Thursday, June 3
2:40 - 3:10 PM (ET)

“U-M President's Commission on Carbon Neutrality Recommendations and Pathway Forward"

Abstract

In February 2019, University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel created the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality and charged it with recommending a timeline and pathway for achieving that goal.  Two years later, the 17-member Commission has come forth with its report, with ambitious goal years and detailed strategies covering Scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions for the Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses and the university’s medical center complex.  Co-chair Jennifer Haverkamp will describe the Commission’s research-intensive and publicly engaged process, its key recommendations, and some initial implementation steps for the university.  U-M welcomes exchanging experiences and insights with peers also grappling with the transitioning of an old, large, fossil-fuel dependent university -- subject to Midwestern winters! -- to the net zero future that the climate crisis demands of us all.   

Biography

Jennifer Haverkamp, an internationally recognized expert on climate change, international trade, and global environmental policy and negotiations, is the Graham Family Director of the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute, a Professor from Practice at Michigan Law School and a Professor of Practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.  She also co-chaired U-M President Schlissel’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality.

Before coming to Michigan, Professor Haverkamp served as the U.S. Department of State’s Ambassador and Special Representative for Environment and Water Resources, where in 2016 she led the Department’s successful negotiations of the Kigali HFC-phasedown amendment to the Montreal Protocol and the International Civil Aviation Organization’s landmark CORSIA agreement to control global greenhouse gas emissions. Previously, Ms. Haverkamp directed Environmental Defense Fund's International Climate Program, spent nearly a decade as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Environment and Natural Resources in the Executive Office of the President, and held posts at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice. She has taught at Cornell Law School, George Washington University’s law school and Johns Hopkins graduate school, and has served on USTR's Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee and a number of nonprofit boards.  Ms. Haverkamp earned a law degree from Yale Law School, earned a master’s degree in politics and philosophy at Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar) and majored in biology at The College of Wooster (on whose board of trustees she has served for many years).