Tech works to improve energy use

Texas Tech students, staff and faculty spent two days imagining a different sort of university, one where wind turbines generate power for buildings, where trolleys shuttle students to campus, where droves of people trade in gas-guzzling cars for bicycles.

Bringing just the last vision to fruition would be a dream come true for conservationists. If all 28,000 or so students who attended Tech biked to or on campus, 115,000 barrels of oil would be saved and carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by an estimated 23 tons per year, according to Bill Strickland, the editor of Bicycle magazine.

His quotes were plastered on a poster board at the Green Campus Action Plan Symposium at Tech, which ended Thursday afternoon with a pledge from Tech officials to make the university more environmentally friendly.

"We will be discussing these ideas with key leaders on the campus, including key student leaders ..., and we're looking forward to working together as we move forward and help make the Texas Tech campus even more sustainable," said Mike Ellicott, Tech's vice chancellor for Facilities Planning and Construction.

Being green is an area where the university has received bad marks in the past.

In a fall 2008 issue of The Sierra Club's "Sierra" magazine, Tech was named one of five schools in the nation failing to implement green policies.

Tech had no campuswide sustainable policies or unified water-conservation plans, according to the magazine. The university also scored a D average for two consecutive years from the Sustainable Endowments Institute, which ranks about 200 well-financed universities on their commitment to environmentally friendly practices. Ellicott partly attributed the low marks to a lack of publicity of sustainable actions already taking place, even between departments.

Examples, he said, include recycling in dorm rooms, a campus bus service, using gray water for irrigation rather than potable water and a commitment to xeriscaping - a landscaping philosophy that decorates spaces with native plants and rocks that require little water and maintenance. All new areas on campus are supposed to be planned in accordance, he said.

But the face of Tech will be slow to change: Tech officials don't anticipate wiping away all the pretty flowers that brighten the campus any time soon, they said. Studies show students are drawn to visually pleasing campuses, said Mike Faires, Tech's associate vice president for operations.

"There has been a request to make the university a sanctuary and in some people's eyes that is a lot of tulips and green flowers, flowering plants, and this is not the climate for that. I think that mind set is changing a little bit. Of course, we don't want to look just like the prairie either. We want to be a little prettier than that, but cactus are great," Faires said.

Going forward, Tech officials will try to coordinate their sustainable efforts, Ellicott said. Goals include developing a coherent recycling program that coordinates with businesses, using resources as wisely as possible and constructing green buildings, the administrator said. The university's first green, LEED certified building, the College of Business Administration, is currently under construction. Materials from two old buildings demolished to make room for the facility were recycled, said officials, who are also trying to obtain money from the stimulus act to make old buildings energy efficient.

College campuses have great potential to be leaders in the green movement, said Kevin Doyle, a green issues consultant from Massachusetts and a keynote speaker at Tech's green action symposium.

They have small groups of leaders who can quickly take dramatic actions, most students are proponents of green practices and making environmentally friendly choices can make and save campuses money, he said.

"The advice that I would give to Texas Tech is the same advice that I would give to all the other universities that are struggling with this and that is dream big. And implement quickly," he said.

"What we don't need here or anywhere else in 2009 is small dreams implemented slowly. We don't have time for that. We can't afford that and frankly the current generation of students won't stand for it," Doyle said.

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First appeared on lubbockonline.com: 6:58 p.m. Friday.

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