WELCOME!
The Environmental Policy Implementation Group (EPIG) is an active coalition of students advocating for and assisting with the full implementation of Oberlin College's Environmental Policy. Adopted in March of '04 by the Board of Trustees, this far-reaching policy addresses campus energy production and consumption, building construction, modernization, and maintenance, land use and development, transportation and material use by the College.
Download the Oberlin College Environmental Policy
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climate neutrality
Climate neutrality is a condition in which an organization is responsible for no overall emissions of climate changing greenhouse gasses (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide and methane. Oberlin College can accomplish this through a variety of mechanisms including: reducing on-campus emissions through energy efficiency and conservation; consuming low-emission products, for example local foods and recycled materials; producing or purchasing renewable energy; “sequestering” (removing and storing) atmospheric carbon, for example by planting trees; and by purchasing “carbon offsets.”
To better understand carbon offsets, it is helpful to look at the Earth as a total system. There is a fixed amount of carbon, some in fossil fuel reserves underground, some in trees, some dissolved in the oceans (and in shellfish), some in peat bogs, and locked in rocks. There is also carbon in the atmosphere as CO2, the principle greenhouse gas. Since the amount of carbon on Earth is fixed, all we can control is where that carbon is stored. When it is in the atmosphere it causes global warming and all the related problems like extreme weather and sea level rise. By reducing the amount that gets burned for electricity (and transit) and increasing the amount saved in trees the amount that is released into the atmosphere is reduced.
Alternative energy generation and energy efficiency projects as well as forest planting projects are audited by third party auditors and assigned a offset value in terms of “carbon credits” tradable on the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). Companies like CarbonFund.org purchase these credits and then do not resell them (thus only counting the reduction once). By increasing demand for these credits, alternative energy and sequestration projects are incentivized. Thus carbon releases on campus are balanced by a reduction elsewhere that would not have otherwise occurred.
Oberlin College: Climate Neutral by 2020 (coming soon)
An exhaustive report prepared by the Rocky Mountain Institute in 2002 detailing how Oberlin can achieve climate neutrality.
Carbon Offsets: Buying a Stairway to Heaven?
the day oberlin went neutral
The Day Oberlin Went Neutral is a celebration of climate neutrality at Oberlin College. When President Dye signed the American University and College President’s Climate Commitment she strengthened institutional direction and made Oberlin one of the first schools to join a national effort to build support in higher education for meaningful action to fight climate change.
Student Senate has funded the purchase of 138 tons of carbon from CarbonFund.org. Though much has changed since the initial audit in 2000 (Rocky Mountain Report--available on reserve in the Science Library), this figure remains a decent estimate of Oberlin’s daily emissions.
Though offsets are not the answer to global warming--they wouldn’t be so cheap if there was a national or global carbon tax/credit system--they are a step toward a global cap and trade system for carbon emissions and directly support verified alternative energy projects. It would be expensive and difficult for even a large organization like Oberlin College to audit and assign values to “offset” projects.
American University and College President’s Climate Commitment:
A Call for Climate Leadership: The defining challenge for our generation and for Higher Education
AUCPCC Pledge Description: Climate Neutrality in a nutshell.
History and Future of Climate Neutrality at Oberlin (coming soon)