes the cost of bus and light rail for students, partners with a car-sharing program and waives fees for community members who carpool and provides free bicycles to residents of the Rice Village Apartments who agree not to have a car at the complex.

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In the climate change and energy category, Rice improved from a C last year and was the only Texas school to earn an A. The institute said, “Rice has conducted several greenhouse gas inventories. The university runs two cogeneration turbines and uses energy management software to track the progress of energy-efficiency initiatives.”

Rice was also the only Texas school to earn an A in the green building category. The institute noted that Rice requires all new construction projects to be built to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. “The Rice Children’s Campus recently earned LEED Silver certification, and several other buildings are currently under construction and awaiting LEED certification,” the institute said. “The university diverts (from landfill) about 80 percent of its nonhazardous construction waste, with some projects achieving more than a 90 percent diversion rate.”

”I think the report card was correct in recognizing that we have become a leader in green building,” noted Johnson. ”With that said, I think it’s also worth cautioning that there are a number of these kinds of college sustainability rankings, and they can often differ considerably from each other. Still, through four years of grading Rice, this particular report card has created a series of snapshots of a university whose sustainability initiatives and programs are broadening and deepening, so I look forward to what they’ll have to say in future years.”

The aim of the College Sustainability Report Card is to identify colleges and universities that are leading by example on sustainability and to provide accessible information for schools to learn from each other’s experiences and establish more effective sustainability policies. Founded in 2005, the Sustainable Endowments Institute is a Cambridge-based nonprofit organization engaged in research and education to advance sustainability in campus operations and endowment practices.

The report can be found at http://www.greenreportcard.org/report-card-2010/schools/rice-university. More information about Rice’s sustainability efforts is available at http://sustainability.rice.edu.