Tim Tai, Senior Photographer

During the decade of University President Peter Salovey’s tenure at Yale, average global temperatures hovered 1.14°C above pre-industrial baselines. That 10-year period also saw the world’s hottest year and month on record.

Salovey succeeded Richard Levin, whose presidency saw the formal creation of the Advisory Committee on Environmental Management, the Office of Sustainability and a landmark 2010-13 Sustainability Strategic Plan aimed at increasing Yale’s sustainability practices on campus and beyond. In 2005, Levin pledged to cut 43 percent of the University’s current greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

With Salovey planning to step down this summer, the News reached out to the Office of Sustainability and program heads to reflect on Yale’s sustainability work over his years in office.

Sustainability plans

Salovey has overseen two sustainability plans during his term. His 2013-16 Sustainability Strategic Plan set goals to shave carbon emissions by 20 percent from 2005 levels, cut 80 tons off existing shuttle fleet emissions and set LEED Gold building standards as the minimum across all future construction efforts.

“Sustainability calls for new ways of supplying energy, serving food, circulating vehicular and pedestrian traffic, distributing documents, and maintaining landscapes,” Salovey wrote in the plan. 

In 2016, Salovey unveiled his 2025 Sustainability Plan, which sought to guide the University across nine sustainability “ambitions,” ranging from health and wellbeing to construction. The plan outlined efforts to establish campus-wide standards for wastewater management, material use, technology sharing and University investments. 

Since then, each of the University’s departments have released individual action plans. The Athletics Department conducted electricity audits to increase energy efficiency across its facilities. As of 2015, the Yale Bowl and McNay Family Sailing Center reported as high as 39 percent and 24.5 percent reductions in electricity consumption, respectively, from the year prior. Yale Law School pledged to host an annual New Directions in Environmental Law Conference, connecting legal experts with the latest climate research.

“There are many champions of sustainability at Yale, and we’re grateful that the community is so passionate about this work,” Amber Garrard, director of the office of sustainability, wrote in an email to the News.

In 2020, Yale achieved its 43 percent emissions reduction benchmark set in 2005, one of Salovey’s most significant sustainability achievements, according to Garrard.

 Garrard also noted the importance of the Yale Carbon Charge initiative, a campus-wide carbon pricing system that has helped contribute to the $1 billion of funding needed to sustainably retrofit all buildings. By charging administrative units for each metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted by their individual Yale buildings, the University is able to shore up 10 percent of its investments for future renovation work in a given year while incentivizing greener practices and contributing to current global carbon pricing work. 

Garrard noted that testing different carbon charge amounts has provided the University “with helpful learnings.”

In 2021, Yale’s campus reached a 28-percent reduction in emissions from 2015 levels despite a 10 percent expansion in size. That year, the University also set a new commitment to reach zero operational emissions by 2050. It diverted 36 percent of waste in 2022, slightly behind schedule to reaching its 60 percent goal by 2025.

According to Garrard, the University is currently studying its Scope 3 emissions — emissions with indirect causes, such as product purchases and transportation — and has plans to set new reduction targets by 2025.

“These efforts can and do take time at a place as large and decentralized as Yale,” Gerrard wrote, “but we know that this work is urgent, and we are excited about getting to where we need to be.”

Fossil fuel investments

Following a proposal by the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate, Salovey convened a Committee on Fossil Fuel Investment Principles in 2020 to guide the Corporation Committee of Investor Responsibility in managing its investment policies.

The Committee’s formation came after years of student advocacy by Fossil Free Yale and the Endowment Justice Coalition. In 2019, students staged a protest for fossil fuel divestment during halftime of the Yale-Harvard football game. 

During its research process, the Committee solicited input from the Yale College Council, Graduate Student Association and Graduate and Professional Student Senate. Yale community members were offered an opportunity to provide their opinions through a webform.

In its issued report, the Committee acknowledged that “climate change is an urgent, existential threat to humanity and a grave social injury” and produced a new set of investment policies. According to the new standards, invested corporations must not “explore for, produce or supply fossil fuels” in the presence of “feasible alternatives.” They must also comply with industry standards — with an aim at eventually phasing out carbon emissions — and cannot engage in misleading climate communications.

However, neither the Committee nor the Corporation settled on full fossil fuel divestment, citing that the withdrawal of “responsible institutional investors” en masse would enable less environmentally conscious entities to “fill the void.” According to the report, well-intentioned divestment practices might inadvertently lead to more greenhouse gas emissions.

“Divestment and engagement can work in tandem to put pressure on companies to make necessary changes,” the report added.

Yale has since divested from 64 fossil fuel companies, including Chevron, Exxon and ConocoPhillips.

However, Naina Agrawal-Hardin ’25, an Endowment Justice Coalition organizer, noted that Yale continues to lag behind peer institutions in fossil fuel divestment. 

Even if divestment would attract bad actors, Agrawal-Hardin said, there are also other, more impactful avenues for limiting corporate misbehavior, such as regulations, laws and judicial action. 

“The next president should commit to disclosing the University’s investments in fossil fuels and other extractive industries to the Yale community,” Agrawal-Hardin wrote in an email to the News. “They should then announce a plan for full divestment, on a timeline consistent with what science and justice demand.”

Scientific research

During University science discussions in 2018, faculty emphasis on “additional university investment in evolutionary and environmental sciences and climate solutions” resulted in the Yale Planetary Solutions, or YPS, according to Tanya Wiedeking, the Project’s interim director.

The multi-organizational effort combines research from disciplines across the University to address the social and scientific issues posed by climate change. Members include the Yale Animal Welfare Alliance and Yale Sustainable Food Program.

“Over the last three years, YPS has facilitated Yale’s greatest assets — its people and their drive to produce knowledge to improve the world — to design, catalyze, and realize solutions for beneficial impact within our own community and across the globe,” Wiedeking wrote in an email to the News.

Wiedeking added that over 40 interdisciplinary projects have earned roughly $3 million in grant funding since the program’s inception in 2020. Early last month, the University appointed Julie Zimmerman, professor at the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Yale School of the Environment, as vice provost for the program.

According to Dave Bercovici, a professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the Planetary Solutions project has paved the way for other new initiatives as well.

In 2021, the University unveiled its Center for Natural Carbon Capture, which Bercovici co-directs. The Center is dedicated to exploring natural atmospheric carbon removal. The Yale School of the Environment-partnered initiative brings together faculty and scientists, providing funding for projects, connecting researchers to labs and hosting climate events. 

The program was made possible by a $100 million donation from FedEx — and, more recently, additional funding from Southwest and Boeing — after the company expressed interest in mitigating its carbon footprint.

Unlike other research efforts in direct air capture, the program prioritizes ecological carbon dioxide removal. Thus far, the Center has primarily focused on forest management, silicate weathering and marine carbon absorption.

“We’re trying to get the Earth to do what it does anyway, just faster,” Bercovici told the News.

The Center, which has hired four new faculty members in the past year, will be housed in Yale’s Osborn Memorial Laboratories after its upcoming renovation.

Bercovici said that the Center’s recent growth is a reminder that Yale is both a “living lab” for local sustainability initiatives but also a globally recognized institution that “should look outwards to how it can help solve real world problems.”

“When [Yale’s] put its mind to it, it’s taken leadership, and I think we could continue to do that with sustainability,” Bercovici added.

A 2023 UN report projected the world to exceed the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature limit set in 2018.

Correction, Nov. 11: A previous version of this article misstated Tanya Wiedeking’s title with the Yale Planetary Solutions.