The Road to Climate Neutrality

GMC: Climate Neutral By 2011
A new “Eco Reps” class to research and communicate sustainability best practices. Interactive data streaming to monitor electricity use. A climate neutral campus fleet. These are all goals incorporated into GMC’s Climate Action Plan, filed with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education in September of 2009.

As part of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, signed by GMC in 2007, the College was required to create the plan to achieve carbon neutrality. It includes short, medium and long-term goals achievable by 2011, 2020 and 2050. GMC’s sustainability office, the Campus Sustainability Council and students in ten academic courses developed the plan with input from the campus community.

Student Leading the Way
On a freezing day in late February, over 70 Green Mountain College students caravanned south to Washington D.C. to participate in Power Shift ‘09, a nationwide student demonstration advocating change in energy policy. Over 12,000 students attended, but no other college sent a higher percentage of students than GMC.

During the five-day conference, GMC students joined a protest to end the use of coal as fuel for the Capitol building power plant. They were present at the Capitol building when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made a dramatic announcement: Congressional leaders had authorized a switch from coal to natural gas.

GMC students have already seen the results of patient but persistent advocacy for change closer to home. In 2006, a group of students generated a proposal to make a similar power conversion on campus—from number six fuel oil to biomass. When Dr. Paul J. Fonteyn arrived on campus in the summer of 2008 to take up his duties as the new GMC president, he recognized the merits of the proposal. “I realized this student-generated project was right on target,” he said. “Moving ahead with the biomass project was the wisest choice for meeting our College’s long-term energy needs in an ecologically sound manner.”

A Case for Biomass
According to the College’s emissions inventory, 71 percent of campus greenhouse gases are currently generated from burning 260,000 gallons of fuel oil each year, a process that releases high amounts of sulfur and other pollutants into the atmosphere. The new plant will use green woodchips—a sustainable and renewable fuel source—to heat all campus buildings. The chips will be harvested from local sources, which will encourage growth of the local, sustainable wood chip market and the emerging bio-energy economy. Economic savings to the College will go a long way towards covering the plant’s price tag. Even after subtracting the cost of wood chips, GMC estimates it will save over $250,000 per year in heating costs.

Another feature of the biomass plan is connecting a steam turbine generator to the wood boilers which will produce 400,000 kWh of electricity annually. The co-generation plan will meet about 20 percent of the College’s power needs and, at certain times, provide surplus electrical energy capacity to the local utility Central Vermont Public Service.

The biomass plant will be a watershed moment in dramatically reducing the College's carbon footprint. But the biomass program is just the latest component in the College’s journey to carbon neutrality.

A History of Sustainability
A walk across GMC’s campus reveals what one might expect to find on a traditional New England campus—walkways lined with venerable sugar maples and Georgian brick buildings. Green Mountain College was founded in 1834, and the school recently celebrated its 175th anniversary. The sense of permanence and classic beauty masks a complex challenge—making the buildings more energy efficient without violating the historic nature of the campus. Through a combination of internal funding, outside grants, partnerships with local agencies, and student projects, the College has deliberately put together pieces of the puzzle.

In 2006, GMC became the first campus to be powered in part through investment in CVPS’s Cow Power program, through which the utility delivers energy created from burning biogas created from cow manure on Vermont dairy farms. The College committed to buy 50 percent of its main campus electric usage from Cow Power and 100 percent on all other accounts, which include the president’s house, the college farm, the college inn and alumni house, and an off-campus residence hall in Killington.

“That was a great step for us toward a sustainably-powered campus,” said Provost Bill Throop. “We’re happy to support not just renewable energy but also the regional economy and the family farms that are so important to the Vermont way of life. It is a good fit with our mission, and departments across campus continue to support the from their own budgets because they feel it’s a priority.”

Moving Forward
The College also embarked on projects designed to increase the energy efficiency of buildings. Through its own revenue sources and funding from Campus Leading on Energy and Education Grants (CLEAN) grant program sponsored by Vermont U.S. Rep. Peter Welch and U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, the College embarked on a window replacement program. By the summer of 2011, GMC will have replaced all 600 windows in student residence halls.

“Coupled with our window replacement program and other efficiency projects, the College we will be able to reduce our carbon emissions by 64 percent within just two years,” Dr. Fonteyn announced in his inauguration address. “Because of this dramatic reduction, I can state, with confidence, that the College will be carbon neutral by 2011. Our research indicates that we will be one of the first two colleges in the country to achieve this goal through actually reducing carbon emissions by more than 50 percent.”

This announcement, based on recommendations from the College’s Campus Sustainability Council, has inspired the campus community to get involved with projects aimed at self-sufficiency and lightening the College's carbon footprint. This spring, students under the direction of faculty and GMC alumni working in the renewable energy field installed solar panels on the roof of the barn on the College farm. The solar array will heat water for the College farm to sterilize equipment used in its small-scale dairy operation. Excess hot water will be piped to GMC’s new Solar Harvest Center.