A team of students is working to convince University Housing that students in the residence halls want to invest in clean energy instead of more conventional energy such as coal, hydroelectric and nuclear power.
So far, the students have succeeded.
Five undergraduates presented the idea to the Residence Hall Association on Monday to give students living in the residence halls the option to buy wind power for the year at a cost of $8.37 each. The RHA overwhelmingly approved the recommendation, and University Housing will work to implement a system for next fall, RHA President Todd Mann said.
The RHA on Monday voted 14-1-1 to support the wind power proposition, which would buy “green tags” with the money raised by the fees.
Students for Clean Energy Options came up with the idea following a survey of 776 students that found 91 percent supported the wind energy proposal, SCEO member Jenny Bedell-Stiles said.
Rather than a permanent change where University Housing incorporates the tax into its yearly budget, students will have the option every year of investing in wind energy.
Mann said University Housing seems “very willing” to implement the idea.
The four-member team of students is advocating an “opt-out” program, in which students will check a box – likely to be placed in the residence hall housing forms – that shows they don’t want to personally invest in wind energy.
It sounds somewhat like reverse psychology, Bedell-Stiles said, because “opt-out makes it seem like everybody’s doing it. If it seems like they’re a minority … they might not check it.”
Because people are generally not interested in reading about energy policy, Bedell-Stiles said, this program will grab students’ attention and educate them at the same time.
Opt-out programs have historically received greater responses than opt-in ones, she said.
Rather than replacing wind energy with coal or other energy sources, purchasing these “green tags” expands the entire energy grid, making clean energy a larger percentage of the grid, said Steve Mital, the project adviser and University sustainability coordinator for the Department of Environmental Health and Safety. He said that the Eugene Water and Electric Board tracks the amount of energy going through the grid.
Although the “green tags” would be purchased from EWEB, the wind energy would come from the Stateline Wind Energy Center near Touchet, Wash., Bedell-Stiles said.
While it does cost more, investing in wind energy would make it more affordable in the future. Mital said that several universities already invest in wind power, such as Harvard, Evergreen State College in Washington and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
On March 7, the four SCEO members, Bedell-Stiles, Jesse David Jenkins, Hailee Newman and Rosie Sweetman, will travel to California State University, Chico for a sustainability conference to present the idea and promote clean energy in residence halls.
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