OGDEN -- Harvard. Stanford. Weber State University.
Today marks the official launch of the Billion Dollar Green Challenge, a push for universities to commit their funds to environmentally sustainable upgrades on their own campuses.
So far, 33 institutions have committed to the project, pledging a total of $65 million that they plan to use to capture solar energy, reduce waste and emissions and conserve water.
"Weber State has one of the largest funds, at $9 million, and it is not a new fund," said Cat Ferrara, a research fellow at the Sustainable Endowment Institute, a coordinating partner in the challenge. "They had a pre-existing revolving fund, and will be one of the universities that will be important in information sharing. Weber State is a little bit ahead of the game. Their fund already has been very effective."
Norm Tarbox, WSU vice president of administrative services, described the $9 million fund as more of a list of eco-friendly campus improvement projects for which funding sources on the local, state or national level had been identified.
"Weber State has been involved for many years in trying to become more energy-efficient and more environmentally friendly," Tarbox said. "We have a culture at the university that values the environment. It's something that's always been there.
"We expect to save up to 25 percent of our energy dollars as we complete the projects on our list, and it's those dollars, the energy dollars we save, that will be reinvested."
Ferrara said her institute targeted universities because of their leadership role in the community, because of students who are able to incorporate findings into their scholarly studies and because many universities already are pushing for sustainability.
Ferrara said a major factor of the Billion Dollar Green Challenge is that money saved by sustainable technology goes to fund universities' green programs.
"Schools reinvest their savings so the fund can be sustainable," Ferrara said.
The Sustainable Endowment Institute, based in Massachusetts, is one of 13 partner organizations behind the Billion Dollar Green Challenge, Ferrara said. Besides the opportunity to share information on what works, universities involved will get technical advice on projects, project-specific data, access to online seminars, and Web tools to help determine costs versus immediate and long-term profits, she said.
The project website, which launches today, is www.greenbillion.org.
Mark Orlowski, executive director of the Sustainable Endowments Institute, said part of the goal is to help people see energy-saving technology as profitable.
"We're transforming energy-efficiency upgrades from perceived expenses to high-return investment opportunities," he said.
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