The college still burns significant quantities of fossil fuel, but that pollution is offset by 2,100 acres of forest land that sequesters, or recaptures, carbon from the atmosphere.
In fiscal year 2016, Middlebury combusted 704,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas, 185,360 gallons of No. 6 heating oil, and 20,243 tons of wood chips. That’s down from more than 2 million gallons of No. 6 heating oil in 2007, according to Jack Byrne, the director of Middlebury’s Office of Sustainability Integration. An average Vermont home burns about 700 gallons of heating oil each year or 100,000 cubic feet of natural gas.
Byrne says the college is continuing to look at new ways to lower its carbon footprint.
“It’s an imperfect journey, we know that, but we’re taking a moment to celebrate and enjoy the accomplishment,” Byrne said. “We’re going to say, ‘Where do we go from here?’ We still emit carbon, and what do we do about that?’”
The college uses a carbon neutral biomass plant to heat the campus. The wood chips burned at the plant come from Vermont forests.
According to these figures, the emissions from the college’s natural gas and heating oil alone account for about 6,317 tons of carbon-dioxide pollution annually (equivalent to about 800 oil-fired Vermont homes or over 1,000 natural-gas-fired Vermont homes).
The college set aside 2,100 wooded acres in 2014 for conservation purposes, and pollution offsets realized by this land will make up for what remains of Middlebury College’s carbon-dioxide pollution, Byrne said.
An acre of Vermont forest land on average takes up 77 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, according to the Vermont Agency of Natural Resource’s Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
By setting aside 2,100 acres for conservation, the college will sequester somewhere on the order of 13,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, Byrne said. That is the equivalent of what the school burns annually in natural gas and heating oil, according to figures from the college.
Achieving carbon neutrality was the result of a nearly decade-long effort, Byrne said. Trustees agreed to set carbon neutrality as a goal in 2007, he said, and within years the college had brought into operation a $12 million wood-burning energy plant. That apparatus, combined with energy-efficiency measures and several smaller solar arrays, cut the college’s annual carbon-dioxide emissions roughly in half, Byrne said.
The move to account for carbon sequestration on forest land will account for the remaining emissions, Byrne said.
College officials hope to someday take advantage of a planned “digester” near the campus, which will convert agricultural waste and other organic refuse and turn it into methane, the primary component of natural gas. Middlebury intends to replace its current natural gas supply with this “renewable natural gas,” but the digester has taken longer to come online than expected, Byrne said.
Until the digester’s natural gas is available, Byrne said, the college will buy natural gas from Vermont Gas. Because Vermont Gas is building a natural gas pipeline that would connect Middlebury College and the digester, among other reasons, the college has since the project’s proposal supported the controversial 41-mile natural gas pipeline.
Byrne said consensus on the topic of natural-gas production has changed lately, but said the college’s support for the Vermont Gas pipeline has not flagged.
Recent studies have found that methane contributes to global warming more significantly than carbon dioxide, and natural gas production emits far more methane into the atmosphere than previously thought. Both these factors have led many scientists today to characterize the impacts of natural gas upon the Earth’s climate as roughly equivalent to coal.
When natural gas is combusted, it produces less carbon dioxide than most other fuels.
Byrne says to comply with carbon-accounting rules, “you have to set the boundaries somewhere, and say, ‘This is our carbon, and we count carbon within these boundaries, but methane emitted from a wellhead somewhere in Canada, that’s somebody else’s problem.’”
“It’s not ideal, and there are problems with [that type of reasoning], but we’re taking responsibility for what we can take responsibility for in trying to get to net zero,” Byrne said.
CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, the amount of natural gas used by Middlebury College in 2016 was incorrect.
