Coal is Too Dirty Even for College

That’s the first ad of our new campaign targeting the world of higher education: Coal is too dirty – even for college.

Did you know that many of our country’s colleges and universities – places that are supposed to be a source of higher-education and leadership – get their electricity by burning coal? And sometimes those coal-fired power plants are even on the campuses?

I think many of us look back in disbelief at some of the things we did in college. We’re seeing that same sense of disbelief from current college students when they learn that their campuses are still powered by coal.

This ad launches a campaign that will use print and online advertising (two more video ads to come) to highlight that some things are just too dirty, even for college.

The ads play off stereotypically “dirty” college behavior, becoming progressively more “dirty” throughout the series. Though college life allows for leniency in the socially acceptable, coal still crosses the line. 

The ad campaign targets schools in 11 states which currently rely on coal power.

• Indiana University-Bloomington
• Indiana University of Pennsylvania
• Lewis and Clark
• Ohio University
• Penn State University
• SUNY-Binghamton
• University of Colorado - Boulder
• University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
• University of Georgia
• University of Iowa
• University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• University of Missouri-Columbia
• University of North Dakota
• University of Southern California
• University of Washington
• Virginia Tech
• Washington University-St. Louis

If you attend one of these schools, you can sign a petition asking your university president to kick coal off your campus – the list and the petition are on this website: http://www.2dirty4college.com/ 

The Campuses Beyond Coal Campaign is working nationwide to wean all campuses off of coal-generated electricity and replace it with clean energy options. With organizers on the ground in several of the more than 60 campuses with on-site coal plants the Campaign is working to help universities achieve the zero carbon emissions targets set forth in the Presidents Climate Commitment.

We released a report last month to support the campaign: “Breaking Coal’s Grip on Our Future: Moving Campuses Beyond Coal.” It highlights many of the problems facing coal dependent schools and the solutions available.

We know students want a cleaner, healthier future, and so they're organizing on campuses coast-to-coast to make that vision a reality.

The ad campaign will run through the end of October, with the remaining two videos to be released in the next few weeks. It’s time to kick coal off campus!

Comments

[Kenneth Conn]

You are a bunch of idiots if you believe there is a "green energy" alternative to nonrenewable energy sources. How on earth will you replace 80% of nonrenewable energy producing capacity? It's impossible. Your goals are a fraud....a sham. You will have to cover hundreds....hundreds of thousands of acres with solar panels and windmills. It's to expensive and unreliable. Get with reality you nuts.

[Heather Moyer]

Hi Kenneth-- Thanks for your thought-provoking, fact-based and polite email response.

You can catch more flies with honey...

[David Sinn]

Nominally the Serra Club is trying to push things in the right direction, but FUD on one-side (carbon sequestering, for example) should not result on FUD on the other. You say in the same breath that the schools on the list "rely on coal power" and highlight that a number of them have on-campus coal plants. But you don't say which is which, nor identify how many rely on grid power which every user of relies to some extent on coal for.

For example Oregon has one coal plant, two in Washington state and California has seven. So for three of your schools listed, there is no on-campus coal plant, and every person in that state is reliant on coal (at some level), so why pick just some of the big Universities in the state, they are all "to blame" by that measure.

If you want to move away from FUD, explaining exactly why each University is at "fault" would do you good. Complaints about the grid is not within the control of the Universities. Local generation, at this time, is more polluting and less efficient then grid based power. And really, for the three states listed do you want the universities to go to local generated power? That would likely be natural gas, rather then predominately hydro-electric power from the grid (baring 10 total coal plants within the local sub-grids of each of the states)?