One of the benefits of working at a University is that one is continually made aware — year after year — of the degree to which students change from one generation to the next. Each new incoming class brings with it the aspirations, and anxieties, that have characterized the period in which these students have come of age.
The students who are arriving on our campus now are an optimistic, forward-thinking group. The Cold War, and the years that culminated in the collapse of the Berlin Wall — so defining of the attitudes and concerns of my generation — are a matter of history for these young people. Instead, this is a group that has been shaped by other concerns and prominent among them is the sustainability of the planet. They have grown up under the shadow of a cloud about whether we can continue to spend the earth’s natural resources as though they are limitless, as if the earth had an inexhaustible capacity to absorb the way we live in industrialized societies. Recently Sierra magazine, the publication of the country’s oldest and largest grass-roots environmental movement, The Sierra Club, found that while a few years ago students looking at colleges to attend were mainly concerned with prestige, location, and social life. “These days, however,” the editors wrote, “applicants look for something more: a school with green credentials.”
At Fairfield University we have invested in a community-wide effort to change the way we operate, so that we assess the environmental impact of what we do, both as an institution and as a community that lives together on a piece of land in Fairfield County. This land, with its ponds and trees, wild turkeys, foxes, and a fairly noisy and vibrant community of green parrots, is the small piece of the earth over which we have stewardship. As a Jesuit University, we have a particular responsibility to be good stewards of the earth, because this is a specific charge put before us by the Society of Jesus.
We have a number of sustainability projects underway — recycling, energy saving procedures, student programs that include a Green Campus Initiative and a Student Environmental Association. Earlier this academic year, we were named one of the nation’s “Cool Schools” by the Sierra Club for our environmentally friendly efforts.
We received more good news this week on this front. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has honored our University with an Energy Star Award for our combined heat and power plant.
The plant has been a source of pride for us since its opening in 2007. This combined heat and power plant, designed by Carrier and supported by a $2.3 million grant from the United Illuminating Company, uses a 4.5 megawatt natural gas turbine to generate electricity that meets most of our needs on the campus. But the added environmental bonus is that the heat generated in the process is captured and used to heat and cool most of our buildings. In making the award, Neeharika Naik-Dhungel of the EPA’s combined Heat and Power Partnership Program, said: “Through the recovery of otherwise wasted heat to produce hot water for campus heating and cooling, Fairfield University has demonstrated exceptional leadership in energy use and management.”
It was also noted that our plant effectively reduces our CO2 emissions by more than 7,400 tons per year. It should be said that the plant also saves us millions of dollars a year in energy costs, and this is certainly more important now than ever, as we face pressures on our costs all across our University budget.
One of the most gratifying outcomes of having adopted this energy system is that other colleges and corporations are coming to the University to tour the plant and to see how it operates. As a University, this is what we should be doing — looking to the future for solutions to global problems, then taking steps to address those problems to the degree that we can. In doing so, hopefully we can share what we have learned for the benefit of the entire community.
