Green Revolving Fund Presented by Elizabeth Anderson 14, Chair of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Green Revolving Fund

Presented by Elizabeth Anderson ’14, Chair

• f the Student Sustainability Task Force

Student Sustainability Task Force

• Not an ordinary club

○ Started as a President’s Cabinet project ○ Works with faculty, staff, and administration in addition to students

• Two main functions:

○ Greening RPI ○ Supporting other environmental clubs

■ Publicizing club events and news through Sustainability Newsletter ■ Encouraging cooperation and communication

Green Revolving Fund

Money GRF Project gets built

Money saved from project

Green project

Why are we bringing this before Senate?

• Publicity

○ We need more members ○ We need student support

• Transparency

○ We want as much input as possible ○ We want to be certain to be transparent

• Advice on how to proceed

Potential Structure

• Project proposals can come from

anyone in the RPI community

• Committee chooses which projects

receive funding

○ Focus on ROI and sustainability improvement

• Set guidelines for funding

Where would the money come from?

• Possible options

○ Endowment

■ Projects would have to have a higher ROI than endowment

• Median ROI: 28%

○ Operating fund ○ Alumni contributions ○ Grants

■ For GRFs ■ For projects

Success of GRFs

• Harvard

○ $12 million fund

■ Started as a $1.5 million fund in 1992, had such success that more money was added to it ■ 11 year limit with returning funds

○ Lighting and HVAC projects

• Many other colleges have GRFs,

including MIT, BU, and Stanford

Benefits to campus

• Reduce environmental impact
• Promote student research of

sustainable technologies

• Save money (energy, water)
• Provide funds for projects that will

benefit campus and the environment

Need for Sustainability at RPI

• Sustainability Report 2014 shows that

RPI is behind many other colleges in terms of sustainability

○ Cornell has a “gold” rating ○ CMU and BU have “silver” ratings ○ Not all of the credits were looked through, but RPI did not score high enough for a “bronze” rating

■ Find it here: bit.ly/RPISustReport

What We Have

• Research for one proposal (solar

energy)

• Research on how GRFs work in

general

What We Need

• A proposal of how the GRF might
• perate

○ Where the money comes from ○ Committee structure ○ Grant research

• Three fully written project proposals

○ Solar panels

■ Need to write out full proposal

○ Energy efficiency? ○ Another project

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

• Project idea:

○ Kenny Campbell ’16

• Other students who have worked on

GRF research so far:

○ Evan Barr ’16, Kelly Dearborn ’16, Jesse Ryan Diaz ’17, Zheng Fangning ’16, Courtney Fiala ’17, and Jesse Noviello ’15

• Project Lead: Dan Sze ’18

Background photo: Anasha Cummings

Take-aways

• Fall 2014 Meeting Time: Wednesdays

at 8pm

○ In Environmental Education Center (EEC) in Union Games Room

• A GRF could greatly lessen RPI’s

environmental impact