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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)(Active transcript)Text transcript:David RobertsContemplate, 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 RowellThank you so much for having me.David RobertsThis 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 RowellLet'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 RobertsAre they all four-year undergrad colleges, or are there some vocational stuff or community colleges?Lindsey RowellSo 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 RobertsSo 23 campuses?Lindsey RowellYes.David RobertsAcross 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 RowellSo, 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 RobertsThe 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 RowellThat'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 RobertsRight. So sticks will show up eventually.Lindsey RowellI 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 RobertsWell, 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 RowellThat'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 RobertsAnd is that the same as the state?Lindsey RowellYes, 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 RobertsAnd what's your job? You have to do that.Lindsey RowellExplaining 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 RobertsYeah, 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 RowellRight.David RobertsAnd when I start thinking about that —Lindsey RowellIt 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 RowellIt 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 RobertsYeah, 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 RowellTo all legislators and decision-makers listening, we do not. So we have about a $7 billion deferred maintenance backlog.David RobertsOh, goodness.Lindsey RowellYeah. 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 RobertsYeah, it adds right up.Lindsey RowellHuge numbers. They're huge numbers.David RobertsYeah. 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 RowellLet me give you some of my —David RobertsCoping strategies?Lindsey RowellI 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 RobertsAmazing.Lindsey RowellSo, 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 RobertsYeah, 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 RowellYeah, 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 Reducti…
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