The University has been selected to receive a National Wildlife Federation Campus Ecology Recognition award for its successful initiative to power the EMU on wind energy.
In the April 2005 ASUO primary election, students voted 1,150 to 277 on a ballot initiative in favor of paying up to $2 per year per student for sustainability projects. As a result, the EMU became wind-powered on Earth Day.
As a former member of the Sustainability Committee, a sub-committee of the EMU Board, ASUO Student Senate President Stephanie Erickson worked on the initiative with University Sustainability Coordinator Steve Mital and two other students, Megan Edgar and Yoko Silk, who have since graduated.
“They were able to convince the administration and the students to get behind this,” said Kristy Jones, manager of campus climate education and action for the National Wildlife Federation. “That’s really an achievement.”
Wind power is more environmentally friendly than other types of electricity because it does not generate waste or pollution, and it does not deplete the finite supply of natural resources such as coal, oil or natural gas, according to the Eugene Water and Electric Board Web site.
The University contracts with EWEB for its wind power, which comes from a wind farm in southeastern Wyoming, according to the EWEB Web site.
For the EMU to run purely on wind power, it would have to have a turbine on or near the building. Instead, the wind power that the EMU uses is heavily diluted with other types of electricity – coal, gas fire, nuclear and hydroelectric, which use the same grid. This energy grid runs through 10 Western states, connecting the Wyoming wind farm to the University.
“In reality, where the electrons in the EMU originate could be anywhere in the grid,” Mital said.
The extra money University students pay means there is more financial support for wind power in general, Mital said, and therefore a greater likelihood that wind power will become affordable and more widely used.
“People are only going to build wind farms if there are other people willing to pay for it,” Mital said.
As a token of its support for wind power, the EMU will receive a “green tag” from EWEB. This will be framed and hung in the EMU sometime during the school year, Mital said.
University Utilities Analyst Josh Ruddick said that without wind power, the EMU’s electric bill averages $110,000 per year. The wind power adds an extra $11,400.
Because of a lower-than-expected price from EWEB, there is a $25,000 surplus from this year’s fee collections, which will be used to establish a fund for future sustainability projects, Erickson said.
“That was the idea. We’d start wind-power in the EMU, then migrate to the rec center and other buildings on campus,” Erickson said.
Another possibility, Erickson said, is that the University might construct its own wind turbine on the Oregon Coast sometime in the future. Oregon State University is currently researching something similar, she said. A group called Energy Conservation and Alternative Futures is being formed to work on these possibilities, and it will include University students and faculty members.
Jones was impressed with the University’s involvement with EWEB.
“They kind of brought it into the local community, encouraging other businesses to do this,” Jones said.
Jones said colleges and universities are eligible for this recognition if they set short- and long-term goals to make the school more ecologically sustainable, work to achieve those goals, report on their progress and ultimately achieve at least one of their goals during a school year.
Of the more than 200 universities that are members of the National Wildlife Federation, 15 applied for recognition and 12 received recognition for the 2004-05 school year. Other recognized projects involved habitat restoration and transportation issues. These projects and others are listed in the Federation’s Campus Ecology Yearbook. The University was included in the 2000, 2001 and 2004 editions of this yearbook for projects involving waste reduction, habitat restoration and a Web site about campus energy use.

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