May 20, 2021
Contact: Sasha Bishop, 510-225-5058; Climate.Action.Movement.UM@gmail.com
https://www.climateactionuofm.org/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN COMMITS TO CARBON NEUTRALITY BY 2040
Ann Arbor, Mich. — After years of community organizing, the University of Michigan (U-M) regents made a historic announcement today, commiting to fully eliminate on-campus Scope 1 carbon emissions by 2040, and acquiring carbon-neutral electricity by 2025, representing significant steps in the right direction. While the plan falls far short of what is needed to adequately confront the climate crisis, the University’s commitment to a definite date for carbon neutrality has been a long-time target of CAM as it provides an essential measure of public accountability. Students and community advocates should be proud of their tireless efforts over the last four years, even when the University responded with arrests rather than open dialogue. However, given the urgent nature of the crisis we are facing, the proposed timeline is inadequate, and parts of the announcement lack specifics, heavily relying on corporate speak that sounds ambitious while containing insufficient substantive commitment. We can and should do better.
The University should uphold its commitment to the We Are Still In pledge, made by President Schlissel in 2017, to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C. This requires cutting global emissions by at least 45% by 2030 according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, U-M’s commitment to carbon neutrality by 2040 has no meaningful interim guideposts or timelines, which means there is nothing holding the University accountable to making the immediate reductions over the next decade which are crucial to avoid the most devastating impacts of warming. Indeed, because resources are not distributed equally, this timeline should be accelerated for wealthy institutions such as U-M, with tremendous research capacity and large financial endowments. At minimum, the University must commit to cutting emissions in half by 2030. Failing to do so would violate the implicit commitment it already made as part of the We Are Still In pledge.
We are concerned that the claimed commitment to environmental justice (EJ) has no concrete actions to substantiate it. Indeed, the Commission on Carbon Neutrality failed to incorporate EJ in any meaningful way throughout its two-year process, failing even to respond to an open letter on behalf of over 3500 students, raising such concerns in 2019. Despite U-M having one of the preeminent environmental justice programs in the world, not a single environmental justice expert or advocate served on the Commission. Far from being centered, the EJ perspective was not even present. While a commitment to centering these principles is laudable, U-M’s own history and the failure to commit to concrete steps for implementation render these simply empty words. U-M must focus on hiring EJ experts and advocates who hold critical decision-making positions throughout the entire process. Most importantly, integrating environmental justice principles requires recognizing that carbon neutrality is, itself, an incomplete framework for climate action. We must also build local resilience to climate impacts and act to account for the historical role our institution has played in driving climate change and the inequities embedded in its impacts.
U-M claims to be championing a plan that is both scalable and transferable, but fails to address what is perhaps its most powerful lever — its ability to contest the iron grip of the state utilities on how Michiganders get their power. Researchers have shown how Michigan utilities like DTE have captured the legislature, successfully manipulating regulatory regimes to prevent Michiganders from accessing clean, distributed energy generation in favor of the fossil-based centralized energy that drives their profits. Indeed, over strong objections, DTE’s VP for Corporate Strategy was appointed to the Commission itself, despite the fact that the commission’s scope clearly would have implications for DTE’s contract with U-M, worth over $60 million every year. In its two years of operation, the Commission failed to perform the most basic assessment of alternative sources of carbon-free electricity, showcasing an alarming commitment to the status quo and unwillingness to use U-M’s carbon neutrality efforts to promote climate action on a state level. Instead, they are upholding the forces that have prevented meaningful action on climate for the past 40 years.
Today’s announcement is an enormous victory in the fight for our collective future. The unprecedented threat of the climate crisis provides us the opportunity and the obligation to dramatically upend the status quo and build a more prosperous and equitable future, with clean energy, water, and air for all. This requires immediate and bold action — we will continue to push the University to implement policy commensurate with this challenge. We urge the University to accelerate the timeline for decarbonization with intermediate benchmarks, adopt substantive frameworks for incorporating environmental justice throughout the decision-making process, and work to expand energy democracy across the state through its approach to energy procurement and engagement with state-wide policy.