Coal-fired Power Plants Flunk Out of Colleges

Transcript

OPEN: Major utilities aren't the only facilities burning coal. College campuses often have their own coal-fired power plants. One of them, Indiana University, has become the target of national and local environmental groups calling for the school to stop burning the fuel. As the Ohio River Radio Consortium's Daniel Robison reports, it won't be that easy.

An alarm sounds at the Indiana University Central Heating plant. It's just one of the dozen or so bells and buzzers that litter the white noise soundscape here. Assistant Director of Utilities Mark Menefee stands by a coal boiler with a two thousand degree inferno raging inside. He says the plant has tried to reduce pollution in recent years.

"We've changed the control systems, we've changed the emissions systems. But the boilers, they're 1940s technology. It's old stuff," he said.

The university heats and cools 12 million square feet of buildings on its Bloomington campus alone ñ that's just less than double the size of the Pentagon. Menefee says many buildings and campus systems are inefficient and result in more coal being burned than necessary.

"It would be easy for us to turn off the switch tomorrow. But then we'd all look at each other and say, 'Now what do we do?'" said Tom Morrison, IU Vice President.

Morrison says his school ñ and nearly all others with coal plants ñ are stuck with the fuel as their heat source for the time being. Burning natural gas ñ which emits half as much carbon as coal ñ would hurt the university's bottom line too much, he says.

But that answer hasn't been good enough for the Sierra Club, which sent paid organizers to campus last fall, resulting in the boisterous student group Coal Free IU ñ led by President Lauren Kastner.

"They're buying it, they're burning it. That's as far as they see. That's as far as they want to see. The financial argument is the strongest they have because you can't argue with the recession," Kastner said.

But in the latest draft of its campus master plan, IU has pledged to work toward carbon neutrality by the middle of the century, joining nearly 700 other colleges making the same pledge ñ nationwide.

"It's an abstract date. It was a suggestion. And nobody's bought into that."

That's Jeff Kaden, university engineer. He is on the master plan working group.

"The administration has not said we fully understand and agree and follow the guidelines of the timelines for climate neutrality. That hasn't happened. And I don't know if it will," Kaden said.

Kaden says the university is counting on developments in clean energy that will allow the school to reach its goal. But until those affordable, new clean energy methods are invented and thoroughly tested first, Tom Morrison and other IU officials admit the school won't reach carbon neutrality.

"We don't have the benefit of experimentation to say let's try this and three years later go, 'Whoops. That didn't work.' We don't get that luxury," Morrison said. "We have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers of the state of Indiana."

Bob Keuster, who runs the non-profit Center for Energy Research, Education and Service, says college campuses -- especially ones as large and coal-dependent as IU -- will never not have an carbon footprint, so climate neutrality is a bit of a misnomer. But he says schools that promise to work toward neutrality have a duty to make the effort.

"Although shame is not the foundation of the approach, there is dimension is lurking there. If you don't follow up on what you say you're going to do, you're going to be a little embarrassed, if anything else," Kuester said.

Of the 60 college campuses that have their own coal plants, fewer than a handful have announced plans to consider phasing them out, despite the Sierra Club's forceful campaign.

But just up the road from IU, in Muncie, Indiana, Ball State University will soon shut down its four Eisenhower-era coal-fired boilers by completing the largest geothermal heating and cooling system in the country. While the project will move the school closer to its carbon neutral pledge, at best, it'll move the school less than halfway towards its goal.