University of North Carolina, Pembroke
EN-10: Community Partnerships

Appalachian Energy Summit – The Beginning

In late fall of 2011 Kenan Smith, ’84, and Hayes Smith,’82, came to Boone to talk about energy. The brothers — both dedicated supporters of the university — settled into a small conference room in the Design and Construction department and began a conversation with then Director of Sustainability Ged Moody and Mike O’Connor, director of the Physical Plant. The outcome was the seed of an idea that would become the first annual Appalachian Energy Summit, held on the campus of Appalachian State University the following summer, 2012.

“After we talked for a while,” Moody said, “Kenan and Hayes recognized what we at Appalachian already knew: our campus was already very good at energy reduction and sustainability. During a pause in the conversation Kenan put his hands on the table and said, ‘Let’s do something big.’ The idea of hosting an energy summit for the system was born. “

The goal for the Summit as defined over the next few months was to jump-start a national transformative effort across higher education. Embraced by UNC General Administration as a system-wide initiative, objectives include:

· Educate our students to be leaders of tomorrow;

· Reduce and stabilize the UNC system's average annual energy expenditures;

· Transform and stimulate the North Carolina economy;

· Position our colleagues in the UNC system and private universities as national leaders;

· Create a culture of environmental and economic sustainability.

Invited guests attend the three-day summit for free and optional resident hall accommodations are provided. The event is paid for by individual and corporate sponsors and does not require any state funding.



The future of the Appalachian Energy Summit

“For year five [of the summit] we are working hard to truly leverage the success we have had on the campuses beyond just saving. ” Moody said. “The important conversations and energy innovations that have been happening in North Carolina can have positively disruptive benefits globally. The university system and Appalachian are creating collaborations and achieving successes that show how higher education can lead first in energy then broaden that scope to address the biggest challenges that face our world – sustainability.” Kenan Smith concurs. “ We have 20,000 students now at Appalachian,” he said. “As we reach out to other systems, other states, other countries. . . suddenly you have 2 to 3 million students talking together. That’s the power for change. That’s big.”

UNCP joined this group in the year of its inception in 2012.

https://sustain.appstate.edu/energy-summit

The NC 10% Campaign is a collaborative statewide initiative led by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) and North Carolina Cooperative Extension promoting locally-grown/caught food, farmers and fishers, as well as the businesses and people who prepare, distribute, and sell food grown in North Carolina.​

The NC 10% Campaign encourages NC individuals, businesses, organizations, and institutions to spend at least 10% of their food dollars on NC-grown foods. It is estimated that NCians spend over $35 billion on food each year. If 10% of those purchases were from NC farms, $3.5 billion would stay within North Carolina’s statewide economy. The Campaign was started in July 2010 with aim of creating demand for local foods, giving an attainable goal of 10% locally-grown/raised/caught, & stimulating economic opportunities for NC farmers & fisheries through:

-partner promotion on interactive website & multi-media strategies

-outreach via sector programming & community events

-producer/buyer networking

-an online local foods data tracking dashboard

UNCP is one of six campus's participating in the NC 10% Campaign with CEFS, since 2013.

http://www.nc10percent.com/


The Real Food Challenge leverages the power of youth and universities to create a healthy, fair and green food system.

Our primary campaign is to shift $1 billion of existing university food budgets away from industrial farms and junk food and towards local/community-based, fair, ecologically sound and humane food sources—what we call “real food”—by 2020.

The Real Food Challenge also maintains a national network of student food activists—providing opportunities for networking, learning, and leadership development for thousands of emerging leaders.

http://www.realfoodchallenge.org/

FY2022
Courtney