New
Team Has Campus Thinking Green
With the recently
formed Green Team spurring sustainability efforts all over
campus, Smith is on track this year to offset thousands of
dollars in increased energy costs and, equally as important,
team members say, substantially reduce the emissions of pollution
and environmentally damaging gases.
Already, following
the Green Team’s initiative at August’s Central
Check-In to sell low-wattage light bulbs to the community,
the college will save an estimated $5,200 and 64,000 kilowatts
(kWh, the standard unit of measure for electrical energy use)
this academic year. According to calculations by Todd Holland,
energy manager for Five Colleges, Inc., and a Green Team founding
member, that savings is equal to the amount of energy it takes
to light 51 average homes for a year.
 The
Green Team is a coalition of students, faculty and staff formed
this past summer to implement ideas and strategies for realizing
sustainability at Smith. An offshoot of the college’s
Committee on Sustainability, the Green Team takes on the work
of reducing energy use campuswide, following through on sustainability
initiatives and exploring alternative forms of energy production.
“What we’re
computing as 'savings' is really cost avoidance,” explains
Holland. “Savings will partially offset rapidly rising
energy prices, which in some cases have doubled since last
year.”
“This energy
savings will benefit the environment by reducing the emissions
from power plants that supply our electricity,” adds
Gary Hartwell, a project manager in the Physical Plant and
a Green Team founding member. As a result of that reduction
in energy use, the college will trim its carbon dioxide (a
greenhouse gas) emission by 22 tons. “That’s equivalent
to removing five cars from the road or planting 1,400 trees,”
Hartwell recites.
The Green Team
is also launching the Big Turn Off, a campaign to get employees
in the habit of powering down lights and electrical appliances
when not in use. In particular, the campaign is targeting
unneeded hallway lights, which run multiple electrical circuits,
lights in unused rooms, such as bathrooms and office kitchens,
copy machines and coffee pots.
“Turning
an idle appliance of unneeded light off generates 100 percent
savings,” states a flyer for the campaign. “There
is zero energy use, and therefore zero emissions, when you’ve
turned it off. Please turn them on when you need them, and
turn them off when you leave.”
In addition to
coordinating the sale of light bulbs in August, and its ongoing
effort to replace many incandescent bulbs on campus with low-wattage
bulbs, Green Team personnel are pursuing a project to cut
energy used for gymnasium lighting, overseeing the improvement
of insulation on steam pipes, and collaborating on a new residence
for Ada Comstock Scholars that will feature triple-paned windows
and thicker walls filled with insulation.
The Green Team
is also laying the groundwork for a transition to a “co-generation”
power plant that will generate electricity and steam for heat
at the same time. The plant is scheduled to be in use by fall
2007.
The Green Team
is working with other sustainability groups on campus, such
as , Clean Energy for Smith
(CES), and the Smith Environmental Coalition. Members of those
groups are on the Green Team.
In May, the Green
Team joined with Information Technology Services in the “Sleep
is Good” campaign, which aims to enable 1,200 computer
monitors to automatically shut down when the machine is not
in use. The project works by activating a “sleep mode”
feature on all Smith computers that will turn off the monitor
(put it to sleep) after several minutes of idle time, without
closing applications or interrupting the computer’s
performance.
The promotion
also encourages users to turn their computers off at night.
Research by the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and the Environmental
Protection Agency shows that only 36 percent of users turn
computers off after work, and that the average computer is
idle for 58 percent of the work day. A common myth states
that it's best to leave a computer running all the times,
but modern computers are actually better off when shut down
during non-use.
The Sleep is Good
endeavor is in support of the Million Monitor Pledge Drive,
a nationwide campaign projected to save $30 million this year,
and enough energy to power 350,000 homes for a month. The
, headed by Lindsey French
’08, head of CES. The
Smith Sleep is Good campaign, in conjunction with the Million
Monitor Drive, is projected to save $39,000 and 458,000 kWh
per year.
With Smith College
using energy at a clip of about 25,000,000 kWh per year (the
equivalent of powering 2,800 American homes), at a rate of
approximately $.08 per kWh (expected to nearly double in 2007),
the formation of the Green Team and its collaboration with
other sustainability groups on campus is none too soon.
The Green
Team is: Ann Finley, area manager in dining services; Carole
Fuller, director of strategic marketing; Gary Hartwell; Todd
Holland;Linda LaFlam, supervisor of residential operations;
Bob Dombkowski, supervisor of grounds; Katherine Thompson
’07, of Gaia; Lindsey French ’08; Mai Kobayashi
’06, of Smith Environmental Coalition; Crisi Clementi
’06, Earth Rep; Joanne McMullin Benkley, program coordinator
for the Environmental Science and Policy Program; and L. David
Smith, director of the Environmental Science and Policy Program.
to view the Green Team Web site.
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