Green Energy: Does it Follow College’s Instutional Pride

To the Editors:

In the spring of 1999, much to the credit of a group of dedicated student activists, Oberlin College adopted an apparel purchasing policy that AFL-CIO president John Sweeney has referred to as, “probably the strongest anti-sweatshop agreement of any college or university in the United States.” This policy, which considers how decisions made on our campus affect labor conditions elsewhere, is consistent with a lineage of moral courage on important issues of race, gender and labor that provide Oberlin students and faculty with a justified sense of institutional pride. Unfortunately, Oberlin has yet to apply the same level of moral consideration to one of our largest annual expenditures – the energy used to heat, cool and provide electricity for the campus. The vast majority of this energy is provided by burning coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels. The effects of coal on human health are well documented – a widely cited study concludes that the lung damaging particulates released by burning coal are responsible for 30,000 premature deaths in the US each year.* This number does not include either mining fatalities or the health effects of the mercury, cadmium, and radioactive isotopes released in association with burning coal. Environmental effects are also severe, coal is the principle source of the acid rain that has severely damaged forests and lakes of the North East United States, and produces three times as much climate-altering CO2 per unit of electrical energy generated as natural gas.
The electrical energy we purchase is a close analog of the sweatshop case. Oberlin College purchases its electricity from Oberlin Municipal Light and Power Supply (OMLPS), which receives the bulk of this power by burning coal. However, two sources of the electricity supplied to OMLPS can legitimately be considered “green” – approximately seven percent comes from a facility that recovers natural gas from the BFI landfill located just East of Oberlin, and approximately 10 percent comes from hydroelectric. But here’s the problem. It turns out that because there is not yet a local market for green energy, OMLPS sells the “green attributes” associated with this power to Green Mountain Power, an energy company that charges a premium to consumers who are willing to pay for green power. This means that the price the College pays for a unit of electricity is a bit cheaper than it would be if OMLPS held its green attributes, but because these attributes have been purchased by others we can’t claim the green energy sources as part of our mix. In other words, in exchange for slightly cheaper energy rates, we must accept responsibility for the negative environmental and health effects of a mix that is completely dominated by coal. In essence, Oberlin is participating in a situation in which the institution saves money at the cost of morally repugnant effects born by others. As with sweatshop labor, we ought to bring our purchasing policy in line with our ethics.
At the moment the College is strapped for money and I will not suggest that we take money from any existing budget item to support purchasing green attributes. One revenue neutral option would focus on altering winter term procedures. Current practice is to heat all dorms for the duration of January in spite of 25 percent occupancy — this results in an enormous waste of coal and money. A campus administrator has estimated that consolidating on-campus students into a few dorms would generate sufficient financial savings to allow Oberlin to purchase all of the available green attributes from OMLPS (effectively shifting Oberlin College’s electrical energy from greater than 90 percent coal to less than 40 percent coal). Some students find this appealing because it provides students with an opportunity to engage in developing a policy that require very real tradeoff between convenience, environmental costs and benefits.
Given the political climate in Washington right now, leadership on the environment and human health is most likely to come from the below. Oberlin has always taught through institutional policies as well as through classes. As it has done in the past, the College should choose to play a leadership role that other institutions and our national leaders might emulate.

*ABT Associates, “The Particulate-Related Health Benefits of Reducing Power Plant Emissions,” Oct. 1999

–John Petersen
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies