Application
TGIF project grants 2007-2008
A. General Information
Project title: Student Internships for Jump-Starting the Office of Sustainability
Total amount requested from TGIF:
Partnering organizations, departments, or individuals (if any): Office of Sustainability,
Energy and Resources Group, Office of Procurement Services, and COIS (tentative).
Primary and secondary contact names:
Primary Contact
Name
Title and department
Phone
Email
Lisa McNeilly
Director, Office of Sustainability
510-643-5907
LMcNeilly@berkeley.edu
Secondary Contacts
Name
Title and department
Phone
Email
Merrian Fuller
Graduate Student, Haas School of Business and Energy & Resources Group
510-735-6302
Merrian_fuller@mba.berkeley.edu
Name
Title and department
Phone
Email
Lila Mauro
Director, Business Service, Office of Procurement Services
510 642-1943
lmauro@berkeley.edu
Organization or campus unit through which the grant funds will be administered:
Office of Sustainability, 381 University Hall, UC Berkeley.
TGIF Grant Application
Date: March 15 2008
Account number where funds can be transferred if grant is approved:
1-58000-65900-21411-72-FASUST
B. Project Description
(The maximum total length for answers to all questions in this section is 300 words.)
1. Purpose
Describe the overall purpose of your project and its key components.
The Office of Sustainability, formalized and launched in January 2008, will champion and
implement various sustainability activities on campus. This $25,000 grant will support four
student intern positions (two undergraduate, two graduate) – called Sustainability Associates – to
offer vital research and coordination support to the Sustainability Office in its first year. These
internships will focus on four areas of sustainability: purchasing, metrics and transparency,
student involvement, and computer energy usage.
The Office of Sustainability is also a partner on three other grant proposals that focus on water,
energy, and green buildings.
2. Sustainability Goals
Which aspects of campus sustainability will your project address, and why is addressing
these sustainability components important?
In coordination with our partners, the Office of Sustainability is proposing the following specific
projects that directly apply to various aspects of sustainability. These projects were identified
based on their timeliness (e.g., will help the Office complete tasks and goals in calendar year
2008) and their ability to leverage significant improvements in key areas of the campus’ work on
sustainability (e.g., green purchasing and computer energy usage).
1. Green Purchasing Action Plan: Develop metrics and concrete goals; will be matched 50% by
Office of Procurement Services
2. Sustainability Research and Assessment: Collect data for a campus sustainability plan and
sustainability assessment update; research outside funding sources and assist with alumni
fundraising
3. Campus Forum for Sustainability: Develop tools for improved student group coordination
(e.g., a Wiki) and coordinate website development for the Office of Sustainability
4. Green Computing: Research on energy management and performance options for non-lab
desktops, possibly including an educational campaign.
Does your project tie into any broader campus sustainability initiatives? If so, how? (For
example, CalCAP, activities by CACS, etc.)
The Office of Sustainability internships are directly tied to accomplishing the work of this new
office (which has a broad sustainability mandate), the campus climate target, and implementing
parts of the University of California Office of the President Policies on Sustainable Practices.
TGIF Grant Application
Date: March 15 2008
3. Project Benefits
How will this project benefit your fellow students? How will your project benefit UC
Berkeley as a whole?
In addition to the career building opportunity for the four student Sustainability Associates to
gain experience with sustainability programs, the work completed will benefit students and the
campus as a whole. One project will improve communication and coordination among student
leaders (and possibly interested staff or faculty) by helping develop a Campus Forum for
Sustainability. Another will work on the preparation of a Sustainability Plan for the entire
campus. The remaining two will catalyze the reduction of the environmental impact of campus
activities.
4. Approvals for Project Activities
Do any aspects of your project require approval from an entity on or off campus? If so,
please explain. (For example, any project which affects a campus building must be
approved by the appropriate campus facilities personnel.)
What is the status of these approvals, as of the date you’re submitting this proposal?
The development of the Green Purchasing Action Plan already has the preliminary approval of
the Office of Procurement Services. The project to investigate the energy usage of non-lab desk
tops in more detail has only been discussed in principle with several Information Technology
managers, but final approval is expected once a plan of study is further developed. The
remaining two projects do not require approval beyond the Office of Sustainability.
C. Project Goals and Quantifiable Impacts
(The maximum total length for answers to all questions in this section is 300 words.)
1. Metrics and Measurability
What quantifiable sustainability impacts will your project have? (This might be kWh of
electricity saved, gallons of water saved, tons of carbon emissions avoided, specific area of
land preserved, etc.)
How will you measure these impacts after your project is implemented in order to see if
you met your goal?
How do these impacts fit into the larger campus context? (For example, what fraction of
campus electricity use does your savings represent?)
A large, but unquantifiable benefit of these projects is the contribution of these interns to the
future success of the Office of Sustainability. In addition, each individual project will have the
following impacts:
1. Green Purchasing Action Plan: The development of this plan will help focus activities within
the Office of Procurement Services that will increase the amount of recycled content purchased
by campus and reduce the carbon emissions associated with these purchases. If the project
TGIF Grant Application
Date: March 15 2008
results in a 1% reduction in these emissions, that would equal 1,340 tons of CO2 equivalent.
These emissions reductions will be tracked through the CalCAP inventory.
2 & 3. Sustainability Research and Campus Forum for Sustainability: The quantifiable benefits
of these projects are harder to calculate. It is expected, though, that they will increase the
efficiency of student activists and Office of Sustainability staff, and leverage their work by a
noticeable amount.
4. Green Computing: Currently, there are no campus-wide guidelines on energy-saving
measures for non-lab desktops, in part because of a lack of information on the energy usage by
these computers. By quantifying usage – especially under different energy-saving settings – this
project will aid in the design of new programs to reduce energy use by computers. If the project
reduces emissions by 10% of the potential identified in CalCAP (conservative estimate), that
would equal 260 tons of CO2 equivalent.
The net impact on emissions may be 1,600 tons of CO2 equivalent. This represents almost 4% of
the reductions needed to reach the campus carbon target, or 0.8% of the campus annual
emissions. These emissions reductions will be tracked through the CalCAP inventory, although
estimation techniques will be required since individual computers are not metered.
2. Additionality or Marginal Benefit
If your project involves doing something that UC Berkeley does anyway (meeting minimal
green building standards or basic environmental regulations), how does your project go
above and beyond these minimal requirements?
The Office of Sustainability was recently established, so the benefit of these new internships
would be additional. There is currently no other funding source for hiring these students. This
grant would allow the Office of Sustainability to get a student internship program off the ground
quickly, before it would otherwise. Each of the projects would result in an incremental increase
in the environmental benefits. Additional fundraising will occur over the next academic year 0910 (from both internal and external sources).
3. Cost Savings and Repayment to the Fund
If your project will generate costs savings to the University, please estimate them here.
There would be approximately $75,000 in energy cost savings from the Green Computing
project, calculated using CalCAP data and assumptions. This makes the TGIF cost to savings
ratio 0.26 (or approximately a 3 month payback). However, the total TGIF cost underrepresents
the entire cost of achieving the estimated reductions from the Green Purchasing project.
Will any of the savings be available to pay back into TGIF?
At this point, there is not a mechanism to pay back these savings to TGIF. However, the Office
of Sustainability has a separate goal of tracking the energy cost savings from campus projects,
which may then be used to finance additional projects.
TGIF Grant Application
Date: March 15 2008
D. Project Team
1. Project team members
Please fill in a table like the one below for each team member. Three blank tables have
been provided for you. You may copy and paste a blank table to create additional entries
for project teams larger than three.
Name
Title and
department
Address
Phone
Email
Relevant
experience or
knowledge for this
project
Hours per week
for this project
Lisa McNeilly
Director, Office of Sustainability
Name
Title and
department
Address
Phone
Email
Relevant
experience or
knowledge for this
project
Hours per week
for this project
Fahmida Ahmed
Sustainability Specialist
Name
Title and
department
Address
Phone
Email
Relevant
experience or
knowledge for this
project
Hours per week
for this project
Lila Mauro/other Purchasing staff
Director, Business Service, Office of Procurement Services
381 University Hall
3-5907
lmcneilly@berkeley.edu
Lisa has over a decade of experience working on sustainability projects in
the public and private sectors.
5
381 University Hall
2-0074
fahmida@berkeley.edu
Fahmida brings extensive experience on sustainability to this project,
including two years working on the issue here on campus.
5
6701 San Pablo Avenue
510 642-1943
lmauro@berkeley.edu
Lila and her staff will provide valuable support to the Green Purchasing
project and be a major end user of the project document.
5
TGIF Grant Application
Date: March 15 2008
2. Additional Team Info
If your project team is partnering with other organizations, departments, individuals, or
other stakeholders, please explain their involvement. (100 words max)
The project will involve hiring a team of four students to complete the majority of the work on
the projects. There will be two undergraduate and two graduate students chosen based on their
experience and interests.
Which person or persons on your team is ultimately accountable for ensuring that the
project succeeds? (i.e., who is the project manager?)
The project manager is Lisa McNeilly, the Director of Sustainability.
Which person or persons will be responsible for reporting project status and
accomplishments back to TGIF? (For example, if your project goal is to save a certain
amount of fuel each year, who will measure the savings and report the number to TGIF
each year?)
Lisa McNeilly, Director of Sustainability, in conjunction with Fahmida Ahmed, Sustainability
Specialist.
Please be specific about the ways in which you can ensure that your team will have this
time available. (For example, students might choose to take fewer classes in order to have
time to devote to the project. Staff might receive permission from a supervisor to devote X
hours per week to the project.) (50 words max)
The staff members have permission to work on this project; students will be hired, in part, based
on their ability to commit the required time to the project.
3. Student Involvement
Will your project involve students other than those listed on this application? (For
example, a project might involve recruiting student volunteers or hiring student interns.)
Yes – we will hire four student interns.
If so, how many students? What kind of students? How will they be involved? (100 words
max)
The four new internships will be integral to the achievement of the project goals. The students
will work with staff to develop detailed work plans for their projects and will ensure timely
completion of their work and final project reports.
TGIF Grant Application
Date: March 15 2008
E. Project Education, Outreach, and Publicity Plan
Note: This section is about letting the campus know what your project has accomplished after
you’ve met your project goals. If outreach and education are actually the primary goals of your
project, please describe them above in the section entitled “Project Goals and Quantifiable
Impacts.”
(The maximum total length for answers to all questions in this section is 100 words.)
What is your plan for letting others on campus know what your project has accomplished?
The results of the interns’ efforts will be shared with the rest of campus through annual reporting
and outreach mechanisms from the Office of Sustainability and through the CalCAP process.
More specifics on outreach in conjunction with the Green Purchasing project will be developed
through the Action Plan. The Office of Sustainability will establish various outreach and
communication channels on sustainability, and these projects will be highlighted as first key
initiatives.
Do you have any specific outreach goals? If so, how will they be measured? (For example,
number of students attending info session, number of hits on informational website, etc.)
1. Green Purchasing Action Plan: The Action Plan will establish specific goals for different
categories of purchases and progress toward these goals will be tracked (in terms of amount of
green products purchased).
2. Sustainability Research and Assessment: The Sustainability Plan will be widely distributed
once completed, and the number of readers will be tracked. The number and amount of grants
received from sources identified will also be tracked.
3. Campus Forum for Sustainability: Numbers of visitors to the site and comments to the
suggestion box.
4. Green Computing: The results of the research will be disseminated to IT managers campus
wide, who will also help develop a possible educational campaign.
F. Project Budget
1. Budget Table
List all budget items for which funding is being requested. Include cost and total amount
for each item requested. (Insert additional rows if necessary.)
Item
Green Purchasing Action Plan – 1 GSR, Fall 2008, 50% matched
Cost
7500
Request
7500
Sustainability Research Associate – 1 GSR, Summer 2008
Campus Forum for Sustainability – 1 undergraduate, Summer/Fall
2008
7500
5000
7500
5000
TGIF Grant Application
Date: March 15 2008
Green Computing – 1 undergraduate, 08-09
5000
5000
Total
$25,000
2. Continuing Support
If you are funded, will your project need any on-going funding after the completion of this
grant? What is your strategy for supporting the project after this initial period to cover
replacement, operational, and renewal costs? (Note that TGIF is unlikely to provide
funding beyond the initial year for ongoing projects.)
The Office of Sustainability will plan on finding future funding for student internships from
other sources. In fact, one of the tasks of the Sustainability Research Associate will be to help
identify some of these other sources and to facilitate this fundraising.
3. Other sources for funding and in-kind resources
The Office of Procurement Services may provide a 50% match to the Green Purchasing project.
Staff time from the Office of Sustainability and the Office of Procurement Services are provided
as an in-kind match to this grant.
G. Project Timeline
Please complete the following table to describe your project timeline. List milestones
chronologically. (Insert additional rows if necessary.)
Make sure to include estimates for:
 Project start date
 Target date for project completion
 Date by which you will need the first installment of TGIF money
 Date by which you expect to have spent all TGIF funds
 Target date for submitting final project report to TGIF
 Any significant milestones along the way (For example: identifying an equipment
vendor, begin installing equipment, finish installing equipment, etc.)
Milestone
Project start date and first installment of TGIF money
Estimated
completion date
June 2008
Campus Forum for Sustainability, start June 2008
Sustainability Research, start June 2008
December 2008
August 2009
Green Computing, start August 2008
May 2009
Green Purchasing Action Plan, August 2008
January 2009
TGIF Grant Application
Date: March 15 2008
Final TGIF disbursement
February 2009
Complete final project report
April 2009
Other notes on project timeline (if necessary):
H. Help TGIF Improve This Application (optional)
Note: All questions in this section are optional. Your answers (or your choice to skip these
questions) will have no affect on TGIF’s decision on funding your project. In particular, TGIF
will not reward or penalize applicants based on how much time they spent on the application,
but it will help us give next year’s applicants an idea of how much work is involved.
How can TGIF make this form better for next year’s at-large student applicants?
How many weeks did you and your team work on this application, from the time you
started to the time you submitted it?
About how many hours do you think each student on your project team spent preparing
the application (including writing, background research, discussions with campus
sponsors, getting approvals, etc)?
About how many hours do you think each non-student on your project team spent
preparing the application?
Anything else you want to tell us?
TGIF Grant Application
Date: March 15 2008