The Brandeis Climate Action Plan, a comprehensive set of suggestions to gradually reduce Brandeis' energy consumption, will be released today, according to Janna Cohen-Rosenthal '03, the University's sustainability coordinator and chair of the plan. Cohen-Rosenthal has been working with the Brandeis Environmental Sustainability Team on the climate action plan since last winter and said that the plan is essentially a timeline for the University to achieve carbon neutrality.

"The plan mainly consists of milestones [for the University to achieve] until 2050," she said.

Cohen-Rosenthal explained that in 2007, Brandeis became part of the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, a group of over 600 universities determined to combat climate change. Part of this commitment is an agreement to develop a comprehensive plan for each university to ultimately become climate-neutral, which she said means reducing virtually all energy consumption.

Although Cohen-Rosenthal was unable to provide specific details of the plan because it has not yet been officially approved, she explained that it is divided into different categories such as energy conservation and efficiency, clean and renewable energy, green buildings, transportation, waste disposal, food and education.

She said some of the potential ideas to promote energy reduction include working with the eco-reps, students in each quad who encourage their peers to conserve resources.

With the assistance of the eco-reps, the plan aims to promote combating climate change, provide incentives for graduate students to carpool and continue to improve the energy efficiency in the buildings on campus.

Cohen-Rosenthal acknowledged that this plan is a work in progress and that the committee is open to suggestions.

Prof. Laura Goldin (AMST), the founder of BEST, said that the measures in the current plan are realistic, although some of the ideas, such as substituting fossil fuels with alternative energy, will be harder to implement because of financial constraints.

Goldin said she plans on contributing to the plan through her classes, as she teaches classes in which students work on environmental projects that contribute to energy reduction. She cited her class "Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving Environmental Sustainability of Brandeis and Community," as an example.

Matt Schmidt '11, the president of Students for Environmental Action, who played an active role in formulating the transportation aspect of the plan, wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that he plans to work with the administration to implement the behavioral change section.

"While carbon neutrality by 2050 may seem like a stretch, [more than 40] years is plenty of time to arrive at this goal if we commit to taking the action necessary. As a leading academic institution, and a bastion of progressive leadership, it would be a shame if we cannot make the hard decisions and achieve this goal," Schmidt wrote.

Goldin added that achieving carbon neutrality would inevitably impose sacrifices upon students and faculty.

"I do think that we will all have to make sacrifices; we couldn't make it happen without those. I think they will have to be in the way we use and expect to use energy, and much of that will be in the way of conservation," Goldin said.

Both Goldin and Cohen-Rosenthal were optimistic about the ultimate outcome of the upcoming plan.

"I would hope, and really do expect, that at a place like Brandeis, which holds as such an essential value social responsibility and contribution to the public good, that this would be something that people would embrace," said Goldin.