The University of Connecticut administration released the 2024 Sustainability Action Plan in late February. The 19-page document has drawn sharp criticism from student activists that have long demanded that the administration of President Radenka Maric release a comprehensive plan for transitioning the university to carbon neutrality by 2030 and net zero by 2040.
Fossil Fuel Free UConn, a coalition of student organizations that advocate for environmental justice and the elimination of fossil fuel energy at UConn, released a statement via Instagram in response to the plan on Feb. 28. Their statement addressed the plan’s redundancy and lack of comprehensiveness, its exclusion of the goal of net zero by 2040 and an overall “lack of earnestness in pursuing sustainability” on the part of the UConn administration.
“Throughout the entire report, there is an utter absence of pragmatic propositions or detailed outlines for the implementation of any of the meaningful carbon reduction measures that would transform UConn into a carbon zero university,” read one particularly scathing section of the statement.
The Sustainability Action Plan is broken into seven sections across 19 pages; of that, by our estimation, fewer than two sections and six pages provide new, substantive details pursuant to UConn’s plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 — and to reiterate, the goal of eliminating carbon emissions entirely is wholly omitted. Roughly four-and-a-half pages are dedicated to a rhetoric-heavy message from Maric summarizing, in no specific terms, the plan; an “About the University of Connecticut” section that is surely unnecessary for students who already attend or affiliate with this university; and an executive summary that summarizes even less than Maric’s introduction.
The plans prescriptions are ambiguous; the bulk of figures included in the document have to do with prior progress on sustainability, which is in keeping with the administration’s modus operandi of exalting past achievements in response to questions about future policy. Plans to incorporate solar canopies, increase building efficiency and turn Discovery Drive into “the model Renewable Energy Corridor onto the Storrs Campus” lack any of the specificity expected of an authoritative sustainability plan, especially one that has been delayed for over a year.
Most curiously, under “Strategies and Implementation,” the plan enumerates a number of “actionable strategies” designed to bring about UConn’s climate objectives. The first of which, labeled “Climate Action Plan,” states the intention to implement “a robust climate action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy-efficient infrastructure, renewable energy adoption, and transportation initiatives.”
UConn students, faculty and staff with background knowledge on the university’s climate regime may recognize the Climate Action Plan (CAP) as a 160-page document published in 2009 and updated by former president Susan V. Herbst in 2012. The plan serves as a roadmap for the university to meet ambitious emissions reductions targets; at the time it was written, the alpha-and-omega was carbon neutrality by 2050. Given the CAP’s age and the ever-changing nature of sustainability demands, it is unclear if this is the framework to which Maric’s own plan is referring. However, it provokes the following question: Did environmental justice advocates at UConn wait hand and foot on a purported “plan” that isn’t even the primary plan?
The amount of climate literacy required to understand Maric’s plan is relatively low; rather, students can expect an abundance of esoteric corporate jargon, dancing around urgent, unanswered questions on concrete steps toward sustainability with tenuously-related paragraphs on stakeholder engagement and academic curricula. While we don’t intend to discount the value of engaging community partners and shaping students’ education around sustainability, they should not completely outweigh technical, granular details pertinent to UConn’s sustainable transition, as is the case with Maric’s plan.
The Daily Campus Editorial Board has historically been outspoken in its support for sustainability and vigilant toward the administration’s efforts to placate the student body with minor greenwashing initiatives. We have documented a clear pattern wherein UConn passes off climate half-measures and irrelevant accolades as bold, innovative advances in sustainability — the so-called sustainability “action” plan is no exception. The Editorial Board strongly echoes the statement by FFFU and remains adamant that the UConn community, as well as the biosphere, deserve better than the meager commitment to sustainability and headless planning that characterizes the current administration as a whole. Given the time and wealth of prior resources that UConn administrators have been accorded to produce a comprehensive and transparent sustainability framework, the current product represents nothing short of a slight against the many students, faculty and staff members who have worked tirelessly to advance environmental justice. It is unclear if there was a single dissenting voice in the room during the drafting of this piecemeal framework; UConn’s sustainability inaction plan clearly is devoid of the meaningful input provided by dedicated UConn community members.