Student power: Colleges are going green
Western Washington University senior Molly Ayre-Svingen recalls being shocked.
Standing in a classroom, she and other members of a group called Students for Renewable Energy asked fellow students in 2003 how much they would be willing to pay a quarter to ensure that their campus consumed only renewable energy. The questioning started at $1 and rose to $20.
"A huge number of hands were still up after 20 bucks," Ayre-Svingen said.
Just two years after that classroom revelation, and backed by a student body vote, the university has become one of the nation's earliest major adopters of purely green power. The Bellingham school also finds itself at the forefront of a rising campus movement across the state and the nation.
Soon after eco-conscious Western students voted to tax themselves to make their school the 22nd largest green-power purchaser in the nation, students at The Evergreen State College in Olympia took similar action. School initiatives like these are now under way across the Northwest -- a movement that has implications not only for campus politics, but also for the energy industry.
"We see a trend in university purchases across the country," said Rob Harmon, vice president for renewable energy programs at the Seattle office of Bonneville Environmental Foundation, which markets green power to public utilities.
Beginning this academic year, all power purchased through Puget Sound Energy at Western's and Evergreen's campuses comes from renewable energy sources, which include wind, solar, landfill gases, and biomass. Hydroelectric power is renewable but is typically not classified as green because hydropower is considered more damaging to the environment.
"There's a lot of energy on campus for this kind of thing," said Brad Bishop, an Evergreen senior who led the student green-power initiative movement. "It's pretty exciting."
In recent years, many utilities have begun offering their consumers the ability to elect green-power-only accounts. The cost tends to run 20 percent to 30 percent higher, but as more customers insist on renewable energy, the cost of those power sources is expected to decrease.
Though private companies, and not universities, were the earliest purchasers of green energy from Bonneville Environmental Foundation, universities now represent a fast-growing market, with Western and Evergreen among the most aggressive.
Continue reading this story from the Puget Sound Business Journal:
Student power: Colleges are going green
