Sustainability

About

Part of the UCOP Department of Capital Programs, Energy and Sustainability, the Office of Sustainability develops, coordinates, and supports campus sustainability efforts throughout the system.

The Office of Sustainability plays a leadership and facilitation role by building consensus among all campuses and academic health centers for aggressive yet feasible systemwide goals to move all UC sustainability practices forward quickly and efficiently. It identifies best practices at one or more locations and works strategically to turn them into standard business practice across the system. The Office of Sustainability coordinates the development and implementation of the UC Sustainable Practices Policy, and tracks key metrics to analyze and report on progress towards the University’s sustainability goals. Externally, the Office reinforces and amplifies UC’s position as a national leader in campus and academic health center sustainability.

Sustainability across UC is a broad, collaborative effort with engagement from students, trainees, staff, faculty, and university leadership working at multiple levels to achieve progress.

The systemwide UC Sustainable Practices Policy (pdf) is overseen by the Sustainability Steering Committee, which meets annually to review progress towards sustainability goals and to evaluate new policy proposals. The Global Climate Leadership Council advises UC leadership on implementing systemwide climate-focused efforts and shares best practices.

The UCOP Office of Sustainability is committed to ensuring that UC’s sustainability policy initiatives and programs are diverse in their staffing, and representative and inclusive of the communities who are engaged in these initiatives and programs. The Office recognizes that the environmental and sustainability fields have a legacy of systemic racism that impacts all sustainability work. It has a collective and individual responsibility to learn about environmental racism and systemic racism and to address and dismantle it. In order to achieve this, the UCOP Office of Sustainability co-developed and signed onto a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement that commits UC Sustainability Offices and Staff to specific actions, accountability, and transparency.