The collaboration between DU and the University of California at Berkeley on this year’s US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon has been a good reason to focus attention again on the sustainability efforts going on at DU and on other college campuses. The home built for the competition by DU and Berkeley students is designed to be sustainable and practical. It incorporates features such as solar power and recycled materials, and is designed for places where urban infill would help city sustainability. The project has been an outstanding example of the ability of college students to meet and exceed expectations of innovation.
Depending on which way you look at it, this project could be seen as taking place at a particularly opportune or inopportune time. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moved to repeal the Clean Power Act, an Obama-era policy aimed at slowing greenhouse gas emissions. This is largely meant to keep the coal industry robust, even when momentum had been building to move away from coal power. For anyone who, like the Solar Decathlon team, understands the urgency behind green energy and sustainable development, this comes as a hard hit.
Adding to the strangeness of the timing are the devastating wildfires in California as well as the major hurricanes that have all struck in the last several weeks. Climate science indicates that emissions from coal-burning industry will worsen global warming, and severe weather events such as storms and fire-causing droughts will become more frequent and more intense. Even if the California wildfires cannot be linked directly to climate change today, more fires like them in the future will be. This makes the decision to scrap plans intended to slow dangerous emissions the same week that wildfires rage an even weirder one.
The convergence of the Solar Decathlon, the EPA move to repeal the Clean Power Act and the news of hurricane and wildfire damage in the same few weeks shows how much knowledge of sustainability varies. But this greater context also shows that universities and their students can be real leaders when it comes to problem-solving. DU’s Center for Sustainability as well as the other Sustainable DU initiatives have projects ongoing throughout the year, as do a large number of other universities. It is encouraging to think of all of the progress being made in these different places, even when news from the federal government is so frequently discouraging.
A lesson from this year’s Solar Decathlon, therefore, is not just that sustainability is important, it is that innovation on campuses and at the local level is important. Students have the education and the resources to participate in current projects or to start their own outside of class work, and when community members cannot, for example, rely on the government to take steps to protect the environment, students can step up and make progress towards desired changes.
The Solar Decathlon is a relatively high-profile project, but others, like volunteering or doing an independent study, also have the potential to be impactful. Students are usually very good at formulating ideas and hopes for the future, but these hopes must translate into action. Undergraduate years are as good of a time as any to use knowledge and new skill to do projects that extend beyond the hypothetical. College students have a lot of influence over what kinds of projects will be prioritized now and in the future, and these have the potential to be much more meaningful than campaign promises and political maneuvering.
