September 6th, 2012

Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign has been turning up the heat on coal users, including campuses.

According to Sierra, 60 U.S. universities operate their own coal plants. The environmental group wants them to convert to another source of energy that produces fewer greenhouse gases, which are contributing to rapid climate change. Coal plant emissions also create ground-level pollution and contain mercury and arsenic, which ends up on land and in oceans and lakes.

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February 12th, 2010

By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

South Carolina’s Furman University, one of the schools that has signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, will be using a new form of renewable energy to improve its carbon profile: Student power.

Along with other schools such as the University of Kansas and the University of Florida, Furman is going to tap the energy of exercising students (and faculty) and turn it into electricity.

Fifteen Precor elliptical exercise machines will be installed at the university’s Herman W. Lay Physical Activities Center (PAC). The energy generated by the machines will then be put back into the campus power grid. Thirty minutes on the elliptical will power a light bulb for two to three hours or a desktop computer for half an hour.

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August 28th, 2009

By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

The U.S. Green Building Council, started 16 years ago, has 20,200 members and more than 50,000 LEED registered and certified projects around the world (80 percent are in the US).

And the group plans to get even bigger as it turns its attention to college campuses and enlists the help of students.

The USGBC is helping universities across the country to establish sustainability courses and USGBC student organizations, and of course, to build green. The Washington-based NGO estimates that there will be 4,300 LEED projects registered (underway) and certified (completed) on college campuses at the end of 2009.

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May 13th, 2009

By Laura Elizabeth May
Green Right Now

Sodexo, a food service and facilities management company responsible for millions of cafeteria meals across the country, and students at Ithaca College recently joined together to green the college’s dining operations.

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July 29th, 2008

By Nima Kapadia From degree options to the availability of financial aid and extracurricular activities, college applicants consider a variety of factors when choosing a school. A college’s sustainability practices are becoming another key factor, and The Princeton Review is trying to help students and parents by including a new category of “green ratings” in [...]

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January 30th, 2008

By Barbara Kessler

Focus the Nation, a collective effort to find global warming solutions that’s being called the country’s largest ever national teach-in, kicks off tonight with a free web cast available to anyone who wants to participate.

The web cast will focus on the “2% Solution,” which refers to the need to decrease carbon emissions by two percent each year for the next 40 years to reach the goal scientists advocate of an 80 percent reduction by 2050. To view the virtual web cast, which begins at 8 p.m. EST, you’ll need to go the Earth Day Television website and download the Flash player.

Focus the Nation: Global Warming Solutions for America will continue on Thursday with hundreds of gatherings at college campuses across the country involving millions of students and faculty and at least 50 U.S. Congressional representatives including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), according to Focus the Nation. Find events on the map the FTN website.

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January 24th, 2008

By Shermakaye Bass

Some of America’s most progressive and ambitious movements have incubated on college campuses: Civil rights, anti-war, anti-Apartheid, nuclear disarmament, to name a few. And now, global climate change.

It should come as no surprise, then, that a professor, Eban Goodstein of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, conceived “Focus the Nation: Global Warming Solutions for America,” a national teach-in and series of public forums (both actual and virtual) set for Jan. 30-Feb. 1.

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