"activist groups such as the Sierra Club, which has organized a prominent campaign against coal on campuses, might make trouble for colleges that continue to burn coal. In late 2007, the group successfully sued the University of Wisconsin at Madison, showing that it had violated the federal Clean Air Act when it did not install pollution-control technology during maintenance on its 50-year-old coal plant.
Bruce Nilles, a lawyer who directs the Sierra Club's national coal campaign, believes that other colleges have similarly extended the lives of their coal plants without installing legally required pollution controls.
The group is now scrutinizing coal plants on four other University of Wisconsin campuses, and plans over the coming year to broaden its investigations into coal plants on dozens of other campuses. "Based on our analyses of the campus coal plants in Wisconsin, we expect to find compliance problems at many of the existing campus coal plants," Mr. Nilles says."
"The University of Wisconsin at Madison is taking on an alternative-energy project that might have rewards for the state, but with considerable challenges for the institution. After the university lost its legal tussle with the Sierra Club, it agreed to a series of concessions to reduce the environmental impact of its Charter Street heating plant, built in 1959, which burns more than 100,000 tons of coal a year.
Alan Fish, associate vice chancellor for facilities planning and management, says the university could have met the letter of the agreement with $60-million in upgrades. Instead, Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, announced that the campus facility—by far the largest state-owned coal plant in Wisconsin—would give up coal entirely and switch to biomass by 2013 to help develop a renewable-fuels market within the state.
The $250-million plan has its risks. In a report released last May, consultants hired by the state determined that there probably would not be sufficient biomass supplies in Wisconsin when the plant is scheduled to reopen. The consultants also cited significant uncertainties about the future prices of biomass and argued the change in fuel would lead to infrastructural challenges, like increased traffic of trains and trucks carrying biomass to the plant.
Gary Radloff, an energy-policy specialist with the Wisconsin Bioenergy Institute, which advises state officials on the Charter Street project, acknowledges those challenges. But he believes the state has great potential for growing biomass products on fallow and underutilized land. He sees the Wisconsin biomass market operating something like the state's dairy businesses, in which products from scattered farmers compose a major, vibrant industry.
For now, university officials hope to burn waste wood from the forestry and paper industries. Initially, though, the renovated plant may have to rely primarily on natural gas.
"We may pay a premium on the front end to create a market," Mr. Fish says. "But in the long run, … the bet we're taking is that this is going to be less expensive, and more sustainable.""
