The Environment Protection Agency announced its top 20 colleges and universities for using green power last month, and the University didn’t make the list.
Oregon State University, meanwhile, was ranked No. 4.
The evaluation criteria the EPA used were purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates, on-campus electricity production and additional green power products. OSU ranked high on the list because it uses energy certificates to purchase 75 percent of its power; the University does not purchase them at all.
RECs are units of electricity a campus purchases through its electric company that are later invested in green energy that doesn’t use fossil fuels.
Steve Mital, sustainability director at the University, said the University doesn’t purchase the certificates because the Eugene Water and Electric Board, which provides campus with power, uses almost entirely green power. Coal and natural gas, the only fossil fuels it uses, makes up 5 percent of EWEB’s electricity, and. EWEB generates most of its energy using hydropower.
For this reason, Mital said, the University decided to this year invest its money in carbon offset programs for the first time.
In a carbon offset investment, the University pays money to a private company that spends the money to clean up another area of the world. Examples include removing methane from a dump or making a coal plant reduce its carbon output.
The amount of carbon in that atmosphere reduced by the private company gets reported to the University, and the University can subtract the amount from its own carbon footprint.
Mital said the Student Sustainability Fund, which receives its money from the ASUO, has recommended the University purchase $7,000 in carbon offsets to offset the carbon production of the EMU. The administration will ultimately decide whether to purchase the offsets; thus far the EMU proposal is the only offset purchase in the works.
University sophomore Matt Bickers said he thinks the plan is a good one. Eugene and the University are already pretty green, he said, and it’s good to help other areas achieve the same goal.
“I think it’s good that the University is taking action to reduce its carbon impact,” he said.
The University may not need to purchase RECs to be sustainable, but it isn’t matching other universities when it comes to on-campus energy production, either.
Lillis Business Complex has a solar power system that has a maximum capacity of 44 kilowatt hours. That helps run the building, but it is not a significant portion of campus electricity use.
OSU, on the other hand, is in the process of building an energy center that will produce 50 percent of the power the campus in Corvallis needs to run – a huge difference from what the University can produce with its solar panels on Lillis, the EMU and the Student Recreational Center.
Some people on campus have doubts even about green energy. Zach Lazar, undergraduate coordinator for the Romance Languages department, said he sees a few cons to wind power, which EWEB uses.
Wind turbines are still a scar on the environment, produce significant noise and are visually unappealing, he said. Lazar would rather see energy production move toward more uses of biomass.
Mital said energy production is indeed moving forward. Wave energy may be the next big step in Oregon, he said, noting that OSU is leading the Oregon University System in research on that subject.
“There’s a lot of hope for it,” he said of wave power, “but there’s a lot of hurdles to get over.”
Mital noted that whether universities are investing in carbon offset, buying RECs or producing energy on campus, they all want the same result.
“The overall goal that all these universities share,” he said, “is to reduce their environmental footprint.”
[email protected]
UO green with envy
Daily Emerald
February 5, 2009
0
More to Discover