Evergreen signs on for carbon neutrality

The Evergreen State College is expected to become a “carbon neutral” school by 2020 through reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and offsetting any remaining effects on the climate, administrators said Tuesday.

The move is part of a national initiative in the fight against climate change.

Evergreen President Les Purce joined more than 250 other school presidents Tuesday who signed on to the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment in Washington, D.C. Purce, a founding member of the initiative’s steering committee, said he plans to encourage research and educational efforts to stabilize the earth’s climate.

“We hope to set an example for others to follow,” he said in a news release.

Evergreen officials are developing a plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2020. As part of that effort, Evergreen has completed its first comprehensive greenhouse-gas inventory to establish a baseline and track progress.

That inventory found that Evergreen’s gross greenhouse-gas emissions are relatively low per student — 5.1 metric tons — compared with other colleges. However, it found that the school’s commuter emissions — which account for 24 percent of the school’s total — are higher than those of most other schools because of its rural location. That means eliminating Evergreen’s carbon footprint will be challenging, if not impossible, without offsetting the commuter emissions through other means, the inventory found.

“Looking at the report, there certainly is some work we need to do to be in compliance with our pledge,” Anthony Sermonti, a college spokesman, said of the emissions report by Evergreen master’s degree candidate John Pumilio. “But a lot of that work has already begun.”

Evergreen officials say they have undertaken those efforts in an attempt to reach carbon- neutrality goals:

• A self-imposed student fee helps pay for 100 percent of Evergreen electricity to come from “green” sources.

• Evergreen built the state’s first public “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” gold-certified building — Seminar II — with energy-efficient and environmentally friendly design features.

• Evergreen administrators have moved the college’s sustainability coordinator position from part time to full time in the next school year.

• Evergreen officials plan several climate-change awareness events leading up to Focus the Nation forums scheduled in January.

• Evergreen officials purchase 18 percent of the food for the college’s dining services from within 150 miles of the campus and have a goal of expanding that percentage.