Princeton University
PRE-2: Points of Distinction

The University’s Sustainability Action Plan, adopted in April 2019, updates Princeton's comprehensive framework for applying repeatable and scalable solutions to global environmental and societal challenges, manifest at the local scale. This Plan sets bold targets in all key areas, including climate action, with particular focus on cultivating solutions at the intersection of research, education and campus planning and operations.

Notably, the university has now launched a transformative infrastructure conversion process to achieve a fossil-free net-zero greenhouse gas emissions campus by 2046, the University’s 300th anniversary. Its entire heating and cooling infrastructure and all buildings will be converted to ground-source heat pumps and geo-exchange from the current natural gas fueled central system.

Other strategies toward fossil-free carbon neutrality include continued major investments in energy efficiency, a four-fold expansion of on-campus solar PV arrays, the planned purchase of new renewable electricity generation off-site, and changes in behavior across the campus community.

For more than a decade, Princeton's University's Campus as Lab (CAL) program has facilitated sustainability research and experiential learning both on campus and in the surrounding community. Explorations into the social, physical, and operational dimensions at the local scale can generate new experiential knowledge to help to advance sustainability on campus, in our broader community, and around the world.

In May 2021, the Board of Trustees authorized an administrative process to dissociate and divest from companies engaged in climate disinformation campaigns or that are involved in the thermal coal and tar sands segments of the fossil fuel industry.

The University also has committed to reducing the aggregate harmful climate impact of the entirety of the University’s direct and indirect endowment holdings, and will set a target date by which to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the University’s portfolio. The new implementation process will allow the University to take into account the greenhouse gas impact of all companies in its holdings — not just fossil fuel companies — and to drive change and expand investment in innovative technologies that hold the most promise to benefit the environment.

The University dissociates by reevaluating the following: purchases or gifts, partnerships, and facilitating employer recruitment activities. It divests by divesting its direct and indirect holdings of the company or entity in question. Dissociation permits, however, continued engagement of other kinds, including partnerships aimed at improving a company’s conduct or standards so that dissociation is no longer necessary.