U. Iowa has an addiction.
No, this isn’t another binge-drinking editorial. We’re referring to our use of coal, the dirtiest way — and, in Iowa, the most common — to create electricity. Environmental advocates met with University of Iowa officials late last week to get them to commit to reducing the UI’s reliance on the energy source.
The Editorial Board applauds these students for the necessary pressure they have placed on UI officials. It’s imperative that the UI transition from coal-based energy to cleaner energy sources.
At the UI Power Plant, 53 percent of the UI’s energy is coal-generated. Biomass accounts for 12 percent, natural gas 11 percent, and purchased electricity 24 percent, according to UI spokesman Tom Moore. The numbers are a five-year average from 2005 to 2009. The Power Plant’s two coal-powered boilers use approximately 100,000 tons of coal annually.
These troubling figures only underscore the Midwest’s disproportionate use of coal to generate energy. According to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, an advocacy group based in the Midwest, carbon pollution from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin makes up 20 percent of the carbon pollution in the United States. That’s more global-climate-change pollution than nearly every country in the world.
The UI can be part of the solution.
Officials should release a specific timetable detailing its efforts to wean the university off coal. We all know the university is happy to publicize its support for sustainability and reducing energy.
And, to their credit, officials have taken some positive steps to cut the university’s carbon emissions. The Power Plant also burns oat hulls, which provide 12 percent of the UI’s energy use.
The Energy Hawk program has saved millions of dollars by improving energy efficiency. The Environmental Protection Agency recently recognized the university for using green energy.
Still, we don’t need vacuous statements that simply restate the need for sustainability, bereft of any substantive action. It’s essential that the officials make a firm, explicit commitment to drastically reduce coal burning.
And that’s what left some of the environmental activists uneasy.
“What we understood from the meeting is that they don’t have a plan,” Graham Jordison, a representative of the Sierra Club, told The Daily Iowan. “If there is one, they don’t really know where it is.”
Coal is much too harmful to the environment to continue burning and spewing it into the atmosphere. As temperatures rise, glaciers melt, and millions in the developing world are faced with crippling droughts, it’s unconscionable for us not to act. Iowa City is often seen as a progressive, globally minded community. The UI’s continued use of a coal-powered plant for the majority of its energy flies directly in the face of that perception.
In times of financial malaise, it’s undoubtedly difficult to sharply move away from a relatively cheap energy source such as coal. Like most addictions, it’s a hard one to break. But it’s necessary all the same.
Ferman Milster, the Power Plant’s head of strategic planning, told the DI that the UI could decrease its coal use by more than half in the next three to five years.
And it should do just that.