New Chief Sustainability Officer Mike Piehler shares his goals for a new initiative

Earlier this month, the University appointed Mike Piehler, an ecologist and director of the UNC Institute for the Environment, as its new Chief Sustainability Officer. Piehler fills a role that has been empty for over a year, since the concealed firing of Brad Ives last August. 

His appointment comes with the transition to a new “Sustainable Carolina” environmental initiative, led by the University’s new Sustainability Council. The council includes experts from a variety of fields, as well as UNC students. 

University senior writer Kyle Ingram spoke with Piehler to discuss his vision for sustainability at Carolina. This interview has been edited for clarity. 

The Daily Tar Heel: Along with your appointment, the University announced a transition to the new “Sustainable Carolina” initiative. Could you help explain where this falls administratively and what all it encompasses? 

Mike Piehler: So, administratively it is one of those things that is very low critical mass … We aren't exactly sure where the people who work for this will reside, but I can tell you that a big component of it is the input of the council, so we have a broad framework where we have this advisory group who reports to the Chancellor and his cabinet. We have the idea of the four committees … A committee who is solely connecting the sustainability efforts to the rest of the University, a communications group to be certain that we tell all of the stories, all of the efforts that have been undertaken … We also have a committee who will be focused on measuring success — so our metrics will align largely with Three Zeros — Three Zeros is not going anywhere. 

It will be our aspirational goals, but Sustainable Carolina is a broader umbrella so that we can perceive all of the things going on at the University, not just the water, the waste and the greenhouse gas … and innovations (committee) — making certain that we are looking for great, exciting new ideas. 

DTH: The Three Zeros initiative was housed under UNC Energy Services. Where does it fall now with Sustainable Carolina? 

MP: Three Zeros as a principled set of goals remains at the core of whatever Sustainable Carolina ends up being. I can tell you broadly, and I can tell you in principle, where we are going to go, but the specifics of exactly where that will sit organizationally, we haven't worked out yet. 

DTH: Last year, student activists were calling for a detailed timeline for meeting the Three Zeros goals of zero waste, zero water and zero greenhouse gas emissions — is that a possibility now? 

MP: I think it has to be in the conversation. Our philosophy, as a council, is that we will have metrics by which we judge progress and goals that we try to achieve in all of the areas, whether it be one of the zeros or whether it be an allied area around sustainability at the University. So I can't say anything for certain about picking days, picking years — there are really well-documented cases of those selections not always working out for lots of different reasons. And for that reason, I think we will be very thoughtful before we say "No this or yes this by, you know, whatever day it is 2024," or something like that.

But for certain, we are all people who have a lot of things to do in the rest of our life and so we want the time we spend on the sustainability effort to matter. And to have it matter, you need to be achieving goals. The University has a great reputation in this space, and to uphold that reputation, we need to continue to be people of action. So yes is the short answer, but the answer in terms of specifics is not certain yet. Just because we need to take stock of where we are. 

DTH: Last year, Brad Ives was fired following a disagreement with Jonathan Pruitt over the future of coal use at the University and about a plan to move to 100 percent natural gas with carbon offsets. Where is that conversation now and what do you think might happen going forward?

MP: So, we have yet to begin formal conversations around things like that. I can say that there is a commitment by everyone to do what we can to move away from coal, recognizing that it's not optimal. There's a lot of effort ongoing. Obviously there's some past commitments that were made that through lots of reasons weren't able to come true, so it is my sense that that has to be a priority, and I believe that, that it's something that people are receptive to. 

DTH: Is there anything else that you are looking forward to in the future that you want to share? 

MP: This group is remarkable and one of the other things that I've always talked about in my professional life is the need for interdisciplinarity and then transdisciplinarity and all the words that people talk about … This council to me is incredible ...

It is incredibly exciting to me that the people who I first thought of — the skills that I wish we could have, the group I wished we could bring together for a lot of reasons — is going to be together. So I am really excited to work with these folks who are generously giving up their time, who are all highly-skilled at what they do and also really insightful into their adjacent areas of expertise and not just their core area of expertise … It's a diverse group in every way. It's got people at different ages, people with different ethnic backgrounds … So what to me is exciting is that we have this remarkable group who are all committed to this cause.

@kyle_ingram11

university@dailytarheel.com