UC, CSU Sign Greener Energy Contract

UC and CSU announced Monday that they have signed a new six-month contract with their energy provider Arizona Power Supplier, mandating that 15 percent of energy purchased will come from renewable sources.

This purchase, revealed at a sustainability conference at UC Santa Cruz, is the latest development of UC's policy on Green Building Design and Clean Energy Standards, a two-part plan to increase sustainability systemwide, passed in July 2003.

"It's part of our ongoing commitment to operate efficiently and with sensitivity to the environment," said UC spokesperson Paul Schwartz.

The systemwide California Student Sustainability Coalition was founded in 2002 to approve and monitor the energy policy, and later joined forces with Greenpeace, a nonprofit environmental watchdog group, to campaign for this latest clean-energy purchase.

"At the conference on Monday, they told us ‘You are our customers, you keep us in business.' It drove home the point that we really drive the universities," said Hillary Lehr, the coalition's coordinator for UC Berkeley.

Since UC and CSU systems are large energy consumers, their purchase of renewable energy significantly increases demand and lowers the cost for the public, Lehr said.

The new purchase is just five percent away from meeting the policy's clean energy goal, which is to have 20 percent of UC's energy come from renewable sources by 2017.

"Nothing like this has ever happened before," Lehr said. "We're realizing that the UC administration isn't against (sustainability). They just need help."

Sources of clean energy include wind and solar power, instead of coal, nuclear and natural gases, said Josh Lynch, campus organizer for Greenpeace.

The results of the coalition's efforts on the UC Berkeley campus include placement of solar panels on top of the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union in 2003, which were acquired with the cooperation of the University of California Students Association to help combat rising energy prices and global warming.

In the coalition's latest cooperative effort with Greenpeace, the 15 percent clean energy purchase is also a measure taken to ensure equal access to an affordable public university education, Lehr said.

"This isn't just about an environmental thing. It's also social justice, coming together under the umbrella of sustainability," Lehr said.

She said that it is important for the UC and CSU systems to use renewable energy, because as the supply of fossil fuel dwindles, students will pay the price for this scarcity in the form of higher tuition.

"(The purchase) shows that even in a budget crisis the university can make a commitment to renewable energy and environmental stewardship without compromising student interests," Lynch said.

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