As a Remedy to Global Warming, As a Remedy to Global Warming

It is also investigating improved technologiesto recover thermal energy before air goes outthe exhaust.Among other initiatives in Yale’s carbonneutralportfolio:❑ A 40-kilowatt solar photovoltaic arraywill go into operation this year on a residentialrooftop at the Divinity School.❑ The Central Power Plant is testingbiodiesel, a soy methyl ester, to fire one of itsboilers, as a potential substitute for heating oil.(The university’s two power plants currentlyburn about 80 percent natural gas and 20percent oil.)❑ Newman’s sustainability office isexploring use of biomass digesters toturn about 1,100 metric tons a year ofmaterial—food waste, animal bedding fromresearch facilities and leaves—into fuel andlandscaping material.Much of the early work to develop agreenhouse gas emissions scorecard for theuniversity came from a team of nine F&ES andYale School of Management students, known atfirst as “the energy mafia” and later as The YaleClimate Initiative (YCI). All of them had beenthrough a class in energy systems analysistaught by Arnulf Grübler, a professor in thefield of energy and technology at F&ES, whoalso shepherded the YCI team as they tookEmissions per 1,000 metric tons of carbon equivalentSOURCES OF EMISSIONS AT YALETotal EmissionsEmissions if no action takenwhat they had learned and applied it to the entire university. Members of the team served as interns in Yale’s facilities office over the past twosummers, doing what Bollier calls “the grunt work of buildings assessment,” down to such mundane details as estimating the energy budgets(from the outside dimensions) of the tombs of Yale’s secret societies. Before then,Yale had no reliable method of determining its greenhouse gasemissions, nor of saying whether it was doing better or worse from one period to the next.The bad news in the final YCI report, released early in 2005, is its detailed depiction of the university as a profligate energy consumer. Thereport describes Yale’s emissions from energy use as larger than those of 30 developing countries. Or as Grübler puts it, “This is a singleinstitution, one university and not the biggest university—20,000 people, including students, faculty and staff. And still the total greenhousegas footprint is comparable to that of millions of people in a country like the Central African Republic.”In addition, the YCI report details emissions from commuting, work-related travel, operation of university buses and other sources that are notbeing included in Yale’s initial reductions target. The 1990 baseline data don’t exist for most of these emissions, according to Tom Downing, seniorenergy engineer at Yale. Still, he says, the areas now being targeted—power plants, purchased electricity and buildings—account for about 80 to85 percent of Yale’s total emissions, or 263,000 metric tons in fiscal 2004.And the good news? Yale has already demonstrated that it can, in fact, reduce its emissions even as it expands, according to Sam Olmstead,associate director of utilities compliance and projects. In fiscal 2005, when two new buildings came online, annual emissions dropped by 3,000metric tons.And that leaves … a bit more than 100,000 tons of reductions to go.“A lot of people make a commitment that they know they can meet easily by doing simple things in conservation,” says Olmstead. “But thesimple things already got done here in the 1990s. I feel like we’re really stepping up to a big challenge.” EYYearPOTENTIAL FUTURE EMISSIONS LEVELS AT YALEEmissions after conservation(predictable in near years butnot in later years)Emissions after conservationand use of renewablesYear{from new buildingsfrom renovated buildingsfrom unrenovated buildings{ {Source: Yale University Office of SustainabilityFall 2005 7