After going live in early October, the Princeton Alumni for Climate Excellence (PACE) campaign has connected with alumni over email, on facebook, and at alumni events in New York City. The statement signed by over 100 alumni calls for Princeton to lead in on-campus emissions reduction just like its Professors and researchers lead in climate policy scholarship and advocacy. “There is no better-situated institution to lead by example than our alma mater Princeton University,” explained Class of 2008 alumnus Dennis Markatos-Soriano and founder of SET. “We have the resources, both academic and financial, to be a model of climate mitigation that other campuses and communities can look to for inspiration and insight.”

The PACE statement calls on the University to aim for climate neutrality in its campus operations by 2030 (a situation of zero net carbon emissions), building on the Google.org Clean Energy 2030 report that came out this past fall. Princeton’s Students United for a Responsible Global Environment (SURGE) chapter advocates a complementary goal. They call for the campus to commit to at least a 25% deeper cut in emissions than University leadership put forward this past January. Such a cut would make emissions at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 (the leading recommendation for developed countries in current post-Kyoto international negotiations). Alumni encourage further cuts throughout the 2020s to achieve climate neutrality, through a range of actions such as increased efficiency, integrating more roof-top solar installations, and the construction of a Princeton wind farm within the region.

Support has come from all ages, from the Classes of 1956 and 1957 to recent graduates in 2008. Geographically, alumni endorsers live all over the world — from China to Rwanda to Belgium to Manhattan. If you would like to add your name to the list of Princeton Alumni for Climate Excellence, please do so at http://setenergy.org/projects/pace-campaign/pace-statement/

In addition to communicating with hundreds more alumni in the months ahead, SET plans to begin directly engaging University leadership to give them the resources and support they need to commit to excellent climate policy.

This effort has been made possible by support from the Evergreen Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Fund for the City of New York and individual donors. By volunteering or sponsoring this effort, you can help SET pull together a critical mass of alumni support to make Princeton a leader in climate mitigation and catalyze further emission cuts throughout the country and the world. If interested, please contact us.

Princeton is a source of top-notch climate scholarship, with leading professors such as Michael Oppenheimer, Denise Mauzerall, Robert Socolow, and Stephen Pacala. As climate modelers, state-of-the-art engineers, and policy experts, professors and staff at Princeton have led progress in the understanding of our Earth’s climate and the range of policies necessary to effectively mitigate this crucial challenge of the 21st century.

Recently, Princeton’s campus has begun to address the need for academic institutions to become laboratories that test emissions reduction strategies on their own buildings, transportation systems, and energy infrastructure. In early 2008, Princeton’s Board of Trustees launched a campus sustainability plan that called for 20% cuts in emissions by 2020 to achieve the 1990 level. While this plan showed significant progress from the business-as-usual trajectory, it does not yet equal the initiatives of peer institutions — evident in the lower sustainability rankings Princeton has received in many recent surveys including the Princeton Review and SEI’s Green Report Card.

We propose the year 2030 as the zero pollution goal date, similar to the recently released Google.org national clean energy plan. Such an achievement aims to be a followup to the effort of our partner, Princeton SURGE, to cut the current 2020 target a further 25% to the post-Kyoto goal urged by many international negotiators of 25% below 1990 levels by 2020.

If you are an alumnus/a who would like to be involved, please sign the endorsement statement here. We are excited to add further momentum to the climate responsibility movement sweeping our nation’s campuses and beyond.