By CRAIG CROSBY

Staff Writer

As Kermit the Frog famously observed, it's not easy being green.

But nearly 300 college and university presidents around the country have committed to becoming 100 percent environmentally green by eliminating their schools' contributions to global warming.

And Maine schools will play an integral role in the effort to enact the sweeping reforms in how colleges and universities around the country operate in their quest to reverse climate change.

"I think signing the commitment is going to make us live up to the commitment," said University of Maine at Farmington President Theodora Kalikow, one of the leaders for The American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. "We're going to have to learn how to do it. Global warming is real and everyone has to do their part."

The American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, which was officially unveiled Tuesday, is an attempt to get colleges and universities to eliminate their greenhouse gas emissions.

The commitment also requires each school to compile an inventory of its carbon emissions and make the results publicly available. Schools have two years to create a plan and set a timeline for becoming "carbon-neutral."

 

More than 284 colleges and institutes in 45 states have joined the initiative since the fall. Before it was officially launched on Tuesday the signatories represented about 15 percent of higher education institutions in the country, according to ecoAmerica's Bob Perkowitz, one of the initiative's organizers. The list of participants includes the entire University of Maine system, except for the Augusta campus, as well as Unity, Bates and Bowdoin Colleges and College of the Atlantic.

"These presidents and chancellors are not waiting," Perkowitz said. "They are not telling someone else to take action. They are, in the true spirit of American leadership, stepping forward and taking steps themselves."

Unity College President Mitch Thomashow, one of 17 steering committee members -- David Hales, president of College of the Atlantic, is the only other Maine representative on the steering committee -- believes colleges and universities need to lead the way toward sustainability because, he says, climate change is one of the biggest problems today's youth will face.

 

"From a political point of view it's a no-brainer to (sign the commitment)," Thomashow said. "It's the implementation that's going to be a challenge."

Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions is just one of those challenges, Thomashow said. The commitment also forces institutions to give every student instruction in sustainability practices.

"That's going to be the most difficult thing to accomplish," he said. "Moving the curriculum so that every engineering student, every medical student, takes these types of classes -- that's a much bigger challenge, but that ultimately will need to happen."

The commitment is the latest example of the quest to be green on college campuses. All the Maine schools that have signed the commitment already have sustainability programs in place.

Colby College started a sustainability program about 10 years ago when it began using waste steam from its heating system to turn electricity-generating turbines, said Thomas Tietenberg, professor of economics. The school is committed to building super-efficient Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design buildings and taking other steps to reduce cut carbon emissions, he said.

Colby has not signed the president's commitment because the school favors programs that have hard targets, such as the Governors Carbon Challenge, Tietenberg said.

"We have started with the ones that have firm targets and are orientated toward those," he said.

Becoming carbon neutral is not without some controversy, even for those who work toward it. Regardless of how efficient buildings become, or how much students and faculty use public transportation, there is realistically is no way for schools to produce zero emissions, Tietenberg said.

"My own view, when you're really thinking about carbon neutrality -- carbon offsets will play a role, but right now the market is shaky," he said. "There are good solid credits out there and there are some that are less solid."

 

Carbon credits, or offsets, are a means to countering emissions by paying for such things as tree planting or renewable energy producers like wind turbines. There are not currently any federal regulations to verify the legitimacy of the credits, however.

"We try to reduce as much as we can without purchasing credits," Tietenberg said.

For most major colleges and universities, however, credits are a major component in their environmental initiatives. And those credits can muddy the waters when it comes to determining just how much colleges and universities are doing to promote sustainability, said Mick Womersley, professor at Unity College.

"If everyone in the world who wanted to reduce emissions bought offsets, there'd be no offsets to buy because no one would have any emissions reductions to sell as offsets," Womersley said. "Offsets are a zero-sum game in terms of emissions and they cost money while actual emissions reductions are actual emissions reductions and money in the bank if you know how to calculate payback and interest rates."

Instead of purchasing offsets, Unity spent its money on increasing building efficiency, reducing electrical consumption and less polluting heating, he said.

The University of Maine at Farmington has taken similar measures and discovered the savings, Kalikow said.

"We'd be stupid not to," she said. "When we have the knowledge and the technology and the material and the smart architects who can do this, it's part of our job to demonstrate how to do this."

Some of the most prestigious universities, however, have failed in their stated mission of improving sustainability. According to its own report, Harvard University produced an average of 17.8 metric tons of emissions per student in 2006. Duke University averaged more than 29 metric tons per student in 2003. Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology both averaged more than 20 metric tons of emissions per student in recent years.

 

Unity College, however, averaged just over 2 metric tons per student in 2006 and did so without the benefit of offsets.

While Womersley believes heating research facilities contribute to bloated figures at places like Harvard and Yale, it cannot all be explained away so easily.

According to Harvard's Green Campus Initiative, the university's emissions increased 100,000 metric tons between 1992 and 2003.

"College campuses are competing for sustainability and this represents a very embarrassing failure for Harvard as an institution," Womersley said.

Ultimately, reducing emissions means saved energy and money, Womersley said. The common sense approach Unity College has taken is one that can be applied everywhere as colleges commit to becoming carbon neutral, he said.

"Instead of building a flagship green building on campus we've built relatively modest, but still relatively green, buildings, but also insulated, and paid attention to efficiency in every other building," Womersley said. "The technology is there. The understanding is there. The payback is there. You don't need to be a crusader to want to save a dollar."