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December 20, 2007, 09:13 AM ET
College of the Atlantic is the First Institution to Achieve Climate Neutrality
The College of the Atlantic has gone climate neutral. It claims to be the first college to do so.
In October 2006, the college set a goal to become climate neutral by the end of 2007. It has met that goal by buying hydroelectric power and by purchasing offsets from the Climate Trust of Portland, Ore. The Climate Trust is a project to optimize traffic signals in Portland to reduce the amount of time cars sit idling at traffic lights.
The college also made changes in its campus infrastructure and policies that other colleges are considering, such as switching to highly efficient fluorescent light bulbs, promoting carpools, and allowing faculty and staff members to work from home.
The college is also very small — it has about 300 students. That, some may argue, makes the job of reaching climate neutrality easier than at, say, a large land-grant university. But in an interview, David Hales, president of the College of the Atlantic, denied that the college’s size was a significant help. For starters, other colleges have more money and therefore “have lots of options,” he said. And the College of the Atlantic, which was founded in 1969 with an environmental ethos, had already done the easiest projects to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
“We’ve been green for a long time. We have less low-hanging fruit,” he said.
Perhaps one advantage of being small, he acknowledged, was that the college could be more nimble in making changes on campus.
“The key is for institutions to realize that carbon neutrality is possible,” Mr. Hales said. “You can do it. If a relatively poor, small school can do it, you can do it.”
Whether colleges can actually become climate neutral has been a point of discussion in higher education lately. A recent Chronicle article about the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment focused on several institutions that face difficult challenges in becoming climate neutral, a pledge that is part of the commitment. Many college administrators think it could take decades for their institutions to become climate neutral — if they ever reach that goal at all. Other institutions refuse to sign the commitment because they think climate neutrality isn’t feasible.
Mr. Hales emphasized that his college’s accomplishment should not be seen as something for the college to simply boast about. He hopes other institutions will learn from what the college did.
“We have laid out everything we did on our Web site,“ he said. “The community of institutions in higher education have a lot to share with each other. There’s a fine line between saying, ‘We did it, and here’s how we did it,’ and, ‘We did it, and we’re better than you.’”
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