An interesting discussion is taking place over at DotEarth, one of our favorite blogs. The post, which discusses students taking their places in the worlds of innovation and activism, mentions Ben Gulak's one-wheeled electric motorcycle, NJIT students capturing exhaust energy, and Manoj Sinha's project to fuel power plants in rural India with rice husks. This is the sort of thing we usually go wild for -- students inventing things! youth speaking out for their planet! capturing energy! -- but commenter Annette Laing makes an important distinction: "For every whizkid, there are a thousand undergrad students doing
half-assed research projects that soon expose a predictable lack of
understanding, knowledge, and maturity. Students doing their own
research is a good idea, but too often, the powers-that-be in higher ed
are endorsing this as a substitute for, not a supplement to,
traditional learning. The denigration of faculty influence is implicit
in this model, and yet faculty are also expected to complete meaningful
research with undergrad involvement. As one chemistry professor (and
excellent teacher) put it to me, it's like having a ball and chain
attached." This piece in the Journal-Tribune about a student experiment with algae illustrates the problem. "The research has not been without a few mishaps. The
algae are native to Columbia, and need to be kept warm, said student
Shannon Folsom. She said that the class had put some containers of
algae on the windowsill, but it got too cold and died. She said that
the class might experiment with algae native to Maine that could
withstand colder temperatures. During
a recent experiment to determine if pumping air into the water makes a
difference in algae growth, the tanks became contaminated, said
Beauchemin, and students were going to sterilize the tanks yesterday
and redo the experiment." This give-and-take is part of the scientific process, and an important thing for students to learn. There are enough university departments working on algae that this is unlikely to handicap the research much, so I doubt that these particular students are any kind of "ball and chain." However, Annette's point is that this kind of curriculum can slow the work that researchers need to do, with no measurable improvement in students' critical thinking skills. While some stellar students, like those profiled in the DotEarth post, are able to take what they're learning in the classroom and synthesize it with their experiments to make some significant breakthroughs, they are the exception rather than the norm. (Which is why there are so many profiles on them: exceptions make for sexy newspaper stories.) So how can curriculum both support student learning and cutting-edge research, particularly in the field of alternative energy? Does your school have a track record of doing this?
In the spring, we alerted you to the Florida legislature's approval of FGCU's solar array, which is expected to cover 19 acres and produce 2MW of electricity for the university. However, to no one's surprise, the project has been delayed by more provincial concerns. Namely, permitting. While officials expect that the missing environmental resource and water use permits will be granted quickly, the clash between even the best-laid plans and bureaucracy is not a new one for universities. "FGCU initially put December as a target date to see the first panels
hit campus, hoping to take advantage of federal tax credits that were
set to expire when the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31. Congress
extended those credits as part of the financial bailout bill, though,
making the back-and-forth permitting process not as stressful. Now, the
university is just waiting for a green light." Here at HQ, we are doing some retrofits -- including test drills for ground-source heating -- to make our building carbon-neutral, and what we've found is that the bidding process is absolutely crucial. Learning to ask the right questions saves a lot of time and headaches. In our specific case, we had much better results by specifying in RFPs that the bidder be familiar
with permitting processes and provide us with solid
examples. By including the permitting in the scope of the work, we headed some of this off at the pass, and ended up going with a project management firm instead of a contractor. Of course, this won't solve every problem, but perhaps is useful as universities move forward with significant sustainability projects. What has your school's experience been? Where have you found unexpected "hurry-up-and-wait" moments? What lessons have you learned from the process?
Our latest issue is live. Here are today's headlines:
Youth Activists Making Their Voices Heard at Climate Talks
Joann Klimkiewicz
At climate talks in Poznan, young delegates from across the world added their voices to
the debate, demanding that the global dialogue be refocused on the survival of
civilizations and ecosystems. Hydrogen: Just a Lot of Hot Gas?
Paul Tolme
Humboldt State’s new hydrogen-powered car and fueling station
are part of a university-led effort to wean America off gasoline. But is
hydrogen the fuel of tomorrow or yesterday’s hype? ClimateEdu goes for a ride to find out.
Service Learning Takes a Climate Approach
Courtney Cochran
A Warren Wilson College project addresses a climate challenge that lies beyond campus, taking advantage of the school's work program and service learning components to help local residents energy-proof their homes. PERSPECTIVE: Recession is the Mother of Invention
Rachel Barge
As legislators make hard cuts to their budgets, education administrators
hunker down on campus spending, particularly when it comes to so-called
“luxury” sustainability programs. To compensate, student organizers and campus
sustainability professionals are turning to new funding sources to implement
vital campus sustainability initiatives. ClimateEdu, published by National Wildlife Federation's Campus Ecology program, offers news, best practice analysis, events, resources, and opportunities for climate leadership on campus. To subscribe to our twice-monthly e-newsletter or read our archives, visit the homepage: ClimateEdu: News for the Green Campus.
As you may have heard, Power Shift is back! We're proud to say that we expect thousands of students from every state to descend onto Washington DC to demand bold federal action on climate change.
This last election, we saw an unprecedented number of young people demanding a new direction for our energy economy – one that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create millions of green jobs and protect wildlife and our natural resources.
We are truly in the middle of a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the direction our country is taking for the better. You can be part of this history, if you register for Power Shift now!
This weekend-long conference gathers students and young activists from all over to discuss, debate and lobby for better climate policies and a shift to a way of life that will repower our country and restore the natural world.
In addition to hearing from speakers like Van Jones and Carol Browner, you and also attend conferences on a host of important ways to save the planet, like lobbying and community organizing. And then there's the chance to be a part of one of the largest youth climate gatherings ever to happen in the country!
Please click here for more information, and to register! See you then!
{Julian's rundown of the best and worst of 2008 was so good we had to repost it here. Add your own nominations in the comments section below.} Campus Highlights and Lessons for the
New Year
 With presidents leading the way, campuses
shifting to solar energy, record level participation in national education
campaigns and students turning out en masse to vote, 2008 was a banner year for
campus sustainability.
To sustain this momentum in the coming
years and achieve real reductions in pollution on campus, however, we will need
more support for faculty and stronger state and federal leadership. Here are our best and worst picks for 2008:
Best:
Presidents Stepped Up
By December 2008, six hundred and five college and university
presidents in every state of the U.S. had signed the American College
and University President's Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). These
courageous leaders committed their institutions to doing what the
world's scientists urge is necessary: achieving climate neutrality by
or before 2050. Although most of these commitments were secured in
2007, the real push to implement the commitment began in 2008 with most
of the signatories submitting greenhouse gas inventories and taking
immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many have also
begun to develop climate action plans, setting target dates and interim
milestones for becoming climate neutral. In the future, the signatories
have agreed to integrate sustainability into the curriculum and to make
their action plans, inventories and progress reports publicly
available. Credit for this outstanding leadership is due to Dr. Anthony
Cortese and his group, Second Nature, as well as to AASHE and
Eco-America, and of course, first and foremost, to the presidents
themselves.
Butte Threw Down the Gauntlet
As she accepted Butte College's grand prize in the 2008 National
Chill Out Competition, President Diana Van Der Ploeg explained, "Our
goal is to be climate neutral by 2010 and I know that is ambitious, but
I think we can do it." The two-year community college in Oroville, CA
announced in 2008 that it had devised a plan to reduce its direct
emissions of carbon dioxide by 100% by 2015 without relying on carbon
credits. Photovoltaic (solar electric) panels, which currently generate
about 28% percent of the campus' electricity needs, will be expanded to
meet all campus electricity needs within the next several years. Butte
is also successfully moving more than a thousand commuters out of their
cars into the largest community college transportation system in
California while integrating sustainability into its curriculum.
Students Voted for Clean Energy
More Millennials (youth, ages 18-29) turned out to vote this year
than anytime since 1972 and it appears that the prospect of clean
energy and green jobs were part of the draw. By election day, the
Energy Action Coalition's Power Vote campaign had generated almost
350,000 pledges from students and other youth who promised to vote and
to hold decision makers at all levels of government accountable for
shifting to clean energy and creating millions of new green jobs. The
number of pledges collected equals about 1/10 of the total increase in
the youth voter turnout in 2008, providing a signal that youth
enthusiasm for clean energy not only translated to votes, but helped
determine the outcome in most of the swing states in the presidential
election.
We Engaged at Record Levels
The higher education community engaged at record levels in national
sustainability initiatives in 2008. According to event organizers'
tallies, 1,365,250 students, faculty and staff at approximately 2,100
college and universities (that's more than half of all colleges and
universities in the country) participated in a range of events focused
on advancing sustainability and climate action. The largest event by
far (and the largest ever of its kind that we know of in the US on
sustainability and climate action) was the Focus the Nation teach-in
(now known as the National Teach-In) held on January 30, 2008 with an
estimated one million participants at 1,900 campuses. Other
record-breakers included the National Campus Chill Out Competition
Earth Day Awards Broadcast (13,550 participants at 330 campuses made it
the largest campus sustainability and climate action awards program in
the U.S.) and the AASHE conference (1,700 participants from 400
campuses made it the largest higher education sustainability conference
held to date and one of the largest campus environmental conferences
held in two decades). If you add the 350,000 pledges collected by the
Energy Action Coalition during Power Vote, involvement levels in 2008
swell to more than 1.7 million.
Worst:
Faculty Not Keeping Pace
While many college presidents have committed their institutions to
bold action to address climate change, few faculty have caught up with
the vision and management of their campuses. A national study, Campus Environment 2008,
conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for
the National Wildlife Federation at 1,068 campuses concluded that
little if any progress has been made in educating students for
sustainability since the study was first conducted in 2001. At only a
minority of schools, for example, have fifty percent or more of the
students taken a course on the basic functions of the earth's natural
systems and even fewer have taken courses on the connection between
human activity and environmental health. Areas such as business,
engineering and teacher education still lag far behind the natural and
physical sciences in offering environmental or sustainability courses
within their disciplines. Part of the reason for this may be that only
a minority of campuses have program to support faculty professional
development on environmental or sustainability topics and an even
smaller minority formally evaluate or recognize how faculty have
integrated sustainability topics into their curriculum. Dr. Jean
MacGregor's Curriculum for the Bioregion Initiative
-based at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington-is one of the
leaders in bringing faculty from multiple institutions together to
develop best practices for educating for sustainability within and
among diverse disciplines.
States Slowed Innovation
While it is important to work towards effective federal legislation
to curb GHG emissions in the U.S., there is much that can be done at
the state level to boost innovation. Unfortunately, many states are
missing these opportunities. According to the U.S. Department of
Energy, as of 2008, only 24 states and the District of Columbia have renewable portfolio standards (RPS)
in place that require power generators to generate a specific
percentage of renewable energy by specific dates. Campus renewable
energy programs in states with strong REPS thrived this year, but their
counterparts in other states were at a comparative disadvantage,
including campuses in states with non-binding standards (Illinois,
Virginia, Vermont and Missouri) and in states with no renewable
portfolio standards at all (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida,
Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan,
Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina,
Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming).
Communities Remained Gridlocked
A handful of campuses all across the U.S., including Colorado
University, the University of Montana, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill and the University of Washington have begun to demonstrate
ways to effectively move students, faculty and staff out of
single-occupant vehicles into more sustainable transit options. The
vast majority of campuses, however, remained gridlocked in 2008. The Campus Environment 2008
study revealed that a select few schools offered free or discounted bus
or public transit passes, carpooling or vanpooling programs, or other
incentives not to drive alone in 2008.As we seek solutions in 2009 and
beyond, Will Toor and Spenser W. Havlick's book, Transportation and Sustainable Campus Communities
(Island Press, 2004) provides an excellent blueprint for developing
greener transportation plans, transit systems, fleets and more and
Toor's article, "The Road Less Traveled," in Walter's Simpson's new
book, The Green Campus: Meeting the Challenge of Sustainability (APPA, 2008) provides additional insights.
Fossil Fuels Reigned
Although the anecdotal evidence of campuses generating clean power
on site or purchasing carbon credits or renewable energy certificates
is mounting, fossil fuels remained by far the dominant source of energy
in 2008. Eighty-six percent of schools generated no renewable energy
on-site in 2008 at all for heating or cooling; less than 8% purchased
renewable energy certificates or carbon credits to promote cleaner
energy from off-site sources; and less than 12% used wind, solar
electricity, biomass or other clean sources on site to generate
electricity. At carma.org, where it is possible to look up college and
university power plants, it is surprising how many campuses, even with
robust and visible sustainability programs, are running plants that
emit comparatively large amounts of greenhouse gases, using coal and
other relatively polluting fuel mixes. Many of these campus plants are
listed as planning to produce similar or greater CO2 output in the
future and none indicated a planned reduction.
To Conclude:
Ultimately, a dramatic collective reduction in campus global warming
pollution was not the headline this year, but we made considerable
progress. Between hundreds of thousands of student pledges to hold
elected officials accountable for clean energy and green jobs, a
massive teach-in on global warming solutions, and hundreds of
presidents' climate commitments, 2008 signaled a wide-spread
understanding that global warming is a real problem, requiring a
willingness to set what seem like nearly impossible goals in order to
quickly cap and begin to reduce concentrations of greenhouse gases in
the earth's atmosphere.
Confucius said, "When it is obvious the goals cannot be reached,
don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps." President Diana Van
Der Ploeg of Butte College and hundreds of other college and university
presidents all across the country have signaled a willingness to do
just that, aiming towards climate neutrality with the hard work ethic
and inventive spirit that represents the best of what we have been and
can be as a nation.
As a warm-up to this year's AASHE conference, I toured Duke University with a group of other sustainability professionals, starting with the swamp.
I imagine most campus visitors don't immediately get dragged out into
the marsh, but the interest on everyone's faces was a visible
reminder that schools aren't just invested in clean energy, but also
in traditional environmental work, such as restoring wetlands. This is particularly true when projects involve students in the process.
The SWAMP (Stream and Wetland Assessment Management Park) project is designed to restore an urban watershed, research several different kinds of wetlands, and purify local water supplies. The work was largely funded by the state of North Carolina because of its positive impact on downstream water quality, with a smaller contribution from the university itself. Students are trained on "real-world restoration techniques, modern hydrologic modeling, and the basic principles of stream, lake, and wetland ecology" as part of their coursework, and they came on the tour with us to answer questions and tell us about the work they've done.
As part of the tour, we also looked at several LEED-Silver campus
buildings, counted bike racks, toured a prototype "smart house," and ate a meal of local food from one of the campus cafes. However, for many people the most memorable part of the day was the morning walk through the woods. One attendee remarked, "I love that students are out here doing the work. That happens at a lot of universities, but not enough. Maybe it needs to be more than just the natural science students."
The idea that students and others on campus need to connect better to their surroundings was a common theme of the conference. Between sessions on eco-literacy, local environmental history projects, campus habitats, and Vandana Shiva's appeal to get people back on the land, almost everybody had something to say.
After Janice Crede started taking small groups of students out to a cabin for a week (no laptops or TVs allowed) for a "Nature Immersion" curriculum she piloted at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, she started seeing results. "We wanted to help students understand a little bit more about their impact on the planet. They have a half-hour biology class each day, then we let them loose to explore the lake, the woods, the bog, before we have some conversations about sustainability and leadership. Everything is outside. We eat dinner by the campfire and stay up too late, and by the end of the week they no longer miss their laptops, and they don’t want to leave."
Surveys and open-ended writing assignments that the students complete before and after the course corroborate Crede's thesis: "What they told me is that they come back and they feel changed in their attitudes, perceptions and behaviors. They feel as if they have a whole new group of people they can relate to."
We are recapping AASHE:
Sustainability on Campus and Beyond as it happens. If you were at the
sessions we're covering, weigh in with your comments below. Or see others'
blogs, photos and Twitter updates on the AASHE live page.
To the surprise of the presenter, Dave Newport of CU-Boulder, this afternoon’s discussion of GHG offsets and Renewable Energy Credits didn’t degenerate into fisticuffs or even a red-faced screaming match. In fact, the discussion was downright welcoming, which is what I’ve come to expect of the attendees of this conference.
Several weeks ago, our feature ClimateEdu article dealt with the different ways that universities and colleges are incorporating renewable energy into their portfolios, whether that’s through installing renewable energy equipment or through purchasing. It’s a touchy issue for most sustainability coordinators, who are intent on conservation, energy efficiency, and on-site generation where possible, but are also coming to terms with the fact that they may not be able to meet their full energy load with such measures. Many schools, in fact, find that they have a large gap to fill, and turn to offset measures to make up the difference.
However, the vagaries of the offset and REC market are still not well understood, even by experts, leading to general suspicion and sometimes outright hostility (which is apparently what Dave Newport expected).
Newport used his own campus as an example as he described the pros and cons of purchasing offsets versus RECs. CU-Boulder, which had been purchasing RECs since 2000 (using funds that students voted to add to their semester fees), switched this year to purchasing offsets through the Colorado Carbon Fund.
Renewable Energy Credits are simply certificates that assure the purchaser that somewhere, a MWh from renewable sources has been produced and fed into the grid. Newport says, “They have some pros, and that’s why we bought them. But we made a mistake, and we oversold them. We told our president that we’re buying wind power, and then when we tried to explain that there’s no big orange extension cord from a wind turbine to our campus, and that actually we don’t know where that energy went to when it got fed into the grid, we caused a lot of problems. We don’t say that anymore.”
While Newport feels that RECs have had their victories, among them increased market demand for renewable energy and the dismantling of some of the geographical barriers to sustainability, the disadvantages of RECs outweigh the benefits. He lists the public perception of REC’s as a ‘sin tax’, the lack of transparency, a poor sense of closure for buyers, and the lack of added value to the initial investment as cons.
Offsets, by contrast, particularly in the community-based model that CU-Boulder is developing, have the potential to not only reduce emissions, but fuel an ongoing movement.
Newport says, “We are focusing on local projects, and doing some of the labor ourselves. You will be able to ride your bike by and see our solar hot water heaters. We have bilingual students going into low-income neighborhoods to help residents weatherize their homes and save some of the energy costs that are disproportionately heavy on them. We’ll have a biomass plant, and new ways to manage transit. All of these things are creating green jobs, keeping local capital local, and are really good for students. And they’re so visible, we get the confidence from investors to keep doing more. It is about reducing carbon, but it’s just as much about improving people’s lives.”
We are recapping AASHE:
Sustainability on Campus and Beyond as it happens. If you were at the
sessions we're covering, weigh in with your comments below. Or see others'
blogs, photos and Twitter updates on the AASHE live page.
In the space of an hour, Vandana Shiva, physicist and agricultural activist, managed to connect the oil and human labor inputs required by modern agriculture, the nutritional deficit of monocrops, the dangers of species loss, the moisture depletion of agro-chemically treated fields, the imbalance of grain that goes to factory farms rather than human mouths, obesity and diabetes, US grain subsidies, biofuels, the 160,000 annual suicides of Indian farmers who are finding the monocrop seeds they purchased won't grow, and the mass exodus of families from heritage land. The coherent case that emerged at the end was simple: "We must get people back on the land."
One of several sustainable food experts that have earned attention in recent years, Shiva is in good company. Michael Pollan, Frances Moore Lappe, and even Jane Goodall have spent years studying the American industrial food systems and come to similar conclusions.
While agricultural yields increased dramatically in the mid-1900's, the soil depletion that has resulted makes farmers even more dependent on intensive chemical fertilizer and water inputs. Not only is this problematic for the farmers who are increasingly sensitive to drought and price fluctuation, but fertilizers based on fossil fuels could very soon become impossible to obtain, if declining oil predictions are correct. The answer, says Shiva, is biodiversity. "The delicacy that small-scale farming requires,
is the delicacy that encourages biodiversity. And biodiversity makes for
healthier food.”
As she spoke, Shiva compared universities—and their status
within their communities—to the recent election, making the case that just as
President-elect Obama will use his advisors to find solutions to the problems facing the nation, "every campus should make its own transition team for food
beyond oil. We can create a food system beyond toxics. Beyond genocide."
In fact, she claimed, food is not only an agricultural issue, but integral to national security and peace. "For me, food is about peace. Peace with nature, peace
between communities, and peace with our own bodies. Because we are at war with
our bodies now, and food has become ammunition."
She went on to say that universities and colleges, who made major strides in the research that based our current agricultural system on fossil-fuel based fertilizers, have a large share of the responsibility for finding a solution."Campuses have a lot of eaters, and a lot of influence in their community. Wouldn't it be exciting if biology classes planted their own biodiversity plots? Why shouldn't edible schoolyards be on every campus?"
Given the intricacies of the global food system, it's no small demand. Shiva’s final comparison drew a laugh from the audience: “Those
guys fiddling with the derivatives that put your economy into this state are
like me, they juggle numbers. But wouldn’t it be amazing if they were juggling
numbers that would make a better system for us?”
Podcast Interview with Vandana
Vandana Shiva: Why Shouldn't Edible Schoolyards Be On Every Campus?
We are recapping AASHE: Sustainability on Campus and Beyond
as it happens. If you were at the sessions we're covering, weigh in
with your comments below. Or see others' blogs, photos and Twitter
updates on the AASHE live page.
Sustainability is rarely defined as a single-entity problem, especially when considering recent economic and political traumas. Gordon Rands of Western Illinois University and Mark Starik of George Washington University argued in one of this morning's sessions that a university's plan for sustainability should be taken far beyond the campus border.
Rands says, "An entity can become sustainable on its own, but it can’t
remain that way." He went on to stress that without a larger context and a fully sustainable climate (environmental or cultural), even the most exciting higher education projects will be unsuccessful.
For example, a green business is unlikely to survive without competitors' willingness to make similar efforts, as their lower costs will cause the eco-minded company to fail. A college, even one running on renewable energy and stable supply systems, could find itself an island without the involvement of the surrounding town. Unless the local channels for food, telecommunications, energy, transportation, medical care, housing, and other provisions are as able to weather a crisis as the university itself, a few wind turbines and even carbon-neutrality will be ultimately meaningless.
Rands and Starik propose, instead, that a holistic view of higher education would work on five levels:
--Ecological: Ensure the viability and environmental-friendliness of the waste systems, products, and energy that support the university.
--Individual: Members of the institution must be invested and participating, whether that's through following a recycling policy, making sustainability knowledge an integral part of the curriculum. or inventing new storage technology for a solar array.
--Organizational: Make sure that your partners support your work, eg. forming strong industrial ecology arrangements or working with your local town for commuting programs.
--Political: Engage in political mechanisms, such as lobbying, trade associations, and media organizations to affect policy and public information.
--Socio-cultural: Use the university's stature in its community to increase the involvement of off-campus citizens and create a broad culture of sustainability.
The idea that a university has an obligation to the wider community is not new, but is usually considered in terms of thought leadership -- research and innovation will eventually trickle down to the populace, even if no direct conversation takes place. However, Rands and Starik suggest that the university itself do more to collaborate with its neighbors, making everyone greener in the process.
Rands says, "This is still on a conceptual basis. At WIU, we've made some operations changes, but that's pretty much it so far. The model, however, started with business and could easily be aimed at government as well. It's just a way to think about all of this."
We are recapping AASHE:
Sustainability on Campus and Beyond as it happens. If you were at the
sessions we're covering, weigh in with your comments below. Or see others'
blogs, photos and Twitter updates on the AASHE live page.
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