U Morris on the road to energy self-sufficiency by 2010

MORRIS, MINN. -- Homegrown heat will warm the University of Minnesota, Morris, this fall, a vivid example of how college campuses are taking the lead in figuring out how to shrink society's carbon footprint.

Experimental by nature and often compact, colleges around the country are becoming laboratories of renewable energy through building design, recycling and waste reduction, organic gardens, alternative transportation and even student competitions.

Today, the 1,700-student Morris campus, where an electricity-generating wind turbine has been a prairie landmark since 2004, plans to dedicate a "biomass gasification" furnace that's a major piece of their plan to be energy self-sufficient by 2010.

The school hopes to soon meet much of its heating needs with the furnace, which will burn local corn residue, wood chips and possibly grasses to make heat. The $9 million facility, funded by state and federal agencies and agricultural trade groups, could reduce the campus' natural gas needs by 80 percent, saving $270,000 annually.

Together with the wind turbine, a second one in the works and a planned power-generating steam turbine, the Morris campus envisions reducing its carbon dioxide output from 12,000 tons in 2004 to 2,000 tons in 2010.

Because most of its energy will then originate in renewable sources and not fossil fuels, the campus will be "carbon neutral" or even "carbon negative," said Lowell Rasmussen, Morris' vice chancellor for finance and facilities. That's a green transformation few public or private organizations will have achieved.

The Morris projects earned the school "exemplary" status on the National Wildlife Federation's campus sustainability report card of more than 1,000 U.S. campuses. Meanwhile, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus and several other Minnesota schools pulled down some of the top grades recently in the Sustainable Endowments Institute's report card by 300 Canadian and U.S. schools with large endowments. (The Morris campus wasn't considered.)

Carleton College, with an A-, was at the head of the class in Minnesota; its Northfield neighbor, St. Olaf, pulled down a B. Both have hilltop wind turbines and student-run organic gardens that produce food for campus cafeterias.

Plug-in appliances

Carleton also has begun offering to test the energy use by students' many plug-in electrical appliances; though dorms are heated with electricity, half of most dorms' energy use comes from appliances, said campus energy management director Rob Lamppa.

"Many of them didn't realize how much their hair dryers and flat irons used," Lamppa said.

At Macalester College in St. Paul, the new Institute for Global Citizenship is being designed to meet the highest architectural standards for efficiency and sustainability, while students have installed green roofs on two structures.

Sustainability manager Suzanne Savanick Hansen pointed out that campuses tend to have advantages and disadvantages in greenhouse gas reduction. Macalester might not be able to erect a 10-story wind turbine or collect clean agriculture biomass like the U's Morris campus, she said, but being in the city makes it possible to provide bus fare discounts and bike- and car-sharing programs.

The university's Twin Cities campus (where 5 percent of its steam is produced from oat hulls) is able to buy 18 percent of its food locally through the Heartland Food Network.

Yet Macalester's commitment to international exchanges has meant that carbon dioxide emissions attributed to college air travel rank third on campus, behind heat and electricity.

And the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus, due simply to its age, is saddled with old and inefficient buildings. The university isn't expected even to set a greenhouse gas reduction goal until 2010, according to Amy Short, campus sustainability coordinator.

But students themselves are often acting as mortar in the gaps of energy and greenhouse gas reductions. At the U, the Active Energy Club does energy audits in campus buildings and worked with new students during Welcome Week to explain where they might cut back on energy use.

Benefit local farmers

Rasmussen, of Morris, pointed out that the biomass burner also will represent a benefit to local farmers. By buying up to 8,000 tons of corn stalks, husks and cobs from within a 20-mile radius, the school will be spending about $480,000 annually in the local farm market. That, and the fact that burner will be heating a community about the size of many Minnesota towns, are reasons the Morris project is being watched as a potential model for towns or large businesses, added Jim Barbour, the plant's emissions specialist.

The Morris biomass gasifier originated as a way to avoid spikes in natural gas prices, Rasmussen noted. But now, thanks to global warming, it's literally taken on new steam.

"Now we're doing it because it's the right thing to do," he said.