It was the famous catchphrase of the late New York City mayor Ed Koch: “How am I doing?” ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ recently asked the question about its sustainability efforts, and the answer is gold. 

A Gold sustainability rating, that is, which ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ earned from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, an international benchmarking organization that measures and encourages sustainability in all aspects of higher education.

The college’s Gold rating is based on an institution-wide self-assessment submitted in June 2020 to AASHE’s Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System. ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ first participated in STAR in 2017, earning its initial Gold rating that year.

The Gold was propelled by an exceptionally strong performance in two sustainability “impact areas”: Energy, in which ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ earned the top rating among the 79 U.S. undergraduate institutions participating in the benchmarking program, and Air & Climate, in which ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ was fourth.

Overall, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ is one of 10 “Top Performers” among U.S. undergraduate colleges.

“Because of the hard work of our entire community, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ has enjoyed a rather meteoric rise to the top of the sustainability field,” said Sustainability Manager Tom Twist. 

In her letter accompanying the college’s STARS submission, President Clayton Spencer said, “Sustainability is a natural priority of our campus culture, and plays an important role here at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. We see civic engagement and environmental stewardship as integral and intertwined components for creating and sustaining a just world.”

She added, “ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ will continue to lead by example and offer students working models of new ways to interact with their world. We will continue to work on creating a campus that is a living laboratory of sustainable solutions — examples that are not just theoretical, but solutions that can be touched, observed, molded, and transferred out into the world — and preparing students to shape the future.”

As sustainability manager, Twist works with the college’s standing Committee on Environmental Responsibility. Chaired by Associate Professor of Physics Travis Gould, CER pulls in members and partners from all over campus, including student EcoReps, who support and often take the lead in driving initiatives on clean energy, sustainable food sources, and reducing waste on campus.

A recent example of EcoRep work is the expansion of the college’s support for electric-vehicle use. Students first conducted a college-wide survey that found burgeoning support for EVs. Then they secured competitive grants to fund additional EV chargers.

Broadly speaking, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ has worked on three sustainability fronts: reducing energy consumption through efficiency measures; strengthening the culture of recycling and sustainability on campus; and switching to renewable energy sources. In 2019, those efforts culminated in ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ achieving climate neutrality a year ahead of its goal.

Some sustainability efforts are the chip-away variety. For example, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ contracts with a Maine-based cleaning company for environmentally friendly cleaning products. The college diverts liquids from its waste stream, reducing the weight and thus the cost of tipping fees at the local landfill. ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ has also instituted a campus-wide composting option for all organic waste.

The college has installed building sensors and controls in all major buildings, allowing for campus wide HVAC control while providing data on energy use from each building. And, LED lighting is now the norm throughout campus.

Others represent ongoing stewardship. Since 2006, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ has pursued green building practices, specifically that construction and renovation projects should achieve, at minimum, equivalency to Silver certification under the green-building certification program known as LEED. The construction of Bonney Science Center, opened this past summer, followed those guidelines.

And others are innovative. Since the last Gold rating in 2017, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ has created a Green Innovations Grants Program that empowers students, staff, and faculty to develop sustainability projects.

Still other projects underscore the importance of institutional flexibility. Modified in recent years, the college’s three-boiler steam plant, which provides heating for 80 percent of the college’s buildings, is capable of using three different fuel sources: natural gas; a renewable heating oil substitute made from waste wood products; and a second renewable fuel, LR100, a recycled vegetable oil. 

“We’re getting a delivery of LR100 this week,” Twist said, during a recent walking tour of the green hallmarks of the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ campus. Recycled vegetable oil technology has come a long way since Twist used to pick up containers of former fry-o-later vegetable oil to help fuel Chewonki, the coastal educational center where he worked before coming to ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. No french-fry smell with this stuff, he says. 

As the college’s vice president for finance and administration and treasurer, Geoff Swift oversees many of the efforts and projects, large and small, that helped move the sustainability needle.

“We’re very conscious of and grateful for the initiatives that are happening in every corner of the campus that keep pushing us forward,” he says. “Whether it’s keeping food waste in Commons to a remarkable minimum — our food scraps go to a local pig farm — or students who take action when they see paper towels that could be replaced with electric hand dryers or the opportunity to expand our EV stations.” 

Sustainability accolades like Gold rating from AASHE “are a big deal,” he says. “But we know we’re not done. The technology that helped us get so green is always changing and improving, so we expect to continue to evolve with it.”

It’s likely, says ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝â€™ sustainability manager, that a recent update to the campus heating plant will put the college “right on the cusp of carbon neutrality.”

Historically powered by fossil fuels — namely natural gas and fuel oil — the plant produces steam that heats buildings across the central campus, totaling about 1.1 million square feet.

Going online in 2017, one of the plant’s three boilers was reconfigured to burn a sustainable forest product called Renewable Fuel Oil — thereby reducing ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝â€™ fossil carbon emissions by roughly 80 percent from 2001 levels.

This week, in an exciting sequel to that development, a second boiler began burning RFO. And this step will reduce ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝â€™ overall greenhouse-gas emissions by another 15 percent. That is, the college’s emissions will total a mere 5 percent of that 2001 baseline, according to an estimate from sustainability manager Tom Twist.

The round green panels are the locations of the two Renewable Fuel Oil burners in the campus steam plant. The first burner was installed on Boiler No. 1, at left, two years ago. The second, on Boiler No. 2, just went into service. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

In conjunction with other conservation efforts, including measures that have cut campus electricity consumption by more than a third since mid-decade, RFO heat brings ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ tantalizingly close to its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2020.

RFO is manufactured by the Canadian company Ensyn Technologies. It’s refined from a biocrude oil produced through a proprietary process of applying extreme heat to sawdust in an oxygen-free environment. (Another product of the biocrude is the kitchen condiment Liquid Smoke.)

Because the biocrude process, once started, is self-fueled, and because the biocrude is created from forest industry waste products (from sustainably grown trees, no less), burning RFO returns virtually no previously sequestered fossil carbon to the atmosphere. (Over the course of a year, transporting RFO to ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ from the refinery in Renfrew, Ontario, produces about 134 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. But substituting RFO for gas reduces ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝’ emissions by 3,000 MTCDE.)

Boiler No. 1 in November 2016, prior to its conversion for burning Renewable Fuel Oil. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

As retrofitted for RFO, the two ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ boilers use virtually identical technology. But they don’t look alike. Borrowing a term from navel engineering, No. 1 is an outie: the burner is housed in a big cylindrical projection on the boiler’s front door. Adding to the bulk was a new housing for the forced-draft fan that pushes heated air through the boiler, that sits alongside that extension.

In contrast, the new installation, on No. 2, is an innie. That’s because the equipment fabricator, Preferred Utilities Manufacturing of Danbury, Conn., designed the burner to fit in the existing door with minimal modification. (So there was no need to relocate the original forced-draft fan from its mounting on the door — and there was no changeover to an induced-draft fan, as we erroneously reported in an earlier edition of this post.)

Port City Mechanical of Portland, Maine, installed the new equipment.

John Rasmussen, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝â€™ energy manager, notes another difference between the original 2017 installation and the new one: Preferred Manufacturing retuned the burner to achieve a lower minimum operating temperature — think of it as the boiler “idling” when its full output isn’t needed — thereby saving fuel.

Rasmussen says that during the coldest days of a normal winter, heating the campus will require one of the RFO boilers running at full capacity and the other at half-power. He explains, “Boiler 1 will be the lead while the other picks up the slack, and then maybe after a couple of weeks you make Boiler 2 the lead, and Boiler 1 picks up the slack.

“But in any case, the goal is to meet 99 percent of the heating demand [on the portion of campus served by the steam plant] with RFO.” Accounting for most of that remaining percentage point is the use of natural gas to fire up the boilers in the fall — a 16-hour process that’s simply more straightforward with gas — and any use of the third boiler to cover for problems with Nos. 1 or 2.

Good planning helped contain both the cost — $200,000 — and time commitment for the conversion. Burning RFO is not as simple as, say, lighting up some Bananas Foster. The fuel oil needs to be pre-heated and pressurized. In addition, as another efficiency measure, steam from the system preheats water that’s about to be boiled into steam.

Surrounded by scaffolding and newly clad in siding to match the adjacent Cutten Maintenance Center, the Renewable Fuel Oil tank is shown on Jan. 19, 2017. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

This all requires machinery — a compressor, fuel heater, and heat exchanger. So Rasmussen made sure that during the original RFO conversion, beginning in 2016, all of this equipment was sized to accommodate two burners, anticipating the conversion of No. 2.

By the same token, the original fuel tank, intake pump, etc., are adequate to serve both burners. The only difference is that during the coldest weather RFO will be delivered seven times a week, instead of five or so.

Meanwhile, Ensyn has continued to attract clients for RFO, including one in Canada and a municipal district-heating system in Minnesota. In addition, two other Northeastern colleges seem like good bets. And, with the Renfrew plant at capacity, Ensyn has opened a new RFO production facility in Port-Cartier, Quebec, on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River.

RFO is also a money-saver for ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, as Ensyn is committed to offering the product at rates competitive with other fuels, Rasmussen notes.

So all in all, on a cold weekend in January, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ has gotten really good news about keeping warm. “The work by John Rasmussen is very exciting and a real success story,” says sustainability manager Twist, “from the standpoints of both carbon reduction and finance.”

ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ energy manager John Rasmussen, at left, and boiler operator John Jasper pose by the new Renewable Fuel Oil burner on Jan. 19, 2017. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Burning biomass to provide the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College campus with heat and some electricity is key to the college’s new Climate Action Plan, which anticipates carbon neutrality across the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ enterprise by 2020.

The proposes action steps to eliminate or offset ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝’ emissions of greenhouse gases. The proposed cogeneration plant would go to work in about a decade, as new buildings at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ begin to exceed the capacity of the current, fossil fuel-fired central heating plant. The biomass boiler system would cut ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝’ net emissions by more than 70 percent.

The CAP also proposes that ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ continue to support electricity generated from carbon-neutral sources, such as hydropower and biomass, as it has done since 2005, offsetting what would otherwise be the college’s single largest source of greenhouse gases.

The plan envisions efficiency, conservation and educational measures to further reduce emissions; and the purchase of carbon offsets to account for emissions that can’t be eliminated.

“Nationally, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ is recognized as a leader in sustainability, and our tradition of social responsibility and environmental stewardship is embedded in our history and campus culture,” said ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ President Elaine Hansen. “We know we are in a powerful position to lead the way in shaping solutions through education and sustainable planning.”

The plan is one culmination of ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝’ participation in the . Three years ago, as one of the chief executives in the coalition’s Leadership Circle, Hansen signed the ACUPCC pledge to achieve carbon neutrality.

Both the climate commitment and the way ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ developed the CAP really represent business as usual for a college that prides itself on sustainability, sound planning and getting the most out of a dollar, says Terry Beckmann, the college’s treasurer and vice president for finance and administration.

“We’ve been committed to sustainable actions for many years and simply see this commitment to climate neutrality as a logical milestone,” she says. “We’re not expecting the campus community to take drastically different actions, but rather to continue to support decisions that make sense both environmentally and economically.”

One distinctive quality of the CAP is that ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ developed it in conjunction with a major revision of the college’s Facilities Master Plan, a roadmap for building construction and other changes to the campus layout over the next 20 years. Harmonizing the two plans enabled the college to maximize cost-effectiveness and other efficiencies.

That process has made “the Climate Action Plan an integral part of growing and updating our campus infrastructure sustainably,” says Julie Rosenbach, sustainability coordinator.

Doug Ginevan, assistant vice president for financial planning and analysis, was involved in both initiatives. “It’s been exciting to participate in such a comprehensive planning process,” he says. “By integrating sustainability throughout our planning, we have created a Climate Action Plan that’s very likely to succeed.”

In fiscal year 2009, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ produced net emissions of 10,466 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. The biomass plant would subtract about 8,100 metric tons from that total. By burning plant materials such as waste wood, such facilities recycle atmospheric carbon rather than pulling it out of the ground in the form of fossil fuel.

Meanwhile, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ has taken such immediate actions as adopting LEED Silver-equivalent “green” building practices as a minimum for new construction. The college has also incorporated climate change and sustainability into its curriculum, outreach and other educational programs.