energy

This year for Campus Sustainability Week, the Campus Services and the Office of Campus Sustainability sponsored an energy reduction challenge between two of West Campus’s freshmen dorms, Folk and Caldwell. From Monday to Sunday, data was collected on electricity, water, and natural gas usage for each of the dorms. At the end of the week, the data was converted into mmBTU, a measurement of energy usage, and plotted on the graph below.

We’ve probably all heard it before. We need to find renewable fuel sources that can keep up with the energy demands of our twenty-first century lifestyles. Coal, oil, and natural gas are not considered sustainable; once we burn them, they’re gone. It is predicted that the earth contains enough fossil fuels to last us hundreds of years, but once the fossil fuels they run out, our energy source is depleted. It may seem like we have plenty of time to develop better energy solutions. But what about the raising average temperature of the earth, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and changing weather and climate?