Sustainable Infrastructure & Campus Growth

This goal focuses on the infrastructure, facilities, and operational services vital to the university’s teaching, research, and service missions. It includes expanding transportation options that reduce car dependence, upgrading buildings and computing infrastructure to meet energy efficiency standards, and nurturing biodiverse landscapes. 

As a college campus, the University of Maryland has a unique opportunity to serve as a living model for sustainable cities. UMD’s campus operates like a small city, consuming electricity and potable water on the scale of a city and generating waste and pollution as well. Campus facilities leaders have created integrated policies and plans to support resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters, inclusive access to green spaces, improved road safety, and special attention to air quality and waste management. 

Environmental and financial stewardship have long been central to how UMD operates, from becoming a charter signatory of the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment in 2007 to becoming the first R1 public research university on the East Coast to achieve carbon neutrality in 2025. This goal builds on that legacy by widening ambitions for direct decarbonization of UMD’s buildings, while continuing to operate the physical campus in ways that protect local watersheds, native biodiversity, and public health. By taking this leadership approach to tackling climate change and other ecological challenges, UMD and the State of Maryland are demonstrating that these problems are taken seriously and require bold, real-world solutions. In creating a campus environment that prioritizes well-built sustainable urban infrastructure, the university is living its values.