Green Campus as a Pilot Site Towards Low-Carbon City: Enlightenment from Cornell Climate Action Plan

Abstract

After green building initiative, much more attention has been paid to green campus transformation. Green campus serves as a pilot site for low-carbon city. This paper summarized the development process of green campus while analyzed the current situation of China’s green campus initiative, including overemphasis on energy efficiency of single building, lack of integrated campus efficiency monitoring system, and insufficient financial support. Based on the experiences and enlightenment from Cornell University’s Climate Action Plan, the sustainable development of green campus in China has been discussed, in the aspects of single building, community/campus, and city. On building level, campus building energy technology demonstration should be strengthened and popularized. On community/campus level, regulatory agencies should be established to take charge of low-carbon campus overall planning and monitoring. On city level, campus, as a regional experimental field of sustainable development, should promote low-carbon transformation of the city in specific ways.