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The New Green U
Major Green Initiatives are Sweeping College Campuses
Says E - The Environmental Magazine
There’s a new green force on college campuses, says E – The Environmental Magazine in its March/April 2008 cover story (now posted at: www.emagazine.com). In “Cleaner, Greener U.,” E examines the many facets of the new campus environmental movement that’s being compared to the passionate anti-war and equal rights activism of the 1960s.
“Climate change is our generation’s civil rights movement,” says Brianna Cayo Cotter, communications director for the Energy Action Coalition, which backed PowerShift 2007 at the University of Maryland last November. Drawing over 5,500 students, the event was the largest gathering of college students ever assembled to talk about solutions to global warming, a weekend of non-stop workshops, speakers and rallies. “We’re at a crucial moment in history,” Cotter said. “Climate change is an issue that’s already impacting us, from the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains to the wildfires in California. We get that the steps taken today will end up being the future for tomorrow.”
She is not alone in her enthusiasm. The green movement has become a force to be reckoned with on campuses, says E. Students are demanding changes - energy conservation, waste reduction, sustainable course offerings, organic food choices, and real climate legislation from Congress beyond the campus confines. So far, 497 school presidents have signed the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment, which commits them to implementing a plan to go “carbon neutral” within two years of signing.
While the progress is encouraging, not all are convinced that the green campus movement has arrived yet. As Nina Rizzo, the California Freedom from Oil campus organizer for Global Exchange, says, “The movement is potent, but we’re not there yet. I don't think people are angry enough.”
Michael M'Gonigle, author of Planet U, a professor of environmental law and policy at the University of Victoria and a co-founder of Greenpeace International, agrees that the incremental changes he’s seeing on campuses have yet to resemble the sustained force of 1960s activism. “But the anxiety about climate change is really palpable - students feel it,” he says. “And there’s an overarching social anxiety, something we have to act on... We can do something right here and right now at this institution.”
And students are doing something. In 2001, Pennsylvania State University made the nation’s largest retail purchase of wind energy, buying 75 percent of what two local 24-megawatt wind farms produced annually. In 2005, wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa decided to locate its headquarters in the state, bringing with it 1,000 new jobs. The school had changed the market price for wind in the state, and other schools are following suit. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Green Power Partnership” rankings, Penn State now ranks third among schools for green power purchasing, with 20 percent of its electricity use coming from wind power. Its fellow state school, the University of Pennsylvania is now second, at 29 percent. New York University is number one, with an incredible 100 percent of its electricity use generated by wind.
Smaller schools have jumped in, too. Vermont’s Middlebury College offers the complete package, from its natural landscape design to its fully composted dining hall waste to its “yellow bike” borrowing system for on-campus commutes. The school’s $11 million bio-mass facility is scheduled to open late fall 2008, with the capacity to burn enough wood chips to displace the use of $1 million gallons of fuel oilcutting the school’s fuel needs in half.
Minnesota’s Carleton College is another small liberal arts school with green might, installing its own wind turbine on campus, engaging in “dorm wars” to encourage low energy use, and committing to green building retrofits and composting of all food waste. A similarly focused school, Maine’s College of the Atlantic, has achieved near perfection in its student-led green pursuits, eliminating or offsetting all its greenhouse gas emissions, supporting on-campus watershed preservation and following the highest standards of green building in all new campus structures.
These initiatives are reaching beyond the campus, too, as students begin to realize their collective might. A coalition of students in Virginia has teamed up to fight a new Dominion “clean coal” plant in Wise County, Virginia. “No new coal” has become a battle cry among college greens, particularly those in the Southeast confronted with the devastation of mountaintop removal mining, including polluted water, filthy air and land stripped of life. Ryan Hasty, a junior at Emory and Henry College in southwestern Virginia, who became president of The Greens on his campus last year says, “It’s an old technology, it’s very dirty and it isn't worth sacrificing the health and well-being of those who live near the mine sites and the power plant. Not to mention the destruction of some of the cleanest and most bio-diverse waterways in the world.”
There are changes underway inside the classrooms, too. Duke University has a new Energy and Environment track (combining business and environmental management) that prepares students to remake their worlds in very concrete ways. Erika Lovelace of Duke’s Office of Enrollment says, “The degree prepares you to come up with sustainable ideas to assist local communities.” At the University of Colorado in Boulder, 22-year-old environmental studies major Paul Chase says working environmental education into the broader curriculum is a major campus goal.
It is not only in purchasing wind power, adding bike lanes and greening the cafeteria offerings that these schools do the essential work of curing the nation’s fossil-fuel dependency and other environmental ills. It is in educating students about the importance of creating and supporting a new green economy, in the process turning out leaders. In that respect, the campus sustainability movement is already a resounding success.
Multiple Methods Available to
Produce Reliable, Sustainable Energy
I wish the Pro and Con arguments over our energy future were not so sprinkled with invective. (reference Savannah Morning News Commentary Aug. 2 and recent letters.) I wish there wasn’t such a fear campaign going on about our dependence on Middle East oil. I wish this fear wasn’t being used as a cudgel to batter us into drilling offshore and on as yet untouched areas of the Arctic (which will not produce oil or natural gas for at least five years).
Most of our imported oil comes from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. And while Hugo Chavez likes to poke President Bush in the eye from time to time, he is not about to jeopardize the enormous investments Venezuela has already made in this country.
I find it ironic that a report of a major Georgia Bioenergy Conference in Tifton also appeared in the Aug. 2 edition. A sustainable energy future, based on renewable energy sources within our borders, is not just a theoretical possibility, but a dynamic reality, which will become more apparent in 2007.
While corn-based ethanol gasoline and soybean and rapeseed bio-diesel currently rate the headlines, research in other technologies has gone beyond the laboratory, beyond the pilot facility, into full-scale production. One company is building a 500,000 gallon combined ethanol and biodiesel refinery in North Carolina which can use agricultural and forest waste, as well as food crops, as feed stock.
Three projected wind turbines located well offshore Tybee could supply enough electric energy for over 3,000 homes. Rooftop solar panels on the millions of square feet of warehouses and distribution centers associated with the growth of the port could meet most of the needs of the booming housing developments on the Westside.
By next year utility-strength concentrating solar power fields, using the heat of the sun to generate electricity, will be in production in Arizona, New Mexico, California and Nevada.
Over 1-million geothermal heating and cooling systems have already been installed (though few in Georgia). They can cut electric bills from 35 to 60 percent. Solar hot water heaters can trim over 15 percent.
Animal waste from dairy, poultry and pig farms can be converted into methane gas to produce heat and electricity. Landfills can also be a source of energy. The rivers and streams of America can spin the turbines of micro-hydroelectric plants.
The technologies are already in place. All we need is the political will to implement them. -- Jack Star
Questions? Comments? Email Jack Star
Energy Independence
The first step to energy independence is to reduce consumption. But that means more than just changing air handling filters once a month, checking air pressure in tires, and substituting a dozen compact fluorescent bulbs. Serious reduction in consumption requires some up front investment.
With all the residential construction now ongoing, and plans for thousands of new homes in the coming years, here’s a scenario that leverages a minor investment to obtain a major long-term reduction in energy consumption.
The base plan calls for:
- a well insulated house with a highly efficient heating/airconditioning unit
- lighting fixtures that accommodate fluorescent and compact fluorescent bulbs;
- digital programmable thermostat
- timer for the hot water heater
- Energy Star appliances
- a solar hot water system
- a starter solar electric system (approx. 500 watt)
That adds only $7,500 to $8,000 to the cost of a new home in the $160,000 to $180,000 range. However, the homeowner would also qualify for an income tax credit of over $2,300. So, in real terms, the cost represents an additional 3% to 4% of the base price of the home.
This small investment would yield a cut in the electric bill of 30% for the next 25-30 years. Most homeowners do not live in the same house for that length of time, but these energy efficient investments would be paid back when the house is sold.
Further, while the costs of electricity are projected to increase over time, the cost of solar electric modules will be coming down sharply, allowing the homeowner to add less expensive solar panels in the future and cut energy costs an additional 20% to 30%.
This formula, of an additional 3% to 4% increase in the purchase price, also applies to more expensive homes, resulting in similar savings.
Houses undergoing extensive renovation can also incorporate the basic package. -- Jack Star
Questions? Comments? Email Jack Star
A Green Building Revolution is Hitting Home…and Office,
Reports a Special Issue of E – The Environmental Magazine
The green building movement is starting to make serious progress, reports E – The Environmental Magazine in its January/February 2007 cover story (now posted at www.emagazine.com). Eco-friendly construction is on the rise, from single-family houses and planned communities to schools, hospitals and other large built environments.
Today, five percent of new commercial construction meets standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program (LEED), a voluntary, consensus-based standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. Ten percent of new homes satisfy the federal government’s Energy Star guidelines, meaning they’re nearly one-third more energy-efficient than regulations require.
Still, considering that U.S. buildings put out about a third of the country’s greenhouse gasses, at the rate green building is penetrating the market today it will be many years before we cut emissions by the 70 percent thought necessary to stabilize global climate.
The green building movement expands on the 1970s solar-energy craze, when drastic oil shortages spurred interest in sun-powered homes and President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House (later removed by Ronald Reagan). When oil prices came back down, interest waned. But by the early 1990s, the green building movement took off again, broadening its focus to consider other issues such as the environmental impacts of materials and whether the buildings offer health benefits, according to Alex Wilson, president of Vermont-based BuildingGreen, executive editor of Environmental Building News and author of Your Green Home.
A number of cities around the country, including San Francisco (and neighboring Pleasanton, Berkeley and San Mateo), Boston, Seattle and Scottsdale, Arizona, are leading the way with laws that require new public buildings be green. So far, 54 cities and 23 federal agencies have adopted LEED standards for buildings, says Bill Browning, senior fellow for Rocky Mountain Institute and co-author of Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate.
Obstacles abound. Part of the problem is the resistance to change and refusal by some professionals to learn new methods. And the technology will continue to cost more until economies of scale are realized.
And there are doubters. Some question whether the term “green building” is too easily co-opted for marketing purposes. Some builders, they charge, do little more than erect townhouses that increase urban density rather than build energy-efficient products that are truly lighter on the land. Critics wonder whether efficiency standards, when applied, can be objectively proven to deliver desired results -- such as lower electric bills. Historic preservationists bristle at a perceived bias toward new edifices thrown up at the expense of older buildings that could instead by sustainably retrofitted while maintaining the character of a community.
Buildings are definitely energy hogs. While the SUV is the environmental bad-boy symbol, buildings consume far more energy than cars and trucks. It’s estimated that commercial and residential buildings in the U.S. consume 65 percent of all electricity, as well as 12 percent of drinkable water and 40 percent of all raw materials.
“I believe that buildings are the worst thing that people do to the environment,” says Rob Watson, former senior scientist at Natural Resources Defense Council. “We don't associate the fact that when we turn on a light switch, coal is mined in a mine. It goes to a power plant that comes up the stack as acid rain producing sulfur dioxide, planet-cooking carbon dioxide.”
“The new green building movement arises from the realization that we can't go on living as we have in the past: that treating the environment in general and energy in particular as afterthoughts no longer makes sense,” says author Bill McKibben. He was marking last October’s opening of the 46-story glass-and-steel Hearst Tower in New York City. The building required 20 percent less steel than a conventional skyscraper and is made of 90 percent recycled material. Sensors there switch off lights when no one is in a room. “They’re sensible, cost-effective, obvious [measures],” McKibben said. “Someday they'll be code. But for now they’re noble, pioneering examples.”
Big turnout for Earth Day
The annual Georgia Power/LEPC Recycle Rama launched the day with a drive through recycling center where folks rid themselves of paint, motor oil, batteries, cell phones, printer cartridges, aluminum, metals, tires, newspapers, magazines and eyeglasses, all re-usable by someone, all potentially harmful to be tossed out.
Computers, clothing and furniture were donated to Goodwill.
Throngs of happy visitors strolled through the sparkling sun-and-cloud dappled grass of the park. More than 80 exhibitors offered advice, fun and games, including Louis the Light Bug, Frisbee Dogs and Birds of Prey.
Lots of people dropped by the SavannahBest.Com booth and the booth of SolarSavannah.Com, which SavannahBest sponsors. A number of them wondered if there couldn’t be a group organized to meet periodically to discuss alternate energy sources, solar possibilities and earth-friendly topics. Pursuing this, SavannahBest is requesting anyone interested in forming or attending such a group to email cimastar@savannahbest.com and we’ll get it started!
Questions? Comments? Email Jack Star
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