Sustainability
In 2009, this university pledged to do the seemingly impossible — become a carbon-neutral institution by 2050. That is, this university seeks to offset its carbon emissions output through countermeasures and emissions reductions and shrink its footprint to zero in 40 years.
For a university of this size, achieving carbon neutrality would be an amazing — almost unbelievable — accomplishment. We’re a community of more than 46,000 students, faculty and staff. This university’s resources provide many of us with housing, food, classrooms and labs, public transportation and parking spaces. As part of the Big Ten, our athletes travel as far as the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to compete.
This university estimates that emissions per capita were at 6.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide in the 2014 Sustainability Progress Report. Multiply that by the entire campus, and that’s a lot of emissions.
Carbon neutrality is almost certainly an ambitious goal, one that this university has made significant progress toward in the past six years. We hit our first milestone — reducing emissions by 15 percent from 2005 levels — in 2012. This university has hit the “low-hanging fruit,” as Student Government Association Student Sustainability Committee Director Ori Gutin put it, with recycling initiatives, waste-water management, composting and more.
While these tactics have helped get us to our current levels, this university is still 7 percent off its goal of reducing emissions from 2005 levels by 25 percent in 2015. And unfortunately, the solution is bigger than just turning off the lights and carpooling. Energy use continues to hamper efforts to reduce emissions, and university officials are approaching an opportunity to make a significant change.
In 2019, the lease for this university’s power plant on Route 1 will be up for renewal. Unlike most other sources of emissions, the power plant’s output had actually increased 1.5 percent by 2013 over 2005. The SGA’s Student Sustainability Committee is one of the voices calling for this university to consider alternative options when deciding whether to renew the lease.
And the half of campus that isn’t powered by the plant gets its energy from purchased sources, which university President Wallace Loh has pledged to make entirely renewable by 2020 — another ambitious goal brought on by campus discussion.
This editorial board applauds university officials for wanting to set environmentally conscious goals and listening to this campus’s community. But intentions aren’t the same as action, and it’s unlikely the university can fulfill both promises.
For one, discontinuing the power plant lease would increase reliance on purchased energy. About 20 percent of the purchased electricity comes from renewable sources. Increasing that amount by 80 percent is not only difficult, but also impossible if this university eliminates the power plant in 2019. As noted in the 2014 Sustainability Progress Report, increased campus power plant efficiency was a large part of the reason this university was able to decrease emissions linked to purchased electricity by 15 percent.
Energy conservation is also quite expensive. The report indicates that officials spent $25 million on energy saving measures for campus buildings since 2008. Solar and wind energy generation is also very expensive to install — consider the 2,632 solar panels this university has at the Severn Solar Array. The university was able to purchase them with a $630,000 grant and an agreement with Washington Gas Energy Services. But paying for more, with this university’s budget cuts and development freeze and the state’s fiscal climate, make it unlikely funding for similar projects is in reach.
This editorial board isn’t saying these goals are unreachable. In fact, we support every effort to create a more sustainable community. But we should be wary of promising too much too fast. Perhaps a more reasonable progression of events would be to focus on meeting one goal before the other — focus on transitioning to renewable purchased energy before cutting ties with the power plant. In the meantime, a shorter lease for the plant could buy time.
We should all do our part toward reaching carbon neutrality, but let’s make sure we’re not creating more challenges in the process.
