Green efforts on campus miss top grades, UNR needs more action
A couple of warm weeks ago, I sat bundled up in class to stay warm and thought that the University of Nevada, Reno might not be efficiently heating and warming its classrooms.
Now that the weather has become somewhat cooler, many buildings feel like a sauna, requiring me to strip down to a T-shirt. This confirms my suspicions.
The university has made a commitment to sustainable practices on campus when the President’s Climate Commitment was signed.
However, it seems apparent that we still have a long way to go in making the campus more sustainable.
With this in mind, I decided to look into where UNR’s environmental sustainability practices stand in relation to other campuses nationwide.
The Sustainable Endowments Institute recently issued this year’s College Sustainability Report Card, and UNR received a C-.
While being one of only 300 schools selected for the list indicates that UNR is at least making an effort at implementing more sustainable practices, the C- shows that there is still room for improvement.
Even UNLV scored higher than UNR, earning a C (oh the shame!).
The report card based the grading on several different categories. UNR received C’s in several categories such as “green building,” “recycling” and “student involvement.”
Our highest mark (a “B”) was in the “energy and climate change” category, for our commitment to using renewable energy sources, photovoltaic technology and Energy Star products whenever possible.
Just over the hill in Davis, the University of California has implemented a series of sustainability programs, earning their campus a B+, scoring A’s in categories such as “administration,” “student involvement,” “transportation,” “green building” and “recycling.”
The UC Davis Western Cooling Initiative, designed to reduce rooftop air conditioner electricity use in the western United States by over 40 percent, and the UC Davis Smart Energy Initiative, which promotes various programs to increase energy efficiency on the campus, are just two of many effective sustainability programs in place at UC Davis.
UNR and the state of Nevada as a whole, are particularly well-positioned to act as leaders in a sustainable future, particularly when it comes to alternative energy.
Nevada ranks first in solar resources with an average of 250 days of sunshine each year and is home to one of the most active geothermal landscapes in the world, making it the perfect environment for geothermal power.
The potential social, economic and environmental benefits for utilizing Nevada’s vast alternative energy potential are so numerous they would require an entire book to discuss (check out Thomas Friedman’s “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”), so there are few reasons not to begin implementing more sustainable programs and legislation.
UNR should work toward earning an A on the next Sustainability Report Card, through action rather than rhetoric, setting an example for the rest of the state, country and possibly the world.
Alex Alexiades is a columnist for The Nevada Sagebrush. He can be reached at editor@nevadasagebrush.com.
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