Feb. 7--CHAPEL HILL -- To the Sierra Club, a new energy task force at UNC is a victory of sorts, an acknowledgement that burning coal is a problem.
But to UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp, who put the task force together, the issue is far more complex.
More than just examining whether the university should be in the coal-burning business, the new task force will examine chilled water, natural gas consumption, state rules on the purchase of power, and other issues.
"This whole thing is a complicated ecosystem, and you have to understand the whole thing," Thorp said Thursday.
The task force's charge is to study the university's carbon-reduction plans and look at what other universities are doing. It will be headed by Tim Toben, chairman of the N.C. Energy Policy Council. Toben is also a member of the board of visitors to the UNC School of the Environment and a partner in the Greenbridge development, an energy-efficient 10-story condominium complex being built off West Rosemary Street.
UNC in recent years has created sustainability and carbon-reduction reports to guide future energy use. Thorp acknowledges the new task force may tread familiar ground, analyzing issues that UNC staffers have already pondered.
But the new task force will make those conversations public, Thorp said.
"We haven't done a good job of sharing what we've done; we've been just asking people to trust us that we have things right," he said. "Having a task force will ensure that information gets shared."
The task force will look for ways to reduce UNC's carbon footprint. Like many universities, UNC has set out a course to become carbon neutral by 2050, a goal environmentalists say should be accelerated.
Toben thinks that may be feasible.
"The whole technological and political environments have changed," Toben said last week. "The new state and federal administrations are very aggressively pushing green technologies. So, could that 2050 plan be a 2040 plan?"
Toben and others acknowledge the cogeneration plant on West Cameron Avenue, which burns coal and natural gas to produce one-third of the university's power, will be a primary center of discussion. The local Sierra Club has badgered the university for months about it. The coal plant accounts for at least 60 percent of UNC's greenhouse gas emissions each year, said Laura Stevens, the organizer with the Sierra Club's Coal-Free Campus Campaign.
"The best way for the task force to address energy use on campus is to address coal use," Stevens said. "Coal is dirty from cradle to grave. From start to finish it hurts the environment."
The cogeneration plant's two big boilers produce steam that is run through a turbine on its way to campus so the university gets two kinds of energy: thermal and electric. The process is actually a more efficient use of coal than the process used by power companies like Duke Energy, which burns coal to produce energy that the university also buys, Thorp said.
Environmentalists would like UNC to wean itself off coal entirely and invest in a new, renewable energy source. Thorp concedes that would be ideal; it's also an expensive proposition and UNC is still paying off bond debt for a recent updating of the cogeneration plant that made it more energy efficient.
UNC would reduce coal use under its current plan to be carbon neutral by 2050. But that's 40 years away, a far too distant target for those who want to save the planet now.
James Hansen is one of those people. Hansen is one of the world's most prominent climatologists, a NASA scientist revered in some circles and reviled in others for his outspoken views on global warming. He came to UNC last week to give a speech, chat up students in some classes and speak at a press event sponsored by the Sierra Club.
"What the world must do is phase out coal by 2030," Hansen said. "2050 is not the right target for the university to be setting. It needs to be a lot faster."
Hansen said he couldn't offer a better, specific alternative for UNC's energy program but said that in general, institutions and nations should cast a more serious eye on nuclear power, a technology that has made dramatic improvements and is far safer than many people realize.
And he balked at the suggestion that UNC's coal-burning process is better than most.
"It does not help to burn it slightly more slowly," he said. "You've got to leave it in the ground."
To see more of The Chapel Hill News or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.chapelhillnews.com/.
Copyright (c) 2010, The Chapel Hill News, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
