Students ask MSU to end coal power

Michigan State University, the nation’s premier land grant college, built a central heating system in 1890 after fireplaces proved a risky way to heat school buildings. Now a student group is trying to convince the school that powering that plant with coal poses unacceptable health and environmental risks.

The university’s T.B. Simon coal plant burns around 250,000 tons of coal each year and provides all of the electricity for the school. It also provides steam heat for buildings and powers the water system.

Coal-fired power plants are the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions and a study by the Clean Air Task Force this year found that air pollution form coal plants will cause 13,200 deaths this year.

MSU Beyond Coal, a campaign sponsored by the Sierra Student Coalition, is asking the university to commit to ending the use of coal for power. The effort is part of a national Sierra Club campaign to end coal burning on college campuses. In recent months the campaign has focused on on-campus rallies to raise awareness of the university’s reliance on coal.

“The main goal of the campaign is to get the university to commit to getting off coal as soon as possible and transition to 100 percent clean energy,“ said organizer Michaela Howard. “We recognize that it won’t happen overnight but the commitment is important so we can know what we are working toward.”

“University has the ability to transition off coal tomorrow because they could burn natural gas,” she said. “They have done it before … For us the reduction in carbon emissions and savings on public health on campus would outweigh costs.”

One step that MSU could take to begin addressing it’s coal use is to sign on to the American College and University President’s Climate commitment.

The pledge requires schools to complete an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions within a year. Within two years the school must create and implement a plan to achieve climate neutrality, and while the plan is being implemented schools promise to reduce emissions, integrate sustainability in to the curriculum, and make public progress reports.

Thirteen Michigan schools, including nearby Lansing Community College, have signed on the President’s climate pledge. Nationwide 676 universities and colleges are using this scheduled framework to address their climate impacts.

Some schools that have taken steps to transition off coal say they expect to save money as a result of the change.

Last February, Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana announced a phased plan to replace the school’s coal-fired power plant with the largest geothermal heating system in the country.

President Jo Ann M. Gora named “volatile availability and costs for fuel sources, a retracting economy and the likelihood of stricter air quality standards” as reasons to invest in renewable energy.

Tom Kinghorn, the school’s vice president of business affairs and treasurer, said that when completed the project will save Ball State $2 million per year and eliminate the 85,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions emitted annually by the school’s coal burners, cutting the university’s carbon footprint in half.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison in in the process of spending $250,000 to convert its five coal boilers to biomass and natural gas, a project that will eliminate the use of 100,000 tons of coal each year.

The switch to biomass is expected to provide an economic boost to regional farms that will supply feedstock such as cornstalks and switch grass.

The move followed an announcement by Gov. Jim Doyle that the state must transition away from coal. It also followed a successful lawsuit by the Sierra Club which charged that the plant was in violation of the Clean Air Act due to a failure to install required pollution control technology.

According to the Sierra Club, a year-long campaign by students was also a factor.

MSU has claimed that ending coal use on campus is not economically feasible.

MSU’s director of utilities, Robert Ellerhorst, recently told the Lansing State Journal that switching from coal to natural gas would add at least $20 million to the university’s annual fuel costs.

Activists say the university is not looking at the big picture.

When people become better informed about the health and environmental impacts of coal, said Talya Tavor, student coordinator for MSU’s Beyond Coal campaign, they are more willing to consider alternatives.

“Most people do not even know that MSU has a coal plant,“ she said. “People need to raise awareness of the detriments of using coal … so many more people have asthma than would otherwise have it … the air is not clean, the toxins that go into the ground and into the water because of coal ash are terrible.”

This week Tavor and student organizers from Beyond Coal campaigns at universities around the country will gather in Washington DC to place pinwheels — a symbol of clean energy — in front the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other prominent places.

Tavor said that the student organizers will also be swapping tactics and discussing strategies for the ongoing campaigns.

Because MSU’s coal plant is the largest in the nation it is viewed as a particularly important battle to win. “If we are able to get MSU to transition away from coal it is not just going to give a big message to the state of Michigan but to the whole country,” Tavor said.

Tavor said she is optimistic that the MSU campaign will show results soon.