Students tackle greenhouse emissions from campus


Inside NAU Home \| NAU in the News \| Search Archives \| Submit a News Tip	Vol. 4 No. 12 \| March 28, 2007

Most of the students in NAU's new Climate Change Mitigation class say they enrolled in it to help "save the world." They are starting on their world-saving quest in their own backyard by working to reduce campus greenhouse gas emissions.

"Change needs to start locally," said Angelina Robinson, an undergraduate in engineering and natural sciences working on a team to lessen waste on campus. "We're starting on a small scale, but we're hoping to make a big difference."

The class project, the "Merriam-Powell Greenhouse Gas Project—Reducing NAU's global warming footprint," is measuring NAU's own contribution to global warming and figuring ways to reduce that contribution.

Hungate and Koch explain how NAU contributes to global warming:

Like almost all human organizations— whether nations, cities, businesses, universities or other entities—NAU emits greenhouse gases that warm the planet. These gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and a few others like sulfur hexafluoride.

In terms of NAU's greenhouse gas footprint, electricity goes from the heel to about the middle of the foot (50 percent). The ball of the foot (40 percent) is natural gas. Transportation contributes three toes worth (8 percent, a figure that will probably increase as new data comes in), solid waste is the fourth toe (1 percent), and other miscellaneous sources add up to the pinky toe (<1 percent).

We are still in the process of quantifying contributions from land use. This could be like waiting for the other shoe to drop, as land use can emit large amounts of greenhouse gases, but in our case it may be finding we're a size 7 instead of a size 9: Careful land management could actually take up greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

The undergraduates' work is guided by NAU biology professors Bruce Hungate and George Koch, who manage the Western regional center for the National Institute for Climatic Change Research, and mechanical engineering professor Tom Acker, who directs NAU's Sustainable Energy Solutions program, and Marc Chopin, associate dean for the College of Business Administration.

"By gathering data from many sources around the campus, we are reconstructing NAU's global warming footprint for every year since 1990," Hungate said. "We're looking at the ways we produce greenhouse gases such as electricity and natural gas, transportation, waste and land use. We're assessing opportunities to reduce emissions in each of these sectors."

Besides helping the local environment, the course work will help NAU meet the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, which NAU President John Haeger signed in January, joining a growing group of universities and colleges committing to reduce college and university greenhouse gas emissions.

The students are examining each major source of greenhouse gases on campus.

Robinson said her waste-reduction team is working with different areas on campus to increase recycling while decreasing misconceptions about it.

"A lot of people aren't clear about exactly what gets recycled and how the process works," Robinson said. "We hope to promote awareness about the process while getting campus to recycle more and bring less to landfills, which do emit gases."

The group also is examining the feasibility of using the methane emitted from the landfill to eventually generate electricity on campus.

The effect of human uses of land and natural ecosystems is being analyzed, too.

"Careful land management can reduce emissions, even reverse them, by favoring the natural processes that consume greenhouse gases," Hungate said.

Anthony DiSanto, a student on the transportation team, said that while the team's goals include one day using alternate fuels on campus, big differences can be made by making small changes. "People should ride bikes and carpool when they can," he said. "If they have to drive to campus, they should park in one spot and walk to the rest of campus."

Hungate summed up the mitigation mission. "The sort of recommendations we might make to the president range from the very simple, like using energy star (uses less electricity) computer settings to reduce electricity use by computers, to the very ambitious, like a co-generation plant that burns small-diameter pine trees to generate heat and electricity," he explained. "Recommendations of specific projects will depend on the amount each can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the amount they cost."

Jaina Moan, a student on the electricity team, said the class is a lot of work, "but the opportunity to work on a real project and develop professional skills on a real-world issue is totally worth it."

The city of Flagstaff also is climbing aboard the mitigation bandwagon. Mayor Joe Donaldson recently signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.

The Climate Change Mitigation class is publishing its findings online.