Stanford University

College Sustainability Report Card 2007

The President's Environmental Stewardship Committee is continuously working on sustainability measures, which involve an in-house green building policy. The Woods Institute for the Environment is a campus-wide effort by all seven schools on campus to develop the University's potential for making a significant impact toward creating a sustainable world. In 2004, the University was certified as a Green Business for its efforts to conserve energy and water resources, and reduce waste and pollution.

On-campus photovoltaic panels provide some solar power, and in 2005 the University was a "Flex Your Power" award winner for its Energy Conservation Incentive Program and Energy Retrofit Program, the latter of which has resulted in savings of 20,169,231 kilowatt-hours annually. The University also runs a cash-for-kilowatts payout in which it allocates baseline electricity "budgets" to each academic school and administrative unit to encourage conservation, financially rewarding or penalizing them for their energy use.

In 2004, Stanford Dining was certified as a Green Business university food service program by Santa Clara County, CA. The 5R program recycles much of the outgoing waste, and sells its compost from food and groundskeeping waste to local farmers. Two to five percent of the menu is from local, organic sources, and kitchen facilities are energy efficient.

A Sustainability Coordinator is assigned to every building project, and sustainability guidelines, published in 2002, are included in every part of the design process. Extensive retrofitting of residence hall lights, showerheads, and boilers have cut down energy use considerably.

Current endowment holdings information is available only to members of the Stanford Management Company board of directors and investment office staff, although any member of the Stanford community may request consideration of issues that could be related to any potential University public security. Past holdings that faced shareholder resolutions are disclosed to trustees, senior administrators, and advisory panel representatives, which includes faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Upon completion of the Historic Investment Responsibility Proxy Voting Database, a 10-year review of those holdings will be available online to that same group.

The University prioritizes investing to maximize profit and has not made any public statements about investigating or investing in renewable energy funds or community development loan funds.

All proxies are voted in-house by the manager of investment responsibility according to set guidelines. Voting is driven first by "shareholder best interest" based on current corporate governance and social issue proxy voting guidelines. Guidelines are updated as issues evolve based on recommendations from an Advisory Panel, which includes four student and two alumni representatives. Updates must be approved by the Trustees Special Committee.