Before this agreement, university administrators worked to minimize the impacts of climate change as part of their responsibility to "care for our common home," according to Audrey Stewart, the director of the Office of Sustainability at Georgetown. "We are inspired by Pope Francis' encyclical, Laud Contact online >>
Before this agreement, university administrators worked to minimize the impacts of climate change as part of their responsibility to "care for our common home," according to Audrey Stewart, the director of the Office of Sustainability at Georgetown. "We are inspired by Pope Francis'' encyclical, Laudato Si'', and the United Nations'' Sustainable Development Goals," Stewart said.
Through a long-term green energy plan, the university has sought to reduce its carbon footprint under the leadership of President John DeGioia. In 2014, the university was able to half greenhouse gas emissions and has implemented energy efficiency policies ranging from district heating to building retrofits that have saved nearly 3.3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, the carbon equivalent to planting 140,000 trees. However, Stewart said, this success did not stop the university''s desire to shift further towards greener energy.
The latest plan follows a 2019 rejection by the Maryland Department of the Environment for a controversial solar installation that would have supplied more than half of the university''s electricity., Stewart hopes the investment can further the university''s sustainable goals by"continuing to power our campus using clean electricity, reducing long-term utility costs to the university and supporting the renewable energy industry in our region through our power purchase."
In the past, the university has partnered with student organizations like Georgetown Energy to create climate-focused initiatives like Solar Street, which expanded the university''s regional solar power to nearly 18 kilowatts of installed capacity. The new PPA would supply the university annually with 100,000 megawatt-hours of electricity, a significant increase in the percentage of energy sourced from solar power.
This energy transition is part of a larger shift away from conventional fossil fuels and towards a "fully sustainable energy mix," said Stewart. The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) also praised the university for this move. Last year, the GUSA Sustainability Policy Team pushed the Blue Campus Referendum which encouraged several new programs to minimize carbon emissions and invest in renewable energy.
GUSA also noted that they are open to further cooperation with the university to mitigate climate change. "Our Sustainability Policy Team looks forward to continuing work with Vice President Geoff Chatas and other stakeholders in the referendum, including the formation of an official sustainability working group," Jacob Bernard (SFS ''23), the press secretary for GUSA, wrote in an email to the Voice.
Georgetown currently sources two-thirds of its electricity from a renewable energy power purchase agreement, and aspires to become carbon neutral by 2030 and achieve 100% renewable power by 2035, in addition to its ongoing commitment to divest from fossil fuels, which began in 2020.
The Earth Commons, the university''s institute for environment and sustainability, will have innovative graduate degree programs and undergraduate offerings spanning the disciplines and schools. The institute will also elevate impact-focused research at Georgetown, and forge new partnerships with government and non-government institutions and corporations around sustainability and environmental education, research, and service.
The institute''s launch capitalizes on increasing faculty expertise across the university, as well as strong student interest in the field, and coincides with a call from Pope Francis for Catholic institutions to make care for the environment an urgent moral priority.
Earth Commons takes its inspiration from Laudato Si'', the powerful 2015 encyclical by Pope Francis on the pressing need to reshape our relationship with the environment. The document outlines the problem of global environmental degradation and the impact on all creation, but particularly on the poor.
"With the launch of our new Earth Commons Institute, Georgetown is in an even stronger position to realize the impact that we can make to better understand and respond to urgent challenges facing our global environment," says Georgetown President John J. DeGioia.
"Providing a more sustainable planet for future generations is both a creative and inspiring ambition that requires the collaborative commitment of disciplines of every kind, focused on the larger goal of advancing the common good."
In April 2021, Georgetown announced the newest "Spirit of Georgetown" value: care for our common home. Others include contemplation in action, people for others, and faith that does justice. In a way, care for our common home weaves together each of these values with the big picture reminder that we are all connected as part of our precious and fragile planet.
The Earth Commons helps make visible both Georgetown and the Catholic Church''s renewed commitment to tending to our common home. Mark Bosco, S.J., vice president of Mission & Ministry, sees it as an extension of the Jesuit way of finding God in all things.
"We can find, revealed in nature, some aspect of this transcendent God who loves us into life and calls us into human agency, calls us to work for the common good and be people for others, to nurture the environment," says Bosco. "It is absolutely part of the Ignatian ethos. It''s no accident that as a Jesuit, Pope Francis sees this through the eyes of his Ignatian heritage."
Care for the environment is a long-standing commitment at Georgetown. The university launched the Center for the Environment in 1996, and the Georgetown Environment Initiative (GEI) in 2012. There has continued to be a strong institutional commitment through the Office of Sustainability and ambitious university goals and achievements around renewable energy, energy efficiency, and carbon neutrality. The university has also made important progress in green building, creating a more circular economy, and investing in sustainability through the endowment.
The new Earth Commons Institute builds on and expands these strengths. Led by renowned bird ecologist Peter Marra, Laudato Si'' Professor of Biology and the Environment, the institute is partnering with a wide range of environment and sustainability faculty across the nine schools, along with the Office of Sustainability. Marra estimates that there are currently over 70 faculty members actively involved in research and education around the topic. Now is the time to harness these resources and create a critical mass to have an impact, he says.
"The Earth Commons is intentionally ambitious because we have this massive environmental issue—the most important thing we are dealing with as human beings on the planet," says Marra. "If we don''t deal with our environmental problems, nothing else matters."
The institute is expansive in its vision because environmental problems won''t be solved by any one knowledge domain, says Provost Robert Groves. "The Earth Commons is energizing all of these pieces into a whole to increase the impact at Georgetown," he notes. Law and policy are critical partners, he adds, as well as the sciences, naturally.
In fact, the Earth Commons'' first degree program is a joint master''s degree between the Earth Commons (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) and the McDonough School of Business. "Combining the environment and business isn''t something most people think of as natural dance partners but they are in so many ways," Marra says. The Master of Science in Environment and Sustainability Management is a one-year program and includes courses from climate change economics to impact investing, all with the Georgetown values focus on ethics and justice.
The Earth Commons works with the Humanities Initiative and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, among others, to create the Voices of the Environment. The annual celebration of various aspects of the environment and sustainability grew out of the GEI''s Earth Week events in April. This year''s focus is on intergenerational justice, with a special emphasis on indigenous perspectives.
Today''s generation of Georgetown students shoulders a heavy concern for the environment. It can be hard to envision a healthy future for oneself, let alone one''s children and grandchildren, considering the trajectory humanity is currently on.
"A lot of our generation feels like this is the existential threat of our time," says senior Shelby Gresch (SFS''22) of Seattle, Washington. Gresch is an active member of Georgetown Renewable Energy and Environmental Network (GREEN) and a student in the School of Foreign Service''s Science, Technology and International Affairs program, minoring in Spanish with a major concentration in energy and the environment.
She has dedicated much of her time at Georgetown to the environment, winning a Laudato Si'' Grant from the Georgetown Environment Initiative (GEI) to design a first-year orientation course on how to live sustainably on campus. As part of her current internship with the GEI, she is helping plan a student-run farm on campus. Happy to see environmental study expand into the much larger, interconnected, interdisciplinary Earth Commons, she says she''s glad that incoming students will have the opportunity to take advantage of the new offerings.
"The institute will focus on different ''commons'' or specialty areas like food and water, biodiversity, and sustainability," she says. "Embedding it across all of Georgetown''s campuses is critical because thinking about the environment should be at the top of our consciousness."
Students like Gresch and senior Rachel Kirichu (SFS''22) of Detroit, Michigan, have dedicated countless hours through student groups like GREEN, internships with GEI and the Office of Sustainability, and informal volunteering to help grow the environmental movement on the Hilltop and beyond. But the good news is they weren''t starting from scratch, says Kirichu.
"I''m thankful that I came into Georgetown with an already established Office of Sustainability and student groups that I can be involved with in environment and sustainability. I didn''t have to establish these—previous students, faculty, and staff laid the groundwork that I can build up from. So I''m very thankful for that—it gave me the space to cultivate my passion. I hope to provide the same for new students to come in and do the same, to create even more effective change in our community and beyond."
"There feels like a loss of choice or opportunity. If I didn''t feel like we all needed to be working on this I wonder if I''d be doing something else. I love the environment and I love what I do but there''s an urgency to this that demands our attention and makes it hard to choose to do something else like be a dancer or something. There are a lot of things we can do to make the world a better place, but we have to do this immediately."
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