Earlier this year, Katie Unger Baillie, director of the environmental innovations initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, worked with her family to paint a series of bat boxes for the university.
The boxes, designed by students in the Weitzman School of Design Fabrication Lab, function as a safe breeding habitat for up to 200 little brown bats, a species that is endangered in Pennsylvania. During climate week in October, the University installed the boxes in its campus parks and other green spaces, to help the population recoup.
“We have a relatively green campus for being in a dense urban area and we want to make sure we’re providing this habitat where wildlife are interested in coming,” Baillie says. “That goes for bats. It goes for birds and pollinators.”
The initiative is one of Penn’s many climate and sustainability programs that help make our environment a better place for animals and people alike. Since 2009, Penn’s sustainability initiatives have reduced its carbon emissions 47 percent, and the university plans to go net zero by 2042 — a full eight years before the City of Philadelphia hopes to reach that goal for its municipal buildings.
This month, the university released its Climate and Sustainability Action Plan 4.0 (CSAP 4.0), which outlines what it will do to fight climate change over the next five years. With this plan, Penn promises to become one of the greenest universities and health systems in the country — in a time when climate leadership is sorely needed.
Making all of Penn sustainable
CSAP 4.0 has six pillars for helping the university become more sustainable: academic research and education; reducing emissions from utilities and operations, transportation and the health system; creating opportunities for sustainability in the physical environment; reducing waste; procuring clean energy, and conducting civic engagement and outreach.
The project has been largely successful leading up to CSAP 4.0. Under CSAP 3.0, Penn announced that it would purchase 70 percent of its electricity from two solar fields it built in central Pennsylvania. Those facilities went online last year.
The university also diverted 29 percent of its waste from landfills last year, implemented a system to track and offset emissions from faculty and staff air travel, and has constructed 51 LEED-certified buildings to date. LEED certification is a global rating standard for energy-efficient buildings.
“Sustainability is part and parcel of how we do things at Penn,” says Nina Morris, Sustainability Director at the University of Pennsylvania.
“It’s a combination of attacking our own carbon emissions, making big changes in what we’re doing organizationally and how we’re reducing the waste that’s coming up from our supply chain, and then educating [others] and becoming a voice, a leader across the country.” — Greg Evans, University of Pennsylvania Hospital System
The university’s academic programs are also engaged in sustainability efforts. In 2022, climatologist Dr. Michael E. Mann joined Penn as the director of the Science, Sustainability and the Media program. This month, he was appointed the university’s vice provost for climate science, policy, and action. Last year, 5,112 students enrolled in courses focused on the environment and sustainability. Climate research is happening in each of the university’s 12 schools. Penn researchers are drafting and pitching climate policy, studying how plants can adapt to changing climates, and developing drought-resistant crops, amongst other initiatives.
These researchers are studying the efficacy and impact of Penn’s own efforts. At the university’s solar fields, faculty and graduate students are studying how solar producers can sequester carbon in the soil and develop best practices for keeping soil healthy and fertile, so that it could potentially be transitioned back to agricultural land.
“Given that solar farms have a lifespan of 25 or 30 years, how do you maintain soil health over that period of time when you’re operating?” Baillie says. “There’s this concept of campus as a living lab … the idea is we use the curiosity and the skills of students and faculty right on campus to investigate our own practices.”
Bringing the health system into the climate change fight
Penn’s earlier sustainability efforts are admirable, but they were limited in scope. Many of the initiatives and the carbon neutrality plan applied only to the University City academic campus. CSAP 4.0 expands those efforts to include other Penn properties and purviews: the health system, Morris Arboretum, the vet school’s new campus in Kennett Square and all Penn-owned real estate. “It’s important that we account for our whole impact,” Morris says.
A major part of CSAP 4.0 is bringing in the health system. Penn’s sustainability initiatives within its hospitals started a few years prior. The new Pavilion on the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania campus was the largest healthcare facility in the world to achieve LEED Gold certification when it opened in 2021. Under CSAP 4.0, all new construction projects will aim for at least LEED Silver certification.
Greg Evans is the corporate director of sustainability for the University of Pennsylvania Hospital System. He started with Penn in 2020 as director of sustainability for Penn Medicine Princeton, where he was able to identify ways Penn Med Princeton could reduce medical waste and rely less on anesthetic gasses. Anesthetic gasses, unlike intravenous anesthesia, release greenhouse gas into the environment. Many of his solutions can be applied health system wide.
“It’s a combination of attacking our own carbon emissions, making big changes in what we’re doing organizationally and how we’re reducing the waste that’s coming up from our supply chain, and then educating [others] and becoming a voice, a leader across the country,” Evans says.
Last year, Penn completed an assessment that evaluated emissions from all of the health system buildings using data from 2022. It found that the health system’s properties alone accounted for 300,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in emissions. Penn plans to halve these emissions by 2030 and zero them out by 2042 — in line with the university’s broader goals. The bulk of the hospital system’s emissions come from energy and fossil fuel consumption, but they’re also targeting transportation, medical waste and food waste. The hospital system plans to release its own sustainability action plan with more detailed goals next year.
Evans hopes to make Penn the “most environmentally friendly healthcare system in the nation” — something the nonprofit Practice Greenhealth tracks. Boston Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic and UC Davis Health were among the top hospitals last year.
“We’re following on their heels, and hope to catch up,” Evans says. “We are certainly on target with what they’re doing and what we plan to do.”
Can Penn make Philadelphia more sustainable?
Penn’s efforts come at a time when many worry that the federal government will abdicate its climate responsibilities. During his second term, President Donald Trump will likely withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate agreement (as he did during his first term) and expand oil and gas drilling. It’ll be up to cities, states and private companies to make progress on fighting climate change in the absence of federal leadership.
As the city’s largest employer and a major research institution, Penn has the influence needed to help make Philly more sustainable. Right now, we’re lagging behind in our goal to shift to renewable electricity, our tree canopy has declined, and the City has let lapse programs that encourage businesses to be more sustainable. (The City is on track to reduce electricity and heating consumption and emissions from municipal buildings in line with its climate goals; Councilmember Jamie Gauthier has introduced legislation to bring back the sustainable business tax credit).
“This knowledge is being generated, but we don’t want it to just stay here. We want it to be out in the world and address these issues that are so pressing.” — Katie Unger Baillie, University of Pennsylvania
Penn has already begun partnering with the City and community organizations on sustainability and climate initiatives. In 2020, they joined the City’s now defunct zero-waste partnership. The schools of engineering, design and nursing worked with the Hunting Park nonprofit North10 to pilot cooling shelters during the summer months, when the neighborhood can get as much as 20 degrees hotter than other parts of the city. Penn researchers are studying how our schools can prepare for rising temperatures and working with the School District on pilot programs to address it. Penn’s Civic Sustainability Fellows work with city agencies to implement sustainability programs.
A pillar in CSAP 4.0 is civic engagement, which aims to expand these efforts and to educate Philadelphians, community groups, local politicians and businesses about sustainability and what they can do to help our city meet climate goals.
“This knowledge is being generated, but we don’t want it to just stay here. We want it to be out in the world and address these issues that are so pressing,” Baillie says.
Bringing the health system into the climate action plan is one way Penn plans to increase civic engagement. Many Americans report high levels of trust in medical professionals. (That’s decreased since the pandemic; a survey found 40 percent of Americans say they trust medical systems in 2024 — compared to 71 percent pre-Covid.) When doctors talk with people about the health impacts of climate change, they listen. The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and American Heart Association amongst other public health organizations have pleaded with the U.S. government to recognize and mitigate the health impacts of climate change.
Penn Medicine has applied for a Draw Down the Lightning grant to create an educational training program for its physicians, staff and administrators centered on sustainability and climate change. The training program will be used at Penn, but Evans hopes other hospital systems will be able to adopt it as well. Penn’s health system is also writing a resiliency plan focused on urban heat islands in Philly and what we can do to keep people safe during ever-warmer summer months.
“We hope to engage the community and work with them on coming up with strategies around how we can be more supportive and sustainable,” Evans says.
