UC Davis recognized as top university in U.S., third in world in GreenMetric rankings

The University of California in Davis has been ranked No. 1 in the United States in the 10th annual GreenMetric rankings of worldwide universities conducted by Universitas Indonesia.

UI ranked UC Davis third globally, behind only Wageningen University Research in the Netherlands and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. The international rankings, released in the beginning of December, evaluated 780 universities, with criteria and guidelines that examine infrastructure, waste, water, transportation, energy and climate change, with the latter being the most heavily weighted.

Davis has held the top spot in the U.S. for the past three years. According to UI, the goal of the rankings is to give credit to universities making an effort to reduce their carbon footprint and combat climate change. Universities submit data in an online survey.

According to a news release, 59 percent of the electricity used on the UC Davis campus in 2018 came from clean, renewable sources, with 14 percent coming from an on-site solar farm and 45 percent coming off-site through two solar farms in Fresno County.

“Our investments on and off campus continue to pay dividends in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,” said Camille Kirk, UC Davis’ director of sustainability.

Former UC President Janet Napolitano announced the Carbon Neutrality Initiative, which pledged the UC system to emitting zero greenhouse gases from infrastructure and transportation by 2025.

Beginning next spring, UC Davis will begin construction on a project aimed at eliminating the campus’s natural gas-powered steam system, which will be replaced with a hot-water system powered by renewable energy as part of a project dubbed “The Big Shift.”