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The greenest college of them all?

Print | Comments () Posted by Beth Daley December 17, 2008 03:15 PM

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By Beth Daley, Globe Staff

I get pitched stories all the time about green, well, everything. Especially from students and administrators at the dozens of colleges and universities that dot the New England landscape.

And to be sure, there are many impressive sustainability efforts going on at Harvard, Tufts, College of the Atlantic in Maine, Middlebury in Vermont and several other institutions.

Mass Maritime's turbine (Solar Design Associates)

But Massachusetts Maritime in Bourne just may have the most visible efforts. The nation’s oldest continuously operating maritime college at the mouth of the Cape Cod Canal built one of the region’s first wind turbines in 2006 that now produces about 20 percent of the campus' electrical needs.

Last year, the state-owned college completed a LEED (Update: Sorry, wrote LEEDS originally but reader caught it) gold certified dorm complex – the first state owned dorm to get such a designation.

That dorm has 81 kilowatts of solar panels on its roof. Nearby, the college just turned on the largest installation of solar powered outdoor lighting – 59 fixtures - in New England to illuminate the northwest campus areas around the dorms and dining hall.

Today, the Academy turned on microturbines that will provide electricity - with its waste heat going to warm water for dorm showers. Granted, they are gas powered and not as green as wind, but they can produce energy continuously (unlike wind) and release fewer greenhouse gases than coal.

More is planned: A wind turbine on top of a dorm and a partnership with a new company that makes wind turbines that oscillate up and down.

“People have heard about us,’’ said Allen Hansen, vice president of operations for the college who is retiring today. “We seem to be a place where (companies) go to partner…and it’s because we have a track record of making these things happen.”

What do you think?

tags Allen Hansen, Bourne, LEEDS, Mass Maritime, solar panels, turbine, wind