Albrecht signs sustainability initiative

USU President Stan Albrecht has signed a sustainability initiative that commits the university to take steps to reduce and eventually neutralize its greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to help combat global warming.

USU joined 141 other universities nationwide in becoming a signatory to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, which is seeking the pledge of 200 universities by June and 1,000 by 2009. The university will now need to determine what its emissions are and what can be done to neutralize them.

In December a USU Sustainability Council comprised of faculty, staff, students and a community liaison was formed to develop the new sustainability initiatives. Lori Selby, the executive director of administration and Sustainability Council chair, said the council's first goal is to draft a comprehensive sustainability policy that can direct the university for the coming decades.

Even before the signing of the President's Climate Commitment, the university had already undertaken several projects to improve its energy efficiency, but Ben Berrett, the director of facilities operations, said there is still room for improvement, especially in facilities.

"We'll probably be doing most of it because we're the ones that burn most of the greenhouse gases," Berrett said.

Berrett said things like updating lighting systems to be more energy-efficient can cut down on the university's emission of greenhouse gases, and costs are paid back within three to five years. He said just updating the engineering building's lights to a more efficient model saves 296,205 kilowatt hours, or approximately $21,000 per year.

"I think the important thing is that saving energy saves greenhouse gases, so anytime we cut our use of electricity or natural gas, that's going to improve it," Berrett said.

Berrett said a retro-commissioning process team has been replacing old thermostats with digital ones to allow for better control of temperature in buildings. The team is also rebalancing air systems and hot-water heaters, and using thermal imaging technology to detect cracks and leaks in buildings.

Facilities has also made other significant improvements, including installing low-emission natural-gas boilers in the central energy plant in 2002. Berrett said the boilers, which are part of a cogeneration energy system, burn natural gas to generate electricity. Then the waste energy that is created burning the natural gas is recaptured and put into the steam system to heat the buildings.

Darrell Hart, the associate vice president for facilities, said the university is constructing new buildings to meet standards for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System, even though the state won't pay for official LEED certification. He said the building industry as a whole is tending toward more environmentally friendly standards.

Hart said the main focus of facilities is maintaining the energy status quo despite adding additional spaces that consume energy.

"We're keeping it fairly consistent," Hart said.

Another area of focus in the new initiative will be transportation, which had also already implemented energy-saving measures before the President's Climate Commitment. Alden Erickson, the Aggie Shuttle supervisor, said the bus fleet was converted to buses that burn compressed natural gas instead of diesel in 1999. Last year the university updated five of its buses to even cleaner natural gas models, which also hold more people and have more power.

"I've been very, very pleased with these new buses," Erickson said.

Erickson said nine of the system's 10 buses now run on CNG, and the one on diesel is only run as a backup. Erickson said the ridership of the buses is already "phenomenal," with 6,000 riders per day. He said he hopes to increase ridership further and encourage carpooling and alternative modes of transportation in order to help achieve the goals of the President's Climate Commitment, the signing of which he said indicated the administration's dedication to environmental sustainability.

"I think it's pretty neat that the university has taken a lead role," Erickson said.

Hart said recycling is a big thing that students can do to help cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling cuts greenhouse gas emissions by allowing items to be reused instead of remanufactured from scratch, and prevents them from decomposing in landfills, which release methane. Hart said students can recycle waste and can also recycle household items at USU's Surplus Sales, instead of "throwing everything away on the street at the end of the year."

Hart said Surplus Sales aims to reuse goods by giving them to departments, selling them to buyers, or sometimes just selling them for scrap.

"If you're a university entity, and you have a desk you don't need, you call Surplus Sales and they offer it to other departments or try to find another buyer," Hart said.

Selby said embarrassment would be the only repercussion if the university did not reduce greenhouse gases per the President's Climate Commitment, but that the steps already undertaken by the university indicate that it's an issue the university is committed to.

"I see it more as something we can accomplish than that there's going to be a penalty if we don't," Selby said. "To not do this is not an option."

-jenbeasley@cc.usu.edu