Seth Vidaņa, coordinator for the Western's Office of Sustainability, receives feedback from students and staff at an open forum on the draft of the Climate Action Plan. Feedback will be considered for revisions as the plan moves toward its next draft. Photo by Carey Rose
Western’s Climate Action Plan, drafted in June 2009, faces public scrutiny this week through a series of on-campus forums as Western attempts to move closer to climate neutrality.
The plan outlines several strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions on campus, including educating students and staff on conservation, streamlining and trimming energy use in buildings on campus, further encouraging alternative transportation and investigating the conversion of the steam plant to run on biomass instead of natural gas.
Drafted by the Office of Sustainability and Facilities Management, the plan is a result of former Western President Karen Morse’s signing of the President’s Climate Commitment in January 2007.
The plan calls for immediate technical climate neutrality through the purchase of Renewable Energy Credits that will offset the carbon emissions Western is generating as well as movement toward actual climate neutrality by reducing and eventually eliminating on-campus greenhouse gas emissions altogether.
Western currently owns enough credits to offset two-thirds of its carbon footprint, said Seth Vidaña, coordinator of the Office of Sustainability.
“We’re so close, and credit prices are going down, so why not make technical climate neutrality our first measure?” Vidaña said. “We’ll have a real and immediate impact on global climate while figuring out how to progress…to actual climate neutrality.”
Credits work to make renewable energy sources more competitive in the marketplace, as they generally have higher costs of production than fossil fuel sources, said Ron Bailey, property manager of Western’s Facilities Management.
“The owner of a wind farm can sell the cost of the power, but he will still have additional costs,” Bailey said. “They can sell the value of it being a renewable energy as a separate commodity and remain competitive.”
The ability to remain competitive will encourage the production of further wind farms, Vidaña said. Still, Vidaña said credits are a temporary solution, and the eventual goal of the plan is to buy less and less of them as actual greenhouse gas emissions on campus are reduced.
Part of the plan hinges on the continuation of Western’s Green Energy Fee, Vidaña said. The fee currently pays for the credits that Western owns, and was approved and implemented for the 2005-2006 school year, but will need to be voted on for its continuation, Vidaña said.
“The AS votes [are good] for four years, and this is the fourth year,” Vidaña said. “You can’t have a fee that goes on forever.”
Western junior Lauren Squires, coordinator for Western’s Environmental Center, attended the Oct. 7 forum.
“One of the really exciting things…is that our green energy fee has made us almost climate neutral,” Squires said. “If students start owning that fact, that would put more [of the students’] energy into reducing our actual carbon footprint.”
One of the programs the plan calls for is further education for students concerning the Green Energy Fee, Vidaña said.
The plan will not only impact Western, Vidaña said, but will also act as inspiration to institutions both within the Whatcom community and nationwide.
“After we purchased our green energy, the city and county also signed on for green energy,” Vidaña said. “In 2006, we were at the top of the list for largest green power purchase, and now we are number eight. We were inspiration for that.”
The next step, according to the timeline set forth by the Office of Sustainability, is to gather input from Western’s Board of Trustees and the president’s cabinet before finalizing the plan and sending it to the trustees as an action item.
“This is an opportunity to take a leadership role in taking responsibility for our climate footprint, and to provide leadership nationally for other schools to do the same,” Vidaña said.
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