Drexel commits to 'Green Globes'
Stephanie Takach
Issue date: 2/20/09 Section: News
According to Carl 'Tobey' Oxholm, dean and chief executive officer of Drexel's Center for Graduate Studies in Sacramento, Green Globe and LEED are different but have the same basic goals.
"We are making specific commitments and putting the data on the web," Oxholm said. "Green Globes is not the same as LEED, but it has the same objective criteria."
According to Kelsey Gibbons, co-president of the Drexel Sierra Club, Green Globes can be an effective rating system if third-party verification is obtained. However, she said it does not set specific construction and design standards and as a result, is a very subjective system.
Another tool used to monitor a university's commitment to increased environmental sustainability is the President's Climate Commitment.
According to its web site, presidents signing the commitment are pledging to eliminate their campuses' greenhouse gas emissions over time. However, Drexel University is not one of the 613 signatories of the commitment.
Tucker said the senior vice presidents recommended to the president that he not sign the Climate Commitment.
According to Tucker, fewer than half of the institutions that signed the Commitment met the Sept. 15, 2008 deadline for submitting baseline inventories of their green house gas emissions, which illustrates that universities are having difficulties with the requirements.
He said it has also been reported that many of the figures that were submitted by institutions that signed the commitment were rough estimates and based on differing methodologies for calculations, making it difficult to normalize the data across institutions.
Oxholm said signing the President's Climate Commitment and committing to the gold standard of LEED was one of the first things Drexel Green investigated.
"I recommended that [President Papadakis] not sign," Oxholm said. "It's easy to say 'Let's go to zero [carbon emissions],' but it's very hard for an urban school with a lot of new buildings that is going from low rankings to high national rankings to say they are going there."
"We are making specific commitments and putting the data on the web," Oxholm said. "Green Globes is not the same as LEED, but it has the same objective criteria."
According to Kelsey Gibbons, co-president of the Drexel Sierra Club, Green Globes can be an effective rating system if third-party verification is obtained. However, she said it does not set specific construction and design standards and as a result, is a very subjective system.
Another tool used to monitor a university's commitment to increased environmental sustainability is the President's Climate Commitment.
According to its web site, presidents signing the commitment are pledging to eliminate their campuses' greenhouse gas emissions over time. However, Drexel University is not one of the 613 signatories of the commitment.
Tucker said the senior vice presidents recommended to the president that he not sign the Climate Commitment.
According to Tucker, fewer than half of the institutions that signed the Commitment met the Sept. 15, 2008 deadline for submitting baseline inventories of their green house gas emissions, which illustrates that universities are having difficulties with the requirements.
He said it has also been reported that many of the figures that were submitted by institutions that signed the commitment were rough estimates and based on differing methodologies for calculations, making it difficult to normalize the data across institutions.
Oxholm said signing the President's Climate Commitment and committing to the gold standard of LEED was one of the first things Drexel Green investigated.
"I recommended that [President Papadakis] not sign," Oxholm said. "It's easy to say 'Let's go to zero [carbon emissions],' but it's very hard for an urban school with a lot of new buildings that is going from low rankings to high national rankings to say they are going there."
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