economy

College campuses are microcosmic. They have long served as institutes of higher education, but also as environments of change and innovation where the free exchange of ideas and influences are encouraged. College campuses are simply primed for social, political, economic, and now environmental experimentation. They can demonstrate efforts in these areas with the potential to extend to larger communities. Whether they succeed is another matter entirely. But either way, their attempts show us where we can go – what we can achieve.

Within the context of energy sustainability, many college campuses are well on their way to this goal, pioneering novel systems design or implementing local sources of renewable energy. And that brings us to the geothermal energy system project currently underway at Missouri University of Science and Technology, giving yet another example of how economic energy efficiency can be. Covered in a recent environmentalLEADER article, this new energy system is predicted to cut the annual campus energy consumption in half. According to Missouri S&T’s project website, the system will also reduce CO₂ emissions by 25,000 tons per year and save 8,000,00 gallons of water per year – not to mention the economic incentive of saving and estimated $1 million in energy costs and operations annually.

To be completed by 2014, the project will replace the existing coal and woodchip fueled steam plant that provides campus buildings with heating and cooling services. Approximately 600 wells will be drilled, connected by an underground system of pipes that will create a larger closed loop system. This network of pipes will link the three planned geothermal plants on Missouri S&T’s campus. Each of these plants will be equipped with heat pump chillers, supplemental cooling towers, and gas-fired boilers.

Of course, Missouri S&T is not the only university that uses a steam plant to heat entire college campuses. Here at the University of Idaho, a biomass fueled steam plant provides 63 buildings on campus with heating services.

In contrast to Missouri S&T’s progress, UI replaced their coal, natural gas, and diesel based system with biomass. While 90 percent of the required steam in produced by burning biomass, natural gas is still used as a backup. The majority of the biomass supply is primarily cedar chip wood waste from the regional sawmills. According to the university website, these saw mills actually own their timberlands. The wood is produced, processed, and the ensuing waste recycled entirely in state – making it a sustainable supply. This fuel choice, like Missouri S&T, was also influenced by cost. Woodchips are about one-third the cost of natural gas and save UI over $1.5 million annually.....

Maybe. From my seat as a journalism and environmental science student at the University of Idaho, things are not looking too great for wind power. While the wind energy industry has seemingly flourished here in parts of the Pacific Northwest (as seen in Beyond the Light Switch’s wind segment), with wind turbines populating once vacant stretches of land, a recent article in The Denver Post revealed that developments like this might come to a crashing halt.

The increased production and assembly of wind turbines in the U.S. over the past 10 years are partially the result of production tax incentives (PTC), a program whose future may be in jeopardy.

Created under the Environmental Policy Act of 1992, PTC has promoted growth in renewable energy industries and supplied many Americans with jobs in sustainability-related areas. PTCs currently offer a 2.1 cents/ kilowatt-hour tax credit to qualified wind industries and other renewable energies like biomass, hydroelectric, and geothermal – with the U.S. currently sporting a total of 38 states with utility-scale wind turbines. The PTC program is currently up for renewal, but deliberations in Congress may tie it up for good. The Denver Post reported that the $1.4 billion program (extended over 10 years) has already failed three times in the Senate.

Here Allison Sherry of The Denver Post quotes U.S. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, "It's nuts…it's like Congress will get around to it when Congress is ready to work on it, but that's cold comfort for people getting laid off across the country and the state of Colorado." Sherry adds that cutting this program now would be way more damaging than it would have been 10 years ago because of the industry’s recent and rapid growth. But opponents of the program’s renewal are less sympathetic...

 A February article from The Wall Street Journal offered an example of such wind-opposing sentiment here, “The wind industry simply cannot continue to rely on the American taxpayer," said Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), who is currently pushing a bill that would cut many energy-related credits from the tax code. "Each time it comes up to a year of expiration, they say, 'If we just get a few more years our technology will mature and we will become more competitive.' It's time for them to figure out how to do that."

Director of Stanford University Atmosphere and Energy Program Mark Z. Jacobsen’s response to this issue is related more to the health benefits of switching to renewable energy sources versus fossil fuels. A Beyond the Light Switch video interview posed the following question to Jacobson: “If energy from renewables is going to be more expensive, why should we consider our energy mix at all?” Jacobson answered, “This is a really twisted incentive system where we pay people to cause environmental damage, and so as a result they can freeload off the health of our citizens. And at the same time we complain about giving subsidies to renewable energy industries that are effectively eliminating those air pollution health problems and deaths.”

DETROIT, December 21, 2011 – The Columbia University Journalism School has awarded Detroit Public Television’s groundbreaking documentary Beyond The Light Switch an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award.  Produced in partnership with Scientific American magazine and aired around the country, the production took a new, in-depth look at the controversy and urgency surrounding the challenge of developing a new infrastructure for electricity in the United States. 

For 70 years, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards have recognized excellence in broadcast journalism. Regarded today as the most prestigious prize in broadcast news, the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes, the duPont-Columbia Awards bring the best in broadcast and digital journalism to professional and public attention and honor those who produce it. The duPont-Columbia Awards engender a collective spirit for the industry and inform the public of the contributions news organizations make to their communities and to the world. 

The two-hour documentary premiered nationally in April, 2011 and was seen in all 20 Top broadcast markets as well as in 92 percent of the Top 50 domestic markets.  It has been available to one hundred million households in the U.S. and has been broadcast nearly 2500 times on public television.  The two hour broadcast has also generated more than 100 hours of video assets that have been featured around the web.

Produced by Detroit Public Television’s Ed Moore and guided by an independent advisory panel convened by the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Beyond The Light Switch is hosted by David Biello, energy and environment associate editor at Scientific American.  He takes viewers to a first-of-its-kind coal plant in West Virginia, gas wells in Pennsylvania and Texas, inside a nuclear reactor under construction in Tennessee, to wind farms along the Hood River Valley in Oregon and to the shores of Cape Cod, among other places around the country that showcase the options for our energy future.

“This award is the highest level of recognition for the professionals who completed this project and our organization’s commitment to exploring the issues most important to our community and country,” said Rich Homberg, President and General Manager of Detroit Public Television.  “We hope this will allow even more Americans to be exposed to the balanced perspective in Beyond The Light Switch to prepare our country to face a challenge more critical than anything since healthcare."