The cost of oil is quickly increasing and many institutions, including the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, have begun introducing cheaper and more sustainable ways of producing energy.

Currently, it takes about 80 barrels of oil for one student to earn a degree, said Charles Hall, a professor of environmental and forest biology. This figure includes construction, food, electricity and other various factors. Even breakfast in a dining hall uses high amounts of energy.

‘If you want cream cheese on your bagel, that’s another gallon of oil,’ Hall said.

To combat high oil costs, ESF has started running campus vehicles on grease collected from dining halls. In addition, the campus is now taking advantage of solar power with photovoltaics – machines that convert solar energy into electrical power.

There are also plans to put up a wind turbine on one of the school’s remote campuses in the fall, said Michael Kelleher, director of Renewable Energy Systems at ESF.

Still, the photovoltaics do not meet design specifications because they produce only half of the electricity they were said to produce.

‘Everybody says ‘rah rah technology’ but technology is not keeping up with (oil) depletion,’ Hall said.

And once winter hits in Syracuse, maintaining campus conditions like heating and electricity will become even more of a challenge, as costs for natural gas – utilized by Syracuse University and ESF – will be higher than ever before.

Hall and Kelleher are both on the Campus Climate Committee, a group that meets each month to discuss sustainability projects to execute on campus.

‘We are worried about the cost of natural gas just like everybody else,’ Hall said. ‘Oil is pretty easy to predict; we know it’s going to go way up; a lot of people want oil, but gas is a little harder to predict.’

Instead of using natural gas as fuel for heating and energy, ESF is ‘looking at expanding photovoltaics and biomass as both a heat source and combined heat and energy source,’ Kelleher said. Energy audits are performed on the ESF campus and on its satellite campuses in order to find ways of conserving more energy.

‘We have to go after our big producers of carbon which are heat and electricity,’ Hall said. ‘In order to do that, our long range plans call for trying to do that with wood, but it’s not easy.’

Hall said he believes the school should build a belt system from the railroad tracks down the hill from the ESF campus. This would allow trains to dump woodchips to be moved uphill on a belt to a co-generation facility to produce energy and heat.

However, the school has not finalized any plans yet, and Hall predicts such plans will not be put in place for another 10 years.

ESF’s current goal is to have a carbon neutral campus by 2015.

‘We’re trying to conserve regardless of cost just because of environmental concerns,’ Kelleher said.

cejordan@syr.edu

Published on September 3, 2008 at 12:00 pm