Search: Student Projects

Big Ideas @ Berkeley marketplace lets alumni, corporate and foundation partners, friends, and family support Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students who are passionate about tackling major global, regional, and local challenges such as clean energy, the environment, public health, safe drinking water, public policy, and technology-based entrepreneurship.

PROPOSED PROJECT: a visible dashboard in UC Berkeley website – The University does not currently have an integrated system to manage information relevant to GHG emissions generated by campus activities. Data collection from some potentially important sources (e.g., campus fleet, commute, air travel) is manual and often in terms of cost. This is particularly true for air travel, where there is no system that tracks air travel trips or mileage. Also, information on different GHG emissions sources is not integrated. It was not until we performed the inventory that we realized the relative size of the different sources of emissions on campus. This is typical of most institutions given that climate change mitigation is a fairly recent interest.

PROPOSED PROJECT: fund graduate students to work with CCAR to improve the GHG reporting standards based on UCB experience and research.

Project to cover the cost of showing environmental films and advance printed posters/ads/fliers to promote participation in the upcoming Earth Week 2008. Need: $4,000, 25% funded

Each year Boalt's Environmental Law Society partners with other organizations on campus to host an environmental justice symposium. The symposia bring together students, faculty, community members, lawyers, policy-makers, and activists to learn about one another's work, strengthen existing relationships and re-energize for future action.

The Treeblogger is now online! Providing your needed dose of environmental news (legal and not) and diatribes. Check it out. Tell your friends. We're saving paper and taking names. If you have ideas you'd like to see posted, email us.

PROPOSED PROJECT: Currently all electricity is paid for by the central campus, and only some of the buildings are metered. This project would reduce energy consumption by creating financial incentives for departments to identify wasted energy, and adjust their practices to reduce energy consumption. A metering and data collection system would be established (using UC Berkeley technology), followed by a period over which baseline data would be collected. After establishment of the baseline, some type of incentive program would be established. For example: (1) Cap-and-trade program, or (2) Provide financial incentives to departments for reductions from baseline energy consumption (i.e., return 50% of electricity savings directly to the department).

PROPOSED PROJECT: The University’s academic curriculum needs to demonstrate a more serious commitment towards addressing climate change. Initiatives taken by the Education for Sustainable Living Program can help jumpstart student-led courses at the grassroots level. Additionally, the University’s Academic Senate, the representative body of the University faculty that can exercise some influence over academic matters, can create a core curriculum focused on climate change (About UC Governance, 2006). At the least, it should create a “flexible course module” on climate change that would be offered to all faculty to be integrated into relevant existing course offerings.

PROPOSED PROJECT: Transportation and Parking Services has the dual charter of providing alternative transportation and ensuring adequate parking for faculty, staff and students. These opposing priorities have become significant and stable barriers to any alternative transportation program. Developing new policies to reduce single occupancy vehicle commuters, and consequently emissions, would be a political debate for this campus. Yet the benefits to discouraging single drivers is significant, ranging from extensive costs savings related to parking infrastructure, to reduced traffic congestion in the local community, to a safer, more pedestrian friendly campus. The following strategies can help. - Alternate funding sources for Parking – The University could partly decouple debt-financing on parking structures from permit sales. If alternative funding sources can be made available, or if more uncertainty can be accepted in permit sales, then there will be greatly improved flexibility in the transportation manager’s ability to alter the incentive structure for drivers to find alternatives. - No New Net Parking Spaces – Successfully implemented on the UCLA campus, capping the total number of parking spaces is a very effective way to ensure less debt requirements. If supply is restricted, emissions will inevitably stabilize as opposed to continually increasing along with campus growth. Instead of investing in new parking structures, the University could put money into improving bicycle infrastructure, bus routes and other transportation alternatives. Additionally, pursuing housing developments for students and faculty in close proximity to campus, as the LRDP currently does, will allow the campus to grow without the need for additional parking spaces.

PROPOSED PROJECT: Work with administrators at other UC schools and the UCOP to lobby the state legislature to address capital budget funding reform. – Although this may the most difficult recommendation to implement, it may also be one of the most important as funding is probably the most important institutional barrier restricting emission reduction projects. UC Berkeley needs to work with other UC schools to push funding reform related to capital budget on two issues: - Allow the capital budget to borrow from the operating budget; - Ensure that bid reversions stay with the campus to fund energy efficiency components that may have been removed during value-engineering.