The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry will use the collective knowledge of its faculty and students to create a carbon neutral campus by 2015.

ESF’s Climate Action Plan is made up of 40 initiatives that fall into five main categories: energy conservation, alternative energy projects, green-building energy systems, campus action plans and forest carbon sequestration.

The plan is part of the Presidents’ Climate Commitment that ESF President Neal Murphy signed to lower carbon emissions on campuses.

ESF emits 12,500 metric tons of carbon per year and hopes to reduce that number by 110 percent. If this goal is met, ESF will have a negative carbon footprint and take in more carbon than it gives off.

The plan was submitted as part of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education on Tuesday.

‘It’s important to provide leadership. We want to demonstrate to society as a whole what can be and should be done to improve global environmental health,’ Murphy said. ‘We want to demonstrate to the larger community that measures can be implemented to reduce man’s impact on the environment while also reducing operating costs.’

Energy conservation and alternative-energy projects

ESF’s renewable energy department will monitor the energy consumption as changes are made. They will adjust their overall plan toward carbon neutrality depending on their monitored results, said Justin Heavey, a junior environmental studies major who helped spearhead the plan.

‘Part of the President’s Climate Commitment and ESF’s own philosophy is continually monitoring the progress of the plan and making adjustments as necessary,’ Heavey said.

The university will also renovate several buildings in hopes of making them more energy efficient. Classrooms and research laboratories will start installing new technology, too, said Mike Kelleher, director of renewable energy systems at ESF.

Biodiesel will be used to power ESF’s fleet of vehicles. While it is not part of the plan, ESF hopes to one day produce ethanol from wood to fuel its fleet of vehicles, which can run on 85 percent ethanol.

Wood pellets will replace a large percentage of fossil fuel as the source of heating and electricity in several buildings on campus. ESF will use its 25,000 acres of forested property to eventually grow their own pellets.

Researchers will continue to produce biodiesel fuel from cooking oil waste, too. ESF will continue to use the biodiesel as an alternative energy source for its vehicles.

Green-building energy systems and campus action plans

ESF will continue to try to construct buildings in the most sustainable manner possible.

The focal point of this effort will be a new building, which will act as a gateway to ESF’s campus and produce more energy than it consumes. ESF has not announced a construction start date for this new building.

The building will be LEED Platinum certified, powered by a wood-pellet steam boiler, backpressure steam turbine, biodiesel micro-turbine, natural gas micro-turbines and a photovoltaic array. Solar-thermal collectors and vertical axis wind turbines may also be used.

The building’s heating and power system will be twice as efficient as conventional electricity generation and produce enough heat and power for itself and other buildings around it.

Student involvement

ESF will hold a competition in the spring challenging students to think of additions to the plan.

‘We have has a significant amount of faculty and students involved in generating ideas,’ Kelleher said. ‘Campus involvement is one of the things that makes our plan so unique.’

Students played a large role in the formation of the plan. Since the beginning stages, students have been a part of the Climate Change Advisory Committee and have been encouraged to get involved.

‘We didn’t rely on any outside consultants. Our plan was put together by faculty and staff and synthesized by a student, which was very important to us,’ Murphy said.

Heavey, the student involved, balanced class work with helping to put together the plan.

‘My job was to string all the projects together into a cohesive plan and quantify the cumulative impact from an environmental, energetic and economic perspective,’ Heavey said.

Forest carbon sequestration

Despite all the initiatives involved in the plan, ESF will not be able to totally reduce its carbon emissions solely through conventional means. To offset what carbon the university does release, it will manage Charles Lathrop Pack Demonstration Forest in Warrensburg, N.Y.

When trees photosynthesize, they absorb carbon. By maintaining the forest in Warrensburg, ESF will help reduce the same amount of carbon it produces.

ESF’s forested properties already take in 37,461 metric tons of carbon equivalent per year, which amounts to more than 300 percent of its actually carbon emissions, Davis said.

jlsiart@syr.edu

Published on September 16, 2009 at 12:00 pm