Project Mission Statement – This project is intended to aid the Puerto Rico Project Center to create a more sustainable model for the IQP program by analyzing carbon emissions, exploring offset applications, and moving toward being carbon neutral and ultimately carbon restorative.
Climate Crisis in PR
One of the greatest threats that humanity faces today is the climate crisis. It is a global issue caused by increases in atmospheric concentrations of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide. Elevated levels of greenhouse gases trap heat from the sun close to the earth’s surface resulting in a net increase in global temperatures and natural variability. (USGCRP, 2018)
The island of Puerto Rico is especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. It is almost certain that the trends of increasing heat episodes, resource scarcity, and extreme weather will continue to worsen through the 21st century (IPCC, 2018). However, the severity of these trends will be dictated by the rate at which climate change occurs.
Immediate action to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is required to limit the effects of climate change everywhere.
Our Project Goal
For our project, we researched several carbon emissions sources, methods of emission estimation, carbon offset types, methods to reduce carbon emissions, as well as previous IQP’s. With the broad goal of creating a program that could make the Puerto Rico Project Center carbon neutral, we had to cast a wide net of ideas and research topics, which we then refined down into what is presented here: a plan involving emission estimation, offsets, and general policy recommendations for WPI’s Global Projects Program. The first part of our project was to determine emissions estimations specific to various WPI project centers, so that we could understand where our emissions came from and how we could reduce or offset them. To create a program that could make the project center carbon neutral, we also researched various carbon offset methods to see what kinds of offsets we could recommend. From there, we created a policy document of recommendations for WPI as well as this website to act as a hub for all of our findings.