RIT & Carbon Sequestration

Besides the Reporter occasionally posting op-eds regarding climate change (they had an environmental issue in march of this year), RIT as a educational institution signed the climate commitment in 2009. Since 2011, RIT has been taking stock of their emissions, and released a climate action plan, which was updated in 2017 [9].

While the climate action plan contains a multitude of goals for different aspects of climate change, it is understandably lacking in direct carbon sequestration, instead focusing on carbon neutrality

Outlined in the action plan is a hierarchy that shows RIT’s priorities in carbon management. The top priority is to avoid creating new carbon emissions, with the second being reducing current emissions. Only third is replacing currently used high-emmiting systems, with carbon sequestration fourth.

Offsetting emissions is last in the hierarchy, taking place 5th [7]. (Throughout the document, this hierarchy is seemingly broken - but abuse of carbon offsets is its own can of worms, not to be opened here).

In the process of building the climate action plan, RIT created 3 “working groups”, focusing on “Energy, Built Environment, and Land Use and Transportation” to aid in identifying plausible sequestration strategies – of these, only the land use and transportation group found possible strategies [7].

RIT Defines Sequestration: Trees & Land

In the glossary of the plan, RIT defines carbon sequestration as: “the process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it. Planting trees is one way in which carbon dioxide is commonly sequestered. Trees use carbon dioxide in photosynthesis to produce biomass, capturing the carbon dioxide and turning it into a solid form [7]”. The land use and transportation group, in turn, follows similarly.

To start, however, after building a baseline for RIT’s sequestration, the plan is to “develop a carbon offset program [7]”. Rather than directly change their sequestration strategies or add new strategies onto campus, RIT is starting by building up their data network on campus emissions.

In addition to building carbon maps of campus, RIT is doing some tangible research – “some research has been conducted on campus to understand the current carbon sequestration and sequestration potential of the soil and vegetation on campus”, and The Environmental Science Department researches and teaches classes related to sequestration and soil [7].

RIT’s main goal regarding sequestration is to have a “net increase in carbon sequestration on campus landscapes by 40% by 2030 [7]”. Beyond that, however, RIT’s climate action plan does not outline how they will continue to research sequestration on campus beyond land use - sequestration that is not permanent.