Sustainability as principle, practice, driver and culture

6.20.11

(Chancellor Katehi delivered the following remarks at a colloquium on sustainability in Glion, Switzerland on June 20, 2011.)

Chancellor Katehi's paper on sustainability from 2011 Glion Colloquium.

We are gathered here this week in the name of sustainability – a term we share a common understanding of, but individually, our specific definitions can vary widely.

Sustainability – as we define it in our classrooms, capitols and marketplaces – has taken on an almost mythical quality. As we know, the term “sustainability” and the movement and action that surround it have been evolving for decades. What began as an effort to sustain quality of life has grown to encompass everything that comprises the natural habitat.

It was the oil crisis in the 1970s that really laid the first foundational layer for the concept of sustainability. The principle of sustainability was connected to energy and the driving need to sustain access to petroleum.

By the 1980s, this term was connected to environmental awareness and began to define a commitment to control climate change.

By the 1990s, sustainability incorporated our aspirations for strong public awareness and public education.

And ultimately, sustainability was also connected to the concept of political stability after terrorist attacks shocked the world, and the ability to preserve financial strength and to improve quality of life following the Great Recession.

Today, sustainability is more than a state of mind. It has evolved into a core value and strategy. It is principle, practice, driver and culture.

Sustainability as a principle

Higher education embraced the concept of sustainability early, but it took many years for passion and beliefs to translate into focus and action.

Working in silos or piecemeal slows momentum and success, and traditional university approaches cannot be applied to sustainability in the 21^st century. Development of sustainable societies requires new ways of thinking and working. It requires working across disciplines and the kind of partnerships that have never before been seen.

The world’s universities have a compelling responsibility to break down barriers, make breakthroughs, take risks and model sustainability. Universities are uniquely situated to take this leadership role, and in fact, no other entity or system may have the ability, capacity and positioning to do so.

The world’s universities have the potential to bring everyone together on an even playing field:  industry, environmental advocates, government and academia. Universities can – and many are – creating these models of the future, testing strategies and forming partnerships.

The world’s universities must be the independent agents, the honest brokers, who create these partnerships and bring science and policy together, then provide the analysis, knowledge, tools, research and commitment to public service.

For example, when the governor of California wanted to develop a Low Carbon Fuel Standard to decarbonize transportation fuels, rather than turning to his agencies, he instead turned to UC Davis and UC Berkeley.

A team of 20 researchers was assembled to develop the policy and ground it in science while simultaneously taking the politics out of the process. Industry, environmentalists and policymakers were involved from the start. The process worked because everyone involved had the same goal: to survive and thrive.

We know business cannot thrive unless our foundation is healthy and stable. We also know that cleaning the planet’s air and water is not just good for our environment – it also creates jobs and improves the economy. So together, industry and academia created the first policy in the United States to steer the petroleum industry toward low carbon.

It was eventually adopted in California almost “as written” – and it requires a 10% reduction by 2020 in greenhouse gases emitted by transportation fuels.

The northeast states in the U.S. have seriously considered a similar standard and there is also interest in it on the national level. UC Davis has also been consulting in Canada, Europe and China on models for low-carbon economies.

Sustainability as a practice

Because of this commitment to service, many leading universities are embracing sustainability in their curricula, research efforts and policy studies. It has triggered a shift in thinking and reprioritization to both acknowledge climate change and commit to sustainability as a practice and energy approach.

Universities are making the key connections, linking sustainability with food supply and availability, water, health and economic prosperity. These connections are crucial, because sustainability must be looked at, studied and practiced comprehensively and holistically.

A piecemeal approach will make inroads, but will not ultimately triumph and truly protect the generations to follow. The world’s universities must make a comprehensive approach to sustainability their top priority.

I will share a few examples of how we have approached this at UC Davis.

We have developed dozens of sustainability projects, ranging from:

• A Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Center, which coordinates California’s electric vehicle research program and overcomes barriers to commercialization.
• The California Lighting Technology Center, which develops innovative energy-efficient lighting.
• The Center for Water Energy Efficiency, which focuses on the energy-water dynamic.
• The California Renewable Energy Collaboratives, including statewide partnerships involving biomass, wind, solar and geothermal energy programs.

As I’ve mentioned, we have dozens of sustainability programs, but the goal is to work collaboratively as we model sustainability.

Right now, we are building what will become the largest zero-net energy community in the United States. The first phase will open in the fall and will house our students who will bike and ride to classes. The buildings incorporate cutting-edge energy and environmental design and the community will generate renewable electric power.

Because we are committed to a comprehensive approach, the project is a public-private partnership and involves work by many of UC Davis’ research centers, including:

• The Energy Efficiency Center
• The Energy Institute
• The Center for Water-Energy Efficiency
• The Western Cooling Efficiency Center
• The California Lighting Technology Center
• The Biogas Energy Project

The project will eventually include homes for our faculty, retail and a dynamic village center. It really has the potential to be an international model, and it is happening only because the approach is united and comprehensive.

Sustainability as an economic driver

Sustainability has led to knowledge generation in science, technology and policy. This new knowledge is driving innovation and the creation of new products and services.

The biggest challenge and opportunity for any organization – and for public universities more specifically – is to integrate the above forms of sustainability into one concept that can drive behavior and culture and lead to a paradigm shift.

This is what UC Davis is developing: a vision and a plan that will provide higher productivity by enhancing output and reducing use of resources.

This plan will generate growth by creating new ideas, new relationships and new structures, by reducing bureaucracy and embracing risk taking, and by encouraging and supporting free thinking about the opportunities and responsible planning against the challenges.

This is the new university: an intensive and intentional organization that can find meaning and order in unconstrained thinking but follows a disciplined approach and provides a focused direction.

UC Davis has established the first university-based Energy Efficiency Center focused on transferring technology into the marketplace. The university also created a Center for Entrepreneurship to bring science, engineering and business together to move ideas out of the lab and into the world.

We have also designed a unique incubator – the Engineering Translational Technology Center.

This is an on-campus facility where faculty can develop their projects while ensuring separation of intellectual property and technology transfer between the campus and start-up companies.

UC Davis has also formed 34 start-up companies since 2004 – 9 of them were formed last year alone. We would like to improve this number and create close to 15 annually.

UC Davis is now in the process of creating an Innovation Hub to connect research with entrepreneurs, accelerate the transfer of campus discoveries into commercial products, and develop the local and regional economy.

Sustainability as an organizational culture

Since the economic downturns of 1999 and 2008, sustainability has been connected to financial sustainability and has also been a driver of organizational reforms.

In an era of state and federal deficits and in an environment of reduced public spending, universities have found themselves facing a new reality. Public land-grant institutions, which have always enjoyed the support of their states in providing access to education, are now watching states quickly distance themselves from the land-grant commitment.

At the same time, the public has found it difficult to reconcile its expectations of a free education with its unwillingness to support that access, either indirectly through taxes, or directly through tuition.

Universities have been criticized widely as irresponsible and unmanageable amid pressure to reduce size and cost while simultaneously providing affordability. Efforts to reduce expenditures and size frequently conflict with state policies and the public’s expectation and appetite for a state-of-the art-college experience.

It is amid this backdrop, and perhaps because of it, that research universities must reorganize and change fundamentally. They are being driven to work smarter and more efficiently. They must be leaner enterprises while simultaneously innovating at the intersection of the world’s most challenging issues.

UC Davis took a significant step earlier this year by opening the world’s most environmentally friendly winery, brewery and food science facility. It is a state-of-the-art teaching and research complex. It includes onsite solar power generation and a system for capturing rainwater – and it was built entirely with private funding.

Last year, UC Davis also brought together leaders from more than 80 states, countries and provinces for a Governors’ Global Climate Summit. In the end, a new alliance was created to move quickly to develop clean technologies and green economies.

This alliance, known as R20, intends to prove that the vast majority of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions needed by 2020 can be achieved at no cost. It has also committed to have, within five years, at least 20 governments on the sub-national level putting low-carbon projects and policies into place.

R20 is working on a sub-national level because the world’s governments are unable to decide on policies and work together to take action on the environment. This is why the world’s universities are needed to lead the charge and act, with the hope that someday, governments will follow.

There is no time to waste or wait for policymakers to awaken or the global economy to improve. The planet requires that we act now, and in new and different ways.

The world’s universities are being called to move forward and leap into the future – even as the citizenry remains conflicted and government is hamstrung by budget difficulties and indecision.

Universities must act, and as they do so, they must break from the past. The traditional university approaches will not conquer the future. Behaviors and structures must change to fully embrace collaboration and multi-disciplinary solutions.

The world’s universities must be bold, creative, disciplined and frugal. If universities work together, as partners and collaborators, they will be the models, the living laboratories and the solution.