UNH Today

In March, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted the first-ever national climate disclosure rule, a decision signifying that publicly traded companies will be legally required to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and other climate risk factors for the first time.

It’s a step UNH voluntarily took more than two decades ago – its first carbon footprint data was published in 2001. The university has spent the intervening years building a nationally renowned sustainability program that is training students for exactly the type of jobs that will be created by the recent ruling, while also partnering with the business community to arm it with data on how to implement more sustainable practices.

Beyond publishing its carbon footprint data in 2001, six years later UNH joined hundreds of other higher ed institutions in voluntarily committing to regularly update and publicly report that information, with a future goal of carbon neutrality.

The recent SEC ruling is going to open the floodgates for other companies joining that process, and UNH is uniquely positioned to continue preparing students for jobs that are about to become even more essential.

“This SEC rule is going to create a huge demand for new skills and a trained workforce in greenhouse gas measurement and reporting. There’s already clear evidence of a major green skills gap,” says Fiona Wilson, UNH’s deputy chief sustainability officer and director of the Sustainability Institute. “Because of our decades of work in this area, UNH is already stepping up in big ways to address workforce development and graduate people with these specific skills, and we are poised to continue to expand this work in the coming years.”

UNH has indeed “been at the forefront of this work for decades,” as Wilson notes, perhaps most notably through the creation of its unique SIMAP (Sustainability Indicator Management and Analysis Platform) nitrogen and carbon accounting platform, a one-of-a-kind tool licensed by more than 500 academic institutions, nonprofits, small businesses, municipalities and other organizations around the world.

SIMAP is a program of the UNH Sustainability Institute. In 2023, it underwent a significant functionality update that allowed it to calculate all Scope 3 indirect emissions, such as those that are produced by customers using a company’s products or by suppliers making products a company uses.

Scope 3 emissions can make up more than half of an organization’s total emissions.

Businesses that have partnered with UNH Sustainability Institute have benefitted from access to the SIMAP technology, which has helped take a seemingly arduous and intimidating task and make it much more approachable.

"The knowledge and confidence we have gained through our partnership with UNH has empowered us to know where and how fast we can take action to reduce our climate impact."

“The knowledge and confidence we have gained through our partnership with UNH has empowered us to know where and how fast we can take action to reduce our climate impact,” says Bruce Hall, director of agroecology at Wyman’s, a fruit company headquartered in Milbridge, Maine. “The connections we’ve made at UNH made it so easy – we went from a sense of being overwhelmed by where to even begin to feeling like ‘We can do this.’”

SIMAP’s ability to track scope 3 emissions has been a significant advance, says Terri Taylor, strategy director for innovation and discovery at Lumina Foundation, an independent foundation focused on making opportunities for learning after high school available to all. Taylor says of the work they’ve undertaken that “when it comes to emissions accounting, for organizations like ours, it’s all about scope 3.”

But she was also pleased to receive guidance on the most important factors her organization could focus on. Whereas trendy news topics have centered around easy-to-grasp items like shifting from plastic to paper or reusable straws, her organization was able to achieve significant progress by examining the impact of its flight schedule used to transport staff members around the country.

“It’s been a really good lesson for us about how you need to get yourself grounded in reliable tools like SIMAP, because a lot of times your assumptions may not be true,” Taylor says. “Changing any of your practices to reduce emissions is often quite difficult, so you might as well focus on the ones that will have the most impact.”

Though the SEC ruling will soon have many more companies focusing on those same items, UNH is proud of the fact that it has been helping organizations tackle them for years. 

“We’ve supported many regional companies and other organizations in their own climate reporting and reduction journeys who are voluntarily choosing to do this because they understand it makes their organization more resilient, and because they understand the importance of this work to ensure a sustainable future for us all,” says Jennifer Andrews, a project director in the Sustainability Institute who co-invented SIMAP and coordinates UNH’s own climate action planning efforts.

That work has also provided a huge benefit for UNH students, who have been able to learn carbon accounting principles through a carbon footprinting certificate offered in partnership between UNH’s Sustainability Institute and UNH Professional Development and Training (PD&T), and through a two-credit Business in Practice course, a partnership of the UNH Sustainability Institute and the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics called the Climate Action Clinic.

“It’s the students that make it – they are inspiring. They are so professional, so talented, and every day I get to work with students on projects like this it just rejuvenates me. There is so much opportunity out there, and to see these young individuals who are coming through UNH, it gives me confidence that the future is very bright."

Students are also offered the chance to work directly with a variety of companies via the summer Sustainability Fellows programs and other hands-on opportunities, gaining valuable skills in the field and experience from their interactions with industry professionals.

One of those professionals, Zoe Malia, environmental sustainability manager at Allagash Brewing Company in Portland, Maine, was also something of a student herself – she recently received her carbon accounting certificate from the UNH Sustainability Institute and UNH PD&T. Allagash has been working with UNH students for several years as it continues to embrace new and developing sustainable practices as part of its commitment to best taking care of the environment, one of the company’s pillars, Malia says.

“The partnership has been incredible. The students and their professors are always on top of their work, and it’s amazing to have those kinds of experts available to us,” Malia says. “I’ve learned so much through this process. The collaboration has been really great.”

The sentiment is echoed from the student side, as well. Grace Rau ’24, who graduated in May after majoring in environmental conservation and sustainability, spent her final semester at UNH working with Allagash via the Climate Action Clinic, helping the brewery generate its baseline carbon footprint.

“From learning the ins and outs of the GHG Protocol to assisting real organizations in measuring and reducing their carbon footprint, these experiences were life changing,” Rau says of the Climate Action Clinic experience. “Allagash is a true role model in the sustainability field and I can’t wait to see what’s next.”

The opportunities created by UNH’s business partnerships lead to graduates, like Rau, ready to hit the ground running in their professions – Rau recently secured her first job working as a climate resiliency planner with Boston-based Weston & Sampson. And the impact of that educational journey has also been felt – and very much appreciated – by the organizations partnering with UNH.

“It’s the students that make it – they are inspiring. They are so professional, so talented, and every day I get to work with students on projects like this it just rejuvenates me,” says Hall. “There is so much opportunity out there, and to see these young individuals who are coming through UNH, it gives me confidence that the future is very bright. It’s my honor to work with them.”