Johns Hopkins University

Our team guided Johns Hopkins University (JHU) through a comprehensive stakeholder engagement effort to co-create a new vision for sustainability and to develop a clear roadmap for the future. Our work provided JHU with a continuous planning tool that allows the university to explore technical pathways to reduce energy and emissions across its campuses and inform decision-making for its carbon commitment.

A major part was developing an overarching 2030 Climate Action & Sustainability Plan, which addresses areas including built and natural environments, teaching and scholarship, responsible consumption, and mobility and transportation. This campus-wide plan will guide JHU’s efforts to become a leader in sustainability and climate action while taking steps to meet the university's 2040 net-zero commitment.

Our study helped JHU quickly assess and prioritize building efficiency upgrades across its campuses, estimating the impact of building energy efficiency measures. These ranged from low capital cost, low disruption, and short timeframe projects all the way to higher cost, reduction, and longer timeframe ones. Measures included retro-commissioning (temperature resets), equipment upgrades (energy recovery ventilation), building electrification (switch building boiler to heat pumps), and envelope upgrades (upgrading windows).

We also developed a strategic carbon roadmap to ensure that JHU’s new goals for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were technically and economically feasible. We evaluated multiple pathways toward decarbonization, considering the unique challenges and opportunities across the four main campuses and their respective energy systems.

We also led the creation of JHU’s high performance and healthy buildings (HPHB) requirements, which set out meeting emissions reduction targets in buildings for new construction, major renovations, and modification projects on campus. Focusing on climate resilience, our team collected baseline data and future climate projections across JHU’s campuses and assessed the university’s risk for climate-related events. This data formed resilience strategies that were included in the overarching Sustainability Plan.