University of Washington, Seattle
EN-14: Participation in Public Policy

A priority in UW's 2019 State Legislative Agenda is advocating for funding for the Center for Advanced Materials and Clean Energy Technology (CAMCET). This center will be the nation’s premier open-access facility for sharing academic and industry-relevant clean energy research instrumentation and technology and will bring university research teams and corporate, government, and nonprofit partners together in the UW Innovation District to accelerate solutions for a healthy planet. The UW is also a signatory on the Washington Business Climate Declaration, illustrating strong support for taking action to address climate change at the state and regional level and to mobilize strong business support to advance Washington’s economic and energy security. The declaration urges the public, policymakers and other business leaders to seize the opportunity to advance the state's economic and energy security by tackling climate change. https://www.ceres.org/climate-declaration/washington

The University of Washington continues to be committed to sustainability, in both formal and informal ways. Over the last several years—although “sustainability” is not specifically mentioned in these efforts—UW has coordinated a number of national advocacy campaigns that are very much related to “sustainability.” For example, the last two years, we led the funding advocacy efforts for the Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASC) program at the USGS. One of the areas in which the centers work is sustainability. We also helped coordinate a national effort to ensure that the Cooperative Research Units (CRUs) program at the Fish and Wildlife Service is funded at a sufficient level. This coordinated effort involved members of the public, outside interest groups, as well as other universities. This had an added benefit of making connections between organizations and entities that were interested in the issue that had not been connected before. Both the CSCs and the CRUs are funded annually by the Interior appropriations bill—S. 3073 in the Senate and H.R. 5952 in the House—and we continue to advocate for its final passage for FY2019. We have pushed for the passage of the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) Appropriations bill, as it supports a host of programs and agencies of vital interest to the UW in a number of ways, including with respect to work in the area of sustainability. For example, the UW continues to play a leading role on an annual basis in terms of advocacy for both the Sea Grant and the Integrated Ocean Observation Systems (IOOS) programs at NOAA, both of which have sustainability as core parts of their missions. The UW is clear in its communications that the CJS bill—H.R. 5952 in the House and S. 3072 in the Senate for FY2019—is a critical bill. In terms of activities at the institutional level, the creation of EarthLab at the College of the Environment is more than an indication of the university’s commitment to sustainability. The overall purpose of EarthLab—to connect the environmental researchers at UW to policy shapers and the public so that the research is applied to solve real-world problems—speaks for itself.

The University of Washington joined 12 other leading North American research universities in the new University Climate Change Coalition, or UC3, a group committed to leveraging its research and resources to help communities accelerate climate action. The coalition launched Feb. 6 at the 2018 Second Nature Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit. It includes universities from the U.S., Canada and Mexico that have committed to mobilize their resources and expertise to accelerate local and regional climate action in partnership with businesses, cities and states. http://www.washington.edu/news/2018/02/06/university-of-washington-other-leading-research-universities-form-international-coalition-to-speed-local-climate-action/ The University of Washington is a signatory to the "We Are Still In" letter stating that, in the absence of leadership from the federal government, we remain in solidarity with those around the world committed to a transition to clean energy and to holding global warming to well below 2°C in accord with the Paris Agreement. https://green.uw.edu/news/uw-joins-nationwide-climate-change-pledge The UW is also a signatory to CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) and a member of CERES' Investor Network on Climate Risk. These memberships are part of the UW Treasury Office&'s Global Climate Change Initiatives, approved by the Board of Regents in November 2013. Treasury's Climate Change Initiatives include an initiative to explore opportunities for shareholder advocacy on climate change. https://green.uw.edu/news/uw-joins-investor-networks-combat-climate-change