‘Bike to the Boilers’ blasts UO backsliding on climate plans

Presenter: Climate action activists biked to the boilers March 13, and KEPW’s Curtis Blankinship was there. Speakers highlighted the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the city of Eugene—the University of Oregon heating system. From the Climate Justice League, Jack Dodson: 

Jack Dodson (Climate Justice League): Why are we here today? Unfortunately, the University of Oregon is the largest source of climate-heating greenhouse gas emissions in all of Eugene. In fact, the heating system for campus is the largest stationary emitter within city limits. (Boo! Shame!)

Anyway, I’m going to give some background on why this is the case and how students have been pushing for action.

So everyone close your eyes, so I can set the scene. Imagine yourself in 2017. It was the first year of Trump’s first term. The fight to stop the Jordan Cove pipeline was about to kick off. ‘Shape of You’ by Ed Sheeran was the No. 1 song. I’m not sure what you all were doing then. I was 12, so I wasn’t doing a whole lot.

But I know great things were happening, ’cause great things were happening on campus. Students were pushing for climate action from the University. In fact, 2017 was when the Climate Justice League started the ‘CAP The Carbon’ campaign.

The context for this was that in 2010, the University released its first climate action plan, which is awesome. This was a great first step, the University committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, but it wasn’t a super strong plan. They kind of targeted all the low-hanging fruit, like installing energy-efficient light bulbs on campus. So, again, great first step, but by 2017 it was time for some real action.

So one of the main targets of this student campaign was the campus heating system. This system is such an important target because it makes up 85% of the emissions from fossil fuels burned on campus, also known as Scope 1 emissions. 

It also makes up 46% of UO’s total emissions, so that’s including all of the emissions from like the, all the traveling our sports teams do, and people commuting to campus and the electricity to turn on the lights in the buildings, all of that stuff. And the heating system is still half of the emissions. That’s a huge deal. (Shame, shame.)

Basically how this works is on the other side of Franklin, there’s a big boiler system that burns methane gas, which is a very potent fossil fuel, and they use that to heat the buildings across campus.

But since this is one system, it means they can do a big infrastructural overhaul and significantly cut these emissions. Again, that’s a lot easier said than done. But by overhauling this one system, they could theoretically eliminate half of their emissions. That’s a huge deal. 

So, you know, students were pushing for this to happen, and the combination of student efforts on campus and the global climate movement really picking up steam, in 2019, UO folded to the pressure and announced their second climate action plan.

Crowd: What? Two climate action plans? No action? (laughter)

Jack Dodson (Climate Justice League): Yeah, so the centerpiece of this plan was they kicked off a study about how they could cut these emissions from the heating system. 

They hired an outside firm to come up with all of the best options, and then they created a task force filled with students and faculty and administrators to make a recommendation. And then they were supposed to implement it.

The task force made the recommendation in February of 2024 and then presented to the board a month later. And this recommendation was for Option 2(b), which would replace one of the methane boilers with an electric one that was hooked up to the grid.

This option, in all honesty, wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was added later on in the process because UO wanted an option that was cheaper and cut emissions less, but it was still a huge deal. It would cut the heating system emissions by 45%.

So setting the scene again, March of 2024, a rainy morning, 9 a.m. A bunch of people turned out to the Board of Trustees meeting to give public comment. The board was supposed to vote to implement this, and guess what? They didn’t. (What? Shame!) 

In fact, they’ve only brought this up at one meeting since then, which was a year and a half ago. They continue to delay action at every instance. (Shame!) 

And also their main argument for why they can’t do this is that they can’t pay for it. And while this is kind of true, since they don’t just have this money sitting around, it’s only true because they’ve made it true. They delayed this project long enough that there isn’t federal money that they could tap into for climate projects.

They have never on their own tried to work with the state government to find a solution. And the only time this was even brought up in Salem was when we went up there and did their dirty work for them. (What?)

They’ve also never tapped into their massive fundraising enterprise, which is ridiculous because so much of their branding revolves around sustainability and frankly, I know there are plenty of alumni who would donate for climate action.

It is ridiculous that UO constantly says that they don’t have enough money to pay their workers or to cut their emissions, yet they always can pay for the new flashy project.

So as the Climate Justice League, we’ve been working to keep applying pressure and keep taking action. 

Unfortunately, a couple months ago UO announced an even worse option. They cut a deal with our local utility to start a pilot project that would raise campus emissions by 65%. 

So after years of delaying climate action, they’re trying to go in the opposite direction. And also, they did this behind closed doors with no transparency about the negative impacts of this pilot project, and no option for any public input whatsoever for that. (Shame!)

Okay. So this is where you all come in. The only way we’re going to get UO to take strong action is if we apply a lot of pressure. We’ve done this in the past. That’s how we got the first two climate action plans. 

But again, we have to apply so much pressure that it’s better for UO to take action than to deal with the negative impacts and the ridicule of not taking action.

This climate action will happen eventually. But it needs to happen a lot faster if we want to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

So please, when you go home today, tell your friends and family about this, sign up to give public comment at the next Board of Trustees meeting, which is next Tuesday, and try to stay involved. This is so important, and again, we need everyone to make it happen. 

Presenter: Dylan Plummer:

Dylan Plummer (Sierra Club): I’m Dylan. I work with the Sierra Club. I do national climate policy, but I also am a U of Oregon alumni and Climate Justice League alumni.

Some of us heard Jack reminiscing, waxing poetic about the beautiful year, 2017. I was there. Ed Sheeran was blasting across the airwaves and we started the ‘CAP the Carbon’ campaign, because, switching a light bulb isn’t enough in the face of a climate crisis. (That’s right!)

So despite what Steve Mital and University of Oregon staff might tell us, the University of Oregon has done little to nothing to reduce its climate emissions, even as our community has experienced it at the impacts of the climate crisis firsthand. (Shame!)

And instead of listening to students 10 years ago and making plans to make investments in the clean energy transition, the University of Oregon’s board of trustees and staff have fought to double down on a polluting fossil fuel infrastructure that is putting our ERs in jeopardy, our community in jeopardy, and undermining our city’s climate recovery ordinance goals. (Shame!)

And they would tell us, ‘We have to do it. This is the only reasonable thing. And you, University of Oregon students are just crazy, unmoored from reality. You don’t understand, you know, the fiscal realities of managing an august institution like the University of Oregon.’ 

No. We came to the University of Oregon because of its sustainability programs, because it advertised itself as an environmental leader. Our students know better than anybody why fighting the climate crisis and transitioning to renewable energy is important, don’t we? (Yeah!)

And it’s not just students. We’re going to hear from union leaders. It’s the faculty, it’s the classified staff, it’s the entire University of Oregon community, Eugene community that knows that we need to make this transition now, and that this is not an unreasonable ask. This is the most reasonable ask. (That’s right.) 

The alternative is (Disaster!) increasing drought, increasing wildfire, increasing global instability, more wars for oil and gas and fossil fuel infrastructure. It’s not a future that we can believe in. 

So standing in front of this monstrosity here, no, that’s actually a cool building. It would be even cooler if it was using an electric heat pump chiller to create the heat that we need to power this university. 

And so I’m saying: We have the solutions. There have been multiple studies. There was a task force, there was a poll that they gave out to students way back in 2018.

There has been so much work by the university to pursue these alternatives. For them to just turn around and say, one, ‘No, we’re not going to pursue electrification,’ and then two, ‘Actually, we’re going to expand our fossil fuel use,’ is just untenable. (Bulls—!) Ridiculous.  Adds insult to injury of our campuses, just complete neglect of their environmental stewardship and responsibility to their students.

So basically what we’ve been saying is they have a big fossil-fuel powered boiler in here that’s creating steam, that’s heating all these buildings. And what we would like to see instead—what the University’s own studies have shown—is that there are alternatives where we could use heat pump technologies, miraculous, highly-efficient technology that use electricity (and here in Eugene we’re blessed with overwhelmingly renewable electricity) to create hot water that could then be pumped across the the university system and be reducing our energy use, reducing our emission, and reducing long-term operating costs.

And it’s a big investment upfront. But what’s the alternative? To see our city burned down in the next climate-driven wildfire? To see the city of Eugene become increasingly unlivable in the face of extreme heat? 

No, not at this is the one option that we have is to make the decisions now to plan for our future and transition to our campus. The solutions are there. The will is there from students, from faculty, from staff, you name it. And the city of Eugene has binding climate commitments that need to be honored.

Presenter: President of the UO faculty union, Kate Mills:

Kate Mills (United Academics): My name is Kate Mills. I’m in the Department of Psychology. I’m a faculty member there, where I get to teach environmental psychology, it’s very fun, and I’m also president of United Academics, the faculty union here.

I am here to call on UO administrators and the Board of Trustees to actually be leaders. They have failed to see the incredible capacity of this university to be a leader in environmental sustainability. Am I right?

I mean, look at where we are. We are in the Willamette Valley, that has such a deep, rich history of stewardship, of advocacy, and for fighting for environmental justice.

Look across the street: Right now, we have the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference happening, and the fact that the University has failed to build from one of the strongest foundations in this nation to be the leader of a sustainable campus baffles me. It’s shameful, and it’s a failure.

It’s frankly a failure of vision and of leadership that I see students taking up. I am incredibly grateful. I see, every Board of Trustees meeting, I see you all advocating for the change that is completely possible, completely within the financial means of this university to enact.

And you are taking on the leadership roles that we need to see at the higher levels of administration, so thank you. Can I get a big just round of applause to the student for the leaders of this university?

Actually, yeah. I could go on about how does the university not actually see how much strength we have in just the civic advocacy in the work that our students do? And across domains, not just in environmental justice?

I’m also here to let you know that faculty are behind you. We do not buy the false narrative that in order to actually enact some of these changes—that faculty also were involved in trying to find the solutions for—we don’t buy the false narrative that in order to do that we would have to lose more personnel in this campus.

So they have been apparently telling that’s BS. It’s total bulls—. And know that faculty are behind these efforts. And again, I am just this week on Wednesday, I went to a gathering of many faculty who were actually hired in the last couple of years as part of the environment initiative across different departments, for the first time meeting each other to talk about how we can work together to make this university what it can be, to be the leading university in environmental sustainability.

We can do this. We are working together. We want to work with you in order to enact our shared vision for this university. So I see a wonderful path forward. I see leaders in all of you. I’m incredibly grateful to be a faculty member of the students at this university.

You should also know those faculty on Wednesday were talking like about how lucky they feel to be here, to have been hired in the last years. ‘Cause they’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t have to convince students that there is an issue. They are on board. They want to find the solutions and they want to enact them.’

And so just know that we are behind you and I will be talking about this as well at the Board of Trustees meeting next week. 

Presenter: Jennifer Smith:

Jennifer Smith (SEIU 503 Local 085): I don’t need to tell you why we’re here. I know that climate justice is a value of all of ours. It’s also a value of our community. It’s our value of our university. It’s a value of our city, it’s a value of our state, and it’s a value of our union.

My union, SEIU 503 Local 085 represents 72,000 workers in the state of Oregon. And we, just like the University has, engaged in a values-based democratic process to hear from stakeholders, to let everyone let their feelings be known, let their values be surfaced. 

The overwhelming majority of not only people in our union, but in the city and in our university democratic process have shown their values and repeatedly agreed that climate is a primary value of ours and we’re willing to have the economic trade-offs to let climate be more important, have goals that represent our values.

And at first it seems like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of economic resources that have to be devoted to this climate transition.’ Well, now it looks like we would’ve been sociopathic to not have committed to our goals, both on our university, our city, and our union, our institutional levels.

Because look around now. It’s like, if we had started actual work on our action plans, we would be in much better shape as a community right now and not reliant on, you know, $5-$6 gas.

So it just shows that we were ahead of the game. We’ve been national leaders on climate since 2010 at the University, since 2014 in the city, and then 2022—where we asked in our legislative body, our general council of our union—to divest from fossil fuels for our retirement and investment accounts.

And yeah, it’s hard. And yeah, our returns might be lower in the short term, but we’re playing the long game with climate and if we’re not going to achieve our climate goals, or even work towards our climate goals, or even go backwards on our climate goals, that’s sociopathic. That’s against our values.

We’ve overwhelmingly showed these are our values and I demand that we stand by them. 

Presenter: The University of Oregon Board of Trustees will be asked to follow through on its climate action plans during the quarterly meetings March 17. Field recordings by Curtis Blankinship for KEPW News. You can hear Curtis Blankinship and ‘Talk Is Cheap’ every Saturday at 4 p.m. on 97.3, Eugene PeaceWorks Community Radio.