Examination done to fulfill Presidents Climate Commitment

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One campus group is making sure that DePauw stops leaving its mark on the world.

A sustainability group has recently been formed to measure DePauw’s carbon footprint, an act mandated when President Brian Casey signed the the Presidents Climate Commitment last fall.

The carbon measurements are the first step in a long term goal to make the campus completely carbon neutral. This will be difficult because DePauw, like much of Indiana, relies on coal for heating and cooling, said Carol Steele, associate dean of Academic Affairs.

Carbon use will be measured using an outline provided by Cool Air-Clean Planet, a non-profit environmental organization that provides college campuses and corporations with templates to gauge their carbon emissions. These measurements will allow DePauw to evaulute how to decrease the emission of greenhouse gasses.

“It looks at a variety of factors - what kind of fuel we’re burning, campus transportation, purchasing patterns and what we generate in terms of waste,” Steele said.

The study is essential to the Climate Commitment because “the construction of this carbon footprint is really important as the first critical step in evaluating what the DePauw community’s carbon emissions are,” she said.

The working groups were founded at the end of last semester as part of the DePauw Climate Commitment. Though there are 11 teams, each with individual goals, most teams are contributing to various components of the carbon measurements, Steele said.

The carbon measurement working group consists of approximately 12 members and is led by Steele, professor John Caraher and sustainability intern Taylor Cantril, a sophomore. Though Greencastle residents are included in the overall process, none are currently participating in this group.

“So far I’m pleased with the group’s effort,” Caraher said, “but we should know a lot more by the end of the semester. We’re still early in the collection process.”

Despite early progress, Caraher said that there would definitely be some difficulties in the measuring system, specifically because of the prevalence of DePauw’s greek system.

“It’s a philosophical question whether to include the greek houses in our calculations,” he said. “I think it’s fair to include the greek houses because so much student life, and thus student emissions, stem from greek property. But there’s also the question of how much direct influence the University has over greek house emissions.”

Another difficulty comes in measuring transportation emissions.

“One solution might be to survey every student who has a parking pass to get their vehicle statistics. We’re also talking to people who are involved with the University’s fleet of cars,” freshman Alex Lopatka said.

Despite the energetic beginning, Caraher emphasized that this is just the starting point of a long and difficult process.

“Generally this isn’t just about counting carbon, we’re looking to see how much greenhouse gas we’re emitting,” he said. “Even though we’re dealing with little, tiny molecules, they have a huge effect.”