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U.Va. creates five-year sustainability plan

Plan will reduce energy to pre-2010 levels

<p>The five-year&nbsp;plan was built upon ideas from existing sustainability projects and programs.</p>

The five-year plan was built upon ideas from existing sustainability projects and programs.

The University recently announced a new five-year plan to cut back on energy use, emissions and waste.

Released April 22, the plan was developed by the University Committee on Sustainability, with its subcommittees, working groups and task force groups. The groups built the plan upon ideas from existing projects and programs, Andrea Trimble, director of the University’s Office for Sustainability, said.

“The plan is a roadmap that outlines specific actions to undertake in the next five years in pursuit of longer-term goals,” Trimble said in an email statement.

Third-year College student Elizabeth Main, a student member of the Civic Engagement Subcommittee, said this plan is something many students have been campaigning for since the 1990s.

Energy reduction is the biggest part of the plan, and the hope is that the energy use in university buildings will be rolled back to pre-2010 levels by 2020.

“It will do a lot for our greenhouse gas emission … and will just in general make us a lot more energy self-sufficient,” Main said.

The plan is split into three parts: engage, steward and discover.

“[The plan covers] how we seek to engage our community in sustainability awareness, how we seek to implement programs and projects that steward our environment, people and financial resources on Grounds and how we seek to incorporate sustainability into U.Va.’s research and curriculum,” Trimble said.

Main said she appreciates how the plan is broken into different parts, allowing those involved to approach sustainability from different viewpoints.

“It’s to create better engagement of University committees, whether it be students or staff, and then obviously the larger Charlottesville community,” Main said. “Our environmental impact at U.Va. has an environmental impact on Charlottesville as well. We share the same air. We drink the same water.”

The cost of the new plan is dependent on how the plan is carried out.

“[It] will depend on specific strategies undertaken, but we expect the overall plan to result in many benefits to the University, including cost savings,” Trimble said. “It’s ambitious, but will continue to quickly advance us towards where U.Va. needs to be, to be a leader in addressing pressing global challenges, both on Grounds and beyond.”

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