Decarbonizing a sprawling university system

As Chief of Energy, Sustainability, and Transportation at the
Chancellor’s Office of California State University, Lindsey
Rowell is charged with developing and implementing a plan to
decarbonize every aspect of the school system, on all 23
campuses, with minimal use of offsets, by 2045. In this episode,
she lays out what it will take to tackle this ambitious goal.


(PDF
transcript)


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transcript)


Text transcript:


David Roberts


Contemplate, if you will, the California State University system.
It is the largest public-university system in the country — by
some accounts, the largest in the world — with more than a
half-million students and some 55,000 faculty and staff, spread
across a sprawling network of 23 campuses, from the top of the
state to the bottom.


What if I told you that it was your job to decarbonize that
entire system — the buildings, the energy infrastructure, the
transportation, the food, the construction materials, all of it —
and you had just over 20 years to do it. Would you panic?
Possibly short circuit? I'm pretty sure I would.


As it happens, though, that is someone's job. Her name is Lindsey
Rowell and she is the Chief of Energy, Sustainability, and
Transportation at the Chancellor’s Office. She is on the hook for
developing and implementing a plan to make the entire CSU system
carbon neutral by 2045, with minimal use of offsets.


You might think, to accomplish something so vast, she would have
a team of dozens and a budget of billions. But this is a public
university system, so of course she doesn't — instead it's duct
tape, baling wire, and ingenuity. I had a great time talking with
her about how to approach this unwieldy project. I think you will
find her pragmatism and good humor refreshing.


Every policy or regulation ultimately must be implemented by
someone on the ground. This is what that looks like.


All right then. Lindsey Rowell, welcome to Volts. Thank you so
much for coming.


Lindsey Rowell


Thank you so much for having me.


David Roberts


This is really interesting, a lot of really interesting stuff
here — I have a million questions to get through to ask you. But
for starters, why don't you just tell us a little bit about the
California State University system, which is different than the
University of California system. Just getting that right up
front.


Lindsey Rowell


Let's get that out of the way. We are so different. Sure thing.
So, California State University system, whether you realize it or
not, you probably know it. We are the largest public university
system in the country, by some metrics in the world, depending on
who you ask on which day. So we have 23 campuses in the system
spread across the state, from the very tippy top up in Humboldt
and down to the very, very bottom of the state in San Diego. So
we cover the entire space in California, and we've been educating
students for about 150 years.


So we have really old universities. We also have a few satellite
locations that offer specialty coursework in nursing or business.
And we educate about half a million students with about 55,000
faculty and staff. So we are a huge, hug organization, and the
schools, probably people are most familiar with without realizing
that they are CSU schools, are the California Polytechnic
University at San Luis Obispo — it's one that a lot of folks
don't realize as part of our system. And we have three Cal Polys
now, Humboldt is a Cal Poly and Cal Poly Pomona, and then, of
course, San Diego State is one of our biggest.


San Diego, Fullerton, and Long Beach are three of our biggest
institutions in Southern California. Reason?


David Roberts


Are they all four-year undergrad colleges, or are there some
vocational stuff or community colleges?


Lindsey Rowell


So no community colleges. The community college system is a
separate but friendly sister organization, complete state
organization. And the CSU is a four-year institution and graduate
program. So we have masters, and we do have educational doctorate
programs at a few of the campuses. So four-plus years.


David Roberts


So 23 campuses?


Lindsey Rowell


Yes.


David Roberts


Across the state. That's a lot. So tell us, then, what laws you
are like — what are your mandated goals here? And are they
mandated by the state of California, or does CSU have its own
separate goals, or are these all just sort of state goals that
you're implementing?


Lindsey Rowell


So, without getting too boring into the legislative dynamic of
the CSU, we're sort of a quasi-state agency. So what that usually
means is that most regulatory and legislative mandates are
applicable to us where we're mentioned specifically. Part of that
is due to the fact that we are called out specifically in the
government code. So we are our own authority having jurisdiction,
if you want a technical term, and then we are self support — a
portion of our work is self support through student tuition and
endowments and so forth. So what that means is the CSU often sets
more ambitious goals.


I cannot think of anything off the top of my head where we are
not, at the very least, meeting California's goals. As California
gets more robust in its challenges towards climate change, I
think the gap between California requirements and CSU
requirements is closing. But, yes, we align with the state in
pretty much everything we do, either by intent or by statute.


David Roberts


The broad framework I've been thinking about this in know, I
think a lot about policy and laws and politics and getting laws
passed, but every law that passes, someone has to do it, right?
Someone has to implement it. And so I've just been giving a lot
of thought to, who are the people out on the front lines
implementing these things? So part of why I'm asking is, what
happens if you don't meet them. Are these self imposed goals
where if you don't meet them, for whatever reason, you're just
like, "Ah, we swung and missed. Bummer." Or is there some legal
penalty if you don't reach them?


Like, what happens if you don't meet these goals?


Lindsey Rowell


That's a fun question because my first answer is the world ends.
That's what happens. So government, as you know, is generally a
carrot sort of organization, not a stick organization. I mean,
punitive response to not meeting legislation is usually reserved
for the private sector. And government agencies are, you know,
sort of pressured to respond to these mandates, but without, you
know, punitive expectations if they don't make them. That said,
though, and I'm going to offer a little prediction — this is
Lindsey Rowell's prediction, this is not the CSU's prediction,
disclaimer — that because the intensity of the climate crisis
just ever increases. And it's funny that we're doing this today,
David, because I just saw all the news of the massive waves in
hitting the California coastline.


I don't think I've ever seen that in my lifetime due to Pacific
storms. And so what I predict is going to happen is there's going
to be this sort of the incentive approach, right, where there's
programs to support government agencies meeting these standards
and goals, and then there'll start to be some hand slapping,
maybe there will be some tightening of the purse strings with
regard to funding that comes our way. And then I do think
eventually there will be punitive damages in the form of carbon
taxes or more direct funding cut offs.


David Roberts


Right. So sticks will show up eventually.


Lindsey Rowell


I think they've got to. I mean, I think at some point you can't
rely on folks to do this work voluntarily. And I think
governments often have to choose between the two pennies that
they have to rub together, as one of my staff likes to say, which
I think is a great metaphor.


David Roberts


Well, actually, wait, we have to rewind because we skipped what
the goals actually are, right. CSU imposes its own goals, but
what is the goal? I forgot to get that on record.


Lindsey Rowell


That's actually a great one. We should talk about that. So, the
CSU, we have a new sustainability policy. And I say new.
Actually, I'm thinking that it's not so new anymore. So we passed
a new sustainability policy right after I came back to the CSU.
So this is January of 2022. And the new sustainability policy,
the overarching goal, is carbon neutrality by 2045.


David Roberts


And is that the same as the state?


Lindsey Rowell


Yes, that's the same goal as the state. Now, campuses have
individual goals that might be more aggressive. Some are
targeting as early as 2030, which is terrifying, but great to see
that ambition out there. So that's the overarching goal. But
within that, mostly what we've done is aligned with the AASHE
STARS program, if you're not familiar. AASHE is the Association
for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, and
they have a tracking system, and it sort of captures everything
with regard to sustainability across the board, in curriculum, in
student basic needs, in diversity, equity, inclusion.


So we've sort of aligned our policy to tackle all of those
overarching umbrella criteria and then the various credits
underneath those. So we have a lot of goals, but the overarching
one that is sort of the point to it all is this carbon neutrality
by 2045 as a system.


David Roberts


And what's your job? You have to do that.


Lindsey Rowell


Explaining that to my mother for like 15 years, we just had
Christmas: "What do you do for a living?" Basically, our role at
the chancellor's office is to sort of advise and facilitate and
implement these goals through policy, through programs. So we do
a lot of program development and more recently, a lot more
advocacy. So you were talking about your interest in policy and
legislation. We have gotten very heavily involved on the state
and federal legislative side, trying to express the need that the
CSU has to inform the powers that be of the group of individuals
that we serve, which is, generally speaking, disadvantaged
communities, underrepresented minorities, first-generation
college students.


So, as we sort of pursue all of this, our jobs kind of touch
everything. We also do broad-scale procurement. We do direct
access energy procurement for 14 of the campuses, meaning we buy
energy on the wholesale market, then transmission and
distribution to the utilities, and then bundled service for the
rest of the campuses. So we have all of that. We do climate
action planning for the campuses, water conservation, sustainable
procurement, waste management, sustainable foods.


David Roberts


Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, this is the point of all this
setup, is to get this in readers' minds, is that you are sitting
in your office having to think about how to get 23 campuses,
physical campuses across the state, to carbon neutrality by 2045.


Lindsey Rowell


Right.


David Roberts


And when I start thinking about that —


Lindsey Rowell


It gives you anxiety?


David Roberts


— it causes a pain behind my right eye. My hands start to shake.
To me, that's just like a huge — maybe you've grown accustomed to
it over time, but to me, it just seems like such a huge,
sprawling thing. It kind of makes my brain short circuit.


Lindsey Rowell


It does that to us. We spend a lot of time sort of mentally
advocating for each other, just going, "We can do this. We can do
this. We got to just fly forward and it's eating the elephant
just one bite at a time."


David Roberts


Yeah, no kidding. The first thing I wanted to ask is just, this
seems like, among other things, it's going to take a lot of
resources. It's going to take a lot of money to do this. So I was
just like, what is your budget? Do you have the budget to achieve
this?


Lindsey Rowell


To all legislators and decision-makers listening, we do not. So
we have about a $7 billion deferred maintenance backlog.


David Roberts


Oh, goodness.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah. And that's not, "woe is us", sort of — that's not that kind
of a comment because the UC and the community colleges of the
state at large, this is something we deal with. They're
chronically underfunded organizations, as government
organizations tend to be. I mean, when we talk about the numbers
needed for this type of work, especially decarbonization, just
electrification. So let's just talk about electrification plans.
The numbers aren't even real numbers, David. They're not numbers
that you and I — and we hear them. We hear Jeff Bezos has $65
trillion or whatever. We know that's a figure. But when someone
says to you, "Oh, just to electrify your central plant, that
serves a campus that occupies, I don't know, let's say, 4 million
square feet, is going to cost you, for starters, $350 million for
the engineering and the basic equipment change out."


So that doesn't include things like switching everything over to
the proper coils that can take the lower temperature hot water to
circulate to buildings. That doesn't include any of the
offsetting renewable energy and all of that that's required to
actually get to net zero. That's an insane number. So when you
start to think about that across a whole campus, the number is
probably closer to 500 million, a billion per campus and then 23
campuses.


David Roberts


Yeah, it adds right up.


Lindsey Rowell


Huge numbers. They're huge numbers.


David Roberts


Yeah. So I guess that's kind of where I want to start before
getting into the details. Just like, how am I not to conclude
that this is just impossible what they're asking you to do? The
scale of what they're asking you to do with the money you have
available to do it, how do you get around that basic —


Lindsey Rowell


Let me give you some of my —


David Roberts


Coping strategies?


Lindsey Rowell


I was going to say my coping strategies, the little things I hang
on to as signs of progress. First of all, so for the CSU, we have
managed to keep our energy use level over the past almost two
decades, despite adding thousands and thousands of square feet.
So we're good at energy efficiency, and we've managed to do it
with no direct — we have no direct budget assigned for that kind
of work. So this is usually nickel and diming an operational
budget. This is capturing incentives through utility programs or
federal grant programs.


So we do a lot of sort of little things where we chip away at the
problem, and that actually is tremendously effective. One of our
campuses, one of our energy managers, his name is Kenny Seeton,
and I can take his name in vain because we're good friends and
he's been around for as long as I have in the CSU. And one of the
things he does so well is he'll do things like he'll have $1,000
left on his purchasing, his pro card, at the end of the month,
and he'll buy a bunch of lamps or he'll buy a bunch of meters and
he'll just keep them in his office until he's got 100 of them.
And then he'll rally his team and be like "All right, guys, this
weekend we're going to go through and we're going to install all
of these."


He'll probably be the first campus to meet the net zero goals,
and he's done it all without a dedicated energy budget.


David Roberts


Amazing.


Lindsey Rowell


So, the answer to your question is so fluid. I think the federal
government is finally starting to put some real money behind
these efforts.


David Roberts


Yeah, I was going to ask, like, IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act,
actually just showering money down on everything. Are you going
to be able to harvest some of that?


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, we're really, really trying. So that's a big part of our
advocacy program. We've kind of got a two-path, two-pronged
approach. One is sort of short term, what can we capture from the
Inflation Reduction Act? Which includes stuff that we're kind of
already doing, centered around investment tax credits for
renewable energy. It also includes the energy efficiency tax
credits, things like that, that have traditionally not — we've
had to capture through third-party developers. The difficulty,
and this is the second prong, the sort of longer-term approach in
making legislators understand what it's like to have this money
on the ground is a couple of things.


One, we don't have the upfront cash for this type of work. So
when a campus has to make a decision, when they say, "Oh, 40% of
this or 60% even of this renewables project, the solar project
that we want to do is going to come back to us." We still have to
come up with the $7-$10 million upfront to do the project.


David Roberts


Because you get it back in tax —


Lindsey Rowell


Exactly.


David Roberts


Under taxes. Right.


Lindsey Rowell


And the problem that we have with that is that that money takes
away from something else. And every time I sort of bring this
question up with folks, let's just say "the folks," the question
is always sort of like, "Well, why don't you have money?" The
question is always like, "Well, why don't you just take some
money from somewhere else?" It's like, no, you don't understand.
That's like saying, "I have $0 in my checking account, write a
check, and then —" it doesn't work like that.


David Roberts


Haven't some of the tax credits been made direct pay?


Lindsey Rowell


They are, but they're still reimbursable. And so the issue with
that upfront capital means that for us, it's typically not that
much more advantageous for us to own one of — a solar system is
just the easiest example because power purchase agreements have
been around for a million years. When campuses do that, the
benefit they have, I mentioned our $7 billion deferred
maintenance backlog. Well, what does that tell you? We don't have
the money to maintain things. So the last thing we need is to own
a sophisticated piece of equipment. That we may or may not have
the staff who really knows how to manage it other than basic
maintenance.


We're still going to have to contract out to switch out the
inverters every 5-10 years, whatever, as they degrade. So we
haven't found that particular element of the program as directly
advantageous. I don't want to disparage the program because I
think it's incredible that this amount of money and effort is
getting put towards this work, but we need bigger chunks of money
available to really invest.


David Roberts


Are you asking the state government? I assume you're up in
Sacramento —


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah.


David Roberts


— nagging the relevant people.


Lindsey Rowell


We're working with legislators in Sacramento and in DC because a
lot of this money — this amount of money has got to come from the
federal level. Right. The state has, California has a lot of
money —


David Roberts


But a lot of debt, too.


Lindsey Rowell


Has a lot of debt and it has a huge population that it has to
serve and we need big federal dollars that are coming. And so
just trying to help folks understand the actual set of
circumstances when someone needs to cut a check —


David Roberts


That's what it comes down to.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, what it comes down to because we don't want to lose a lot
of money through administrative processes. And the other thing
with that that I think is really important to mention that I
think does not get understood on the Hill, for example, is that
when you have a rigorous process for these programs, the
institutions that get left behind are the same institutions and
the same people that get left behind for every other social
economic climate program there is: It's the poor people with no
resources. They don't have the money to contract for consultants
to help them do these applications.


David Roberts


So the application process itself is a barrier.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, yeah. So there needs to be some streamlining, and I think
the federal government has heard that. But, of course, when these
statutes are written, they come with a lot of legal constraints
that they have. So it's just tremendously complicated. It's not
like someone on the Hill can wave a magic wand and just go "Oh,
we'll just do it like this." Because they also are responsible
for taxpayer dollars, and they better make sure that if they're
going to put a trillion dollars towards something, it's going to
get spent where they said it's going to get spent.


David Roberts


Right. Well, let's talk some nuts and bolts. So you said you have
a $7 billion with a B deferred maintenance backlog. I'm wondering
if there are things you can do that would serve the dual purpose
of maintenance and decarbonization. In other words, could you try
to dig out of that hole in a way that also serves your carbon
goals?


Lindsey Rowell


Yes, 100%. That is actually our approach and has been forever. So
we really look at opportunities to dovetail energy projects with
maintenance projects for the simple reason that if you're going
to cut into a hard lid and send some tradesperson up there
crawling around, like, why do that twice?


David Roberts


Yeah, right.


Lindsey Rowell


Just the simple economics of that, of patching and painting and
laying down equipment and bringing contractors out, is a lot
cheaper to do one time than multiple times. One of the things we
like to say in our unit is that all maintenance is energy
efficiency. Right. You make pipes stop leaking, you make
equipment more efficient, you change out fans that aren't working
and dampers that are stuck and fix economizers, you're not only
addressing your maintenance issues, but you are making things
operate more efficiently. So we look at that approach, and
luckily, this is an advantage that the CSU has with regard to how
we spend our funding.


We have this operational budget, and we don't have to say this
money is going specifically for this project. We make that
designation ourselves in our office. So as long as we're
capturing it completely for the purposes of the Department of
Finance, the scope can be the scope. So there's a little bit of
flexibility there to make sure that money is being spent where
it's supposed to be spent.


David Roberts


And I'm going to guess, as I was thinking about this, 23 campuses
getting to zero carbon. My intuition was that buildings must be
the big ticket item in terms of the heating and cooling, the
amount of infrastructure required to heat and cool them, the
construction budget itself, the embedded. Because one thing I
thought was important to mention, I forgot to mention it earlier,
but we should put this in the context of your goals, is that when
you talk about carbon neutrality, you're also talking about scope
3 emissions.


Lindsey Rowell


It's so scary.


David Roberts


Yeah, that's the most mind-blowing part to me, and I'm going to
return to this later because for readers who are not familiar,
scope 1 and 2 emissions are sort of the emissions from the energy
that you're directly using. But scope 3 is the emissions sort of
embedded in the materials you use, the energy that people use to
transport themselves to the campus, like all sorts of sprawling
stuff that goes well beyond the campuses. So we'll return to that
later. But I'm assuming that. Am I right to say that buildings
are sort of item one on the list here in terms of emissions?


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, I think so. I mean, the estimates from the Department of
Energy are all kind of — they shift a little bit, but generally
we say between 30 and 40% of our emissions in the United States
are attributable to buildings. Right.


David Roberts


You think that's true of your system, too?


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, I would say campuses are easiest to understand if you think
of them as little cities, right. There's big buildings with
various operations. All in all, it's operating on a curve that is
similar to a city, right? Like early morning to midday and some
into late night. And then there's a variety of practices between
labs or a library or an office, whatever that's happening in
there. And then they're spread out. Right. There's geography and
landscaping and agriculture. There's everything.


David Roberts


Food. We're going to get to that later, too. But let's talk
buildings. You must have some really old. You've been around a
century. You must have some big old, drafty buildings, I'm
guessing.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, Chico and San Jose have been around a very long time.
Sacramento State just celebrated its 75th birthday, so there's a
few things that have gotten taken care of through sort of seismic
updates. After the 1989 quake, a lot of buildings across, not
just for the CSU, but across the state, really got retrofitted to
accommodate the moving and shaking that is our lovely state out
here on the west coast. And at that time, windows, building
skins, rooftops were replaced. Insulation was making buildings
more efficient as part of just a general practice of making them
more safe.


But that said, there are still buildings from the 1980s and even
the early 90s, when we were still kind of getting hip to a lot of
these sort of efficiency practices. So, yeah, there's a lot of
just general work to do. And then on top of that, the big thing,
obviously, is the distribution of energy around the system.


David Roberts


Yeah. Can you even generalize across 23 campuses? How are they
generally heated and cooled?


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, I can actually generalize. So pretty much every campus, in
fact, I can't think of one off the top of my head, has a core
campus that's served by a central, like a district energy system.


David Roberts


Oh, all of them?


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah.


David Roberts


Oh, interesting.


Lindsey Rowell


Some of them have buildings that are sort of off the loop based
on where they are on the campus property or who owns them, you
know, if it was a public-private partnership or something like
that. But, yeah, generally speaking, we have a district energy
system at every campus. Some of them have co-generation. Although
we had three campuses as part of the cap and trade program in
California, we now are down to one. The other two have
successfully decarbonized to get under the threshold for
emissions to no longer need to be a part of that program. So
that's really tremendous.


And then we did have our one campus, Channel Islands, had a large
25 megawatt co-generation system that was partnered with the
southern California energy utility for grid stability and parity.
So that's generally the situation. Some campuses have really
sophisticated tunnel systems, which are awesome because it makes
maintenance and protection systems really great. But of course —


David Roberts


Oh, it just like shelters the infrastructure, basically.


Lindsey Rowell


It does. And it means everything runs underground where
temperatures stay more stable, access.


David Roberts


So what are these district heating systems running on? You said
there were three that were co-generation. What are the rest of
them? Are most of them natural gas?


Lindsey Rowell


Natural gas boilers, yeah.


David Roberts


Are there any geothermal?


Lindsey Rowell


No, we have no geothermal. In fact, didn't think that geothermal
would really be a feasible option for us, but have recently
learned that some of the newer geothermal technology, as it
relates to ocean chilling could really maybe be something we use.


David Roberts


Yes, I'm familiar and excited about those developments.


Lindsey Rowell


This is the best thing about this job. Right. There's always
something changing in the technology that you get to learn.


David Roberts


So you have lots of natural gas based district heating systems.
What do you do to a natural gas based district heating system to
decarbonize it? Do you just switch out the natural gas boiler for
what, a big heat pump? What do you do?


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah. So that's where sort of the individual campus dynamic is
going to become a bigger factor depending on how far they're
moving heating — so our chilling is almost all electric. Most
campuses have electric chilling, and that can be offset with
renewables, which is fantastic. And then a lot of campuses have
and or are looking at thermal energy storage, allowing them to
benefit from that. So that's been really exciting. I love that
work, and it's really just a good old fashioned energy project
that's really solid.


David Roberts


Can I ask what kind of thermal storage people are looking at?


Lindsey Rowell


Campuses have like a two phase ice system. Most of them have
chilled water.


David Roberts


Interesting.


Lindsey Rowell


Like water tanks, which works fantastic for 99% of the state.
Humboldt is our little outlier up there — the place that never
gets warm.


David Roberts


Right, the non-warm California campus.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, the one non-warm or San Francisco, I guess, could be —


David Roberts


Yeah, I guess this should have occurred to me earlier, but I
guess heating itself is not a big issue. Mostly you're dealing
with air conditioning.


Lindsey Rowell


Right. So, the boiler replacement is mostly — so, you know, our
temperate climate gives us a couple of benefits. One, the boilers
that are out there on the market can serve our purposes if we can
figure out a way to lower temperature and circulation without
causing major issues with our distribution system, like leaking
Victaulics and other valves in the system. And also if we have
coils throughout our units, our air handlers and units throughout
buildings that can function on that lower temperature hot water.
If they can't, then we're talking about — there's major
engineering you're having to take out, replace a natural gas
boiler with electric heating boiler.


Can't get the water up to circulating at 185 degrees. It's
circulating at 145, maybe 155. And you've got coils in your units
that maybe are only thresholded at 165. All of that stuff has to
get replaced.


David Roberts


So if you switch out the boiler, there's a bunch of other
reengineering —


Lindsey Rowell


There can be. And for most of our campuses, it seems like that
all of those secondary effects are needed, although I don't know,
if it keeps getting warmer, maybe we won't need to heat at all.


David Roberts


Do all of your campuses have, like, energy people, managers,
somebody whose job it is to?


Lindsey Rowell


Yes, aside from vacancies that occur through attrition and things
like that, part of our requirement is that every campus have an
energy manager. They do a tremendous amount of work on this. But
like the central plant, the district heating question with the
boilers, a lot of these campuses, their domestic hot water is
tied to their district hot water, their heating hot water. So for
them to just — they can't just turn off their boilers in the
summer. For example, one of our mechanical review board members
loves to — he's like, "Why are they running the boilers in the
summer?


It's like, "Well, you still got to have hot water in your labs
and your lavatories." So sort of this, like, well, I guess I
would say lack of foresight, but it's not really that. Right?
Lack of crystal ball, when years ago, these systems were created.


David Roberts


So if you can get the systems onto electricity, basically, you
can call that carbon neutral by buying renewable energy
certificates, basically, by vouchsafing that the electricity is
clean. Is that the idea?


Lindsey Rowell


Not allowed in the CSU.


David Roberts


Oh, really? You guys are really playing on the hard setting,
then.


Lindsey Rowell


That's not true. It's not not allowed in the CSU. It's not
allowed by Lindsey. So if someone else comes along and says,
"You're stupid and this is impractical", they can —


David Roberts


"Good God, woman, make things easier for yourself for once."


Lindsey Rowell


I know this is a deep, dark hole that we've dug ourselves, but my
feeling about offsetting is that our points of pride in the CSU
are that the community that we serve stays here. So our students
tend to live and work in the communities where they go to school.
One in ten workers in California has a CSU degree. I feel that
buying credits is a misrepresentation of our obligation to the
people that we serve. And so, our working policy now, within my
group and with the support of my team, our team, is that we will
not purchase offsets until we get to that point where we just,
like, can't.


We don't have the money, or that we're at that last 5% or 10% to
get over the hump. And realistically, we'd like to keep it in the
family. Right. Where we have a CSU fence line, and we go, okay,
if we're buying offsets, it's through a campus over generating,
and we're accounting for it at another campus that can't.


David Roberts


We might be talking about two different things. Two things to
keep distinct. One is carbon offsets.


Lindsey Rowell


Sure. And one is renewable energy credits, and...


David Roberts


One is renewable energy credits. Offsets. I can see absolutely
the case for not relying on offsets. I get. But for your
electricity, if you don't rely on renewable energy credits, you
are having to self generate in real time the electricity you're
using —


Lindsey Rowell


That is what we're angling for.


David Roberts


Which is super hard.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, it is super hard. I'm kind of conflating the two. Because —


David Roberts


You don't want to do either.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, they're interchangeable in my mind. So really, what we want
to see happen is that we exhaust all opportunity to generate on
our campuses the offset that we need and own those credits. Now,
the fact I was born at night but not last night, I know that that
is a huge undertaking.


David Roberts


Yeah, as part of this, you must be trying to install quite a bit
of —


Lindsey Rowell


We are.


David Roberts


Yeah. Renewable energy on your campuses.


Lindsey Rowell


We are. Tremendous amounts of renewable. And also looking at,
like I said, maybe an opportunity for geothermal, like large
scale geothermal that a single campus wouldn't be able to use.
But we could sort of account for that again in the family.


David Roberts


Right. Sort of sell it to another campus, more or less, kind of.
I mean, surely if you have 23 campuses in California, some of
them are sitting on top of some geothermal.


Lindsey Rowell


Oh, for sure. Especially up north, and then it looks like down
south and in the Imperial Valley, there's possibly some
opportunities, and we're starting to investigate that as how do
we do a partnership on that in a way to afford it.


David Roberts


Would be nice to get like a real power plant sized power plant.


Lindsey Rowell


Oh, it'd be so cool. If anyone out there wants to write me a
check...


David Roberts


Yeah. Because everything else is just like little bits here and
there. So I guess you're like covering all your roofs with solar
panels. Parking...


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, mostly parking. Roofs are tricky just because of warranties
and access and that kind of thing, and the age of our buildings.
But we're really trying to do this to where the CSU is in and of
itself, carbon neutral and net zero. And we've set the goal that
way, knowing that getting to 0% is like, that's not a real thing,
right? Functional zero. And knowing that we're probably going to
hit a wall at some point where it's like we're constrained by
finances, we're constrained by property, we're constrained —


David Roberts


Well, yeah, land.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah. There's a whole bunch of potential hurdles there that might
just put up a brick wall that we can't get through.


David Roberts


Could you theoretically own a big solar field that's not on one
of your campuses, like somewhere else?


Lindsey Rowell


I mean, some of the campuses. Cal Poly SLO has actually done that
through the RES-BCT program for the PG&E. They've put in a
large — you know, now, for the purposes of this discussion, don't
quote me, because I can't remember if the campus actually owns
the property or if it's a lease agreement, but it's off the
campus proper. They've got a large system that they installed to
serve, like their equine center and their ag center that are off
the campus grid, basically.


David Roberts


Is there a campus that is generating as much electricity as it is
using yet?


Lindsey Rowell


There's a couple campuses that are close. So Long beach is
actually pretty close. I think Fullerton is pretty close. Sac
State is going to be pretty close. Several of the campuses are
under contract for solar and microgrid systems that are going to
get them close, at the very least, going to position themselves
for meeting those longer term goals.


David Roberts


Yeah, I do see now why a geothermal power plant would really come
in.


Lindsey Rowell


That'd be cool. It'd come in super handy.


David Roberts


Yeah. Speaking of microgrids, I love me some microgrids. And
campuses are sort of kind of the iconic place to do it. You have
control of the whole system. So do you have microgrids,
islandable microgrids set up anywhere yet?


Lindsey Rowell


So, we don't have islandable microgrids. The regulatory
environment in California to actually come off grid is extremely,
I'll say, complicated. You could do a whole show on that, David.
Actually, it would be really interesting to hear how people
characterize that situation, but we're really approaching it
right now through the lens of resiliency, because since the
paradise fire in northern California in 2017, the public safety
shut offs that the utilities are allowed to enact to protect the
grid during inclement weather has affected campuses pretty
severely. They've lost power for five, six, seven days.


David Roberts


Yeah. And it occurs to me that you must have some labs and stuff
where a blackout is a big deal.


Lindsey Rowell


Yes, that's very true. We have labs, we have vivariums, we have
critical ops. We have archives, all kinds of stuff that needs to
be protected. And obviously, we have generators, but no one
designs a generator to run for ten days. So even on e-circuits,
it's still more than we're capable of supporting over a long
period of time. So, we're looking at a lot of this as an
opportunity to reconfigure our electrical system so that only the
appropriate operations are served by emergency circuits, and that
we have battery backup that offers some longer term, and then
also, at least in the interim, pair it with our — some campuses
have fuel cells. All of them have generators. So use that
microgrid operation for a resiliency purpose. Not so much for
islanding right now.


David Roberts


So is there a campus currently where if the grid goes down for
one of these planned outages, it can stay on? Is that, like, up
and running anywhere, or is this just a gleam in your eye?


Lindsey Rowell


Well, I guess I should ask a clarifying question. If you mean are
there any campuses that could continue business as usual?


David Roberts


Well. How about continue some modified, reduced version of
business as usual. So their vivariums, right, and labs can stay
going, let's say.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah. So every campus can do that to a degree. Right. So every
campus has enough backup. But I wouldn't say — I'm going to infer
what you're asking and basically say, could you go to minimal
operations where some classes or some research?


David Roberts


Yeah, yeah, yeah.


Lindsey Rowell


Basically the answer to that is "no." There's enough backup
generation to allow enough time so that a faculty member, for
example, could make alternative arrangements for their critters
that they're researching somewhere or something like that. Or
make a note on their data that there was a disruption. There's
enough time to kind of get your affairs in order.


David Roberts


Right.


Lindsey Rowell


Okay, we're going minimal ops, and this one room is going to be
available. Ideally, we'd have something like that, although I
would say, interestingly, the pandemic has changed that. Right.
Our ability to pivot to an online pedagogy has, like, wow,
suddenly we can do that. So a very few classes that can't just
go, "okay, we're going to catch up on labs when we get through
this outage in a few days."


David Roberts


So, beefing that up, it seems to me, was mostly about installing
more solar and more batteries. Are you just going nuts on
storage?


Lindsey Rowell


We are. We're really trying. It's difficult because, again, we're
doing that through third party power purchase agreements. But we
have a few campuses, actually, that are under contract right now
for solar and battery. So kind of the building blocks of their
microgrids. And then we'll look towards expanding into microgrid
controllers and all of the secondary electrical work. Actually,
we have quite a few. Several of the Sonoma State has broken
ground on theirs. Cal Poly Humboldt, Cal State San Marcos,
they're all moving forward with their microgrid plans, and that's
just to name a few.


David Roberts


Final electricity/building question is, since you have these semi
self-contained campuses, can they serve as virtual power plants?
Can they sell grid services? Is that even up and running yet in
California? Is that doable yet, or is that something you have on
the horizon?


Lindsey Rowell


I'm so glad you asked that question. I'm super duper, duper
excited about virtual power planting.


David Roberts


Me too. I need to do an episode just on them.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, yeah, you really should, because I'm just learning about
this — yes. So the answer to your question is yes, no, yes, yes.
It's not happening yet in California. There's definitely some
regulatory hurdles here. There used to be sort of virtual net
metering and aggregated net metering programs in place with the
utilities that have gone away over the time or morphed into
different things and so there's some regulatory issues to deal
with there. But my team and I have really been talking about the
coordination between our microgrids and our thermal energy
storage as a real opportunity to virtual power plant among our
campuses and also —


David Roberts


Demand shift.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, demand shift. And also as an opportunity as we're talking
about these sort of what do we do with the campuses that can't
put renewable energy right. Can we help support each other in
this sort of regional way? So, we're just in our infancy sort of
investigating this, but so excited about the possibilities.


David Roberts


Yeah, I wonder and maybe things aren't far enough along for you
to know this, but I don't have any sense of what the scale could
be on that. Would you imagine being compensated for grid services
in your various campuses being a real substantial income stream?
Or is this more like a frill? Do you know what I mean? Like how
are you thinking about it?


Lindsey Rowell


So my first response to that is I don't know, but my second
response is based on California's history with how it operates
within the confines of utility regulation and with our new NEM
3.0 requirements, I cannot see this being an income stream.
That's me and my crystal ball. I would be very surprised, but I
would say maybe the benefits would be more like "grid stability
is good for everybody" kind of a thing.


David Roberts


Yeah. VPPs are great just for their —


Lindsey Rowell


For their own merits. Right. Just the purpose.


David Roberts


So one final question about buildings, which is just something
that occurred to me as I was thinking about this, is, are you out
building new anything, new campuses or new —? Because I would
imagine building new stuff that works for these goals is a lot
easier than retrofitting stuff. But are you even doing any new
stuff? And is sort of tightening requirements for new stuff a big
piece of this?


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, I think we're in an interesting time for that. I mean, we
are building new buildings in alignment with our master plans for
campuses. Post-COVID, though, I think there's a need to analyze
the asset and real estate needs. Are they the same as they were?
What is the next generation going to expect with regard to their
on campus experience versus their online experience? And then,
you know, looking at population growth in California, which has
slowed, do we look at building new institutions to serve
communities that know rural or have a long commute to a four year
institution?


Or does that not make much sense? Do we do satellites or do we do
remote learning centers? So I think there is a lot of uncertainty
there. Not in a bad way, but just in a "Jeez, everybody, this was
a global pandemic. What a weird thing to have happened. And now
it's brought up all these questions." And then I think the other
thing is, there's a very real understanding among our capital
team, of which my group is a part, that the most sustainable
building is the building that's already built.


David Roberts


Yeah.


Lindsey Rowell


So all of the folks that I work with, my peers in the executive
leadership sort of group, are very aware of this. And instead of
being like, well, we're going to just do business as usual.
Everybody's really cohesively talking about, do we need to
rethink our strategy? Do we need to start thinking about what
buildings can be saved? How can we reduce waste?


David Roberts


Right. Infill, versus sprawl.


Lindsey Rowell


Yes, that risk is — the liability that we have. The further out
we spread our boundaries in terms of our assets is real. Right.
This is all stuff, space that has to be insured. And then we've
got space that if it's not serving its function anymore, do we
really need to demo it or should it be retrofitted? So, I think
that's a conversation we're having, and I think we're probably
going to be seeing maybe a shift in how we evaluate whether a new
building needs to be constructed versus an old building being
rehabbed.


David Roberts


Interesting. Let's talk a little bit about scope 3.


Lindsey Rowell


No.


David Roberts


Honestly, for any institution, scope 3 is a little bit
overwhelming and baffling. But for something like campuses, like
you say, they are little cities. So, scope 3 involves a lot. The
first question is just, do you feel like you have reliable tools
to measure and assess scope 3 emissions? Because the whole field
around scope 3 emissions seems a little bit nascent to me. What's
your take on that?


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, I was just going to say no, I don't feel like we have the
tools and go farther to say that anyone that tells you that they
do is lying.


David Roberts


People are working on them, allegedly.


Lindsey Rowell


The colleagues, the folks that I work with, we all sit around the
tables going, "What are you guys doing with scope 3? What are you
doing with scope — ?" Or somebody called it scope 4, because
we've got scope 3, like transportation, and scope 4 is the
embodied carbon piece, or scope 3a, whatever. And everybody is
just going "Where do you even start?"


David Roberts


Where do you begin?


Lindsey Rowell


It's so massive. The transportation piece is getting a little bit
better configured. Although I think the definition of what is our
responsibility and what is other people's responsibility and how
do we avoid double counting or not counting is still a question.
But we're trying to do better on sort of our programmatic
elements of that related to alternative transportation and fuels
and that kind of thing.


David Roberts


Well, I mean, if any student at any one of your 23 campuses
drives their car to the campus —


Lindsey Rowell


That's us.


David Roberts


Boom, you've got some scope 3 emissions there. So you have to
theoretically get all however many thousand students. You said
some mind-boggling number. You have to get them all to the
campuses without driving. That alone is like, how on earth do you
do that? I mean, I know you can do some carpool programs, but you
don't control public transit. You don't control zoning decisions
—


Lindsey Rowell


Boundary responsibility. Well, it's the same thing with embodied
carbon. Right? Like, I don't control how lumber is milled and
where it comes from.


David Roberts


This was my other question, which is, even if you could measure
the amount of embodied carbon coming in through building
materials, say, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a
source of carbon-free building materials even available to you.


Lindsey Rowell


So where we are with this now, which is to say, not far. So there
are some firms, like, working on sort of software tools to help
start tracking this. The state of California does require
environmentally preferable purchasing or reporting on
construction materials and things like that. So we do do that.
The cynic in me is like, is this even close to, like, is this
even accurate enough to merit tracking?


David Roberts


Right, right.


Lindsey Rowell


But the optimist in me is like, okay, well, we got to start
somewhere. So tracking what you're using is a place to start, and
then at least you can put rules of thumb to it. Right? Like, how
many pounds of steel do we use? How many pounds of lumber, how
many pounds of concrete? And as a rule, regardless of where it
comes from, what is the carbon impact of those materials, even
though the specifics of where they come from and how they're
milled and all that stuff has an impact, it at least gives you
some framework to start from, because where it is right now is
just like pulling numbers out of the damn sky. Just don't know.


David Roberts


There's a lot of dreamed up numbers in that general vicinity.


Lindsey Rowell


I mean, for organizations like mine, or ours, not mine, right.


David Roberts


Do you even have the staff? Do you have the staff to do this?


Lindsey Rowell


Exactly. Like, the administrative and transactional costs
associated with tracking that information is — I couldn't even
begin to. You could have someone in every unit for every project
doing only that. Only that.


David Roberts


Yeah. Really seems like a place where you really badly need
better tools, like standardized, off the shelf.


Lindsey Rowell


Very, very much. I feel like this is a supply chain matter,
right, ideally. But because it doesn't work to rely — we have to
try and take responsibility on our own. We can't force industry
to make these adjustments.


David Roberts


It does seem like, though, especially in scope 3, you are, to
some unavoidable degree, dependent on developments that you have
no control over. Right. Like what the state does or even what the
federal government does.


Lindsey Rowell


Right, so at this point, it's more about just understanding what
we use. When we feel like we can track that with some degree of
accuracy, we'll feel like we've made a tremendous success. We are
including scope 3 as part of our carbon reduction.


David Roberts


That's crazy; that's just crazy.


Lindsey Rowell


I'm going to retire before all this.


David Roberts


In your mind's eye, when 2045 rolls around and CSU is carbon
neutral, how are people getting to school? What does the zero
carbon, just the transport alone, just the transport angle alone,
what would it look like for that to be truly carbon free? No more
gas cars, I guess. No more gas cars on the street.


Lindsey Rowell


We have the best chance of it in California, right. Like we're
moving away from petrol, as it were, in California. So my thought
is that if things were to go my way, it'd be a combination of
things. Obviously, where — we have good public transit, we have
good programs for students, shuttle systems and stuff that aren't
necessarily related to the community programs, regional transit
and things like that, that we have a little bit more control
over, and then electric vehicles and mobility devices which have
their own issues. I mean, we've got concerns related to lithium
ions, and everything is a rabbit hole but —


David Roberts


Once you scope 3 it, all of a sudden, EVs are not as
uncomplicated as they seem.


Lindsey Rowell


Exactly. And I think the other combination with that is, do we
have students coming to school when they don't need to be?


David Roberts


Right.


Lindsey Rowell


Like, are students coming to school for classes where they really
don't need to be? Could you be doing this class once a week
instead of three times a week, and the rest of the class is held
online? I don't know the answer to that. I don't know that that
is the answer. But I think all of those avenues need to be
investigated so that we understand what students need, what they
want, and how we can meet these goals while giving them both of
those things. The college experience that they want, and the
education they need. Think about how much reduction that would be
to just have someone for one class going, well, I only have to
come to campus one day a week.


David Roberts


Yeah. That's an easy lever to pull. For sure.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, for sure.


David Roberts


One can imagine ways of decarbonizing that do not serve
resilience, that leave campuses sort of brittle or vulnerable.
Talk a little bit about just the effects you've seen of climate
and severe weather on your campuses and how you're thinking about
resilience as part of decarbonization.


Lindsey Rowell


Well, so this is such a hard question because we just had fairly
recently in California a hurriquake. Have you heard of this?


David Roberts


No.


Lindsey Rowell


New weather phenomenon.


David Roberts


Oh, good. Have fun.


Lindsey Rowell


Our campus, San Bernardino, out in the inland empire, was hit by
torrential rains from a hurricane. At the same time, there was an
inland earthquake — and they had like four inches of water on
their gym. And they're out in what we would refer to as kind of
the low desert. They're not in a place where you think of
flooding exactly. You definitely don't think of being impacted by
a hurricane. And then they also suffer the wildfires from
sweeping through the valley there. Poor campus. We use them as an
example. And they're such good sports about it, but so there's
that.


And then, like I said, we had a couple of days ago, now I've got
phone calls out to our campuses in San Jose to see if their Moss
Landing Institute was impacted by these waves coming in off the
coast. They've got research right up butted up against the ocean
where they impacted by that? So wildfires and public safety shut
offs are the main impacts. Right. And then, of course, drought
across California because this is a desert state, most of it. And
we go through decade long periods of drought. One of the things
we're trying to do is we've developed a resilient infrastructure
guidelines model.


So it's a tool to allow campuses, when they're planning projects
and capital construction to think about their designs in terms of
the resiliency hazards, potential climate hazards and resiliency
impacts their campus might face as a result of where they are
geographically, their age, the condition of their infrastructure,
so on and so forth, and then use that for those projects, but
then also for their utility master planning efforts and their
critical infrastructure reports to kind of help prioritize how
they should be looking at their infrastructure upgrades. Because
if you're a campus that has been experiencing drought, you're not
necessarily going to think about prioritizing your stormwater
plan, stormwater infrastructure. But if you don't and you find
out that three other institutions in your immediate area have had
massive millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of
damage and shutdown resulting from water intrusion because they
didn't have a good stormwater infrastructure. Maybe you need to
be thinking about that a little bit more.


That needs to be bumped up the priority list, perhaps more. So
that's one of the tools we're using. It's actually pretty
sophisticated and we've been working on it for a couple of years,
and then it's intended to stay kind of a living document because
the climate is changing.


David Roberts


Indeed.


Lindsey Rowell


Universities are changing.


David Roberts


Yeah, that's truly a moving target. I've burned up all my time,
so I don't have time to talk about food. But obviously I feel
like I should at least mention it because among all the many
other things that you have to worry about, once you're talking
about decarbonization and scope 3, and everything else is food
incoming food service, food waste. Could you give us like a one
or two line how you're thinking about food, answer?


Lindsey Rowell


I can summarize food by saying it is almost as difficult as scope
3.


David Roberts


Interesting.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, we should talk about this at another time. We can get into
some of this, David, but it is tremendously difficult. It's
another thing that crosses those boundary lines. And then the one
thing that I think people in your audience definitely will not
know is that the way most, this is true of most universities, not
just ours, is that the way food works on their campuses is
through auxiliary services, meaning they have contracts for food
providers through their 501(c)(3).


David Roberts


Right. So once again, you're dependent on, you need someone to
provide carbon free food service or else what can you do?


Lindsey Rowell


Right, right. And then you've got all the safety policies. Right.
Because we spend a lot of time on the food waste side, too,
going, okay, we have students who are food insecure and you're
going to throw away all this food from some box lunch thing, can
we give it away? And you got to go through risk management for
all that. Like everything else, it's just a rabbit hole. And that
is. Oh, man, that is a tough one.


David Roberts


Interesting. Yeah, it's something that I think my sort of like,
energy nerd world crowd doesn't think about a ton. Same with kind
of agriculture.


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah. Interesting to see how they cross.


David Roberts


Final question here is, just as I said earlier, it is sort of, I
don't know, like amusing and poignant to me to imagine you
sitting in your office thinking about basically how to transform
a decent chunk of the state in the next few years. So you've been
given this mandate, which, you know, thanks a lot. So what when
you think about California politicians now and regulators, what
do they not get? And if you had to sort of prioritize a couple of
things that you would ask from them besides money, like give me
some money, obviously. But in terms of law or regulatory support,
are there a couple of top line items that would make your life
easier?


Lindsey Rowell


Yeah, I think the government really needs to facilitate
partnerships a bit more. I don't know that any one organization
like ours, or even the UC, which is obviously a huge and well
recognized, world renowned organization, has an easy time
developing relationships with nonprofits, with commercial
interests, supply chain groups, and those partnerships are
imperative. And I think the thing that frustrates me with the
money question is, the money is out there. We know it exists;
like, the actual physical pieces of paper are available. And I
tend to think that there's probably a lot more interest among the
community, be it business, be it private philanthropy, anywhere,
that they would like to know how they can help, how they can be a
part of this.


And I don't feel like the government does anything to try and
facilitate those partnerships. And so we're all sort of feeling
around in the dark in this room, trying to find who we are and
then also not waste each other's time. Right. Do I have what you
want? Do you have what I want? There is some organization that
could happen here that I think would be really helpful —


David Roberts


Are not duplicating efforts. It seems like there's got to be lots
of big organizations that need roughly the same things you need.


Lindsey Rowell


And there's services, there's firms that do this kind of work,
certainly, that have a lot of these contacts. But for
organizations like the community colleges and the CSUs, they
don't have the funding to go out and hire people for these sort
of theoretical connections. So I would really like to see, other
than the money — don't forget the money — but other than the
money, sort of that. And then also related to these programs,
just streamlining, what do you, as a legislator and your aides
and the people within the organizations over whom you are
responsible, what do they really need to see?


Are we doing reporting? Are we punching numbers? Are we investing
time and staff and money in information that you're never going
to look at, is never going to get verified? It's not useful to
anybody. And can that be simplified?


David Roberts


Yeah, a lot of it. Just about. It seems like communication
between legislators and regulators and people like you who are
out in the implementation swamp, better communication would be a
great thing.


Lindsey Rowell


Yes.


David Roberts


Thank you so much, Lindsey. This is just fascinating. Like
decarbonization in general is just a giant puzzle, and every
little piece of it is a puzzle, but you've got your hands on a
really big piece of the puzzle. So I'm sure it feels overwhelming
and slightly ridiculous what you're being asked to do. But I will
say it comforts me to know that there are people like you out
there really doing the ground, the block and tackle work of
making this happen.


Lindsey Rowell


Yes, it's comforting to me to know that there's people like you
out there spreading the word that this work is going on.


David Roberts


Oh, good. Well, we've comforted one another in the storm.


Lindsey Rowell


The marginal success of the day.


David Roberts


Beautiful. All right, thanks so much, Lindsey.


Lindsey Rowell


Thank you, David.


David Roberts


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