2008 Woodie Awards
Students must help make USM greener
Guest Column
Jake Chamberlain
Issue date: 4/28/08 Section: Perspectives
You may have read in the April 7 issue of the Free Press about USM's attempt to measure its movement towards a sustainable campus through STARS - a new sustainability assessment system.
Students and faculty alike have joined forces in an extremely motivated attempt to figure out where USM has been and where it is going in terms of environmental friendliness. The STARS program measures all aspects of university function and its effects on our environment. Extensive data ranging from green house gas emissions caused by electricity and heating usage to the organic/non-organic food supply at USM has been collected. Being an active student participant of this project, I have been measuring such green house gas emissions from a 2005-06 baseline. The results have been inspiring; however, USM still has a lot of work to do if it wants to reach its goal to be "carbon neutral."
In 2005-06, USM used roughly 19,727,262 kilowatt-hours of electricity. That includes all campuses, outbuildings, rental spaces, etc, and is a whole lot of electricity usage which happened to pump out a great deal of CO2 (the biggest culprit of the green house gases). In 2007 USM had decreased the amount of electricity used by 3,104,712 kwh.
That is a pretty impressive feat and could be attributed to the large-scale attempt across campus to decrease our environmental footprint. This is not to mention the fact that at least a portion of that electricity was either purchased or produced in the form of green energy, including biomass, hydro and wind.
In addition, USM has undertaken at least seven LEED approved building and remodeling projects, improving the environmental integrity of our facilities. Many of these buildings use energy conservation methods and also pull from alternative energy resources that decrease electricity and fuel purchasing (non renewable, CO2 emitting resources).
Yet, the fact that, in 2007, USM had still consumed about 16,622,541 KWH of electricity says something about the state of our sustainability: we still have a lot of work to do if we are to obtain our carbon-neutral goal - emitting little to no CO2 into the atmosphere.
Students and faculty alike have joined forces in an extremely motivated attempt to figure out where USM has been and where it is going in terms of environmental friendliness. The STARS program measures all aspects of university function and its effects on our environment. Extensive data ranging from green house gas emissions caused by electricity and heating usage to the organic/non-organic food supply at USM has been collected. Being an active student participant of this project, I have been measuring such green house gas emissions from a 2005-06 baseline. The results have been inspiring; however, USM still has a lot of work to do if it wants to reach its goal to be "carbon neutral."
In 2005-06, USM used roughly 19,727,262 kilowatt-hours of electricity. That includes all campuses, outbuildings, rental spaces, etc, and is a whole lot of electricity usage which happened to pump out a great deal of CO2 (the biggest culprit of the green house gases). In 2007 USM had decreased the amount of electricity used by 3,104,712 kwh.
That is a pretty impressive feat and could be attributed to the large-scale attempt across campus to decrease our environmental footprint. This is not to mention the fact that at least a portion of that electricity was either purchased or produced in the form of green energy, including biomass, hydro and wind.
In addition, USM has undertaken at least seven LEED approved building and remodeling projects, improving the environmental integrity of our facilities. Many of these buildings use energy conservation methods and also pull from alternative energy resources that decrease electricity and fuel purchasing (non renewable, CO2 emitting resources).
Yet, the fact that, in 2007, USM had still consumed about 16,622,541 KWH of electricity says something about the state of our sustainability: we still have a lot of work to do if we are to obtain our carbon-neutral goal - emitting little to no CO2 into the atmosphere.
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