Are We Carbon Neutral Yet?

Nick Ho
APES E Block
04/30/16
Information from class notes and assignments, compiled data provided by Alan McIntyre

Proctor's environmental mission statement is to create and sustain a carbon neutral campus. The term carbon neutral refers to the concept of generating fewer or equal carbon emissions than the amount of carbon sequestered naturally by the environment. In reference to to our campus, this means lowering our energy consumption to a sustainable level. Sequestered carbon can be stored in the ocean, terrestrial environments, or geologic formations. Terrestrial carbon sequestration is the process of absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere into biomass and soils.

The process of sequestration (Credits: ES 401, Middlebury College)

The school has put a significant amount of effort and funding into achieving this goal. The outline of the environmental mission statement includes, "sustaining a carbon-neutral footprint on campus... providing systems and services that encourage behavior, innovations, and technology that reduce our resource consumption [and] purchasing goods that are ecologically responsible." Proctor has lived this out in many ways, one of which has been the creation of the Wright Biomass Facility. Built in 2009, it replaced the school's oil furnaces with an alternative form of energy: biomass. Not only are the steam emissions from the facility clean water vapor, but the school's usage of fuel oil has dropped. Since 2006, our #4 fuel oil consumption per year has dropped 55% (from 84,334 gallons to 37,843 gallons) and our #2 fuel oil consumption per year has dropped 50.9% (81,037 gallons to 39,715 gallons).

Wright Biomass Facility (PC: Nick Ho)

Solar Power Live Production
(solrenview.com/SolrenView/mainFr.php?siteId=1771)

Another step the school has taken as a community towards carbon neutrality and reducing its carbon footprint is the construction and installations of solar panels. In 2013, 273 PV (photovoltaic) panels were installed atop the Wilkins Meeting House. Generating 70,000KW annually, they have generated 225MWh of electricity since their construction. This equates to 153 tons of CO2 emissions avoided, 7,582 nights of powering the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center, or 8 days of powering a search engine data center. Just last year, we added another array of PV panels on four Proctor buildings and the Proctor ski area, bringing our campus solar energy production rate to over 320,000KWH per year.

Solar Panels atop the Meeting House (PC: Nick Ho)

Other projects Proctor has begun that work towards sustainability include Peabody Dorm (2009), which is heated and cooled via geothermal energy, Sally B (2013), which utilizes energy efficient lighting, and the construction of thee new dining hall (2016), which will also take advantage of geothermal heating.

Proctor's New Dining Hall (PC: Nick Ho)

So how close is the school towards their goal of carbon neutrality. As it turns out, we already are carbon neutral. Terrestrial carbon sequestration accounts for about 2,806mtons of CO2 per year. In 2015, our CO2 output was about 1,425.9mtons of CO2, or 1,484.5mtons of CO2 if we take rough values of ground transportation into account. As it stands right now, our campus produces 1,321.5 fewer metric tons of CO2 than the carbon neutrality threshold.

In-class carbon footprint calculations (PC: Kelly Yu)

I'm excited to be a part of a community that holds environmental consciousness with such a high regard. We're in a position where it is our responsibility as contributing members of society to lower our carbon footprint as much as possible. I'm proud of our administration, trustees, faculty, and students for showing initiative to better the world from an environmental standpoint. As Jon Ferris says, "For us, the future of alternative energy at Proctor is looking bright." One point I remain curious about is the financial motivations behind these projects; how do these more efficient and cleaner forms of energy relate to the amount we pay for energy at this school?

I like the fact that at Proctor we live out our mission statements. Yesterday, on April 28th, 2016, we celebrated Eaarth Day, a time during which we all gathered at different workshops to appreciate and understand the role the environment plays in our lives. I spent the day hiking on Proctor woodlands building cairns and inukshuks and appreciating the beauty of nature.


Sources:
https://proctor.wistia.com/medias/2rzoqyx5yf
http://www.proctoracademy.org/page/On-Campus/Environmental-Stewardship
http://www.solrenview.com/SolrenView/mainFr.php?siteId=1771
http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/255078/original/Winter_2010carbon_sequestration.pdf