Carbon Neutrality Remains on Pace

Middlebury College’s Office of Sustainability Integration declared the College to be on track towards its goal of carbon neutrality by 2016 in its most recent report citing the biomass plant, efforts by a variety of groups on campus, and the new biomethane initiative as critical to the progress.

In his Winter Term update, Director of Sustainability Jack Byrne wrote, “Our FY13 carbon emissions were 50 percent below our 2007 baseline year emissions due to the high performance of our biomass system AND the cumulative effects of the numerous energy efficiency projects the College has completed over the past several years.”

The poster child of the College’s push for carbon neutrality has been the biomass plant, which has cut the College’s use of #6 fuel oil from 2.1 million gallons to 634,000 gallons since 2009.

Despite its success, the biomass plant cannot always handle the College’s large energy demand. “The next big step will be the switch to using biomethane to displace the fuel oil we still burn when biomass is not enough to meet heating and cooling demands,” according to Byrne’s report.

The process of switching over to biomethane to supplement the biomass plant will not be quick and is reliant on the successful construction of the recently approved Vermont Gas Systems pipeline project. The pipeline will allow for cost-effective access to biogas when the biomass plant requires it to maintain operation. The Office of Sustainability Integration estimates the biomethane project will be online by early 2015 at the latest.

The success of the biomethane project is essential to the attainment of carbon neutrality as Byrne anticipates that it will reduce the College’s carbon emissions by 40 percent from the baseline emissions. This amounts to about a 90 percent reduction overall from the baseline year.

“Once this is achieved, [the] remainder of our carbon emissions will be from College related travel, electricity purchased, vehicle fleet and waste sent to the landfill,” Byrne wrote.

College-related travel will account for roughly half of the remaining 10 percent of carbon emissions. According to the 2008 Climate Action Implementation Plan, the current definition of travel includes exclusively College-funded travel, and excludes travel that is funded by student groups or is funded through grants.

However, Byrne reports, “We are in the process of revising the method for calculating emissions from travel as it represents more than half of the total that would remain to assure that we are using as accurate an estimate as feasible.” Other efforts to reduce emissions due to travel include converting some of the College’s vehicles to run on carbon-neutral fuel.

That leaves about five percent of emissions that need to be cut and much of that can be done with the involvement of College students.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize how easy it is to reduce their day to day energy use,” said Campus Sustainability Coordinators (CSC) President Ali Rotatori ’14. “Most of the students on this campus are very eager and willing to live greener, but the issue is they aren’t sure how.”

The CSCs are one of a handful of student groups on campus committed to educating the student body on responsible energy use.

Rotatori acknowledges that not everyone can commit the time to environmentally-focused groups.

“If people can’t be directly involved and commit time to helping Middlebury become a more environmentally friendly place, they can at least help out by changing their own habits,” she said.

Rotatori and her fellow Campus Sustainability Coordinators have many suggestions in their “Greening Your Dorm Room” pamphlet including turning off power strips, taking shorter showers, and walking instead of driving around campus.

With the deadline just two years away, the College is planning to reach its goal thanks to the efforts of many students, facilities and maintenance staff, faculty and administrators.

However, if Middlebury finds itself falling short of its carbon neutrality goal, there is a back-up plan in the form of “carbon credits” that can be purchased to offset our emissions. Colby College employed this tactic when it claimed its own carbon neutrality, sparking debate about the validity of using carbon credits to assert carbon neutrality.

For now though, the College is focusing on furthering what progress has been made in the effort to achieve its goal.