When it comes to sustainability, we have history. We have momentum. And we have ambitions to accomplish much more. Here is The University of British Columbia’s sustainability story, so far.

Although our institutional history dates back some 100 years, our modern sustainability story begins in 1990 when The University of British Columbia signed the Talloires Declaration. In doing so our University, along with hundreds of other leading educational institutions who signed the Declaration, pledged to make sustainability the foundation for campus operations, research and teaching. 

Since then, UBC has lead the campus sustainability movement in many ways. We were the first university in Canada to adopt a sustainable development policy and the first to open a campus sustainability office. In 2007, we met our Kyoto targets, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by six percent below 1990 levels, this despite double-digit increases in floor space and student enrolment. We've won numerous awards and have marked our progress with these milestones: 

2012

• UBC and its partners open the Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Facility which will reduce campus greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 9 per cent and prove clean energy technologies at a community scale

2011

• UBC opens the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), designed to be the most innovative and high performing building in North America
• UBC's Vancouver campus is designated Canada’s first Fair Trade campus by FairTrade Canada
• UBC breaks ground on one of the largest steam to hot water conversion projects in North America, which will reduce GHG emissions by 22 per cent 
• UBC receives Canada’s first Gold rating in STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System), a comprehensive university sustainability rating system

2010

• UBC sets bold targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, commiting to reducing GHG emissions 33 per cent by 2015, 67 per cent by 2020, and 100 per cent by 2050, compared to 2007 levels
• UBC President Professor Toope announces the UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI), an ambitious sustainability initiative that will promote and unite sustainability efforts in teaching and learning, research and campus operations

2009

• The UBC Community develops the Sustainability Academic Strategy, involving over 350 students, staff, faculty in consultations, which recommended establishing and expanding shared infrastructure and programs to connect sustainability across academics and operations
• UBC integrates sustainability as one of nine core commitments in Place and Promise, further institutionalizing sustainability in UBC’s highest-level strategic plan
• UBC publishes a series of case studies on sustainability to showcase and share our operational and institutional sustainability experience

2008

• UBC President Stephen Toope and five other BC university and college presidents are the first to sign the Climate Change Statement of Action for Canada
• UBC achieves an A- rating in the Sustainable Endowment Institute’s Green Report Card, among the top in North America

2007

• UBC reaches its Kyoto targets, reducing GHG emissions from academic buildings to six per cent below 1990 levels, despite a 35 per cent growth in floor space and a 48 per cent growth in student numbers
• Faculty member Dr. John Robinson shares the 2007 Nobel Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

2006

• UBC publishes Canada's first campus-wide sustainability strategy after a consultation process with 20 departments, all faculties, all major student organizations, and over 100 individuals

2003

• UBC pioneers the U-Pass program, which has increased transit ridership at UBC by more than 230 per cent since 1997

2001                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

• UBC launches EcoTrek (2001-2008), the largest energy and water retrofit at a Canadian campus at the time, which retrofit 288 buildings on campus, resulting in significant reductions in emissions and energy consumption

1998

• UBC is Canada's first university to open a campus Sustainability Office

1997

• UBC becomes Canada's first university to adopt a sustainable development policy

1996

• Faculty member Dr. William Rees and graduate student Mathis Wackernagel of UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning originate the award-winning ecological footprint concept

1990

• UBC signs the international Tailloires Declaration, a 10-point action plan for incorporating sustainability into higher education