DURHAM, N.H. - The University of New Hampshire is the new home of the Clean Air-Cool Planet Climate Fellows Program and the Campus Carbon Calculator. Clean Air-Cool Planet will be dissolving in 2014, but two of its signature programs will live on at the Sustainability Institute at UNH.

Developed in partnership with the Sustainability Institute in 2000, the Campus Carbon Calculator is used by thousands of campuses and institutions across the United States and abroad to track their greenhouse gas emissions. More than 90 percent of the U.S. colleges and universities that publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions use the calculator. In partnership with Sightlines, a new online version also exists called CarbonMap (the Carbon Management and Analysis Platform).

Since 2008, the Climate Fellows Program has been attracting undergraduate and graduate students from across the country to work on high-priority climate solutions projects with a variety of partners, from municipalities to companies to nonprofits. Through this highly competitive program, students receive skills training, mentoring, networking opportunities, and a stipend for full-time summer projects.
                         
"Transitioning the Climate Fellows Program and Campus Carbon Calculator to the Sustainability Institute feels like coming home," says Jennifer Andrews, former acting executive director of the Portsmouth-based Clean Air-Cool Planet. "UNH has long been a close partner of Clean Air-Cool Planet. We've worked together for nearly 13 years to advance sustainable solutions to the climate challenges we face."

Andrews stresses that users of the Campus Carbon Calculator and CarbonMap will see no changes in their use of and support for these tools. The 2014 Climate Fellows Program application process will be announced later this month.

"When we considered the next chapter for Clean Air-Cool Planet's assets and legacy, we logically turned to the Sustainability Institute," says Susan Tierney, a founder and former chair of the Clean Air-Cool Planet board of directors and managing principal at the Analysis Group in Boston. "UNH was instrumental in helping to create the Campus Carbon Calculator and in working with us to establish it as the gold standard for tracking greenhouse gas emissions at colleges and universities."

"The Climate Fellows Program and the calculator represent the kinds of innovative tools and learning experiences that are responsive to the grand challenge of climate change. The calculator supports institutions of higher education, towns and cities, businesses, and nonprofits to develop data-driven strategies for reducing emissions, and the Climate Fellows Program serves as a spring board for high-level undergraduates to put their education to work and chart their next phase of professional development," says Tom Kelly, UNH's chief sustainability officer and director of the Sustainability Institute. "Both programs directly advance our public research university mission to engage in collaboration to find solutions to challenges and opportunities that impact our quality of life for the long-term, and climate change is clearly in that category."

Climate work is a key component of the Sustainability Institute at UNH. Sustainability is a core value of UNH, shaping the university's culture, informing its behavior, and guiding its work. As a nationally recognized leader, the Sustainability Institute acts as convener, cultivator and champion of sustainability on campus, in the state and region, and around the world. Learn more at www.sustainableunh.unh.edu.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,300 undergraduate and 2,200 graduate students.

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