UNC students see their green fee in action « It\’s Getting Hot In Here

by Janie Hauser, UNC student & RESPC member

In 2003, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was the first school in the Southeast to pass a Green Energy Fee. After wading through the administrative procedures of increasing student fees, the students who were still around set out to find projects to fund. During the following school year, the students who had become the Renewable Energy Special Projects Committee dedicated the first year’s fees to a solar thermal array that would go on the roof of a dorm that was being renovated. UNC administrators argued against the economic practicality of the project but the students saw the educational possibilities and decided to commit the $184,000 (which was subsequently matched by the Housing Department and a grant from the State Energy Office).

The inclusion of the solar panels in the dorm renovation inspired a collection of greening efforts in the design of the entire building including sustainability learning community (or environmental theme housing). Recently, the committee (an almost completely different group of students than the ones who were present at the vote for the project—all except me, even though Jesse says he was there, but he wasn’t, haha) took a tour of the new building. It was awesome because we got to see the new dorm before anyone else and hear about all of the updates and changes they are making. More importantly we got to go on the roof and see the solar panels up close and learn more about how they work. They are EXTREMELY visible, you can see them from the business school, anywhere on South Campus, and on the balconies of the dorm (there’s a great picture of Jesse Prentice-Dunn and me on the 10th floor and the panels are in the background). Even though we have worked on other projects since the Morrison project got started the panels are physical manifestation of the original victory for clean energy at UNC.

About Liz

While at the University of North Carolina, Liz led one of the first successful campus renewable energy campaigns in the southeast and won the Morris K. Udall scholarship in both 2002 & 2003. She organized the first Southeast Student Renewable Energy Conference April 2-4, 2004, to engage other Southern schools beyond UNC in energy and climate work. In the summer of 2004 she became a co-founding member of Energy Action Coalition, which she has been actively involved with since then. She co-chaired the Energy Action Coalition Steering Committee for 2 years and is Executive Director of the Southern Energy Network, which works with students in the Southeast on clean energy and climate initiatives as part of Energy Action Coalition's Campus Climate Challenge. In late fall 2005, she attended the UN Climate Negotiations in Montreal and helped start www.itsgettinghotinhere.org . In 2008, she joined the board of the Highlander Research and Education Center (www.highlandercenter.org).

1 Response to “UNC students see their green fee in action”

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1 Liz Veazey Feb 6th, 2007 at 4:38 pm

this is great to see Janie! Thanks Charlie, Cameron, Robin, Paul, Jess, and all those involved in the campaign who helped make this a reality! it’s great to see that we’ve left a positive legacy at UNC, and hopefully there will be multiple renewable projects at UNC that we can all show our children!

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It\’s Getting Hot In Here