Yale to go green

MSNBC reports that Yale University plans to be the "greenest" university. Maybe this gives Ivy League a whole new meaning!
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Jan. 26, 2007 - Global warming is one of the most-talked-about topics in Davos this year. But for many gathered in the Swiss mountain town for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, mere talk isn’t enough. “We cannot wait for our governments to act,” Yale President Richard Levin told delegates on Thursday. “Large organizations with the power to act independently should take matters into their own hands and begin to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions now.”

Levin has made good on his own call, implementing a program that he hopes will make Yale the greenest university in the United States. He spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Arlene Getz in Davos about his strategy and its progress. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What prompted you to implement this program?
Richard Levin: Global warming is real, and human activity is a major contributing factor, so it was clear that something had to be done. We concluded a year ago that the reduction of greenhouse gases [at Yale] is both feasible and not prohibitively expensive.

What’s your end goal?
We set a target of reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions to 10 percent below our 1990 levels by the year 2020. That’s a 43 percent reduction from our mid-2005 levels [a projected total of 203,000 metric tons of carbon equivalent, or MTCE, the international standard of measure of greenhouse-gas emissions].

How far have you gotten?
We’ve reduced our campus greenhouse-gas emissions by 6 percent in one year [15,486 MTCE].

How are you doing this?
We’re using a variety of instruments, including better controls on lighting and heating in existing buildings and including green architecture for all new buildings. Where we can we’re using renewable sources of energy: photovoltaic [power], ground water for heating and cooling, biodiesel fuel in our bus fleet. We plan to replace our cars with hybrids. We’re also increasing the efficiency of the university power plant, which currently generates all of our steam and water and two thirds of our electricity. There’s 13 million square feet of space on campus, and all of this makes a big difference.