Air quality has a price--Yale weighs options

Leaving a computer running 24 hours a day, seven days a week has its costs. Few students know the price of such electricity, both on the environment and on the University's pocketbook.

BRYAN GALIPEAU/YH Yale's Sterling Power Plant is 'state-of-the-art' by all acounts.

The debate between a handful of student activists and the Administration centers around cost: pollution is cheaper. With a limited budget, normative choices about how the University will allocate its funds will inevitably prioritize some issues over others. The installation of environmentally friendly generators would carry with it a significant cost.

The University currently acquires its electricity from United Illumination (UI) and from a central plant owned by Yale.

"We have a power plant that is really state of the art," Judith Joffe-Block, BK '04, head of the Yale Student Environmental Coalition Energy Committee (YSEC), said. "It's actually really good."

Several Connecticut power plants, however, including the nearby New Haven Harbor Plant, have far worse reputations. The Yale Green Corps has been campaigning against the so-called "Sooty Six," a group of plants notorious for their harmful emissions. The Connecticut Clean Air Act of 1977 introduced stringent pollution standards, but those plants built before the legislation passed were exempt from such regulation.

UI sold their New Haven Harbor Plant and Bridgeport Plant, two of the "Sooty Six," to Wisvest Corporation in April 1999. UI now purchases all power from Enron, an intermediary which buys up electricity throughout the state at the lowest market rate. If Yale purchases energy acquired by UI from Wisvest via Enron, the school is, albeit indirectly, financing the "Sooty Six," plants that are out of date with contemporary emission standards.

Wisvest Business Manger Don Dickinson said that Wisvest has sold energy to Enron but would not specify if any such sales occurred in Connecticut. Yale signed a 10-year contract with UI in 1997.

The central plant located next to Swing Space, the energy source for most of campus, cost the University $100 million to construct. It co-generates steam, chilled water, and electricity. It was modified in 1997 to allow it to burn both natural gas and oil.

In 1990, when the central plant burned oil, it produced 160 tons of nitrogen oxide and 350 tons of sulfur oxide, two compounds detrimental to air quality. In 1999, the renovated plant emitted a dramtically reduced number of harmful compounds: 12 tons of nitrogen oxide and five tons of sulfur oxide.

Cost is the sole arbiter of how much the plant pollutes. Oil is used when it is three percent less expensive than natural gas. Oil, used 35 days a year on average, produces eight times as much sulfur dioxide as natural gas. When the plant burns oil, it burns No. 6 oil, the cheapest and dirtiest form.

"My problem with the power plant is I wish it would burn natural gas if it can," Joffe-Block said.

The plant also has three backup diesel generators. If demand exceeds capacity during the day, the plant begins to use diesel. Diesel pollutes heavily, but the plant has catalytic converters to limit emissions.

"We're very conscious of the amount of energy we consume," President Richard Levin, GRD '74, said. "But people want air conditioning. You have to judge for yourself whether or not it was a mistake to air condition the common areas in the renovated colleges. I don't think it was."

YSEC hopes to start programs to curb consumption. "Yale should be pushing demand-side management," Joffe-Block said.

Yale's policy is a simply a strict cost-benefit formula: the University will only improve a builiding's efficiency if that change pays for itself within four years.

Woolsey Hall, for instance, will not be improved any time soon. "We've done a study on Commons. It would be incredibly expensive to renovate Commons so as to make it more energy efficient," Levin said. "If we get a donor for the project, we will certainly consider it."

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