It’s a new year — as evidenced by my inability to write the date correctly — and with that means Earth is ticking ever closer to a significantly more dangerous climate. Fortunately, there is still a narrow path to reducing the severity of impacts: Achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is likely to enable us to keep below a 1.5℃ increase in energy from pre-industrial levels.
Despite the urgent need to start transitioning to a greener economy and NC State’s multifaceted plans to improve sustainability on and off campus, little emphasis has been put on transitioning the university to renewable energy sources.
On its Energy page, the Sustainability Department boldly proclaims its admittedly impressive 32 percent reduction in energy consumption per square foot since 2002. However, taking into account the University’s growth over time, its consumption has actually only declined 15 percent. The page then lists ways it tries to manage demand and improve efficiency, but it makes only one brief mention of renewable energy: A paltry list of solar energy installations on campus.
In a Technician news article from October, University Sustainability Office Director Tracy Dixon said, “…NC State has publicly said we will be climate neutral by 2050.” However, the 16 current solar installations listed on the University’s website produce only about 160 kilowatts of electricity.
For comparison, the University uses approximately 57,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each hour, so this is about 0.3 percent of the University’s energy needs, and this is only during the daytime. Another telling point about that list of solar installations: Only four have been added since 2015, and two of those were a laughable 0.16 kilowatts each, both from 2017.
Clearly the University needs to drastically step its game up, especially since it also still uses natural gas for heating purposes. Reducing energy consumption is an important measure, but there’s a limit to how much utility you can get from an amount of energy. As such, renewable energy sources are crucial to achieving carbon neutrality.
The University has a lot of room for improvement — literally. The campus covers over 91 million square feet, enough to theoretically produce 1.2 million kWh per hour. While that would be an impossible feat, it demonstrates that the University could meet a considerable amount of its energy needs with on-site production, which has the added benefit of reducing power loss due to transmission.
For starters, we could install panels on the roofs of all buildings on campus. A number of the existing projects are on rooftops, and this method would cause minimal visual disruptions in addition to making use of largely unused space. We could also purposefully buy or repurpose land to set up a solar farm.
Not only would this change dramatically reduce our carbon footprint, it would also reduce the $15 million we spend on electricity annually. Granted, the costs of the solar panels and battery storage would be considerable, but the prices for solar power have steadily fallen over time, and likely will continue to do so in the future.
Price, however, should ultimately be no object in pursuit of a sustainable energy future. The cost of failing to act will vastly outweigh that of preventative measures through the devastation of extreme weather, rising seas and habitat destruction.
