It’s Getting Hot In Here

Credit: Michael Drazdzinski

Solar panels adorning the tops of Harvard buildings. A bright, towering wind turbine on the St. Olaf campus. Libraries and dormitories chock full of blue recycling options and even composting bins inside the dining halls, at the University of Washington.

Campus sustainability has come into its own over the last decade, with renewable energy, tray-less dining, and sustainability director jobs popping up at campuses across the country. While many colleges and universities can implement some or all of these programs to reduce their carbon footprint, many projects are done piecemeal, without a regular source of funding or the institutional support to make it the first step in a larger commitment.

Being a sustainable campus can be so much more than just a green garden or showcase project. Sustainability projects can often reduce the overall operating costs for the campus, saving energy and money, keeping tuition low. But high upfront costs can be a barrier to administrators experiencing steep budget cuts and rising energy costs.

One way for any college or university to achieve these results is through a sustainability financing mechanism called the Green Revolving Fund.

On the main stage at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s national conference in Pittsburgh, PA, the Billion Dollar Green Challenge will be launched in front of the largest gathering, to date, on sustainability in higher education. The Challenge is inviting colleges to establish green revolving funds to invest in significant energy efficiency upgrades on campus.

At the time of the launch, 32 institutions have joined the Challenge’s Founding Circle. Founding Circle participants range in size from large institutions such as Arizona State, Harvard and Stanford, to small and innovative institutions such as Northland College, Green Mountain College and Unity College.

Green revolving fund projects are diverse and versatile, and can be easily adapted to a school’s priorities. Have an active student body? Consider operating a student-driven fund, like at Oberlin College’s EDGE Fund, where students work with faculty and staff to initiative sustainability projects. Want to retrofit your campus buildings? Take a page from the University of Pennsylvania’s Energy Reduction Fund, which reduces energy through building upgrades.

Existing green revolving funds prove that sustainability efforts can be profitable and even fund larger and more ambitious projects, as they have an average return on investment of 32 percent annually.

Clearly, the benefits of joining the Challenge and operating a green revolving fund are numerous. They are a bright spot in a rocky economy, helping to create green jobs in campus communities while substantially reducing operating costs. The Challenge is a broad network of like-minded institutions focused on improving campus sustainability throughout their operations.

For participating institutions, it will be a best practice forum for what kinds of projects have proven successful, what programs have had difficulties, and what programs you should consider on your own campus, based on real-life examples.

As energy prices rise and concerns about resource scarcity increase, it is a risky venture to not invest in environmental initiatives on campus. By joining the Billion Dollar Green Challenge, institutions can both save energy and grow money.

Lately in the climate movement I’ve been encountering an idea I believe is based on flawed assumptions: that the only real “solution” to the climate crisis is promoting clean energy and efficiency, while avoiding “problem-oriented” approaches like shutting down existing coal plants and stopping tar sands pipelines.  According to this way of thinking, the climate movement’s best bet is to focus almost exclusively on saying “yes” to things we want, and seldom or never say “no.”

I fully recognize the tremendous importance of working with communities to implement clean energy solutions.  I have huge respect and admiration for people who dedicate themselves to this kind of work.  If that’s your calling, I’m behind you 100%.  But I can’t and won’t agree that having people who are willing to take a principled stand against dirty energy is any less a part of the solution than implementing alternatives to fossil fuels.  We will never build a real movement for climate justice without being willing to say “no.”

If you don’t believe me, imagine what would happen if every US climate activist focused only on renewables and efficiency, while declining to speak out against unjust energy.  The result would be a heyday for fossil fuels.  Relieved of the inconvenience of people willing to stand in the way of injustice, coal companies would finish blowing up the last Appalachians and converting the Powder River Basin to a wasteland.  Largely unopposed, Big Oil would build its long-sought network of pipelines linking the Canadian tar sands to US refineries, solidifying US oil dependence for the next several decades.

Meanwhile we’d be installing lots of solar panels and wind turbines.  But it wouldn’t matter much, so long as fossil fuel companies could go their way unopposed and externalize the costs onto others.  When seen as one wing of a broader movement that also includes confronting injustice directly, renewable energy solutions are hugely powerful.  But if the climate movement becomes unwilling to condemn injustice where it exists, all the solutions we implement are for nothing.  They’ll be swept away in the tide of dirty energy infrastructure fossil companies would build without principled opposition from our movement. Continue reading ‘Why Confronting Climate Injustice is Solutions Work’

Cross-posted from Solar Mosaic Energy 2.0 Blog

Tim DeChristopher understands why he’s going to jail. As he told Rolling Stone in a recent interview, “What I did was a threat to the status quo, so I understand why those in power want to put me away.”

Tim represents a new breed of disruptive, bold climate activists who are putting their lives on the line to bring about the transformational change we need. And he considers Solar Mosaic part of that transformation. Asked what it would take to fundamentally transform our energy system, he pointed to Solar Mosaic as proof that we’re on our way. For the folks at Solar Mosaic, this is both a huge compliment and a great expectation to fulfill.

A quick recap on Tim: One the eve of Obama’s inauguration, a 27-year old economics student from Utah entered an auction set up for oil and gas companies, became the top bidder, and won the lease rights. He had no intention of paying for the land; he was acting to protect public land from destructive extraction. Despite the fact that the leasing plan was flawed and has since been revoked, Tim faces up to ten years in prison for his actions. His sentencing was recently rescheduled for the tenth time and is slated for late July. To read Tim’s full story, click here.

I take a lot of inspiration from Tim, for his personal resolve and his commitment to confronting the inadequacies of the grey economy and spurring on a new energy transformation. I’m also inspired to witness this new paradigm taking hold in concrete ways around the country. Indeed, Solar Mosaic – which aims to democratize clean energy in Oakland, California and around the country – represents a radical departure from traditional top-down fossil fuel systems.

DeChristopher speaks of a future that promotes local power, justice and prosperity for all, and an economy based on human goodness. Solar Mosaic embodies these tenants, putting the energy in the hands of people, creating jobs and helping community institutions save money, and building an economy that reflects the values we strive to live by.

It’s called the Self Express: and the catchy name isn’t the only unusual thing about the 38-foot bus which a group of Northwest students and recent graduates are converting into a living space that will transport them across the country this summer.  By the time it’s finished, the former 1989 school bus will be ready to run entirely on used vegetable oil, and will be outfitted with a solar panel installation on the roof.  For the bulk of the summer it will serve as a temporary home for six youth activists determined to show that sustainable living in the twenty-first century is both possible and practical.

The Self Express project is a grassroots effort launched by youth organizers based at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon who have a vision for a better future.  Traveling across the US in an essentially carbon-neutral vehicle, they plan to create a real-life example of community-oriented living.  The group intends to connect with local nonprofits and charities in locations they visit across the United States, performing service and volunteer work that gives back to the community.  They will also travel to and participate in key events in the US climate movement happening over the next few months. 

“I’m really interested to see what’s going on in our country,” says Katie Kann, a recent graduate of Linfield College who will be setting out on the Self Express later this month.  “I’m tired of only hearing about the negative stuff in the news, stuff that makes me sad. I want to see the good things that fellow citizens are doing to help people and improve quality of life across our country.”

In this way the Self Express project connects the hands-on solutions work needed to jumpstart a transition to a clean economy with the political organizing and activism that’s essential to building the sustained movement that will get us off fossil fuels for good.  Considering the scale of the challenge we’re facing, it’s neither logical nor useful to argue about whether climate activists should be addressing problems or building solutions.  We urgently need to do both these, things, which is why youth organizers aboard the Self Express will be connecting with community solutions projects while also facilitating communication between grassroots groups fighting fossil fuel infrastructure. Continue reading ‘Youth Activists Prepare for Community-Building Journey’

Yesterday more progress was made in the effort to move the state of Massachusetts beyond coal and towards a clean energy revolution. The Utility and Telecommunications Committee had open public hearings for several proposed bills which call for an end to fossil fuel dependence in the state, one of which was written by students from Students for a Just and Stable Future (http://justandstable.org/). The hearing started with an introduction of the bills by Rep. Eherlich from the 8th Essex District, who continued to explain how organizing around the coal power plant in her community is what drove her to first become civically engaged.The hearing was well attended by concerned community members, public health advocate groups as well as students from across the state.

After Representative Eherlich spoke, members from Environmental League Massachusetts and the Sierra Club outlined the health risks posed by coal power plants. The Sierra Club also offered reference to their recent publication on how renewable energy sources can replace the base load power for the grid which is presently generated by fossil fuels and nuclear power. Four members from Students for a Just and Stable Future then spoke on behalf of their drafted legislation, house docket #2625, which is entitled “An Act to Phase Out Coal Burning and Use”. Unlike other bills in front of the committee that ask for this to be done by the year 2020, Students for a Just and Stable Future believe that the issue demands more urgency and should be accomplished by 2015. The students who spoke addressed the many externalities pushed onto local communities and the environment throughout the coal commodity chain covering everything from the devastation due to mountain top removal to the effects emissions are having in the form of acid rain and global climate change.

Continue reading ‘Students Stand Up and Say “No More Coal”!’

I just got back from a trip to North Carolina.  I met up with some rockstar student activists in Forest City, NC – where the construction site of Facebook’s newest data center is located.  In November 2010, Facebook disclosed its plans to invest $450 million in the 300,000 sq. ft. facility and to power the center using dirty coal power.

North Carolina students bear witness at Facebook's Data Center.

Emma Wicker, one of the activists, grew up 10 minutes away from the construction site. Emma is stoked to have Facebook bring some much needed jobs to the area, she just wants those jobs to drive an energy revolution, not increase demand for dirty coal power. Duke Energy, the local electric utility, relies on coal for over 50% of its generation mix and is currently building another large 800MW coal plant just 10 miles away in Cliffside, North Carolina.

The action didn’t just happen in North Carolina on Friday. Students across the country stood up to demand more from Facebook. In Austin, Texas, students gathered outside Facebook offices in an effort to talk with employees about the campaign. The students were denied access to the building, but they were able to deliver a letter for Mark Zuckerberg to the security guard that works on Facebook’s floor, and get the attention of Facebook staff passing by.

Carson Chavana delivers a letter for Mark Zuckerberg.

As the student activists in Austin said on Friday, “Facebook is in a relationship with coal? Dislike!” Join us in asking Facebook to Unfriend Coal by Earth Day 2011.

At a youth climate meeting in Minnesota in January 2008, a neat idea emerged from discussion:

‘We need to start training young people, not just FOR green jobs, but TO CREATE green jobs. We should start in the Twin Cities this summer.’

Fast-forward three years, and over 250 young people have been trained over three years in Summer of Solutions programs around the country to create innovative and self-sustaining solutions around energy efficiency, green industry, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and smart transportation and design that advance job creation, social justice, and community empowerment. A network of over 70 youth leaders has coalesced to launch a national organization from nothing and develop 2011 Summer of Solutions programs that will support hundreds of youth in creating the clean energy economy in 15 cities nationwide. These programs have expanded rapidly in number, quality, and sustainability over the years without grant support, and with a major influx of funding and leadership in late 2010, we’re just hitting our stride.

As you read on, I’d encourage you to think of any young people (individuals or groups) who might be interested in a summer program based on community-based innovation in the clean energy economy. If so, please invite them to apply to any of our 15 programs nationwide by April 24th at www.grandaspirations.org/apply2sos

Continue reading ‘Youth Forge Solutions Nationwide – All Are Welcome’

I just read something that made me livid. While we have multiple reactors melting down in Japan, Obama has decided to expand nuclear loan guarantees. The real kicker? I was just reading this article, from the fall, about how President Obama slashed renewable energy guarantee programs behind the scenes after praising them.

Now, instead of restoring his cuts, he is asking for 12 times as much money for nuclear boondoggles. Loans that the CBO reported that half of them are likely never to be paid back.  So, bailing out the nuclear industry to the tune of over $20 billion dollars in non-recoverable bailouts while not proving basic support to clean energy programs that actually are likely to be paid back and support good, green jobs.

Read this from last year:

Obama Talks Big About Clean Energy While Cash Stripped From Key Program – ABC News.
“While President Obama has touted his deep commitment to a clean energy industry, the administration has quietly drained more than half of the $6 billion allocated to a key renewable energy program and senior White House officials have proposed either fixing or scrapping one of the President’s most widely heralded initiatives involving solar and wind power.”

Then this now:

Obama Seeks to Expand Loan Guarantees for Reactors, Chu Says – Businessweek.
“The Obama administration will press ahead with efforts to expand loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors while investigating the failure of Japan’s power plants after an earthquake, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said.

The U.S. Energy Department is seeking to add $36 billion in loan-guarantee authority to the program’s existing $18.5 billion, Chu said today at a House committee hearing. President Barack Obama asked lawmakers to expand the program in Obama’s February budget request…

Obama supports an expansion of nuclear power and increased loan guarantees, and “that position has not been changed,” Chu said. Energy officials “don’t believe there is any danger” posed by U.S. reactors, Chu said today.”

Got it? President Obama cut renewable energy loan guarantees, a critical clean energy investment program, in half, – by $3 billion dollars while now seeking to expand Nuclear energy loan guarantee programs by $36 billion dollars. That is an increase of twelve times! over what he left for clean energy.

Angry yet? I thought so.

I expect to get some crap about how nuclear power is awesome in my inbox, but right now, I am not interested in hearing it. All I have to say is that I thought President Obama and Chu were being tone deaf and short sighted when they came out ahead of the Deepwater disaster endorsing offshore oil drilling. Now, they have stripped renewable energy guarantees and are working to increase nuclear power loan guarantees in the wake of the largest nuclear disaster in modern history. Are they just trying to piss us off and lose the next election? Because, they are doing a heckuva job.

Kaifukuryoku (回 復力), is the Japanese word for resilience. For many in Japan, resilience has become a a way of life, a goal that has driven one of the most advanced efforts at planning for disasters in the world.

The word tsunami is also Japanese, originating in their long familiarity of living on the knife edge of disaster, wedged between volcanoes, fault-lines, typhoons, and the vastness of the Pacific ocean.

Yet, the three disasters Japan is grappling with today are showing the limits of resilience and industrial societies.

Buildings in Japan are subject to incredible standards for flexibility and strength, to survive the earthquakes that threaten cities. Mt. Fuji has incredible lava channels and barriers built to protect Tokyo from an eruption. Volcano, typhoon, and earthquake monitoring systems are linked to alarms that can be activated to warn citizens to seek shelter and/or higher ground.

These all saved lives.

Yet, now as Japan should be mobilizing all its resources to feed, house, and evacuate citizens who have been impacted by this terrible disaster, it is mobilizing to prevent a third and possibly worst disaster, a nuclear catastrophe.

Continue reading ‘Disasters and Resilience: Clean Energy Can Save Us’

This week the elected student government at the largest university campus in the Pacific Northwest endorsed the vision of a coal-free Washington.  On Tuesday the Associated Students of University of Washington (ASUW) passed a resolution that calls for replacing the TransAlta Coal Plant with clean energy by the year 2015 or sooner.  UW joins four other Washington colleges and universities where student governments have passed similar resolutions so far. 

This legislative session Washington lawmakers are confronting the challenge of phasing out coal dependence and eliminating the serious public health threat that is the TransAlta Coal Plant.  Right now a bill is moving through the state senate that would set a 2020 deadline for ending coal combustion at TransAlta; yet student groups know we can move beyond coal sooner than that.  The evidence is in the number of student governments – basically the elected voices of student interests on college campuses – that have called for a transition to clean energy by 2015.  ASUW alone represents over 40,000 students at the UW Seattle campus.

The UW Beyond Coal resolution was spearheaded by the College Greens, a group of undergraduate and graduate students who introduced the legislation to the student senate.  While working to pass the resolution, students from UW took time off their busy class schedules to visit the state capitol in Olympia as part of an environmental lobby day attended by over five hundred concerned citizens from across the state.  Students are sending their message loud and clear: the young voters of Washington are ready to move beyond dirty coal power.

Legislation to transition off the TransAlta Plant by 2020 recently cleared the Senate Ways and Means committee, and is gradually making its way toward law.  Legislators should take this opportunity to not only continue working to pass this bill, but to strengthen it and require an end to coal use by 2015.  Lawmakers who do so will have the support of five student governments and counting – including ASUW, which represents a larger body of university students than any similar entity in the Pacific Northwest United States.