One day, there shouldn’t have to be an Office of Sustainability.

That’s what Outreach Coordinator David Dean said he thinks of the office, which the University created in April to coordinate programs and work with other on-campus offices such as Transportation and Energy Management.

But “the reality is,” he said, “there needs to be one now,” especially if the University is to accomplish its goal of cutting 20 percent of its energy use by 2010.

“Sustainability is something that’s been going on for a while,” Dean said. “We’re trying to move toward a carbon-neutral environment, but we have a lot of work to do.”

Chancellor James Oblinger signed an American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, according to the program’s Web site, that holds signatories, and their universities, responsible for creating and implementing a plan to accomplish a state of climate neutrality.

The ACUPCC holds the universities involved to a standard of reducing their own energy consumption. N.C. State started that project in 2007, Dean said. Reducing energy use by 20 percent is the first benchmark.

But the University’s sustainability report, which Dean said was released in October, stated the campus had actually increased energy use by 1 percent in the 2007/2008 year.

To determine how to proceed, Dean said they took “a look at previous years’ water and energy use to get an idea of how much we use. We’ll work our way down from there.”

About 60 percent of on-campus energy consumption comes from students, faculty and staff using electricity. Dean and Director of the Office of Sustainability Tracy Dixon have gone from class to class to educate students about conserving electricity.

Dixon said she is also working on a green cleaning project that would introduce more environmentally friendly chemicals and efficient water use to cleaning methods.

But both campus and state policies hinder the Office of Sustainability, as well as those it works with, by placing restrictions on how students and staff can save energy.

“We’re trying to determine how we’re going to pull this off,” Dean said. “There’s a nuclear reactor on campus — that’s going to be a challenge. There’s a no-composte boundary with state regulations policy. There are changes that need to happen.”

Students are also working on the project. Dean said students like Anup Engineer, a senior in business administration, came to the Office of Sustainability to pitch an idea about showing real-time energy usage on a widescreen television located on the library’s first floor.

“It’s kind of an awareness thing, showing the University’s committment to energy issues,” Engineer said in the Oct. 27 issue of Technician. “We are a premier energy research university in the North Carolina system. When you think of energy research in North Carolina, you think of N.C. State.”

Dean said he redirected Engineer to two other offices to help get the project moving.

“We’re working with all these groups,” Dixon said. “We’re filling in the gaps to accomplish this ultimate goal.”