Ideas for Cornell posted by Ian Tse
Long term goals:
- All (significant percentage) of energy used on campus be from renewable sources: Solar Decathalon team has done extensive research on the use of photo-voltaic for powering buildings and believes it is the way to go. They have calculated that for their 2000 sq ft model house, a simple payback period of 10-12 years was possible. How this translates to larger buildings is not immediately obvious, but we should definately promote PV installations on campus as a long term energy solution. CUSD has also had great success implementing solar thermal heating units for buildings. Solar thermal is the process by which the heat from solar radiation is captured and transfered to heating water and air in buildings. Solar thermal could potentially save a lot of energy currently dedicated to heat generation. Wind energy was also a topic of discussion during the meetings. Although Cornell has suspended its efforts to build a wind farm to generate energy for campus consumption, efforts have been made by Kyoto NOW! to establish a renewable energy fund that would go towards either the purchase of green energy or to funding the establishment of a local wind project. Efforts are currently underway to secure a method of funding.
- Greening the dorms: The new West Campus dorm buildings are using approximately four times as much energy as the old Class Halls. This is a disturbing statistic especially when we consider the fact that these buildings are getting certified as "Green Buildings." While the design of the unfinished buildings cannot be changed now, we can promote increased energy conservation in these and all dorms on campus. If we can establish some type of conservation awareness program in which each dorm building competes against each other to see which building can conserve the most energy per resident. In addition, efforts to educate students about conservation through powering down unused computers, using compact fluorescents, recycling, and water conservation can be facilitated through this kind of competition.
- Computer Sleep Policy: Many of the computers in the many CIT labs across campus have a very energy inefficient sleep policy. Many computers are kept on for 24 hours and not allowed to fully go into sleep mode. This policy, as explained by a representative from ESW, is used so that computers will be quicker coming out of hibernation. So, if these computers are left on for such an extended period of time without being put to sleep, the computers are wasting energy and computing power for the sake of negligable time savings. If CIT will not change this sleep policy, we would like to see them plug these computers into what is called a world community grid. The idea is that when your computer is idle, a downloaded software will automatically download a piece of a larger problem and works on calculating it while your computer is not being used by you, its owner. Since the computers at CIT will not go to sleep and are idle 24/7, they might as well be using their computer power to try and help humanity. Please read about this awesome project on the world community grid website:
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/
- More is to come....
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4 comments:
Good luck with your efforts-- hopefully, persistence will pay off.
Maybe it would be helpful to let folks know what some other colleges and universities are doing. See, e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency's Top 10 list of colleges buying green power. Some prestigious names in there--Penn, Harvard, Duke . . .
Also, readers who wish to buy wind power to cover their own energy needs can do so. If you don't feel that you can afford to go 100% wind, a very inexpensive option is to buy 10% or 20%. For the average household, the cost will be 5-10 cents a day . . .
For info on green power suppliers, see "Your Electric Choices" at www.green-e.org.
Regards,
Thomas O. Gray
American Wind Energy Association
www.awea.org
www.ifnotwind.org
Hello Energy Team,
I'm glad this focus group has been created in the blog. Check out the comment by the representative from American Wind Energy Association. It relates to an effort we have just begun in the Hub, but which was not mentioned during the Visioning Meeting.
In the Hub, the new Energy Team is planning to get students living in residence halls, fraternities, sororities, and apartments to offset their greenhouse gas emissions through a Green-e certified company. This should go under the items for the Master Plan because one idea is that students be allowed to Bursar their payment for the carbon offset on a monthly or yearly basis.
Next week, during Hub meeting, the Energy Team will meet to discuss outreach efforts and a strategy to get the Bursar option. So far, there are two rooms in Ecology House that have used the Carbon Fund to offset their emissions. If we get 30-50% of students doing this by the end of the academic year, we'll have offset nearly that percentage from residential activity (since an individual offset is 10 tons of CO2, the national average per individual).
You can offset your emissions today by going to www.carbonfund.org or choosing another carbon offset company at www.green-e.org.
Remember to put this idea for the plan.
Thanks!
Carlos Rymer
Outreach Coordinator
Sustainability Hub
Hello Energy Team,
Phil and I met last Wednesday to talk about outreach efforts. We agreed that it would be good to begin getting the message out about our Carbon Offsets Initiative and sign up students. Phil is looking into the list of
offset organizations to see which one is the most inexpensive.
I have written a letter addressed to RHD's and/or RA's (check below). We should schedule events for every other week (discussions or global warming films) that will aim at convincing students to offset their emissions. At each event, we will have laptops available for students to offset their greenhouse gas emissions at that moment (we probably will need a waiver form or something to avoid future problems). I have a film titled "Global Warming: What You Need to Know," and I'm sure there are many other films about global warming that we can show (some are available at libraries).
I'm also going to receive "An Inconvenient Truth" by late October (an early version is coming out for the Student Sierra Coalition).
What we need to do now is send an e-mail to RA's or RHD's requesting them to send information about our initiative and carbon offsets to their residence hall listservs. We also need to ask for permission to hold an event in their residence hall (one residence hall every two weeks looks like a good rate). Here's a link for the program Houses with contact
information (RA's are always looking for programs, so let's contact them). Please take the responsibility to contact one or more RA's or RHD's (use the letter below if you'd like).
http://www.housing.cornell.edu/housing_residential/program_houses.asp
We can also organize film events at RPCC. The two links below are a form to request space and a guide for reservations. We need to request a room at least 1 week before the event, but we have time to do it. Perhaps doing this 2-3 times per semester would add well to the residence hall efforts.
Check the links below.
http://r25.sas.cornell.edu/wv4/wv4_servlet/urd/run/wv_event.DayList?evdt=20060914,evfilter=172,ebdviewmode=grid
http://housing.cornell.edu/docs/cc_reservation_booklet_web_student_06.pdf
Finally, we need to keep a record of how many students are doing it. If you have already signed up to offset your emissions (www.carbonfund.org is
excellent), please let me know and I'll keep a record. We need to
distribute flyers about these events once we let RA's know what dates we're doing each event for each residence hall. We can also post on sustainability boards and through listservs to get good turnouts.
Please volunteer to help. These first steps are very important. Let's begin by getting some students to sign up. If we build up enough support, we can try for a Bursar option. Let's make residential life carbon-free at
Cornell!
Thanks!
Carlos Rymer
Outreach/Energy Coordinator
Sustainability Hub
From: Energy Team, Sustainability Hub
To: Resident Advisors or Residence Hall Directors
Dear Residence Hall Representative,
We are writing to inform you that the Sustainability Hub, a student
organization working to promote campus sustainability and foster group collaboration, has just initiated a new educational effort. Our Carbon Offsets Initiative aims to educate Cornell students about the science,
effects, and solutions to global warming. Our ultimate goal is to convince many students living on or off campus to offset their greenhouse gas emissions through any of the Green-e certified organizations.
Green-e certified organizations set up reforestation, renewable energy, and energy efficiency projects to offset the carbon dioxide emissions of individuals, houses, buildings, and businesses. They are strictly regulated and are required to offset the exact amount of carbon dioxide
emissions agreed upon by the contributor. In general, most businesses and individuals who decide to offset (that is, eliminate) their carbon dioxide
emissions choose one of various organizations, all of which are listed at www.green-e.org.
We are requesting your permission for the Sustainability Hub to hold an event in your residence hall on a date to be chosen. The event will
consist of either a discussion about global warming, a presentation about the issue, or a film (such as An Inconvenient Truth or Global Warming:
What You Need to Know). We are also requesting permission to set up laptops to allow students to directly offset their carbon dioxide emissions. This will allow us to get as many students to offset their emissions after hearing about the issue.
Finally, we would like you to send out this message to your hall's
listserv. We advise that students use the Carbon Fund
(www.carbonfund.org), which can offset 10 tons of carbon dioxide (about the national average for one individual) for $4.58 per month. Go to the link below to do it now:
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=5419
If roommates split up the charge (which may not always be necessary), it would be $2.29 per individual per month for those interested in doing it. We would like students to let the Sustainability Hub know that they are offsetting their emissions by contacting Carlos Rymer at
cmr55@cornell.edu. If any student has a question about how this works or how to sign up, please also contact Carlos at cmr55@cornell.edu.
After signing up, students receive a certificate by mail or e-mail within a few days. We recommend that students place these certificates on their doors to encourage others to do the same. We have created a name for rooms
that choose to do this: Green Rooms. We hope that you are willing to help us in this effort. If we can get about 50-80% of students living in residence halls signed up by the end of the academic year, we may achieve
carbon-neutrality. Continued outreach and advertisement will need to occur to ensure that new students continue this effort (this will maintain residence halls carbon-neutral for a longer time).
We hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely Yours,
Sustainability Hub
Hello,
I agree with the idea that Cornell can pay to offset it's greenhouse gas emissions if it doesn't have other options (there might be some options in the table, though). In the case that there are not many options to reduce greenhouse gases other than energy efficiency, Cornell can pay about $1.65 million per year to be carbon-neutral.
Currently, Cornell emits about 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. At a fixed price of $5.50 per ton (it will be a lot lower for Cornell because this would require a bigger project), 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide * $5.50 per ton of carbon dioxide would equal $1.65 million. With a student population of about 20,000 and a staff + faculty population of 13,800, each individual can pay about $48.80 per year to come up with the necessary sum.
If Cornell matches half of the cost from its budget, each individual would only pay $24.40. I'm sure there would be those willing to pay more than that if necessary(we're talking about $2 per month; this is not a lot to ask for). So it looks like this is a feasible choice. To convince the administration and the entire Cornell population is a difficulty.
I think Cornell needs to quickly look for places where it can purchase clean energy. Either acquiring a windmill or paying for clean energy would work. Making the entire campus carbon-neutral would put Cornell pretty high, given that it is an energy-intensive research institution.
Carlos
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