Quantifying and Reducing a National Organization's Impact on Global Climate Change and Developing a Model to be Replicated

Professor Gail Suchman, lecturer at SIPA and Columbia Law School, and Senior Legal Advisor to the Urban Design Lab for Sustainable Development at Columbia's Earth Institute, has been advising the team working with the National Audubon Society. National Audubon requested a comprehensive evaluation of its own carbon footprint and recommendations for how to reduce it by at least 10% in four years. Defining the possible scope to be electricity, heating, magazines, mailings, lands, employee commuting, and business travel, the team started in on defining the footprint of the whole operation. After the analysis of over 90 facilities and 700 employees, the students found that the areas of energy, heating, and travel could all be made more efficient.