MSU is greener after joining Chicago Climate Exchange

In 2006, MSU took another step toward being a “greener” place: the university joined the Chicago Climate Exchange as another step in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon, along with Fred Poston, vice president for finance and operations, and Michael Walsh, senior vice president of the Chicago Climate Exchange, signed the membership agreement Nov. 14 and marked the occasion by planting a tree.

MSU will bring its broad expertise in environmental sciences, its history of stewardship and its tradition of student involvement into play with the Chicago Climate Exchange. The exchange, or CCX, is North America's only, and the world's first, greenhouse gas emission registry, reduction and trading system for greenhouse gases.

Members of the Chicago Climate Exchange seek to reduce direct emissions by conserving energy, for example, and to provide opportunities to offset emissions, such as no-till farming or tree farming. MSU will work toward the prescribed 6 percent reduction goal.

MSU is the fifth university to join the CCX. The others are Tufts, the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota and the University of Oklahoma.