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Three dollars buys much green
By Emile Hallez
ehallez@mscd.edu

Like hordes of girl scouts and Mormons before it, Auraria is knocking at your door. Fortunately it isn’t selling cookies, Jesus or a tasty combination of the two; rather it wants money for low-flow toilets and more efficient lighting.

Deciding to add a three-dollar renewable energy fee to current institutional costs is one issue on which students will vote during April 25 and 26 elections. The fee will apply to the spring, summer and fall 2008 semesters and will be tiered, reaching four dollars per student in 2009 and five dollars in 2010 and 2011. The Auraria Board of Directors plans to use the money to expand the existing program, for which students are bled for a dollar every semester.

Some of the upgrades the campus could receive include water-saving toilets, more sensor-activated faucets and energy-efficient lighting fixtures. About 10 percent of the fee would be used for marketing and education – creating informational banners for “green” buildings and hosting talks by environment experts, said Shaun Lally, chairman of the Student Advisory Committee to the Auraria Board. More funds would also be pumped into the campus’ recycling programs, he said.
Open up your wallets, comrades. This one’s a no-brainer. While your money won’t guarantee salvation in the afterlife or fill your guts with Samoas, it will give Earth a much-needed pat on the butt.

The campus won’t actually be powered by wind, solar power or biofuels, but Auraria will purchase renewable energy certificates that offset the amount of electricity provided by other sources. Like most buildings in Denver, Auraria’s power comes from Xcel Energy, whose electricity is generated predominantly from coal – not exactly the face of environmental consciousness.

“Coal-fired power plants are a leading cause of respiratory illness, and already account for over 40 percent of our nation’s carbon dioxide emissions,” read a statement from the Sierra Club.

Auraria currently offsets 45 percent of its electricity with 51 million kilowatt hours in wind energy certificates purchased in 2006 to last through June 2009. The expanded fee will be used to purchase enough certificates to offset 100 percent of our electricity, Lally said. The energy certificates come from Sterling Planet, a company that doesn’t physically supply its customers with power, but gives them peace of mind in paper form.

Unfortunately, this referendum is blatantly ambiguous in terms of fund delegation. There is no mention on the voter information sheet of how much will be spent on each aspect of the program or of specific implementations to make buildings more efficient. Money thrown at this cause will be given to good intentions that lack certainty. But three to five dollars is less than a lot of you spend on Ding Dongs every week, so tossing it at renewable energy once a semester is comparatively money well spent.