Columbia University Awarded Climate Registered™ Gold Status and Joins Ranks of U.S. Climate Leaders
New York, NY – Columbia University was awarded Climate Registered™ Gold by The Climate Registry, a nonprofit organization that is governed by U.S. states and operates the Carbon Footprint Registry, which is North America’s largest voluntary registry for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Columbia earned this recognition by publicly reporting a third-party verified GHG emissions inventory for its operations. This data will enable them to track their climate initiatives and GHG reductions credibly over time.
“Columbia has made great strides in reducing GHG emissions since 2017, when the University’s first sustainability plan was released,” said David Greenberg, Executive Vice President for University Facilities and Operations. “With the bar raised by University President Lee C. Bollinger’s commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, we have an even greater task ahead of us: creating the roadmap to realize the vision of a net zero University, and ensuring that Columbia stays at the forefront of sustainable operations.”
With its first campus-wide sustainability plan released in 2017, Columbia committed to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30 percent before 2020, a goal the University has since surpassed. Its new sustainability plan, coming April 2021, is a larger, more ambitious 10-year plan encompassing all of Columbia’s campuses. It will provide a roadmap for the University to take even more progressive, urgent action around climate change, using science-based targets to ultimately achieve net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.
“Organizations that become Climate Registered™ are the leaders in a growing movement to address climate change by managing and reducing emissions at the subnational level,” said Amy Holm, Executive Director of The Climate Registry. “We have just over a decade to take action that will ensure we avoid the worst effects of climate change. This kind of leadership is needed now more than ever.”
This is the fourth year Columbia has reported GHG information to TCR. Columbia’s Climate Registry Information System (CRIS) report for emissions year (EY) 2019 is now public and can be downloaded from the Public Reports section on TCR’s website.
About The Climate Registry
The Climate Registry is a non-profit organization governed by U.S. states and Canadian provinces and territories. The Climate Registry designs and operates voluntary and compliance GHG reporting programs globally, and assists organizations in measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV) the carbon in their operations in order to manage and reduce it. TCR also builds GHG MRV capacity in sub-national and national governments, and spearheads innovative projects such as the Water-Energy Nexus Registry. Find out more at www.theclimateregistry.org and follow on Twitter @theclimatereg.