Cutting Carbon Emissions
The University of California’s Sustainable Practices Policy sets a target for each UC campus to reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions (Scopes 1, 2 and 3) by 90% or more by 2045, compared to 2019.
As of 2024, UCSB had achieved a 40% reduction in its total emissions relative to this baseline, primarily by investing in on-campus energy efficiency and purchasing electricity generated from carbon-free sources.
However, campus heating and hot water are still generated by natural gas boilers distributed across almost all campus buildings and accounted for 94% of UCSB’s scope 1 emissions in 2024.
Background
As of 2024, UC Santa Barbara had achieved a 55% reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, even as our campus building footprint doubled and our population grew by 44%. Strategic investments in high-capacity electrical infrastructure and all-electric buildings for teaching and student housing have laid the foundation for the next phase of our energy transformation: elimination of natural gas combustion on campus.
The C·CHANGE project builds on UC Santa Barbara’s longstanding commitment to and expertise in sustainability to address this single largest remaining source of direct greenhouse gas emissions.
As a leader in both education and research for environmental stewardship, renewable energy deployment, and energy efficiency, our campus serves as a living laboratory for the innovative solutions the world needs to address decarbonization and climate adaptation.
UC Santa Barbara’s Auspicious Location
Several unique characteristics of our campus make us especially well-positioned to implement the ambitious C·CHANGE project. Our coastal location, mild climate, and relatively flat terrain make heat pumps—co-located in an all-electric Central Utility Plant— particularly effective in meeting our heating and cooling needs. These heat pumps will operate on carbonfree, renewable electricity, consistent with the clean power we already procure from California’s electrical grid. The new centralized energy infrastructure will eliminate the need to maintain and replace individual boilers and mechanical systems in campus buildings. Finally, because UC Santa Barbara does not have a natural gas-fired central plant to replace, we are poised to achieve emissions reductions and energy savings faster than many of our peer institutions.
UCSB’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the lowest amongst UC campuses when normalized for campus population. This is also true when normalized for building area.
