SEAC's Green Energy Campaign

Getting your School to Support Clean Energy

Electricity production is the single most environmentally-damaging sector of the economy. Most electricity produced in the United States is from coal and nuclear power.

Schools tend to use LOTS of electricity. It is not unusual for many classrooms to have their lights left on, wasting energy.

Just as materials management has a priority on reduction ("Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" - in that order), energy has a similar process. It's called Conservation, Efficiency and Clean Renewables.

The most important first step for reforming your school's energy use is to work on conservation and efficiency. The cleanest electron is the one not used.

For the electricity that your school actually needs (after cutting energy use as much as possible), you should try to get as much as possible supplied by truly clean renewables.

Simply switching to a "green" energy supplier (if you're in one of the states where you can pick your energy supplier) may do more harm than good. Currently, all of the "green" energy marketers are selling power that includes polluting combustion sources as renewables. In order to support clean energy without supporting development of new incinerators, your school will have to use a special contract called a performance-based contract.

Performance based contracts differ from typical contracts that a school would normally use. Normally, contracts are awarded simply to the lowest bidder. A performance based contract factors in other things such as environmental factors. These various factors would be evaluated and scored so that the bidder with the best score would get the contract.

Here are some of the elements that a good school energy contract should include:

• A Clean Renewables Definition: Clean renewable energy includes wind, solar, ocean power, geothermal, and small-scale run-of-river hydro. Clean renewable energy does NOT include any sort of combustion technologies, nuclear power or hydro power large enough to block entire rivers.

• Conservation and Efficiency Program: Any energy marketers who contract with the school must work with the school to ensure that the school's energy use decreases by a certain amount each year. This can also be accomplished by installing clean renewables locally (preferably on school property, like solar panels on roofs of school buildings), and having these renewables offset the school's reliance on power from the energy grid.

• Providers Can't be Promoting Dirty Energy Supplies: No energy will be purchased from marketers who have NEWLY BUILT (anything put in service since January, 1st 1997) generating power in their mix, unless that newly built power consists of clean renewables. This makes sure that companies that promote environmentally-damaging energy supplies won't get the contract, even if they pretend to be selling "green" energy.

• Cleanest Provider Gets the Contract: After screening out the dirty energy promoters, preference should be given to the marketers with the cleaner mix of existing resources. Low scores with go to providers with nuclear capacity in their mix. Having a dirty mix of fossil fuel sources would also lower the score. Highest scores go to those who have the largest amount of NEWLY BUILT clean renewables in their mix.

• Contracts can be Voided if Contractor Doesn't Live Up to Performance Requirements: If a provider comes along that can document that they have a cleaner mix (and if they meet the other requirements of the contract), part or all of the current contract can be re-awarded to the new provider with the better product. This ensures that the company who gets the contract would be at risk of losing part or all of the contract if they don't remain the cleanest energy provider available.

Contracts with the above specifications would ensure that any new developer that wants to build clean renewables like wind turbines would have a guaranteed market (your school) without having to pour tons of money into advertising (like Green Mountain does). Innovative contracts like these can do more to promote development of clean renewable energy than any of the other "free market" options that currently exist.

A clean energy contract need not cost the school a lot more money. By saving energy each year, the school's decreasing energy demand could offset any higher costs of buying responsibly-produced electricity. A clean energy contract could be designed such that the cost factors are balanced against the environmental factors in a way that wouldn't allow for more than a certain percentage increase in cost over the current situation.

To learn more about how to pursue this sort of contract with your school, contact Kevin Lyons at klyons@crab.rutgers.edu or 732-445-8059.

Below are some links to other useful resources on greening your school's energy systems:

• Brown Is Green (Brown University)

• Green Schools Email List

• Conserve UB (State University of New York - Buffalo)

• Green Schools Program

• Green Investment, Green Return: How Practical Conservation Projects Save Millions on America's Campuses

• Campus Environmental Projects Research Station: Resource Flows Project Examples

• Campus Environmental/Energy Audits:
  • Dartmouth CEPCO Report
  • University of Pennsylvania Campus Environmental Audit
  • Pennsylvania State University Indicators Report
  • RPI Energy & Water Conservation Projects

• EPA Energy Star Buildings and Green Lights Partnership

• Edinburgh Sustainable Architecture Unit (University of Edinburgh)

• Estates and Buildings (University of Edinburgh)