Last week I was approached on campus by a member of the Sierra Club and asked to sign a petition in order to change the nature of our energy production.

Before this encounter, I hadn’t really given much thought to what provided the energy for our school, just that we were relatively good at conserving it. Immediately after signing the petition, I began to think about the likelihood of making such a huge change. Many attainable environmental goals have already been reached, if you take a look around the campus. You can see electric service vehicles humming by everywhere, and many of our toilets are water-conservation conscious. Some of the new meters we park in front of are equipped with solar panels.

These changes conserve resources and are not too incredibly expensive.

The next logical step then, after these manageable goals, is pursuing something more difficult. However, making the change from coal right now seems unlikely, mainly because of cost. As I recall from last year, the great state of New York was already garnishing our tuition hike. Where, then, will the millions of dollars necessary to convert our power station come from?

According to the Sierra Club, Ball State University in Indiana has made plans to create a geothermal system, at a cost of $70 million. This would cut their emissions by half and save their university $2 million in energy costs every year. It looks to me like they are pursuing geothermal energy, not just because it is more environmentally acceptable, but because it is actually cheaper.

Not surprisingly, new coal burners are predominantly being produced in China and they are prohibitively expensive. There is the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which is undertaking a $250 million project to change their boilers to run on paper pellets and wood chips, which Binghamton does actually use in its central heating plant.

It doesn’t seem realistic to me that our school is going to make the huge jump to cleaner energy at this point and time. When the point comes to change our aging coal burners and the most cost effective method is green, then we will surely employ it. Since we border Pennsylvania, the coal doesn’t have far to travel to our boilers. Until it is too expensive to physically purchase the machinery necessary to burn the coal, I think we’re going to be burning coal.

Unless it is totally necessary to replace the way that we currently procure energy, I think we’re going to be waiting awhile. Electric cars, toilets and solar panels cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Changing the way we create our electricity will probably cost tens or hundreds of millions.

The shirts that read “Beyond Coal” are sure to become more ubiquitous around campus and I applaud the Sierra Club’s efforts. However, it is only many decades from now, as an alumnus from Binghamton, that I expect to be greeted by wind turbines or steam stacks on our horizon.