Dartmouth’s energy production: a history and look ahead

BY LAUREN AZRIN The Dartmouth Senior Staff

Recent developments, such as the opening of the Irving Institute, have sparked discussions about clean renewable energy on Dartmouth’s campus. The Dartmouth Hanover Heating Plant, which has been supplying campus with energy since 1903, is the oldest continuously operating co-generational energy plant in the country. Using cogeneration — heat and energy production — the plant supplies electricity and heat by sending low-pressure steam around campus. To create this steam, the plant runs of of No. 6 fuel oil, a type of residual oil characterized by both an extremely high-energy concentration as well as an extremely high rate of pollution.

Dartmouth initially began to set greenhouse gas targets as early as 2005, according to assistant director of the Dartmouth Sustainability Ofce Marcus Welker. Around that time, greenhouse gas and carbon impacts became the frst and most widespread environmental related goals set by colleges and universities.

“These questions of, ‘What are we going to do?’ ‘What’s the alternative?’ began being raised in late 2010, early 2011, when the current iteration of the Dartmouth Sustainability Ofce was founded with Rosi [Kerr] as the director,” Welker said. “The cogeneration plant is the largest single generator of greenhouse gasses at Dartmouth College by far, and so has been the focus of a lot of the work that our ofce has done.”

Since then, the College has been working to try to reduce fossil fuel emissions, as well as create more ecofriendly forms of energy production.

According to Dartmouth News, in April 2017, College President Phil Hanlon made an Earth Day pledge to transition Dartmouth to a low-carbon future by making strategic investments in sustainable energy. The pledge included reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 2010 levels by 50% by 2025 and by 80% by 2050, transitioning the heating system from No. 6 fuel oil to renewable sources by 2025 and establishing a better system to distribute energy across campus.

In 2019, according to Dartmouth News, the College began seeking proposals to build a biomass energy heating facility and transmission system to replace the existing central heating system.

However, Dartmouth News soon wrote that the plan was abandoned in 2020, with the College announcing that the biomass plan was “not the right path forward.” Instead, the College then began prioritizing the conversion to a hot-water system, in an efort to move away from a single, central generation facility and explore options for a distributed system that uses a range of sustainable energy sources.

Welker explained that having a distributed system instead of just one central hub — which is the case of the current heating plant — would allow for more freedom in the types and amounts of energy in diferent buildings.

In 2022, Dartmouth News shared that the College was making strides in their plan, with their upgraded campus heating system drawing interest from other New England schools. Ofcials from schools like Williams College and Mount Holyoke College came to tour campus for a look at parts of the new, high-efciency hot-water heating system, according to the College’s press release.

In terms of how Dartmouth compares to other institutions, Welker explained that a metric called “energy use intensity” — the amount of energy used to heat, cool and electrify buildings, divided by how many buildings as indicated by square footage — is used to make this assessment.

“Amongst the 30 institutions that are a part of the Ivy Plus sustainability collaborative, we are, I would say, in the 40th percentile,” said Welker. “We’re not the best, we’re not the worst. We’re pretty average amongst our peers.”

On this year’s Earth Day, April 22, Hanlon sent a campus-wide email announcing updates and progress at the fve-year mark from his frst Earth Day announcement.

“We have charged the Our Green Future 2.0 planning team with reviewing the institution’s current state, re-examining our 2017 goals and recommending a new set of sustainability goals for Dartmouth,” he wrote in the email.

The latest science emphasizes that the world needs to do more to avert the most serious impacts of climate change, wrote Hanlon, citing that the science-based greenhouse gas emissions goals set by the College in 2017 are not enough.

“We are inspired to move more quickly and have made substantial investments in a low-carbon future,” Hanlon wrote. “In this and the next fscal years, for example, Dartmouth has committed more than $50 million dollars to upgrading our infrastructure to enable our low-carbon energy transition, most notably by converting from steam to hot water heating and cooling.”

Assistant anthropology professor Maron Greenleaf, a co-founder of Dartmouth’s Energy Justice Clinic and a working group member for Our Green Future 2.0, also emphasized the importance of ensuring the College’s energy initiatives align with scientifc advancements.

“There’s a need to update Dartmouth’s goals to be in line with both what the science says in terms of what we need to do, and also kind of think about Dartmouth’s role as a leader regionally in the Upper Valley and beyond,” Greenleaf said. Transferring over to these lowtemperature, hot-water heating systems is estimated to save the College approximately 20% of heating and cooling emissions that are associated with campus operations, Welker said.

“It’s my opinion that this direction is the right direction,” Welker said. “And that is going to mean that the central energy plant — I don’t know when, two years, fve years, that’s still very much being fgured out — will be decommissioned, and they’ll stop burning the oil, and then they will heat, cool and electrify the campus using other technologies.”

Welker described that the upcoming change in presidents will also play a role in the implementation of the College’s sustainability goals.

“We’ve got all this great feedback from the community, and now it’s just working with this incoming administration to launch the specifc programs, projects and strategies for achieving the goals that the community has developed,” explained Welker. “By the end of this calendar year, I suspect that we will know a lot more about the future of Dartmouth’s operations and the trajectory of those.”

Greenleaf also emphasized the shift that may occur as leadership changes.

“With a new college president coming in who’s going to be making decisions about what she thinks is a priority for the campus, this is a wonderful opportunity and moment for us to be bringing these sustainability goals to the table to support and encourage her to prioritize sustainability and particularly the transition from fossil fuels,” Greenleaf said. “There’s a real opportunity for Dartmouth to be a leader in the way that we need to be.”

In addition, “energy retrofts” will help to reduce campus energy emissions, especially when added up cumulatively over time.

Welker explained that he is “optimistic” that these changes will slowly but substantially change how much energy the College uses.

Switching over to this system is, however, going to necessitate a lot of campus construction in the next two decades. Welker said he believes this “disruption” will be worth it, as it brings with it a “massive opportunity” for the College to reduce its greenhouse gas impacts.

This “tiered process” involves massive teams of people to execute and a lot of “rearrangement,” Welker explained. Another limitation, Welker said, is the supply chain and labor challenges, which colleges and universities nationwide are running into.

Leader of the student-run

Dartmouth Energy Alliance Nathaniel Roe ’23 expressed appreciation for the recent eforts of the College.

“It seems that in the last fve years, the College has really stepped up to the block on the topic of climate by more formally making strides to divest itself from fossil fuels and provide programming, learning opportunities and research opportunities that intend to serve students around the topic of energy,” Roe said.

Through Roe’s projects in the DEA as well as in his engineering projects, he has viewed the College as “openminded and fexible” to exploration in the energy space.

“I think Dartmouth College is going to be the leader in the energy space. There are some of the smartest, most well-published researchers related to energy and energy justice in the world in [the Irving Center], and I think a lot of people could really beneft from that,” Roe said. “That gives me so much hope for the future, and I think that’s what we should be really excited about. This place that we have, it’s an incredibly powerful basis that we can build a low carbon future on.”

Greenleaf emphasized that Dartmouth is at a critical point in its energy process as decisions are made about plans going forward.

“As someone who’s part of it, I think there was a lot of responsiveness, and they did a great job of including a lot of diferent voices and expertise,” Greenleaf said. “Now what the College does with that — Do they adopt these goals? Do they actually follow through with them? — That’s the next step.” wiseuv.org/dartmouth campus@wiseuv.org

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213 Wilson Hall

Verbum Ultimum: A Dose of Common Sense

The Editorial Board urges students to balance fun with safety this weekend.

This week, the College will host its annual Green Key music festival. Concerts will kick of early this afternoon at Phi Delta Alpha fraternity and Collis Center, followed by the Programming Boardsponsored show tonight featuring headliners Neon Trees and Cochise. Festivities will continue throughout the day tomorrow, with live music oferings practically every hour after 11 a.m. This Editorial Board hopes that students will take a well-deserved break from their studies to get outside, enjoy the music and soak up the sunshine with friends. However, we also hope students will keep in mind the potential risks this weekend brings, and we ask that everyone does their best to keep themselves and others safe.

Because Green Key is often thought of as the one of the biggest weekends of the year at Dartmouth, some students may feel pressured to drink more than usual or choose to experiment with new or larger amounts of drugs. To ensure the health and wellbeing of our campus community, as well as the sustainability of our beloved Green Key tradition, we encourage students to exercise caution this weekend. When safety is sacrifced, situations that start out fun can quickly turn miserable, or worse, outright dangerous. We want to stress that we cannot have fun if we are not safe. More specifcally, we recommend that students consider the types and amounts of drugs and alcohol they consume, take particular care in crowds and assess how their choices may afect others before they act.

During big party weekends like Green Key, Dartmouth students are especially at risk of consuming dangerous amounts of alcohol. Students shouldn’t feel pressured to “keep up” with others, or buy into the common belief that “everyone is drinking a lot.” For their own safety, students should consider what they are drinking and avoid mixing or drinking beverages when they don’t know what’s in them. According to CDC guidelines, one standard drink is equivalent to 14 grams of “pure alcohol,” which is found in 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces — equivalent to one shot — of 80-proof distilled spirits or liquor (such as vodka, tequila or gin). Students should be especially careful when drinking “batch” — mixed drink concoctions often served at parties. If another student is making or pouring your drink, they’re probably not a bartender or a chemist, which means that the alcohol content could be higher than you’d expect. If you are going to drink batch, do so slowly and with caution, or ideally, avoid the batch altogether and open up a canned drink.

We also hope students stay aware of their own alcohol tolerance — and recognize that just because others are drinking a certain amount does not mean that amount of alcohol is safe. The CDC defnes “binge drinking” as alcohol consumption that brings blood alcohol content to a level of 0.08% or more — for men, this typically means consuming fve or more drinks on one occasion, while for women, this number is only four. However, students should note that the intensity of the efects of alcohol are diferent for everyone and can relate to factors such as someone’s size and whether one has eaten recently.

The prominent drug culture at music festivals like Green Key also puts Dartmouth students at risk of encountering fentanyl. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, is sold illegally for its pain-relieving, heroin-like efects, according to the CDC. It can be mixed with cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, MDMA, cannabis and other commonly used drugs — with or without the user’s knowledge — to increase the efects of the drug. With the rise of student drug use during Green Key, we want to stress the dangers of fentanyl and encourage students to take precautions to minimize the risk of an overdose.

According to the National Institute on Drug Use, fentanyl’s efects can include drowsiness, nausea, confusion, sedation, unconsciousness, arrest, coma and death. Last year, New Hampshire recorded its worst year for overdose deaths since 2017. Ofcials confirmed 434 deaths from overdose, with a majority involving fentanyl. Deaths involving illegally manufactured fentanyl are on the rise, according to the CDC. The National Institute on Drug Use adds that 2021 saw 70,601 overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily fentanyl) — an increase from 2020. Fentanyl and other opioids are the most common drug involved in overdose deaths. Fentanyl’s high potency greatly increases risk of overdose, especially for people who are unaware a drug they are taking contains it: If they underestimate what they are taking, this can result in an overdose.

If you suspect someone has taken fentanyl or is in need of medical assistance, call 911 immediately.

According to the Student Wellness Center, all Hanover frst responders, including DOSS and EMS, can be reached by calling 911 and are trained in the administration of Narcan — which can be used to treat fentanyl overdoses when administered right away. The Student Wellness Center also states that New Hampshire and Vermont have Good Samaritan Laws, which prevent the prosecution of drug ofenses if emergency responses are called.

While the Editorial Board does not condone drug usage, we know drug usage at Dartmouth is inevitable and therefore believe strongly in measures that can minimize harm. We urge students who are planning to take drugs to purchase Narcan as a preventative measure: Students can get Narcan from the Student Wellness Center for free from 8:30 a.m. through 4:30 p.m. on weekdays. Students can also purchase Narcan from the CVS Pharmacy on Main Street in Hanover or at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center Pharmacy at Centerra in Lebanon without a prescription. Narcan will not cause harm even if it is not needed, so in a situation where an overdose is suspected, it is better to be safe and use Narcan than to be sorry.

The presence of large crowds at concerts like Green Key also creates potential for harm — and we ask students to learn to recognize when a crowd becomes dangerous and how to stay safe in such a situation. According to The Washington Post, some signs of a crowd becoming too dense include but are not limited to: the crowd moves, then suddenly slows; people in the crowd complain of discomfort or there is a feeling of confnement without a clear way out. The article also states that if the crowd ceases to move and people get stuck, there are some strategies to stay safe, such as moving with the crowd rather than against it and staying upright in a “boxer stance” with legs staggered, knees slightly bent and arms out. It is also helpful to grab your forearm with your opposite hand to create a chest-shield. These tactics can help prevent you from being trampled or sufocated by the mass of a crowd.

We also hope that students head into Green Key weekend with an awareness that their actions directly afect others. In past years, Green Key has placed a strain on the Upper Valley community. If too many emergency calls are placed due to the overuse of substances, all of the ambulances in the Upper Valley will respond to incidents at Green Key, which means people outside the Dartmouth community may not be able to get the emergency care they need. We encourage you to think about the quantity of alcohol or drugs you’re consuming to keep yourself out of danger and ensure that medical resources remain available for those who also need them.

This same care should also apply to the way you treat fellow concertgoers. Although some events, including the Programming Board concert, require a wristband and Dartmouth ID to enter, many Greek house concerts and other events have far less security, which could allow local high school students to sneak in. This year’s guest policy permits any student to invite a registered guest, so students may bring visitors into the concerts. Many alumni also come back for Green Key weekend and may participate in the programming. This combination of guests unfamiliar to the current Dartmouth student body could lead to risks: High schoolers are even more vulnerable than college students at events like these because they may have less experience navigating an environment with prevalent drug and alcohol use, making them more likely to push their limits and over-consume. In addition, the presence of alumni at the events could lead to interactions with even more severe power imbalances, and alumni also may feel less accountability for their actions than current students. Due to these risks, we want current students to ensure the environment is as safe as possible for younger or less experienced guests: Be careful about who you serve alcohol to, and watch out for others. If it seems like someone is uncomfortable or in danger, don’t hesitate to step in.

While Green Key is an event that brings the town and the College communities together, we must recognize the burden we place on the Town of Hanover, as well as the liability that the festival is to the many organizations — including the Programming Board, sororities and fraternities, the Dartmouth Organic Farm and others — that host these concerts for us.

It is possible for us to recognize these truths and simultaneously have a weekend flled with peace, joy and, of course, tons of fun.

Let’s make this weekend the best it can be. Here’s to this Green Key, and the many more to come.

Subsidizing Fossil Fuels Only Enrichens Big Oil

Fossil fuel subsidies are inefcient, fail to achieve policy goals and threaten the environment.

Fossil fuel subsidies are incredibly expensive; in 2020 alone, they cost global governments $5.9 trillion. Yet, these subsidies fail to efectively achieve the policy goal of easing the burden of energy costs. Instead, fossil fuel subsidies enrich the fossil fuel industry and waste public money, while harming public health and the environment. With the catastrophic efects of climate change looming, governments must eliminate the fossil fuel subsidies wreaking havoc on both Earth and the taxpayer’s dime.

These subsidies come in two forms: explicit and implicit. Explicit — or direct — subsidies are government money that goes directly to fossil fuel production or consumption. That money may be spent on exploration, extraction and development, or it may come in the form of low-cost federal land leases, regulatory exemptions or tax deductions and exemptions. In 2022, global governments spent more than $1.097 trillion on direct fossil fuel subsidies — an all-time high.

Implicit — or indirect — subsidies are the government costs and spending on infrastructure. They are incurred by the social and environmental costs of fossil fuel production and consumption. For example, fossil-fuel-induced local air pollution costs global governments $2.4 trillion each year due to excess mortality and morbidity, work and school days lost and damaged infrastructure.

Initially, policymakers hoped fossil fuel subsidies would protect households by preventing fuel price increases that would prevent low-income households from accessing energy. Unfortunately, fossil fuel subsidies are an inequitable, inefcient and wasteful welfare policy that largely benefts higher-income households. According to a 2015 research article from the International Monetary Fund, in low and middle-income countries, the richest 20% of households beneft six times more from fuel price subsidies than the poorest 20% of households. In the United States, 16% of Americans, or 5.2 million households, live in energy poverty, despite the United States’s total expenditure on fossil fuel subsidies and total subsidies per capita being the second highest in the world. American communities of color are 60% more likely to sufer from energy poverty than white Americans.

Reforms do not inevitably lead to restricted energy access. Instead, the reallocation of public funds can expand energy access and improve public wellbeing. Reform must be conscious of lower-income households and replace the subsidies with policies targeted at helping the most vulnerable. For example, Kenya undertook fossil fuel subsidy reform through subsidizing connection costs instead of energy costs with wild success. Kenya’s plan led to rapid rural electrifcation and a dramatic increase in electricity access from 16% of the population in 2003 to 71.4% of the population in 2022. Energy access soared without long-term increasing fossil fuel usage, and renewable energy generates over 80% of Kenya’s electricity in 2023.

Instead of achieving policy goals for the public good, in practice subsidies enrich Big Oil. The world’s fve biggest oil companies generated all-time record profts in 2022, totaling more than $199 billion. In

2022, global anxiety over the impact of global infation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on energy prices led to soaring explicit fossil fuel subsidies around the world — an example of social welfare and energy security justifying fossil fuel subsidies. Yet, the biggest winners of policies intended to protect the vulnerable were fossil fuel executives and shareholders. The fossil fuel industry argues that large profts are essential to the security of supply, as the excess profts can be reinvested in industry development. However, more than half of 2022’s oil and gas profts went to company shareholders through dividends and stock buy-backs. Additionally, Big Oil backtracked on its previous promises to invest in clean energy, with BP lowering emission cut promises from its initial target of 35% to 40% to its current target of 20% to 30% by 2030. A federal investigation undercovered that Shell’s claims of investing in clean energy were intentionally misrepresented in an ofcial report to be renewables, when, in reality, those “renewable energy investments” went to natural gas.

Fossil fuel subsidies are an inefcient use of public funds, wasting taxpayers’ money and reducing funding for worthier causes. In 2020, the explicit and implicit fossil fuel subsidies cost the United States $662 billion, around $2,006 per capita. Cutting just two tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry — the intangible drilling costs subsidy and the percentage depletion tax break — could generate $17.9 billion in government revenue over ten years, according to Congress’s non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation. The Biden Administration’s fscal year 2024 budget proposes cutting tax subsidies for oil and gas companies, which, by the Administration’s estimates, would save the government $31 billion over ten years. The resulting estimated government revenues could then fnance healthcare, education, social security and other social services. Additionally, those savings could be invested into developing and promoting clean energy and energy-efcient technologies, reducing energy costs and decreasing reliance on fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel subsidies also encourage excessive production, overconsumption and inefcient use, leading to severe damage inficted on the public and the climate. The subsidies block efcient fuel pricing, resulting in a price that does not refect the true social and environmental costs. Fossil fuel combustion accounts for 73% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, signifcantly contributing to the increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events like drought, heatwaves, wildfres, foods, hurricanes and more. Global warming leads to a whole host of problems that harm people — food security, poverty, population relocation and disease prevalence. Efcient fossil fuel pricing would prevent 900,000 local air pollution deaths per year and reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 36% by 2025, a sufcient cut to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

Fossil fuel subsidies are a waste of public money that beneft the fossil fuel industry to the detriment of the public and the environment. Governments must reallocate public funds away from fossil fuel subsidies to invest in social and environmental programs that remediate the harms of the fossil fuel industry and better prepare the world for the perilous future posed by anthropogenic climate change.

THADRYAN SWEENEY GR: FOOLSBALLERINA