Re-CAP: Looking back on Climate Action Plan 2.0

Session upon session of monthly meetings filled Google Calendars during the 2025-26 academic year as Lafayette College’s Office of Sustainability worked to develop the third iteration of its plan to achieve carbon neutrality.

With the second version of the climate action plan entering its final days — as the third plan is expected to go through Board of Trustees approval this month — its key promises have yielded a mixed bag.

“We are making progress,” Director of Sustainability Delecia Nahman said about the plan, known as CAP 2.0. “Our emissions are going down within some very specific activity areas.”

CAP 2.0 included several initiatives aimed at reducing the college’s greenhouse gas emissions and expanding sustainability programs to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035. It also built on efforts and accelerated the timeline outlined in Climate Action Plan 1.0.

Much of the progress came from energy conservation projects and renewable energy investments. A two-acre solar array was installed on the Kirby Sports Center roof in 2022, and the college invested in a solar project in Kentucky, looking to generate off-site renewable energy, with eight other institutions, two years ago. Other projects included energy-efficient boiler replacements and lighting upgrades, which aim to increase the college’s clean energy usage and reduce reliance on carbon-dependent energy sources.

While making progress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with a 39% reduction from 2007, one of the major goals of finding a new solution to campus heating and cooling has been pushed to CAP 3.0.

“While we did pursue some potential solutions and we did some studies on a few different solutions, none of them ended up being the right solution for us,” said Nahman, adding that they sought to “narrow down the existing solutions” in CAP 3.0.

Civil and environmental engineering professor David Brandes, who served on the CAP 2.0 steering committee, wrote in an email that the college had “not successfully raised funds or obtained grants needed” for key aspects of the plan, including making Metzgar Fields carbon neutral by 2025.

The Office of Sustainability looked to expand the on-campus composting system and increase total waste diversion. The college, currently at a 26% diversion rate, seeking to renew and reuse waste products, met early goals of 19% by 2020, but missed a 2024 benchmark of 40%.

Nahman, however, believes that the college is on track to reach its larger goal of 60% waste diversion by 2035.

Conner Elliot-Knaggs, the climate action and circularity manager, wrote in an email that the college has seen a roughly 1% increase in diversion rate per year over the past three to four years.

“That trend is not sufficient to achieving our goals,” Elliot-Knaggs wrote. He noted that CAP 3.0 aims to “develop a waste focused working group to improve these numbers,” primarily by decreasing contaminated recycling rates.

Elliot-Knaggs also wrote that the college focused on implementing a “co-location standard,” meaning recycling bins should accompany every waste bin. The composting system, in accordance with CAP 2.0 goals, has expanded to all dining locations on campus.

“While they are smaller impacts from an emissions perspective, they are within our control, and they are meaningful,” Nahman said.

Some of the delay in reaching CAP 2.0 goals was attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to both Nahman and Brandes.

“We’re also very focused on adaptation, which is recognizing that there are going to be long-term impacts to campus,” Nahman said. “We need to be able to adapt to those and be prepared for those changes.”

Disclaimer: Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Seidel ’26 and Assistant News Editor Makenna McCall ’27 are both employees in the Office of Sustainability. Neither contributed writing nor reporting.