Students will vote for the school to generate its own green energy, but proposal needs Trustee support.
By Daniel
Evergreen students will vote on a plan for Evergreen State College to generate 100% of its power using renewable energy sources.
The proposal comes from the Evergreen chapter of the Washington Public Interest Research Group. Geoduck Student Union representatives voted to add the initiative to their winter ballot, alongside a measure that would re-new the research group’s $8-per-quarter fee.
Evergreen already buys “renewable energy credits” to offset its carbon emissions, funded partially by a $1-per-credit fee that students voted for in 2005.
However, the research group’s campus organizer, Sarah Shames, says these credits are not enough. “The renewable energy credits we think are an awesome interim step, but they’re not renewable energy,” said Shames. “Carbon neutrality is great. But it’s very 10 years ago. We can do better now.”
The proposal asks students if they “support putting the Evergreen State College on a path to powering all operations with clean, renewable energy by no later than 2050 and for all electricity to come from renewable sources by 2050.”
“It’s in line with the tradition of the college to be sustainable, renewable,” said Shames. “That’s well within being the cutting edge place that evergreen is and wants to be, and I think would be attractive to current student body and prospective students.”
The proposal does not specify how Evergreen would generate the renewable energy. In 2010 Evergreen investigated building a biomass gasification plant on campus, which would convert debris from the Evergreen woods and surrounding areas into natural gas. The plant would have doubled the amount of particulates in campus air and was thwarted after Thurston County Commissioners passed a one-year moratorium on biomass energy projects.
Shames said the open nature of the plan is part of its strength. “We don’t want to commit you to something hyper specific. Technology is constantly changing,” said Shames. “Every time you look, the price of solar goes down, so we want to just make sure that whatever mix you have will actually work for the campus.”
The proposal would also not bind the college to any plan of action and, if passed, would require the support of the Board of Trustees.
For example, a 2010 GSU vote asked the college to divest from companies profiting off the Israel-Palestine conflict, including Caterpillar, whose bulldozers were utilized in the 2003 killing of Evergreen alumnus Rachel Corrie by Israeli soldiers. Responding to an open letter letter published in the Journal, the Board of Trustees declined to divest, arguing that “The Board’s position on the issue of divestment does not represent a failure to hear, listen or respond … We understand that some may not share our view, but this doesn’t mean that we haven’t listened, understood and responded to their views.”
Then-president Les Purce also responded to the initiative in a letter, arguing that “While we teach students that they have a duty to become informed about political questions, form opinions, and act on those opinions, the college as an institution refrains from doing so.”
Whether or not divesting completely from fossil fuels is a “political question” will be an interesting proposition for the board to consider.
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