{"id":224656,"date":"2026-06-22T01:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T01:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/224656\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T01:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T01:08:12","slug":"we-dont-know-how-we-pay-for-it-lafayette-college-maintains-2035-carbon-neutrality-goal-in-new-climate-plan-financial-uncertainty-remains-the-lafayette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/224656\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We don\u2019t know how we pay for it\u2019: Lafayette College maintains 2035 carbon neutrality goal in new climate plan, financial uncertainty remains \u2013 The Lafayette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Much<\/a> <\/p>\n

Photo by Eliza Boylan<\/a> for The Lafayette <\/p>\n

Much of Lafayette College\u2019s heating comes from a steam plant on campus, which is responsible for roughly 56% of the campus\u2019 direct emissions.<\/p>\n

Lafayette College\u2019s Board of Trustees unanimously approved the newest iteration of its carbon neutrality plan last month, though funding for the plan has not been secured.<\/p>\n

The initiative, Climate Action Plan 3.0<\/a>, was developed over the previous academic year<\/a> and represents the college\u2019s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2035, a target set in its 2019 predecessor, Climate Action Plan 2.0<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While Climate Action Plan 3.0 includes more specific data on indirect emissions from college purchases, or Scope 3 emissions, and introduces potential measures to combat climate change on campus, many of its central goals \u2014 including a 60% waste diversion target and transitioning to a more eco-friendly campus-heating strategy \u2014 are carried over directly from the previous plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t meet the scale of funding that we needed,\u201d said Delicia Nahman, the college\u2019s director of sustainability. \u201cAs a result, some of the other goals within CAP 2.0 didn\u2019t reach the target at the pace that we were hoping to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new plan \u2014 which attributes previous shortcomings to COVID-19, leadership turnover<\/a> and a lack of financial support \u2014 states that implementation will require \u201cnew dedicated sources of funding\u201d but does not specify what those are.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the plan does not establish a single dedicated funding source for every initiative, the college is committed to pursuing a combination of institutional investments, grant funding, philanthropic support, donor contributions, and government funding opportunities,\u201d Vice President for Finance and Administration Audra Kahr wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know how we pay for it,\u201d said Julia Nicodemus, an engineering professor who served on the plan\u2019s steering committee. \u201cThat to me is the biggest concern about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Lafayette prepares for its upcoming capital campaign, a multi-year fundraising effort, both Nicodemus and Nahman cited the campaign as a likely source of sustainability funding; Vice President for Advancement Sean Scanlon<\/a> did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Trustees Chairman Bob Sell \u201884<\/a> said funding discussions did not come up during the approval process, and that any conversations about costs would be \u201cpremature\u201d at this point.<\/p>\n

Unfulfilled goals from the previous plan are again brought to the forefront in this iteration, with strategies outlining steps to end dependency on the on-campus steam plant<\/a> responsible for much of campus heating, which contributes 56% of the college\u2019s direct emissions, and approaches to reduce additional emissions through adaptations to the campus\u2019 electricity, transportation, waste and development of Metzgar Athletic Complex.<\/p>\n

The plan identifies four possible pathways to replace the steam plant, including shifting to air-source heat pumps, geothermal energy and two separate carbon capture sources. One option, implementing a geothermal energy source, would see multiple years of construction on the Quad.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lafayette will conduct an engineering study to determine the strongest option based on cost and campus disruption, among other factors, though the study has not been commissioned yet, according to Nahman.<\/p>\n

New to this iteration are also data on projected climate change impacts on campus, focusing on flooding risks<\/a> along the Bushkill Creek and extreme heat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith each iteration of the climate action plan, we are that much smarter,\u201d Nahman said. \u201cWe now have better data, we now have new stakeholders and we have new ideas about how to reach the goals with a different pathway in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the adoption of Climate Action Plan 2.0 in 2019, Lafayette has achieved 100% renewable electricity through a partnership with a solar energy facility<\/a> in Kentucky and expanded composting efforts and waste reduction programs.<\/p>\n

The previous plan also established the college\u2019s Green Revolving Fund, a pool of money for sustainability projects aimed at achieving carbon neutrality. The college promised $1.8 million in funding across three installments from 2019 to 2021; however, the final payment was delayed, with the final disbursement coming in 2025; Kahr attributed the gap to financial uncertainty during the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: Assistant News Editor Makenna McCall \u201927 is an employee in the Office of Sustainability. She did not contribute writing or reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Eliza Boylan for The Lafayette Much of Lafayette College\u2019s heating comes from a steam plant on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-224656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}