UB Energy Officer Outlines What Needs to be Done to Make College Campuses More Sustainable

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Thirty-three years after the first Earth Day was celebrated in April 1970, the energy officer at a university that has led the move toward sustainable campuses has issued a "to-do list" for institutions of higher education in order to make further progress toward the "green campus."

Walter Simpson, energy officer at the University at Buffalo, says that "institutions of higher learning have a special obligation to address the looming environmental crisis whose most threatening dimension is global climate change, driven by wasteful fossil fuel use.

"To stop global warming, we need deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, which can be achieved only by switching to clean, renewable sources of power," Simpson notes in an article in the April issue of Planning for Higher Education, the journal of the Society of College and University Planning.

"Talk of campus environmental sustainability," he adds, "is deceptive if it does not acknowledge this essential energy challenge."

Simpson's article demonstrates how successful energy-conservation programs can operate by detailing some of the ways that UB successfully has tackled campus energy issues. These include:

o Aggressively promoting energy-conservation measures and projects to achieve savings so significant that they offset the energy costs of new buildings. UB, for example, constructed six new buildings in the late 1980s, increasing the square footage of its North (Amherst) Campus by 20 percent without increasing its energy costs by a dime.

o Utilizing an energy services company (ESCO) to implement energy-conservation projects at a faster rate than can be done in-house. At UB, an ESCO project including lighting retrofits, energy-management-system upgrades and many other conservation measures was completed at essentially no cost since the $17 million project paid for itself over time through energy savings. The project cut emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide by 15 percent.

o Implementation of a "green computing" policy to address the campus energy costs of the tech revolution, which at UB amount to $600,000 to $700,000 annually. If allowed to run 24 hours a day, one average desktop computer system, Simpson points out, will use 1,300 kilowatt hours per year, which translates into $100 a year in energy costs and the equivalent of burning more than 1,000 pounds of coal or 100 gallons of oil.

o Choosing clean green power. UB's recent decision to purchase wind power has made it New York State's largest purchaser of wind power.

o Giving campuses a central information source for news and discussion about campus environmental problems, such as the UB Green Web site, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ubgreen.

While highlighting what UB has accomplished in energy conservation, Simpson's article also identifies areas that all colleges and universities should be addressing, such as:

o Prioritizing conservation efforts to focus on campus "energy pigs," which is what Simpson calls the most wasteful, energy-intensive facilities, such as buildings with laboratory fume-hood ventilation systems.

o Resisting the temptation to buy cheap, dirty energy that only lowers costs while forgetting about energy conservation, which lowers utility costs and benefits the environment.

o Creating policies that establish energy conservation and the transition to renewable energy resources as institutional priorities.

o Raising awareness about energy costs, using simple methods, such as posting signs in building lobbies that state how many energy dollars a year it takes to run that building, causing people to start thinking about the cost of energy where they live or work.

o Stemming the excessively wasteful activities seen in dorm rooms and apartments by making students who live on campus pay for the energy they use.

"Stories abound about students who live in dormitories and campus apartments leaving computers, stereos, TVs and every other electrical gadget they own turned on for 24 hours a day," Simpson adds. "Nothing will induce behavior change better than to charge residents for the energy they use."

Most on-campus housing in the U.S. requires that students pay a flat rate since energy costs are included in their rent. "Such an arrangement is a mistake because it provides no incentive to conserve energy," Simpson says.