The Log | School News
Nicholas School Purchases Renewable Energy Certificates to Offset Use of Fossil Fuels
To demonstrate of its commitment to environmental stewardship, the Nicholas School has purchased $19,718 of renewable energy certificates to offset its use of electricity generated from fossil fuels.
“Buying these certificates is a way of putting our money where our mouth is,” says William H. Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School. “It ensures that the energy our school takes from the national power grid to run classrooms, labs and offices is being replaced with an equivalent amount of clean, renewable energy.”
The school bought the certificates this summer from Gray County Wind Farm, the largest wind farm in Kansas.
Renewable energy certificates are credits that individuals, institutions or businesses can buy to compensate for the amount of nonrenewable, greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels they burn in their vehicles, homes, offices or other facilities.
Buying the certificates helps subsidize the cost for a wind farm, solar farm or other renewable energy producer to generate an equivalent amount of clean energy and put it back into the national power grid, Schlesinger explains. But you’re not buying the energy itself; you’re buying the attributes of the energy.
“The certificates represent the desirable environmental outcomes, such as reduced carbon dioxide emissions, that are achieved when the energy is produced using renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels,” he explains.
“It sounds complex,” he admits, “but the bottom line for most energy users is pretty simple: Buying these certificates is an easy way to offset the amount of greenhouse gas emissions their energy use has caused.”
The Nicholas School’s purchase of the wind power certificates compensates for the estimated amount of electricity used last year at the school’s facilities in Durham and at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, N.C.
“All told, we’re offsetting about 16.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions,” says Becca Ryals, a second-year Master of Environmental Management student who worked with school administrators, staff members and student groups to spearhead the purchase. “That’s equivalent to taking about 1,500 gas-powered cars off the road for a year.”
Ryals says the idea to buy the certificates grew, in part, out of Nicholas School students’ involvement in the Duke University Greening Initiative (DUGI), a project aimed at enhancing environmental sustainability campuswide. After conducting a survey this summer that showed 92 percent of Nicholas School students supported the purchase of renewable energy certificates from the school’s discretionary fund, Ryals and other students from DUGI, the Nicholas School Student Advisory Committee and the Energy Club met with Schlesinger and school staff members to suggest the purchase.