Campus Greening: College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine

College of the Atlantic was founded in 1969, at the height of the environmental movement, to take education beyond understanding the world as it is, to enable students to actively shape its future. COA's one major, Human Ecology, focuses on the relationship between humans and their environment. COA practices what it teaches. In December 2007, it became the first college or university to become carbon neutral.

The process began on Oct. 8, 2006, at the inauguration of President David Hales, when COA pledged to become Net-Zero for carbon emissions by December 2007. Since then, COA students, staff and faculty have worked to calculate the college's greenhouse gas emissions and research ways to reduce, avoid and offset these emissions.

COA has conducted a comprehensive energy audit and begun extensive work to improve energy efficiency in all buildings. New student residences (shown under construction, above) are scheduled to open in September 2008. Because of the attention to building tightness, the college plans on heating the three duplexes-six homes serving fifty-one students-with two residential wood pellet boilers-at most. That's one boiler of a size that would typically heat a one-family home, heating three residences of seventeen people. Among other sustainable innovations, the residences are being fitted with a gray-water recycling system and composting toilets. Heat for the new housing and for its domestic hot water will come from wood pellet boilers, a renewable resource manufactured in Maine.

COA has also reduced projected annual greenhouse gas emissions by 22 percent or about 450 tons by obtaining all of its electricity through a low-impact hydroelectric generator in Maine.

To determine how the college could best counteract the emissions that it can't avoid, students and staff have spent the past year intensively studying the carbon-offset market. COA has now offset the entirety of its carbon output over the past 15 months-2,488 metric tons-by investing in a greenhouse gas reduction project operated by The Climate Trust of Portland, Oregon. The Climate Trust project chosen by the college will optimize traffic signals and manage traffic flow in Portland, OR, thereby reducing the amount of time cars spend idling at traffic lights in that city. The entire project is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 189,000 tons over five years-the equivalent to taking more than 34,000 cars off the road for a year. Even better, it can serve as a model for emissions reductions in other cities.

Upon his return from serving as a member of the youth delegation to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, COA sophomore Matthew Maiorana called climate change "the challenge of our generation," adding, "After the conference, I realize that COA is a world leader in addressing the climate crisis. While the United Nations and the United States are taking small steps toward creating a just climate future, COA is taking giant leaps.

—Updates from Craig Ten Broeck, Consulting Advisor for Sustainability, COA