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October 27, 2008, 02:54 PM ET
Counting Up Greenhouse-Gas Emissions, and Atoning for Them
This week’s Chronicle contains a couple of articles that might be of interest to folks who are trying to track and mitigate their greenhouse-gas impact:
REC-ing Ball: Some colleges are re-examining the ways in which they buy renewable-energy credits. At St. Mary’s College of Maryland, for example, students have spent about $50,000 to purchase credits for green energy in the past, but they may have to pay a lot more to cover the college’s rising energy consumption. At the same time, emissions experts and college administrators cast doubt on the efficacy of renewable-energy credits. “It’s a really cloudy issue,” says David F. Hales, president of the College of the Atlantic. “Our feeling is that [REC’s] are wonderful things to do, but they don’t result in emissions reduction.” The College of the Atlantic, along with other institutions, prefer to mitigate emissions through offsets.
Gas log: The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education has taken data from 163 greenhouse-gas reports that were submitted in the past month and found averages across various types of institutions. The article did not have room for a table showing average emissions in metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent per full-time student, also compiled by AASHE. Here are the figures, by Carnegie class: Doctorate: 6.41 Masters: 3.45 Baccalaureate: 7.61 Associates: 1.29 Special focus: 37.77
Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the association, said he was surprised at the energy use of special-focus institutions (a category that includes teaching hospitals). The Medical University of South Carolina and the medical schools of the University of California at San Francisco and the University of Massachusetts are among the institutions that have signed the climate commitment.
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