College should put a freeze on chiller purchase
By: MacCARES
Issue date: 10/10/08 Section: Opinion
Roughly a week ago, a group of students in MacCARES was notified of Macalester's intention to finalize the purchase of three chillers to expand campus cooling capacity with a more efficient system via a $7.5 million dollar emergency allocation from the Board of Trustees in its meeting on October 11, 2008.
Considering that the chiller system accounts for nearly 10 percent of Macalester's carbon emissions and is inherently connected to another 40 percent of our emissions through the heating plant, such a decision is crucial to Macalester's sustainability planning.
As Macalester students, we are deeply concerned with the strategy, content and process of Macalester College's decision.
First, we feel that the planning process that has led to the decision to replace the chillers has not paid adequate attention to our overall financial, energy and ecological sustainability given the crises that we are currently facing. The College has given partial consideration to energy concerns by planning to install an energy-efficient chiller model to replace the old system, which currently suffers from engineering malfunctions.
However, despite this good intention, the investment creates a "sunk cost" barrier to longer-term heating and cooling solutions that will be necessary in the face of rising energy costs, tightening economic conditions, and the increasing need for action on climate change.
Second, we do not feel that due diligence has been pursued in identifying alternatives to chiller replacement. Given that many buildings are still over-cooled in the summer and therefore inefficient, more consideration should be given to the reduction of our cooling load.
We further feel that a $6,000 campus ground-source heat survey to better understand the campus's true capacity to provide its own heating and cooling resources is necessary and reasonable given the value of the information to be learned and the massive proposed cost of this chiller exchange.
Considering that the chiller system accounts for nearly 10 percent of Macalester's carbon emissions and is inherently connected to another 40 percent of our emissions through the heating plant, such a decision is crucial to Macalester's sustainability planning.
As Macalester students, we are deeply concerned with the strategy, content and process of Macalester College's decision.
First, we feel that the planning process that has led to the decision to replace the chillers has not paid adequate attention to our overall financial, energy and ecological sustainability given the crises that we are currently facing. The College has given partial consideration to energy concerns by planning to install an energy-efficient chiller model to replace the old system, which currently suffers from engineering malfunctions.
However, despite this good intention, the investment creates a "sunk cost" barrier to longer-term heating and cooling solutions that will be necessary in the face of rising energy costs, tightening economic conditions, and the increasing need for action on climate change.
Second, we do not feel that due diligence has been pursued in identifying alternatives to chiller replacement. Given that many buildings are still over-cooled in the summer and therefore inefficient, more consideration should be given to the reduction of our cooling load.
We further feel that a $6,000 campus ground-source heat survey to better understand the campus's true capacity to provide its own heating and cooling resources is necessary and reasonable given the value of the information to be learned and the massive proposed cost of this chiller exchange.
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