American College & University President's Climate Commitment
On Earth Day 2009, President Mark Keenum signed the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment. This commitment demonstrates the Universities dedication to sustainability. Due to the commitment, the University now completes annual greenhouse gas inventories and progress reports documenting path towards the goals of our Climate Action Plan.
The goal of this climate action plan is to produce a path by which Mississippi State University can reach carbon neutrality by the year 2042. In order to do so, we will focus on five areas. Four of these areas directly relate to the day-to-day operations of the campus while the fifth is education and research.
To develop the plan for each area, a task force was assembled for each focus area. A member of the University’s Sustainability Committee led each task force, facilitated the task force discussion, and reported the focus area goals back to the Sustainability Committee. The five focus areas are as follows: operations, grounds, transportation, materials, and education/research.
The overarching goals of the four operational focus areas (operations, grounds, transportation, materials) are:
- determine the carbon producing aspects of each area,
- determine ways to either eliminate or reduce those carbon outputs,
- determine potential sequestration opportunities.
Each task force determined specific objectives necessary to reach these goals.
For more information, visit President Climate Committment