Interest already high for Pitt Sustainability Challenge

By MARTY LEVINE

Three days after the Pitt Sustainability Challenge was announced on Dec. 7 — which will award $300,000 to a “solution to advance carbon neutrality with lasting benefits for the Pitt community” — the contest already had registrants, said Aurora Sharrard, executive director of sustainability: “We’re very excited about the response.”

The challenge is looking for ideas to help Pitt achieve its main sustainability goal of carbon neutrality by 2037: “Balancing all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions put into the atmosphere by removing or capturing and storing an equivalent quantity of GHG emissions.”

The new contest, Sharrard hopes, will inspire both Pitt groups and external groups backed by nonprofits or for-profit organizations “to come to the table and bring those solutions.”

Similar challenges have worked well when done by everyone from foundations to government agencies, she said: “They definitely are successful around the world.” The Pitt challenge, she added, can focus on solutions for one part of one campus — say, making the Oakland dorms or the athletic department more carbon neutral — or can be aimed at a wider impact across the University.

“We tried to keep it general,” she said of the challenge, “because we wanted people’s innovative ideas.”

The contest has detailed rules and evaluation criteria on its website, which Sharrard urges potential applicants to review. A team of contest judges has been assembled from energy concerns and experts in innovation and sustainability,

Register now for Q&A webinars prior to the submission deadlines. The registration deadline is 9 p.m. March 8, 2023, with applications due by April 5, 2023, and finalists announced in June 2023.

Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.

 

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