The fight against the climate crisis requires us all to play our part. But while universities tend to be rated for their world-class research, student experience, and graduate employment opportunities, they’re less known for leading the way on sustainability.
Not so in Toronto. Late last year, the University of Toronto was named the most sustainable in the world, beating more than 1,400 academic institutions across 95 countries. It’s an achievement that’s been spearheaded by Meric Gertler, who was appointed as university president in 2013. He previously spent two decades at the university as a professor of geography and planning.
“It’s something we’re really proud of,” he says of the accolade. “It’s one thing to do research and talk about that research, but you also have to walk the talk.”
We spoke to Gertler about the challenges the university has faced, the initiatives that have made the most difference, and what advice he’d give other leaders hoping to emulate his example.
Where did your mission to turn the University of Toronto into the most sustainable university in the world come from?
Anything we can do to make Toronto a more livable place makes it easier for us to attract great students and recruit wonderful faculty members from around the world. But there were a couple of other catalysts. The first was a decision in 2017 to create a new university-wide President’s Advisory Committee on the Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainability. We were debating whether or not to divest our endowment fund of fossil fuels – which we went on to do – and saw an opportunity to coordinate all of the other ways a university like ours could address the climate crisis.
The other epiphany was in 2019 when the Canadian government levied a national carbon tax. When we received our first bill, it turned out we were one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the province of Ontario. It was horrifying and embarrassing and we had to do something about it.
What challenges have you faced? Do you think universities face unique challenges in this area, compared with other sectors?
It’s a big operation. We’ve got 260 buildings across three campuses that are in need of maintenance and upgrading, and hundreds of acres of land. We’re also not flush with cash, so financing is a challenge. We’re not directly funded by the government to do this kind of work and are often overlooked when they roll out programmes to decarbonise the economy or enhance sustainability. We’ve had to work very hard to make sure we’re eligible for funding to do things like replacing windows or installing heat pumps.
You’ve implemented a number of impressive initiatives. Which do you think has had the biggest impact?
Creating the presidential committee seven years ago was really critical. It brought together not just academics and students but also staff who oversee the university operations. They brought interesting problems the university needs solutions to, and the committee co-produced a strategy called Project Leap. It’s an ambitious but very practical plan to track and dramatically reduce our carbon footprint. We’re on track to reduce our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% before 2030.
We’ve done a lot of deep energy retrofits of the buildings we own, improving the insulation, replacing windows and installing smart building controls. We’ve had a district energy system in place for 120 years at the university, which is powered by four big natural gas boilers, and we’re in the process of converting those to electric. But the really big initiative was creating the country’s largest urban geothermal system underneath a beautiful green space in the middle of our downtown campus that we recently made pedestrian only. It has eliminated 15,000 metric tonnes of our annual greenhouse gas emissions, which is the equivalent of taking 3,000 cars off the road. Project Leap was almost entirely financed by the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which is a great demonstration of how innovations in finance and a bit of creativity can unlock all kinds of potential.
Another impressive initiative is the development of Harmony Commons, the largest Passive House-certified building in Canada. It’s a 746-bed dormitory that uses new construction methods, where heat is captured and recycled, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
How else have you engaged students and faculty in this mission?
We started with an inventory of all the research strengths and teaching we do on sustainability across the whole university. That led to what we called sustainability pathways, which enable all of our students – no matter what they’re studying – to learn some basic competencies in sustainability principles and practices. They can also get involved with our Campus as a Living Lab projects, which address real-world sustainability problems at the university and in the wider community. There have been nearly 500 student projects already and dozens of internships. I take my hat off to students for pushing us to do more, and getting their professors and other faculty members on board.
What role should higher education institutions such as universities play in creating a green future?
Universities are uniquely well positioned to do this. The University of Toronto is large, and highly visible. We have been around for a while and have a strong credit rating. We’re also one landlord responsible for hundreds of buildings and hundreds of hectares of land, with the potential to make decisions centrally that can have a huge impact on enhancing sustainability. Plus, we’ve got the energy of our students, and the expertise in-house. Governments should quite intentionally figure out ways to build universities into their strategies for tackling climate change.
We’ve got a lot of international partnerships as well. We work with a group called University Climate Change Coalition (UC3) and the U7+ Alliance of World Universities, which includes universities from G7 countries as well as countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Indian subcontinent. And since Canada became a signatory partner of Horizon Europe, we’re looking forward to developing joint research projects with partners in the UK and Europe.
What’s next for the University of Toronto’s drive for sustainability?
We’ll continue to look for new opportunities to accelerate our progress across our three campuses. Another area we’re working on is enhancing our climate resilience against the effects of extreme weather events, which are now happening with greater frequency.
We’re also turning our attention to reducing scope 3 emissions that arise from activities we are engaged in. We’ve developed an internal carbon tax to offset our faculty’s air travel emissions, for example, and recently funded a reforestation project on university-owned land.
What advice would you give to other university leaders looking to follow your example?
When you first tackle this, it can seem like an insurmountable problem. But creating a new structure that brings together faculty, students, staff and alumni can provide a focal point for strategy and action. Our committee was co-chaired by a professor of environmental studies and our chief operating officer for facilities and sustainability. That sent a strong signal about the need for those two teams to work closely together, and it has worked beautifully.
Our experience shows that you can actually go from laggard to leader very quickly. No matter how big the obstacle seems to be, when you create the right structures for people to collaborate and act, you can move the needle pretty far, pretty quickly.
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