Tec de Monterrey campuses want to establish themselves as sustainable spaces. By 2040, they want to become carbon neutral facilities with 80% clean energy consumption.

The goal is part of the 2025 Sustainability and Climate Change Plan, a cross-cutting strategy that sets short- and long-term climate goals for the university.

Sustainable Tec de Monterrey campuses

The climate crisis caused by global warming isn’t just a phenomenon that needs to be addressed but is one that needs to be addressed urgently.

This is according to Inés Sáenz Negrete, Vice President of Inclusion, Social Impact, and Sustainability at Tec de Monterrey, who provides details of the institution’s plan to transform its facilities.

In an interview with Tec Review, Sáenz Negrete explains that the path to campus sustainability and carbon neutrality is underway, based on the 2025 Sustainability and Climate Change Plan.

She says that a self-evaluation process has already been completed at all Tec de Monterrey campuses to determine their current status from a sustainability perspective.

The different institutional areas will define more strategies to achieve the goal of making all spaces carbon neutral and resilient to the effects of the climate crisis.

According to the Vice President of Inclusion, Social Impact, and Sustainability, 49% of the energy consumed nationwide currently comes from renewable sources and 14.1% from efficient sources and reduced CO2 emissions.

The recently opened Mexico City campus is spearheading the transformation of facilities, having been designed and built with eco-efficient technologies in classrooms, the library, and common areas.

An urgent task

The 2025 Sustainability and Climate Change Plan, presented this past April, lays out a path for the Tec and its community, as a comprehensive strategy in which the institution will establish a proactive culture to tackle the climate emergency. This will be reflected in the generation of ideas and technologies, as well as high impact actions that promote the formation of leaders committed to forging a sustainable future.

On August 9, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented its latest report on the consequences of the climate crisis, which the United Nations has dubbed a code red for global warming.

In an interview with Tec Review, Inés Sáenz Negrete offers more details about the institutional commitments the university and its community are undertaking to join the fight against climate change.

Inés Sáenz Negrete, Vice President of Inclusion, Social Impact and Sustainability at Tecnológico de Monterrey. (Photo: Alejandro Salazar)

A plan for the planet by 2025

Why is it important to heed this environmental warning?

It’s not (only) important, it’s imperative to join forces to curb the effects of the rising temperatures we’re experiencing across the world that increase the frequency and devastating impact of meteorological phenomena.

I feel a lot of pride and commitment when I say that the Tec is joining this effort, which is something all people and organizations should do. We want to be a sustainable institution and above all adopt a proactive culture to tackle the climate emergency.

What is the 2025 Sustainability and Climate Change Plan?

It’s a very ambitious, demanding, and rigorous plan that consists of six axes of action: Culture, Mitigation, Adaptation, Education, Research, and Outreach.

There’s a very big commitment from our president (Rector David Garza). This Plan is a priority for the institution.

Our objective is on the one hand mitigation, i.e. to reduce our ecological footprint, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce and sustainably manage waste, and employ a circular strategy for water use.

This plan involves adaptation, the way in which we make campuses resilient to the onslaught of the climate crisis, as well as education, something intangible but lasting, in which we commit to training students and faculty at Tecnológico de Monterrey to be able to tackle the great complexity of the climate crisis and transform the world towards sustainable development.

We promote research from an interdisciplinary perspective to provide systemic solutions that fully address the complexity of climate change and enable sustainable development.

We also know that it’s very important to reach out and put our academic, scientific, and technological capacities at the service of society, to promote the acceleration of processes towards sustainability in a tangible way in communities and in people’s lives.

To this end, we’ve formed various partnerships (with other universities, governments, social organizations, and companies) to have a larger and stronger effect. We also participate in international conferences on the subject.

This past June, Tec de Monterrey, together with 45 leading universities around the world, committed to continue implementing programs and actions to further sustainability, which we all agreed upon when signing the Hamburg Declaration 2021, released at the Global University Leaders Council 2021 Hamburg (GUC Hamburg).

The axis at the heart of the plan is culture, the most difficult thing to change. We look to develop a culture of sustainability and need to make abrupt modifications. Changing our habits as an institution will be uncomfortable, but necessary.

As an institution, we look to move towards a much more austere culture in the use of resources, in our ways of working.

(Photo: Abigaíl Guzmán Tamez)

What sustainability projects have already been started on campuses?

We’re committed to being carbon neutral by 2040, i.e. 80% of our energy will come from renewable sources.

We’re working on a comprehensive waste management strategy, creating a fund for climate change research, and adapting our syllabuses to teach climate change courses.

We’re about to undertake climate risk diagnoses so that we’ll know specifically what our vulnerabilities are and come up with strategies for each campus.

What role will each participant play?

Our students are very active. There are student associations that are very productive.

I’m sure that there’ll be more student groups. The number of activists working on these issues will grow, and our students will become more and more sensitive to the issue of sustainability.

That’s why the culture of sustainability is very important in our plan. It answers questions like, “How do we choose our suppliers?” “How are our events held?” “What do our cafeterias look like?”

It’s a topic that cuts across the university as a whole, and we want our students, faculty, researchers, and staff to take that culture home with them.

The planet’s future is here in the present. With our actions today, we can ensure a future for the planet, and Tec de Monterrey is assuming that responsibility and that co-responsibility of trying to ensure a future for the planet.