Cornell's Vision for a Climate Neutral Campus
Randy Lacey, Cornell University
Cornell University has completed a climate action plan that proposes a climate neutral university. The effort to create this plan considered a very broad range of possible measures and was extremely rigorous in evaluation of each. The resulting portfolio of climate actions could yield a university that is climate neutral by 2050. Much of this work is already underway at the university, where the campus is cooled by deep lake water and heated by a combined heat and power plant. After more than 100 years of burning coal, Cornell has committed to move beyond coal in the next year.
Biography:
Randy Lacey is a university engineer and the director of facilities engineering at Cornell University where he manages a staff of 50 engineers and project managers. He has bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering from Cornell University. He has designed laboratories for more than 25 years and is active in Labs21 as an instructor and presenter. During three months in 2009, he worked in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to create the Web-based resource: Climate Neutral: Research Campuses.