Climate Action Plan Bulletin

Yale’s 2025 Sustainability Plan has 8 months left of its 9 year life span (23 out of their 41 goals achieved as of 2023, carbon offsets, and a couple LEED buildings), with many professional schools following suit through school-specific action plans. The School of Architecture has not published commitments to sustainability, instead relying on individual efforts to make headway; like the banning of foam or the introduction of the dual degree program with YSE.

This year, Green Action worked with an ad hoc faculty and staff committee to correct for this absence. Conversations with the committee identified a focus on culture, curriculum, and material usage; a departure from the typical plan that is grounded in facility usage and operational carbon emissions. This departure comes as an acknowledgement that our impact will reach far beyond Rudolph Hall; as an industry we are the cause of a plurality of global GHG emissions, and the current structures of Sustainability and Resilience are an inadequate basis for addressing that responsibility.

A draft Climate Action Plan is under review, and plans for implementation in Fall 2024. The proposal will prioritize the urgency of strengthening socioecological thinking as integral to architectural education. It will also give members of the YSOA community tangible goals by which to measure the efforts made by the administration, by the faculty, and by the students.