Williams College’s Carbon Offsets Purchases
“Carbon offsets are arrangements that will allow [the college] to compensate for our own greenhouse gas emissions by investing in a greenhouse gas reduction or sequestration project somewhere else. These arrangements can take many forms, from forest conservation to renewable energy development to landfill methane capture.” – Campus Environmental Advisory Committee (CEAC) report
Williams College commits to Carbon Neutrality
In 2015, President Adam Falk and the Board of Trustees revised and expanded the college’s commitment to address climate change. The two parts of this commitment related to the campus’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions include:
1) Reducing the college’s emissions to 35% below 1990 levels by 2020 and
2) Purchasing sufficient carbon offsets to “neutralize” the College’s remaining GHG emissions and achieve carbon neutrality in 2020.
In the College’s strategic plan, which was published in 2021, the College has committed to “[m]aintaining carbon neutrality with a view toward achieving net-zero emissions through investment in high-quality, verified carbon offsets and carbon removal.”
Offset Purchases
The Campus Environmental Advisory Committee (CEAC), a committee composed of faculty, staff, and students, spent two years researching and writing a report that articulates its recommendations for how the College should approach carbon offsets. Subsequently a small trial-run of offsets was purchased so that the committee and campus community could analyze those offsets and decide if, at the end of the year, the college should invest in those projects to cover the rest of the College’s greenhouse gas emissions. Both reports – CEAC’s recommendations and the offsets purchased – are included below.
“Offsets are a short-term solution to our carbon pollution problem. The only question is how short-term. As it develops its offsets portfolio, we urge the College to explicitly factor offsets into its long-term strategic planning, and to maintain an ongoing public dialogue about the time horizon of its offset investments. In the meantime, we should be on guard for any signs of moral licensing, especially when it comes to decisions with long-term implications for campus energy use.”
– Campus Environmental Advisory Committee (CEAC) report
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