MEADVILLE —
No matter what anyone thinks about the whole issue of climate change, “it makes good sense to use energy resources that are renewable,” David McInally, Allegheny College’s vice president of finance and planning, said Monday.
The occasion was the formal announcement that the college has signed an agreement with Constellation Energy to purchase enough green e-certified wind energy to supply 100 percent of its annual electricity usage beginning in 2011.
This does not mean that wind turbines are being installed on campus. It doesn’t even mean that every electron was generated by a gust. What it does mean is that Allegheny is putting its money where its mouth is — making a commitment to purchase electricity generated by wind.
Carlyn Johnson, a rising Allegheny senior whose joint major in environmental science and physics is putting her on the cutting edge of green technology, explained that while wind is currently responsible for generating less than one percent of America’s electricity, it’s growing at an amazing rate in recent years — and is positioned to fly even higher. “The Midwest — the Great Plains — people call them the Saudi Arabia of wind, she said. “There’s a lot of resource there. I expect we’ll be drawing a lot from that region of the United States, even though there may not be so much generated around here.”
Fortunately, the point of origin is pretty much irrelevant, she quickly pointed out.
“There’s no way you can say these green, clean electrons coming from that wind turbine are going to come to Allegheny College,” she said. “Everything, whether it comes from wind or coal or oil or nuclear is being fed into the grid. The thing is, the way to make sure you’re paying for wind instead of coal is you pay the rates for wind, which are different. That’s how you get wind energy instead of coal. We’re paying for the wind.”
As wind producers increase capacity, she added, the costs go down.
During Monday’s session, Johnson and McInally were joined by Kelly Boulton, Allegheny’s sustainability coordinator, and Tim Alexander, vice president of finance and administration for the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania.
“We talked a lot today about values,” Johnson said. “Even though coal is cheaper, the negative externalities of coal are internalized into the cost. You have environmental issues that come out of air pollution from coal. You have particulate matter in the atmosphere. You have ozone. You have a whole range of environmental problems that we are paying for. Health problems. Asthma. These are things you’re paying for that you don’t necessarily see.”
By going with wind, “You’re eliminating these negative costs — these negative externalities,” she said.
As for her future plans, Johnson, who recently completed a wind study for Acutec Precision Machining Inc. in Saegertown, is planning on grad school — but only after gaining a bit more experience in the field. This summer, she’ll be interning with a Massachusetts company that produces residential wind turbines. Even though they aren’t physically on the Great Plains, they’re still participating on the wind generation bandwagon, she added. “They’re three years old and they have 20 employees now,” she said. “Two years ago, there were just two of them.”
Mary Spicer can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at mspicer@meadvilletribune.com.
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