The second is a quick mention of the East Coast Greenway in an article on climate mitigation efforts on Princeton University’s campus.

Enjoy!

And solar is not the only renewable energy Atlantic City (AC) can brag about. In late 2005, AC built a 7.5 MW wind farm to power its wastewater treatment plant. The five 1.5 MW turbines have long been the only major wind installation in New Jersey, though the state plans to build an offshore wind farm in the early 2010s.

Of course, these solar and wind systems don’t mean Atlantic City is necessarily a perfect model for the sustainable energy transition ahead. AC is self-proclaimed “Always Turned On,” and many of those lights can probably use an upgrade to compact fluorescents and LEDs.

Nonetheless, Atlantic City definitely deserves some praise for their leadership in renewable energy deployment. And New Jersey also deserves kudos since state incentives were crucial to make these projects viable. Princeton University and other NJ institutions can get inspired to utilize more carbon-free renewables for their power needs as well.

Here’s to continued renewables and efficiency deployment to prevent us from needing to build any more fossil fuel-fired power plants throughout the US and beyond. Thanks for helping to lead the way, AC!

The coalition is a partnership of ~50 diverse organizations from regional networks like SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment) which I was involved in and the Black Mesa Water Coalition to longstanding environmental organizations such as the Sierra Student Coalition and Greenpeace. They had their first national conference in DC in 2007 when 6,000 youth came from all 50 states. This year, almost twice that amount plan to come together in keynote speeches, panel workshops, and mass actions to demand our federal leaders stop dragging their feet and embrace climate progress.

I was proud to hear that Princeton SURGE anticipates a group of ~50 students will make the trip to DC and the campus Sustainability Office may support the trip. That is exactly the type of partnership that can make climate responsible policy inevitable – the marriage of student energy and innovation with institutional resources to accomplish common goals.

Congratulations to everyone involved in Energy Action and Powershift organizing thus far! And youth across America, I hope you get a chance to be part of this historical gathering February 27th-March 2nd, Powershift 2009.

Onwards-

Located off the main campus, the Princeton building is home to the Research Collections and Preservations Consortium (ReCAP), a collaborative initiative with Columbia University and the NY Public Library. The solar system includes ~5,000 panels covering ~53,000 square feet of roofspace. It will offset much of the building’s power needs, and may provide all its power during periods of low heating or cooling demand. The main investor for the project is Pennsylvania Power & Light, who can sell the SRECs and benefits from an investment tax credit.

This is a great step in the right direction for Princeton University. And I hope it will be the first of many sizable renewable energy applications to continue to drive downward the carbon intensity of Princeton endeavors. SET’s Princeton Alumni for Climate Excellence (PACE) effort aims to support a commitment to climate responsibility (at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020) and climate neutrality by 2030 through further deployment of solar, wind, and geothermal alongside its efficient natural gas cogeneration facility.

For alumni that haven’t endorsed the PACE statement yet, please do so here.

Onwards in the Sustainable Energy Transition-

After going live in early October, the Princeton Alumni for Climate Excellence (PACE) campaign has connected with alumni over email, on facebook, and at alumni events in New York City. The statement signed by over 100 alumni calls for Princeton to lead in on-campus emissions reduction just like its Professors and researchers lead in climate policy scholarship and advocacy. “There is no better-situated institution to lead by example than our alma mater Princeton University,” explained Class of 2008 alumnus Dennis Markatos-Soriano and founder of SET. “We have the resources, both academic and financial, to be a model of climate mitigation that other campuses and communities can look to for inspiration and insight.”

The PACE statement calls on the University to aim for climate neutrality in its campus operations by 2030 (a situation of zero net carbon emissions), building on the Google.org Clean Energy 2030 report that came out this past fall. Princeton’s Students United for a Responsible Global Environment (SURGE) chapter advocates a complementary goal. They call for the campus to commit to at least a 25% deeper cut in emissions than University leadership put forward this past January. Such a cut would make emissions at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 (the leading recommendation for developed countries in current post-Kyoto international negotiations). Alumni encourage further cuts throughout the 2020s to achieve climate neutrality, through a range of actions such as increased efficiency, integrating more roof-top solar installations, and the construction of a Princeton wind farm within the region.

Support has come from all ages, from the Classes of 1956 and 1957 to recent graduates in 2008. Geographically, alumni endorsers live all over the world — from China to Rwanda to Belgium to Manhattan. If you would like to add your name to the list of Princeton Alumni for Climate Excellence, please do so at http://setenergy.org/projects/pace-campaign/pace-statement/

In addition to communicating with hundreds more alumni in the months ahead, SET plans to begin directly engaging University leadership to give them the resources and support they need to commit to excellent climate policy.

This effort has been made possible by support from the Evergreen Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Fund for the City of New York and individual donors. By volunteering or sponsoring this effort, you can help SET pull together a critical mass of alumni support to make Princeton a leader in climate mitigation and catalyze further emission cuts throughout the country and the world. If interested, please contact us.

Leading voices include James Hansen and Bill McKibben who call on concentrations not only to stop rising, but also to fall from today’s ~385 ppm down to 350 ppm. They make the case that we have already reached a concentration that would, if left this high, set off catastrophic climate change and a sea level rise of many meters. Their belief stems from a review of the history of Earth’s climate over the last many million years that shows whenever GHG concentrations were this high, sea level was more than 75 feet above the level today. Those who push for a global regime to achieve 450 ppm (or higher) believe the transition to less ice and higher seas will occur so slowly that we can adapt more easily over the next century than we can revolutionize our energy system from fossil fuels to zero carbon sources over the next 25 years.

For instance, the US has hundreds of billions invested in coal plants, sunk costs that lead rational economists to think Al Gore’s Repower America plan (zero carbon electricity in 10 years) is a nonstarter. But if Hansen and McKibben are right about the catastrophic costs of >350 ppm, maybe Al Gore has chosen the best target. And when our country sets its mind to something, impossibilities disappear. Maybe Obama can help inspire a sustainable energy transition over the next eight years on the scale of the ’40s war effort or the ’60s Apollo Project.

My current thinking focuses on the 450 ppm goal as a policy driver for now (which would take tremendous change in the developed world of an 80% cut in emissions over the next 42 years). As yesterday’s blog described, our country can probably achieve this at very little cost. As long as we set up our cap and trade system as a flexible instrument ready to adapt, we will be set. If the scientific consensus emerges that 450 ppm is indeed too high, the emission cap cuts should accelerate accordingly. My energy portfolio projections make zero carbon US electricity more plausible for 2030+ (even with aggressive growth for wind, solar, and efficiency) than Gore’s call by 2018. But I think institutions with ample resources should be Repower America models. For instance, Princeton University should step up and join Google, Yahoo!, UNC-Chapel Hill and others committed to climate neutrality in their global footprint. Once the models are established (with their lessons learned through success and failure), they can guide the nation and indeed the world to a sustainable future.

What do you think is the optimal GHG concentration?

Should we aim for 350, 450 or some other level? What first steps do you think the new federal government should take?

Together, we can stabilize the climate and achieve energy security.

Princeton is a source of top-notch climate scholarship, with leading professors such as Michael Oppenheimer, Denise Mauzerall, Robert Socolow, and Stephen Pacala. As climate modelers, state-of-the-art engineers, and policy experts, professors and staff at Princeton have led progress in the understanding of our Earth’s climate and the range of policies necessary to effectively mitigate this crucial challenge of the 21st century.

Recently, Princeton’s campus has begun to address the need for academic institutions to become laboratories that test emissions reduction strategies on their own buildings, transportation systems, and energy infrastructure. In early 2008, Princeton’s Board of Trustees launched a campus sustainability plan that called for 20% cuts in emissions by 2020 to achieve the 1990 level. While this plan showed significant progress from the business-as-usual trajectory, it does not yet equal the initiatives of peer institutions — evident in the lower sustainability rankings Princeton has received in many recent surveys including the Princeton Review and SEI’s Green Report Card.

We propose the year 2030 as the zero pollution goal date, similar to the recently released Google.org national clean energy plan. Such an achievement aims to be a followup to the effort of our partner, Princeton SURGE, to cut the current 2020 target a further 25% to the post-Kyoto goal urged by many international negotiators of 25% below 1990 levels by 2020.

If you are an alumnus/a who would like to be involved, please sign the endorsement statement here. We are excited to add further momentum to the climate responsibility movement sweeping our nation’s campuses and beyond.

I’m proud to say that my undergraduate alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a signatory. And our rivals down the road at Duke University are also signatories (I can be proud there too because I received a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke). But this Commitment is not just reserved to big-name schools that excel in basketball. Wilson Community College in eastern North Carolina is another leading campus in the effort, and hundreds of schools, large and small, dot the American landscape as beacons of climate responsibility for the communities around them. At Wilson Community College, their President aims to install massive solar arrays that can provide much of the electricity their efficient buildings demand. At signatory University of Oklahoma – Norman, they just announced a plan to generate all of their electricity needs from wind farms by 2013.

The resolve of our country to face climate change and its growing threats will be tested over the next several months of economic downturn. But campus efforts that are already making progress to foster a stable climate will be strong reminders for the rest of our country that a sustainable energy future is possible by the 2010s.

My graduate alma mater, Princeton University, still trails its peers in emissions reduction targets, as it aims to cut emissions 20% to 1990 levels by 2020. While large strides in efficiency have been achieved over the last few years, SET hopes to help Princeton commit to more aggressive cuts that make its alumni proud and impress prospective students watching the higher sustainability rankings at Harvard, Yale and elsewhere closely. I will give updates on that campaign in the weeks ahead.

In daily news, oil prices climbed back into triple digits on market hopes that a bailout would pass the House on Thursday and keep our economy afloat. Tomorrow’s oil inventory report will help give the oil market further direction, ironing out whether inventories are falling faster than demand or vice versa. I’ll give the full details tomorrow.

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education brought up the importance of oil-scarcity education in colleges and universities throughout the country. My favorite on-campus example of energy progress in an oil scarce world is by being a leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through the College Presidents Climate Commitment. They just released an inspiring annual report on progress toward climate neutrality at the 500+ institutions that have signed up in the first year of the program’s existence. Here’s to more campuses, like my graduate alma mater Princeton, joining this cutting edge club and becoming models for both global climate progress and energy security.

The main headlines this week are so far related to oil. The price is exploring further record territory by hitting $143.67 on Monday and may pass that soon due to a bullish medium term oil outlook report by the IEA today. Their latest report, which comes out each July, lowered their projections of demand growth over the next five years from 2.2% to 1.6% per year. But this demand destruction from higher prices was matched by a downward revision in projected supply, especially due to project slippage for major new oil production projects by 12-15 months as costs have recently doubled, especially hindering supply in Russia. They predict continued tightness in the oil market over the next five years, supporting record prices remaining. OPEC spare capacity is expected to roughly double by 2010 before falling to “negligible” levels by 2013. Such a scenario seems to support a continued climb for oil prices and raises the importance of our sustainable energy transition to keep these rising energy costs from crippling our economy.

And again, oil is not the only fossil energy rising to records. Coal traded internationally shot up last week by 5.8-10.9% at major ports in South Africa, Australia and Europe. The price in Europe broke $200 per ton for the first time ever. As oil and natural gas rise, there appears to be little chance that coal will not stay at current records or even rise further.

At my graduate alma mater, Princeton, many alumni stepped up to support innovative research in the energy field. The Barron Family (of alumnus Thomas Barron Class of 1974) contributed $4.5 million to the Princeton Environmental Institute to endow a professorship and a student prize celebrating commitment to environmental leadership in any field, Class of 1989 Paul Maeder and his wife gave $1 million to fund risk-taking faculty research in the energy field, Class of 1989 Dwight Anderson gave to support a tenured faculty position in energy and the environment, and Class of 1952 Gerry Andlinger gave $100 million to establish a center for energy and the environment within the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. I’m excited to see what progress Princeton scholars can make toward the sustainable energy transition ahead and hope on-campus energy policies will continue to move forward toward becoming a national model as well (as Princeton SURGE, Greening Princeton, and other groups aim to support).

Again, I’ll be out most of the week but will be back in touch regularly next week as we figure out the best steps for people and institutions worldwide to transform our dependence on oil and other greenhouse gas-emitting fossil energies to an efficient utilization of renewables.