Pioneer LogLewis & Clark College’s Student-Run Newspaper

Going green gets SEEDy

March 05, 2010

by Garik Lawson Asplund

Students Engaged in Eco-Defense members have said that “Lewis & Clark hasn’t done anything to make the grade” for sustainability. Hardly. The College has taken countless steps to make the sustainability grade and then some: numerous LEED constructed buildings, not watering the campus lawns, changing out lightbulbs and toilets to be more efficient, using recycled materials wherever possible, ardently supporting alternative transportation, and on and on. The College’s and Facilities Services’ sustainability webpages are good primers on our strong historical commitment to being sustainable.

Perhaps SEED should take a page out of the College’s book and implement a more concise and accountable plan instead of quixotically throwing money at the latest fad in environmentalism.
The College understands that money matters. Paying for sustainability can be pricey, which is why sustainable strategies are always compared to the other, normal construction practices. If the traditional way is cheaper, then a life-cycle cost-benefit study is undertaken. SEED, unfortunately, has no such measures in place. Ergo the new arbitrary $85 opt-out green fee.

The Green Energy Fee program was started in 2006 as an opt-in program, then changed to its current opt-out status in 2007. For the 2007-2008 school year, there was a 96 percent participation rate. Go us! But if the price rises by over 300 percent, it is doubtful that the same percentage will stay in the program. SEED may very well be getting their first lesson in economics.

A different option to consider is having different levels of payment for students. Those willing to forgo the $85 will do so. Others, not wanting to pay that much, may be happier contributing $40, the original $20, or nothing at all. This approach is more reasonable, but it still ignores the fact that all the talk of buying green energy is misleading.

The energy that LC uses comes from Portland General Electric, which already has an outstanding green profile. Thus the make up of electricity use for LC in 2005 (totaling 16 million killowatt hours) was such that 36 percent comes from hydro, 27 percent from natural gas—the cleanest of fossil fuels—23 percent from coal, 10 percent in wind credits, and 4 percent from nuclear. All told, that is a 50-50 split for conventional fossil fuels and “renewable” energy sources. This last year it was reported that the energy fee program had grown and was able to pay for nearly 28 percent of all energy needs of the College.

Unfortunately, the way the program works is not so simple. The fees that students pay go to the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, a Portland based non-profit that buys Renewable Energy Certificates from energy suppliers. What this means is that the school, in exchange for paying a fee, receives a slip of paper saying that somewhere, at some time, 1,000 kWh renewable energy was produced.

In fact, many of BEF’s suppliers are out of state in North Dakota, Texas, Alaska, and Wyoming. So, basically we are subsidizing wind farms and bio-incinerators, but in a round about way. Not that there is anything wrong with giving money to these operations­—there really isn’t—it’s just that the manner in which it is being done, and publicized, is somewhat opaque.

And while the Green Energy Fee is not responsible for making LC pricey­—the $85 optional fee accounts for 0.2 percent of the $40,000 annual tuition, room, and board—it remains a hefty chunk of change. Many students live off campus and already pay the $82.50 or $165 for parking permits which were lobbied not because of parking shortages, but mainly for environmental concern. On top of that, they must pay their own energy bills, heating, et cetera. For them the proposal probably doesn’t make too much sense.

A more careful look at the numbers would assist SEED in making the best use of their efforts. For example, electricity use only accounts for 36 per cent of the College’s greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation and natural gas use round out the remaing majority of emmisions. Surely there are other measures that would be more effective, if not more efficient, in reducing C02 output, and not all of them have to be levied on the student’s themselves. A push for developming new technologies that can be used the world over will have much greater benefits than the status quo.

Continuing the school’s quest to go for the low-hanging fruit first remains the wisest plan.