12 March 2008

Maine’s College of the Atlantic Is the “Greenest” of Them All

Practicing what it teaches, COA works to achieve carbon neutrality

 

This silo is where the wood pellets for heating new super-insulated residence buildings at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, will be stored. In the residences, which open in September 2008, timers will ensure that the hot water goes off after three minutes. Each unit will separately measure its energy usage. (COA)

This silo is where the wood pellets for heating new super-insulated residence buildings will be stored. (COA)

By Jeffrey Thomas
Staff Writer

Washington -- When David Hales, president of the College of the Atlantic (COA) in Bar Harbor, Maine, pledged in 2006 that his school would become the world’s first carbon net-zero campus, he made the commitment “because it’s the right thing to do.”

Carbon net-zero means that all greenhouse gas emissions associated with the activities of the college have been avoided or reduced, or offset by investing in programs that limit emissions elsewhere.

As a college dedicated to ecology, “we should be doing everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint and any other kind of pollution or adverse environmental impact,” said Hales in an interview. “The primary motivation for us is to practice what we teach.”

COA offers only one undergraduate degree, a bachelor of arts in human ecology. There are about 325 students, with 20 percent coming from outside the United States.

Hales believes higher education “has a special responsibility in moving toward sustainability. We have the resources. Even at a small college like ours, we’re wealthy enough that we have no excuse not to do the right thing.”

The college saw in the pledge “a tremendous learning opportunity,” he said.

COA conducted an energy audit of its greenhouse gas emissions and researched ways to reduce or offset these emissions, which contribute to global warming.  It improved energy efficiency in its buildings with such measures as replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescents. The college raises organic food and promotes alternative commuting methods such as carpooling and biking, and it has flexible work plans so more employees can work from home.

There is “full student participation and commitment,” Hales said. The students gathered the data “to figure out exactly what our [carbon dioxide] footprint is; they were involved at every step in the measures that we took to directly reduce our emissions about 22 percent. They are the ones who vetted all the options for buying carbon offsets.”

Carbon offsets counteract or offset greenhouse gases that are emitted into the atmosphere. They can be created by such actions as planting trees, increasing energy efficiency in buildings or transportation, or investing in projects that reduce the emission of greenhouse gases elsewhere. To offset the emissions the college could not avoid, COA students chose to invest in a greenhouse gas reduction project operated by The Climate Trust, of Oregon, that optimizes traffic signals and manages traffic flow to reduce the amount of time cars spend idling at traffic lights.

COA students have not only been supportive of the measures taken to fulfill the net-zero carbon footprint pledge, but they also “drive us to new measures,” Hales said. “The only grumbling we have is if we’re not green enough.”

In new campus residences that open in September 2008, timers have been installed to ensure that hot water goes off after three minutes. Each unit separately will measure its energy usage. “What we’re anticipating … is that there will be significant competition among each of these residential units to be the most energy-efficient unit,” Hales said.

In December 2007, just 15 months after taking on the challenge of reducing its carbon footprint to net zero, COA fulfilled its pledge, becoming the first college or university anywhere to achieve carbon neutrality.

A top environmental news Web site, Grist.org, recently ranked COA as “the greenest college in the world.” The nonprofit Sustainable Endowments Institute (SEI) also honored COA by naming it as one of four colleges and universities to receive the institute's first Sustainability Innovator Award.

Hales said colleges and universities represent a big enough sector to influence markets. “We’re training the consumers of tomorrow, and we all have influence on our alumni,” he said. The 5,000 U.S. colleges and universities constitute “a relatively large and influential sector that ought to be both capable of doing the right thing and more sensitive to trying to conduct our affairs in a sustainable way.”

He said COA students have been active on other green fronts. They are involved “in everything from watershed management around this region, to regional planning efforts, to drafting the legislation which finally became Maine’s bottle law for deposit returns. COA students helped draft legislation requiring that the environmental, economic and cultural impact of large franchises -- so-called “big box” stores -- be evaluated “before permission is given to move ahead with those developments,” Hales said.

Staying carbon neutral “is something you have to do every year; you can’t achieve it once and then say ‘OK, now we did it, now we can forget about that,’” he observed. COA has taken on a new pledge: to get all of its energy from renewable sources by 2015. The college has marine biology island research stations, and the biggest challenge will be finding a way to power its marine fleet by renewable means.

“Right now, the technology doesn’t really exist for us to meet that goal,” Hales said. “We’re hoping by making that commitment to encourage others to make that kind of commitment and to provide a stronger market for the development of the technology that will let many people, not just us, move toward being 100 percent renewable.”

But making the commitment is imperative, he said. “My strong guess is that by 2020 or 2025, any institution that is still paying for fossil fuels is going to be having a very difficult time financially.”

More information is available on the College of the Atlantic Web site.