- HEARING ON EXAMINING STRATEGIES TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AT U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

[Senate Hearing 110-1244]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

S. Hrg. 110-1244

HEARING ON EXAMINING STRATEGIES TO
REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS
AT U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

=======================================================================

HEARING

before the

COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

__________

APRIL 3, 2008

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Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/
congress.senate

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COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION

BARBARA BOXER, California, Chairman
MAX BAUCUS, Montana JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri

Bettina Poirier, Majority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Andrew Wheeler, Minority Staff Director

C O N T E N T S

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Page

THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2008
OPENING STATEMENTS

Klobuchar, Hon. Amy, U.S. Senator from the State of Minnesota.... 1
Craig, Hon. Larry E., U.S. Senator from the State of Idaho....... 3
Sanders, Hon. Bernard, U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont.... 4
Whitehouse, Hon. Sheldon, U.S. Senator from the State of Rhode
Island......................................................... 5

WITNESSES

Birgeneau, Robert, Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley 7
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Johnson, Jacqueline, Chancellor, University of Minnesota, Morris. 31
Prepared statement........................................... 34
Levin, Richard C., President, Yale University.................... 75
Prepared statement........................................... 78

HEARING ON EXAMINING STRATEGIES TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AT
U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

----------

THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2008

U.S. Senate,
Committee on Environment and Public Works,
Washington, DC.
The full committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. in
room 406, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Amy Klobuchar
(member of the full committee) presiding.
Present: Senators Klobuchar, Craig, Sanders and Whitehouse.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR,
U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

Senator Klobuchar. The hearing will come to order.
Senator Boxer is going to be joining us soon, and she asked
me to sit in and begin this important hearing, which is
entitled Examining Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas
Emissions at U.S. Colleges and Universities.
We are very pleased that we have our guests here today. We
have Robert Birgeneau, who is the Chancellor of the University
of California at Berkeley. I will say, Dr. Birgeneau, that I
saw the other day Mark Yudof, who is going to be heading up the
University of California system, who previously left the
University of Minnesota where he was much loved, and then went
to Texas. So you are very lucky to have him there. He also
would host pancake breakfasts every so often. Maybe that was
more of a Minnesota thing. I don't know what he will do in
California, maybe granola. I don't know.
We also have Dr. Jacqueline Johnson with us. She is the
Chancellor at the University of Minnesota at Morris. We are
pleased to have her here. I visited the campus on my tour of
all 87 counties in Minnesota, and was so impressed by the work
that they are doing with the wind turbine and everything else,
and really the whole university community is a part of it. I
think it will give us a different perspective, more of a rural
perspective of what colleges and universities are doing.
And then we also have Dr. Richard Levin here from Yale
University. I was honored to speak on climate change in front
of the Yale trustees about a month ago. I know that Yale has
been doing great work in this area as well.
I thank each of you for being here today. I believe each of
you has recognized the challenges of climate change, and have
taken steps toward reducing the universities' carbon footprint,
doing something about it, working with not just faculty, but
also students and alumni to make sure that they understand that
this is so important to our entire world going forward.
I know that all of you have had unique initiatives.
President Levin, I have gotten the information on what you have
done, and Yale has been committed to reducing greenhouse gas
emissions on campus to 10 percent below 1990 levels by the year
2020. What interests me most, and I know interests some of my
colleagues who are going to be coming shortly, is the fact that
Yale plans on expanding its 13.5 million square foot campus by
nearly 20 percent during the same time. I think this
underscores this idea that you can expand economically and
still be able to reduce carbon dioxide. In fact, with new
buildings it is probably easier to do.
Chancellor Birgeneau, I understand that you have made a
similar commitment, and we look forward to hearing about some
of the climate research programs at Berkeley.
As I mentioned, Chancellor Johnson, you have been doing
great work there, and the fact is that by 2010, your campus
will be carbon-neutral. But what is even more impressive is
that the University of Minnesota at Morris has achieved this
carbon neutrality completely through onsite generation.
Today's hearing is about more than specific greenhouse gas
reduction strategies. It is also about how colleges and
universities can have a unique role to play in this important
work. I truly believe that we have to act quickly to develop
the technologies and strategies to address climate change
before other nations do. Not only is it an environmental
necessity and obligation, but it is also an economic necessity.
We have seen first-hand in our State the wind turbines all
over. We just went to No. 3 in the Country with wind energy,
and it has really been a boon to our rural economies in
Minnesota.
By eliminating our own greenhouse gases and conducting
vital climate researches, colleges and universities across the
Country are leading the fight against global warming. They are
educating and training the next generation of engineers,
architects, business leaders and scientists to build and
compete in a low-carbon economy.
I often use the example of the space race and Sputnik and
all of the great technology that came out of our colleges and
universities and those devoted to this research just because we
wanted to put a man on the moon. We can do the same thing here
with this challenge that we are faced with. We did everything
from developing CAT scans to space sticks, which my family used
on hiking trips in Wyoming, Senator Craig, in the western part
of our State.
Senator Craig.
[Remarks made off microphone.]
Senator Klobuchar. What?
Senator Craig.
[Remarks made off microphone.]
Senator Klobuchar. Yes. Well, of course.
This all came out of, again, the Nation's commitment to
doing something to move our Country ahead.
The National Renewable Energy Labs have identified a
shortage of skilled workers as one of the leading barriers to
deployment of clean energy technologies. High schools,
vocational schools, junior colleges, labor management
apprenticeship programs and, yes, colleges and universities
like yours will be all called on to prepare our young people to
fill the gap.
So I look forward to hearing about the ways in which
colleges and universities are incorporating climate matters
into their curriculum and what more can be done. I also look
forward to learning more about how successes achieved on
campuses are being scaled up to the community and State level
and what more can be done to accelerate that process.
So I thank each of you for being here.
Senator Klobuchar. I know my colleagues would like to make
brief opening remarks.
Senator Craig.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LARRY E. CRAIG,
U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF IDAHO

Senator Craig. Madam Chairman, thank you very much.
And to all of you chancellors who have joined us today,
thank you for being here and participating in this hearing.
I must say at the outset, Madam Chair, that the hearing
came as a bit of a surprise in relation to its timing. I say
that because it was very difficult for all of our staffs on
this side to properly scope and get ready for it. So it has
reduced me to suggesting and this is to you, Dr. Levin that
this is an alumni gathering for Yale, and probably that in
itself makes it worth turning on the lights and assembling the
staff, because we have obviously the Chair as an alum as well
as committee members Senator Lieberman, Senator Clinton and
Senator Whitehouse. So congratulations. That in itself is worth
the gathering.
But I must say, Madam Chair, that in looking at the
totality of what universities are doing today, it is important
that we get it right. Again, I look at the timeliness of the
meeting and the proper preparedness that went into it. I am
looking at a memo that suggests four universities tied to the
Chicago Climate Exchange, and they missed four for some reason.
They missed my University of Idaho. They missed Tufts. They
missed Hadlow College, and they missed the University of
California at Irvine.
So let's get it right as we talk about these critical and
important issues, and that in no way belittles the universities
that are before us today. Michigan State, they said it was the
University of Michigan.
I happen to watch these things very closely, as does my
staff. Timeliness and preparedness are critical to good scoping
in the preparation of a hearing. The President of my alma mater
at the University of Idaho brags that the University of Idaho
has the lowest carbon footprint per student of any school in
the Exchange. We are very proud of that because Idaho itself
has the lowest carbon footprint of any State on a per capita
basis. Idaho will further reduce its emissions by 6 percent,
not by 2020, but by 2010, on the guidelines of the membership
of the CCX in Chicago.
With that said, I will yield my time, because as we get to
the testimony and the questions, the role that universities
play in educating and training the work force that the Chairman
has spoken to is critical. We know right now that we are
stressed out as we try to bring clean energy online from the
nuclear side of the equation, that we simply don't have the
talent that we need and the skills necessary, and that is going
to take time to make sure that can come online appropriately
and safely, so those roles are played dramatically and very
importantly by our universities.
I look forward to your testimony.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you, Senator Craig.
Just to clarify, we did try to have a geographic
representation with the East, the Midwest, and the West, with a
private and a public school. I talked to Chairman Boxer about
having an additional hearing. I understand that we did offer
your side to provide a witness, and we can do it again with
more timing.
Senator Craig. Timing is important for preparedness and
accuracy. You are absolutely right.
Senator Klobuchar. OK. I would also note for the record
that President Bush also went to Yale.
Senator Craig. Oh, dear.
[Laughter.]
Senator Klobuchar. We have Senator Sanders here.
Senator Sanders. I did not go to Yale.
[Laughter.]

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BERNARD SANDERS,
U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF VERMONT

Senator Sanders. Thank you very much for being here. This
is in fact an important hearing. The reason that it is an
important hearing is not just that colleges and universities
all over this Country, some are smaller, some are larger,
consume a lot of energy, and like every other entity, we want
to see them become more energy efficient. But there is
something obviously unique about colleges and universities, and
that is they are educating the future of this Country.
So to the degree to which you can involve your student body
in greening your campuses, developing sustainable energy,
moving toward energy efficiency, what you are doing is you are
educating an entire new generation who will leave your schools,
go out into the world, and take the lessons that were learned
on your campuses.
That, if I may mention, Madam Chairman, is one of the
reasons why I, in the recently passed energy bill, introduced a
provision which will provide financial support to institutions
of higher education as they look to increase more onsite
renewable energy and to become more energy efficient. So we now
have within the energy bill a provision that should help
potentially over a period of time every campus in this Country.
This program supports institutions of higher education
through multiple grant opportunities. Taken together, the
projects to be funded through the program must develop
renewable energy facilities, improve the energy efficiency of
buildings, or promote innovative energy sustainable projects.
One of the most exciting parts of this new program is that
the colleges and universities must involve their students and
local communities in their efforts. That is when you apply for
a grant, that is one of the components of the grant. So you
work with your students in greening up your campuses.
The other part of the provision is that then you have to
tell your communities, your cities, your States what you are
doing because colleges and universities virtually all over this
Country play a unique role. People look to you, and it is not
only the football game or the basketball game. You develop an
energy-efficient project all over the State, you will get the
publicity, and people will say, wow, Yale did something really
extraordinary, what can we learn from that? Or we have
something in Minnesota or wherever.
As I mentioned, we have that provision in law, and right
now, along with Senator Kerry, we are requesting support from
our colleagues to fully fund that provision. I want to thank
one of our witnesses, Jacqueline Johnson, the Chancellor of the
University of Minnesota at Morris, for signing a letter which
has dozens and dozens of signatures on it, seeking full funding
of this legislation. And I want to thank my colleague, Senator
Warner, for supporting the efforts to get full funding as well.
I want to also thank all of our witnesses for being here
and for the good work that you are doing.
So we see that the passage of this provision and the
funding of this provision could provide the kind of funds that
will really increase the efforts that many campuses are making
in America and put you in the forefront of moving this Country
away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and to sustainable
energy.
Madam Chair, thank you.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Senator Sanders.
Senator Whitehouse has joined us.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE,
U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND

Senator Whitehouse. I am delighted that we varied from the
Yale alumni program briefly to have Senator Sanders say a few
words, but I want to welcome the panel and particularly express
my appreciation to President Levin. Not only am I an alum, but
I am a parent at the moment. I am very pleased to see you here.
My daughter reports about how energetically her
sustainability class is working with the university on issues
that actually pertain to the university's policies. So the
manner in which the university has combined its educational and
management roles around this I think is very helpful and I
appreciate it very much.
I hope we all recognize how quickly Yale graduates can move
up in the Senate. We have a brand new freshman Senator, senior
to me, but still a freshman Senator who is chairing the
hearing. So it is a great thing.
I wanted to just add to the record. I will ask unanimous
consent that my full statement be made a part of the record.
But I would like to note that Ruth Simmons, the President of
Brown University, was in Washington yesterday giving a speech
to the Economic Club of Washington. I went to hear her remarks.
She said this: ``Who would have predicted a century ago the
environmental degradation that has led to climate change? Yet,
science stands ready to identify problems, raise awareness,
change behavior, and bring solutions to bear. This is the
miracle of what the modern university and its research capacity
offers the world today. What an evolution from the narrow
missions of colonial universities.''
So I couldn't agree more. I am delighted that you all are
here. I want to take a moment to brag on the work that Brown
University is doing and the University of Rhode Island. They
are both heavily engaged in this. Brown has been at work on
green initiatives I believe since 1991, and has been a real
leader in this area. All of our colleges participate. Even one
of our smaller colleges, Roger Williams, is now running its
shuttle bus service on the recycled canola oil from its fryers
in the dining halls.
So Rhode Island is keenly interested, and I appreciate very
much the role of universities, and I thank all of you for being
here.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
[The prepared statement of Senator Whitehouse follows:]

Statement of Hon. Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Senator
from the State of Rhode Island

Thank you Madam Chairman, and thank you to all of the
members of the panel for being here today. I'd like to extend a
special hello and thank you to President Levin of my alma
mater, Yale University. I recall my undergraduate career there
very fondly and I am proud that my daughter Molly is a freshman
at Yale today. I am also greatly pleased to see this great
institution at work to combat global climate change. The
universities represented here today are educating the next
generation of leaders who will help reverse the tide of global
warming, and at the same time are leading by example by
minimizing their own carbon footprints. I know these efforts
required difficult choices, and I commend all the panelists for
their institutions? commitment to their students and our
environment.
America's universities are uniquely positioned to lead the
fight against climate change. Yesterday, I attended a speech by
Dr. Ruth Simmons, the President of Rhode Island's own Brown
University, in which Dr. Simmons spoke eloquently on the very
issue that brings us here today. She stated:

``Who would have predicted a century ago the environmental
degradation that has led to climate change? Yet, science stands
ready to identify problems, raise awareness, change behavior,
and bring solutions to bear. This is the miracle of what the
modern university and its research capacity offers the world
today. What an evolution from the narrow missions of colonial
universities!''
I couldn't agree more. I'm especially proud that colleges
and universities in Rhode Island have taken critical steps to
transform their campuses into models of energy efficiency and
carbon neutrality. We in the ``Ocean State'' regard our
environment and our responsibility to protect and preserve it
as a nearly sacred cause. So it makes sense that our
institutions of higher learning should be models for the way we
think and act about climate change. They make me and all Rhode
Islanders extremely proud.
Brown University innovated the ``green campus' revolution,
starting in 1991 with its ``Green Initiative'' Seventeen years
later, Brown has achieved one of the lowest energy densities
and carbon footprints among universities of its size. With its
recently inaugurated Community Carbon Use Reduction Program,
Brown plans to do even more: reduce its greenhouse gas
emissions to 42 percent below 2007 levels by 2020, and up to 50
percent below that threshold for all new construction on
campus.
Similarly, the University of Rhode Island, in Kingston, has
also taken significant steps to reduce its carbon footprint and
become more energy-efficient. This winter, URI announced that
it would undertake a massive upgrade of its operational
systems, from lighting to heating to water management. These
upgrades will save the university seven million kilowatt hours
of electricity and forty-two millions of pounds of steam per
year. Meanwhile, the college's Renewable Energy Club has been
studying the feasibility of wind turbines and other alternative
energy generation that could make the campus even more
sustainable and further reduce its footprint. It's a great
example of a university attacking the problem at many different
levels, the administration and students matching each other's
commitment to change.
Our smaller institutions are also busy creating innovative
solutions that will help better meet the needs of the planet.
Roger Williams University, in the town of Bristol on the
shores of Narragansett Bay, now runs it shuttle bus on 100
percent recycled canola oil taken from its cafeteria's fryers.
This alone will keep 2300 gallons of diesel fuel from being
burned, and cut the shuttle's CO2 emissions by 75
percent. It's a small step, but one that shows the innovative
and creative thinking that have become the hallmarks of Rhode
Island's college and universities in this area.
America's universities give our young people the tools and
the opportunities to live happy, healthy, and productive lives.
It makes sense, then, that while these institutions are
preparing their students for the future, they should also do
everything they themselves can do to make sure that our planet
will be in a condition to be enjoyed and enriched by these
students. Brown, URI, Roger Williams, and other Rhode Island
institutions have all made that commitment, and it is essential
that more and more colleges take up this cause and begin to
look for ways in which they can contribute to our fight against
global climate change.
I thank the Chairman again for bringing this excellent
panel together today and I look forward to hearing the
testimony from our witnesses.

Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much.
I think each witness has 5 minutes. We will start with Dr.
Birgeneau.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT BIRGENEAU, CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

Mr. Birgeneau. I hate to admit it, but both I and two of my
daughters are Yale graduates also.
[Laughter.]
Senator Craig. Oops. Now, this is taking it much too far.
[Laughter.]
Senator Klobuchar. OK, look what you started, Senator
Craig. My husband went to the University of Minnesota.
Senator Craig. Oh, come on now. You trumped me with George
W.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Birgeneau. I might also point out, having had to
finance my two daughters through Yale, that fees at Berkeley
are $7,200 a year.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Birgeneau. Senator Boxer, Senator Klobuchar, and other
Senators and members of the Committee, thank you for giving me
the opportunity to speak to you today on one of the most urgent
issues facing our State, our Nation and our globe.
Climate change caused by our use of carbon fuels is one of
the most significant and pressing challenges of our time. At UC
Berkeley, which is one of the Nation's preeminent teaching and
research universities, we are aggressively addressing climate
change through our teaching and research, as well as through
policy and collective and individual actions on our campus.
The State of California has demonstrated national and
international leadership in committing to reduce its greenhouse
gas emissions. It has legislated that the State's global
warming emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020, which is a
25 percent cut in greenhouse gases, and 80 percent below 1990
levels by 2050. UC Berkeley is at the forefront of energy
research and specifically any energy research and
implementation to make these goals viable.
We received an important grant from the United States
Department of Energy Office of Science to create the Joint
BioEnergy Institute through a 5-year, $125 million grant.
Another important effort is the creation of the Energy
Biosciences Institute, a collaboration between ourselves, the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the global energy
corporation, BP.
The institute is funded by--and this is unprecedented--a
$500 million 10-year grant to UC Berkeley and our partners by
BP, awarded in 2007. The purpose is primarily to explore and
develop biofuels beyond the corn to ethanol paradigm.
Additionally, scientists from UC Berkeley and the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory has been developing a bold
research agenda called Helios, exploring solar energy devices
from photovoltaics to microorganisms, including
nanotechnologies to produce cheaper and more efficient solar
cells.
Today, Berkeley has emerged as a leading world center on
energy research and education with an annual research budget of
about $100 million per year through unprecedented public-
private partnerships.
We have also been aggressive with measures to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions on campus. Under the Cal Climate
Action Partnership, which is a coalition of students, faculty
and staff of the administration, we have undertaken a
feasibility study, and based on sound analysis and actual
policy, have committed to a target of reducing greenhouse gas
emissions on campus to 1990 levels by 2014. This is 6 years
ahead of the State's mandated reduction. Our strategies for
achieving this ambitious target include increasing the
efficiency of our energy usage, greening our electricity
supply, and promoting sustainable transportation.
Buildings account for over 70 percent of campus emissions.
Projects to reduce emissions include large scale lighting
retrofits, building recommissioning, making our heating,
ventilation and air conditioning systems more efficient, and
deploying additional onsite renewable energy production.
Our plan also contains efforts that are indirectly related
to energy usage, and also have enormous impact on resource
conservation such as water conservation, minimizing waste, and
purchasing greener products.
These actions are supported by a formal campus policy
entitled the Statement of Commitment to the Environment, and
the recent appointment of a Director of Sustainability. Many of
these efforts to mitigate UC Berkeley's climate footprint have
been led by our students, who are a new generation passionately
committed to solving the world's energy needs in both a clean
and socially responsible way.
Berkeley students recently voted a $5 add-on student fee
increase to fund sustainability projects on campus. The
Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative is a unique student
community that brings together hundreds of students, professors
and industry and government leaders on issues of energy and
resources at Berkeley.
Our students are acutely aware that one billion people on
this planet have no access to modern forms of energy and they
live on 50 cents per day or less. These populations will suffer
devastating effects if global climate change continues to
progress at its current rate. Our students understand that how
we deal with these challenges will transform humankind's
relationship with the environment and change the way that we
drive the global economy. Universities must lead this
transformation.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Birgeneau follows:]

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Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much.
Dr. Johnson.

STATEMENT OF JACQUELINE JOHNSON, CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF
MINNESOTA, MORRIS

Ms. Johnson. Thank you, Senator Klobuchar, members of the
Committee. In the spirit of full disclosure, I suppose I need
to begin by saying that I have absolutely no connection to Yale
University, and I do hope you won't hold that against me.
Senator Craig. That is very appropriate at this moment,
Doctor.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much for inviting me to address
the Committee on behalf of my campus. In the year 2010, the
University of Minnesota, Morris, will be carbon-neutral. We
will have accomplished this reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions through the onsite generation of nearly all of our
electrical and thermal needs using renewable, sustainable local
resources.
How is this possible, you ask? I am about to tell you.
Minnesota, Morris, one of five campuses of the University of
Minnesota system, is a decidedly rural, residential public
liberal arts college of 1,700 students. On a hill overlooking
our prairie campus, a 1.65 megawatt wind turbine currently
powers 50 percent of our campus buildings. It is the first
turbine of its kind to be constructed at a public university,
and it has been in operation since Earth Day 2005.
Tucked behind our campus physical education center, a small
unobtrusive building is currently under construction. It will
house our biomass gasification plant scheduled for its first
burn in May of this year. By burning locally procured non-food
based biofuel feedstocks, principally cornstover--if you wonder
what that is, it is the stocks of the corn--and mixed prairie
grasses, we will essentially replace our natural gas supply and
our natural gas dependency.
In addition to providing a minimum of 80 percent of campus
heating needs, we anticipate that this plant will put
approximately $500,000 back into the local economy annually.
Thus, instead of sending dollars out of State to purchase
natural gas, we will deposit these resources into the pockets
of area citizens.
But that is not all. In the fall of 2008, we will add a
steam turbine to this gasification system. Operating on the
green steam, which is a product of the gasification process,
the steam turbine will produce electricity for us on those days
when the wind isn't blowing and it provides a redundant source
of electrical power that goes back into the grid on those windy
days that are the hallmark of the prairie. This same green
steam that provides heat for our campus in the winter will
connect to an absorption chiller in the summer to cool our
buildings.
And there is more. In the spring of 2009, we will add a
second wind turbine on the hill which when it is operational
will provide the remainder of our electrical needs and then
some, eventually allowing us to put the excess electricity
produced on our campus back onto the grid.
Of course, like many American colleges and universities, we
are taking other steps to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
Our fleet includes hybrid and zero-emission vehicles. We
recycle. We conserve. We have an active local foods initiative.
We are designing new and renovating old buildings with
attention to LEED specifications.
How does this fit into our academic mission and our
undergraduate liberal arts focus? Our students have been and
are at the forefront of our green initiatives. They are active
participants in studying the impact of these initiatives
through an interdisciplinary studies major and of course a
number of other majors as well, a robust undergraduate research
program, service learning, and a variety of active internships.
Students work directly with Morris faculty. They present
nationally at conferences. They co-author papers with faculty
members. They are our best spokespersons.
How have we managed financially and are we saving money?
Our work is financed through investments made by the University
of Minnesota system, whose regents in 2004 adopted a system-
wide policy related to sustainability. Our work is also
supported through investments made by the State of Minnesota.
In addition, we have received grants from the U.S. Department
of Energy and from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In December 2007, we were authorized by the Internal
Revenue Service to issue three clean renewable energy bonds and
we are currently in the process of negotiating an energy
service contract. We will have achieved our goal through an
integrated set of financial tools.
Do these investments save us money? The answer is both yes
and it depends. For example, as long as the price of natural
gas stays at or above $8 per BTU, we save money by using
biomass gasification. While CREBs are no-interest bonds, they
still must be paid back. We don't have deep pockets or abundant
resources, just imagination, vision and resolved.
Moreover, we are spending close to home. We are reinvesting
dollars in rural America. And we have only just begun. We
believe that the work happening on our campus provides
prototypes for transforming the future of rural America in a
way reminiscent of the Rural Electrification Act of the 1930's.
We believe that this onsite renewable electric and thermal
generation system provides a model not only for other colleges
and universities, and for small communities and for
neighborhoods in the United States, but that it also has great
relevance for developing countries, truly a model of global
significance.
We also have an obligation to use the investments that have
been made in our campus infrastructure to train a new work
force for a new economy, green collar jobs, career ladders that
provide technical, intellectual and entrepreneurial pathways
for the future. We believe that when we reach our goal in 2010,
we will be the first college in the United States to have
reduced greenhouse gas emissions in this way through onsite
generation. BW, before wind, our fossil fuel footprint was
12,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. By 2010, we will have
reduced that footprint to zero. We will have achieved carbon
neutrality.
I am just about finished, if I could have just a few more
seconds here.
I am thinking that some of you are listening to this and
you are saying to yourselves, where on earth is Morris,
Minnesota? So let me end my remarks by helping you to get your
geographic bearings. The best way that I can think of to do
this is by sharing with you a story that involves one of our
alums, who is a University of Minnesota, Morris, graduate of
course, and a graduate law degree from Georgetown. She
currently sits as a Justice on the Minnesota State Supreme
Court. This is Justice Lorie Gildea. She describes the location
of the University of Minnesota, Morris, like this. She says:
``It is west of Harvard, east of Stanford, and a whole lot
closer to heaven.'' So we just thought you might enjoy that.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Johnson. University of Minnesota, Morris, students like
Justice Gildea are outspoken and they are action-oriented. We
encourage students and faculty to ask and answer the big
questions of our time. Our work in reducing greenhouse gas
emissions speaks directly to these characteristics and
qualities.
At the University of Minnesota, Morris, we provide a
liberal arts living and learning environment that is literally
both renewable and sustainable.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]

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Senator Klobuchar. Thank you, Chancellor Johnson. You have
done our State proud, and mostly you have made Senator Craig
happy. So this is good.
President Levin.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD C. LEVIN,
PRESIDENT, YALE UNIVERSITY

Mr. Levin. Thank you, Senator Klobuchar and members of the
Committee.
Thank you, Chancellor Johnson, for that inspiring case
study. I will point out, however, that your description of your
institution being west of Harvard, east of Stanford, and closer
to heaven also suits Yale.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Levin. There is no doubt that we have a problem. The
Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change concluded last year that in the absence of
corrective measures, global temperatures are likely to rise
between one and 6 degrees centigrade by the end of the century,
with the best estimates ranging between two and four degrees.
Even a one degree increase will limit the availability of
fresh water and cause coastal flooding in much of the world.
Environmental damages and dislocation will be even more
consequential if global temperatures rise by more than two
degrees.
Universities have four important roles to play in the
effort to curtail global warming. First, we must continue to
advance our understanding of climate change. As Brown President
Simmons said, it is in universities that these effects were
first discovered. We need to discern the effects of climate
change on the economy and the environment, and also understand
the consequences of taking corrective action.
Second, universities must pursue research into carbon-free
energy technologies such as solar, wind and geothermal power,
as well as seek more efficient ways of using carbon-based fuels
through improved building materials and design, and improved
technologies for vehicles and power plants.
Third, we must educate students who go on to become future
leaders and influential citizens. At Yale, we take this part of
our mission extremely seriously. We offer over 60 undergraduate
courses focused on the environment. Our School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies has for decades produced some of
America's most influential environmental leaders. The study of
the environment and sustainability is now embedded in the
curriculum of our graduate schools of business, architecture
and public health.
Finally, universities can demonstrate to the Nation and to
the world that substantial reductions in greenhouse gases are
feasible and not prohibitively expensive. With 12,000
employees, Yale is the third largest private employer in
Connecticut. There are 11,000 students on our campus and we
have an annual budget of $2.5 billion. We are a large
organization by any standard, the equivalent of a Fortune 1,000
company. We are large enough to be a model of responsible
environmental practice for other universities and business
organizations. We are large enough to demonstrate that
greenhouse gas reduction is feasible and affordable.
As Senator Whitehouse indicated, in these efforts to
demonstrate best practices in limiting carbon emissions, we are
also teaching our students, who are full participants in this
campus-wide effort. We are teaching them how to be responsible
citizens of the world. Together, we are learning how to balance
near-term economic considerations against the long-term health
of the environment and the well being of future human
generations.
We have committed to reducing the university's greenhouse
gas emissions to 43 percent below our 2005 baseline by 2020.
That is also 10 percent below 1990 levels. It is a goal that is
within the range of estimates of what is required to keep
global temperatures from rising two degrees centigrade. So far
in the first 2 years of our program, we have reduced carbon
emissions by 17 percent. To achieve this, we have retrofitted
heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in 90 of our
roughly 300 buildings.
We have installed thermally efficient windows in many of
our largest existing buildings, and in all of the new buildings
we have constructed in the last decade. We have acquired new
power plant equipment and modified some existing equipment to
achieve substantial savings in fuel consumption. We have used a
mix of conventional and renewable fuels in our power plant and
in our campus bus fleet.
We have made a commitment that all of our new buildings
will achieve a silver rating or better from the LEED building
rating system. And engaging our students, we have reduced
student electricity consumption by 10 percent in each of the
last 2 years by sponsoring a competition among our residential
colleges.
Other measures currently in the works should yield an
additional 17 percent reduction in the next 3 years. These
projects include the replacement of university-owned buses and
trucks with hybrid models, a new co-generation plant, solar
panels on selected buildings, and small wind turbines in the
windiest sections of our campus.
In most cases, the present value of the energy savings from
these projects exceeds the initial investment. In other cases,
we will invest to achieve carbon savings even at a modest net
economic cost, in part to demonstrate the feasibility of new
technologies, and in part, to encourage policy change that
would price carbon correctly.
I believe we can reach our greenhouse gas reduction goal at
a cost of less than 1 percent of our annual operating expenses.
In our view, this additional expense is justified and we
believe the leadership of many other large organizations would
come to the same conclusion.
Other universities are joining us in aggressively reducing
their carbon footprints. By the end of the academic year, I
expect that every one of our sister institutions in the Ivy
League will adopt its own concrete greenhouse gas reduction
goal. These efforts are being replicated at colleges and
universities across the Nation and around the world, as you
have heard today.
I hope the members of the Committee take heart in the
knowledge that large organizations are concluding that they can
and should take actions to reduce their carbon footprint
significantly. I commend the Committee for its thoughtful
consideration and approval of legislation that would establish
a national system for reducing carbon emissions. Our future
depends on it.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Levin follows:]

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Senator Klobuchar. Thank you so much to all of you. I am
going to start with a few questions, and then turn it over to
my fellow Senators. Of course, I will start with my chancellor
here, Chancellor Johnson.
Could you talk about how you came upon this, that Morris
started to get into this so early? Was it something about your
mission or what you have historically focused on as a campus?
Ms. Johnson. I appreciate the question. Thank you very
much, Senator Klobuchar. I think there are a number of reasons.
One of the immediate reasons I believe had to do with the high
cost of gas in 2000.
I think another one of the reasons does really have to do
with the kind of populist, and as I mentioned earlier, action-
orientation of the students, the faculty and staff who are on
our campus. But you may not know that the University of
Minnesota, Morris, started life as an American Indian boarding
school in the late 1900's. It was founded by the Sisters of
Mercy and turned over to the Federal Government who in turn in
the early 1900's then established, after the American boarding
school movement ended, an agricultural high school on the
grounds.
So when you come to the University of Minnesota, Morris,
and I hope that you will, you will see a collection of historic
buildings that are on the National Historic Registry that are
part of that era of an agricultural high school. I like to
think that the work that is happening on the prairie right now
in Morris and at the university is really in some ways reaching
back to those elements of our heritage. It is a new way of
working collaboratively with partners in the region and with
our agricultural community. Thank you.
Senator Klobuchar. I was just thinking as I heard this,
there are more opportunities for a huge wind turbine in a rural
university than there is in an urban one, although we now have
on in Minnesota in a suburban shopping mall. Are there other
rural universities that you know of that are doing similar
things across the Country?
Ms. Johnson. Sure there are, including in the State of
Minnesota. If you go to Northfield, you will see the big wind
turbine there as well. And obviously, it depends on location.
We actually are sponsoring it. We have a Center for Small Towns
on our campus, and we will be hosting a symposium in June with
special invitations having been issued to about 50 schools,
private and public schools in the region who are very much like
us, situated in rural communities.
We believe that the work that is happening on our campus,
it is about wind; it is it about biomass and gasification, but
it really is as much about this integrated system of renewable
energy onsite. We think that it isn't just the unique
characteristics of our geography that there are others who can
replicate and reproduce the same kind of thing.
Senator Sanders had mentioned earlier the importance of
dissemination, the importance of producing an educated
citizenry. I think we are really in the midst of that in terms
of building this research and demonstration platform on the
prairie. We have good partners with an outreach center that is
part of the University of Minnesota's agricultural school. We
are lucky to be part of the system. We also have a wonderful
partner with the USDA Agricultural Research Station that is in
Morris. We talk about this as the research triangle, and we say
North Carolina, move over. But we really have great
opportunities in our small town to do some of these things and
to share them.
Senator Klobuchar. OK. Thank you.
I have been trying to get Senator Sanders out to Minnesota,
so maybe we will bring him out to the campus, although your
campus may never be the same.
President Levin, as you know, we are considering, and this
Committee has voted through legislation with a cap-and-trade.
It seems that carbon offsets will be an integral part of any
kind of future cap-and-trade program. I know that Yale is
utilizing them to meet your own emission goals. Could you
elaborate on the role of offsets in your climate strategy and
the kind of research that is going on at Yale with carbon
offsets?
Mr. Levin. Sure. Actually, except as a prize to the
residential college that wins the energy savings competition,
we are actually not focused on the purchase of carbon offsets
in today's markets such as they are, in part because today's
markets don't really reflect a scarcity price on carbon as
markets will when the Lieberman-Warner bill is passed and
enacted into legislation.
We are committed to participating in direct investments in
carbon offsets. In other words, we have looked at and are
likely to make in the future investments in wind farms in areas
remote to the campus that won't actually feed the campus, but
will feed the New England power grid and will be incremental
sources of renewable supply.
So the carbon markets, as I suggest, really will work much
better when they do reflect a true scarcity price. Right now,
they do not, and in fact if one wanted to satisfy our large
requirements, we could reach our 43 percent goal, which would
require purchasing about 203,000 metric tons of CO2
at a price that is actually fairly modest today, but that is
not reflecting the true cost.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much.
Chancellor Birgeneau, I am out of time here, but I have
some great questions of you about your green rooms, your green
dorm rooms or whatever they are. So we will come back on the
second round.
Senator Craig.
Senator Craig. Thank you all very much.
Clearly, our colleges and universities can lead in the
areas that you are now speaking to, in the concept of
university competition and the walled thinking and creating
areas that our universities are supposed to be. The one thing
that I have focused on is not distorting a marketplace or not
creating artificial mechanisms, but truly allowing technology
and the innovative mind to get there.
What your colleges and universities are doing today is
outside any law that Congress could ever create. You are
grabbing the issue. You are taking the issue and you are
running with it in a fair and responsible way, as are my
colleges and universities.
But let me have some fun with you for a moment. Let us turn
to this weekend and March Madness and put our colleges and
universities and our alumni to a test. Can we do that? So let
me direct my questions, Madam Chair, to have some fun.
Let me start with Cal Berkeley first. Now, listen up folks,
because I want to get it accurate and I want to get it right.
Cal Berkeley, 110 metric tons in 2006. Is that accurate? Excuse
me, 210,000 metric tons in 2006.
Mr. Birgeneau. I can't tell you if that is the exact
number.
Senator Craig. I believe that is correct. And you have
23,482 undergraduate and 10,076 graduate students, 33,558
students. All right. So your carbon footprint would be, under
current day calculations, about 6.3 metric tons per student
year. OK? Let's put that up.
Now, we will go to you, Dr. Johnson. You do very well, by
the way. You are going to score well here. You predict that you
are a zero-emission campus by 2010.
Ms. Johnson. That is right.
Senator Craig. All right. And with what you have laid out,
that is very possible. You also say that your footprint was
12,000 metric tons before wind.
Ms. Johnson. Yes.
Senator Craig. About 12,000 tons for 1,700 students, and
you were at 7.1 metric tons per student year.
Ms. Johnson. That sounds probable.
Senator Craig. OK. But you haven't won yet. Remember, we
are going to play this game out right through to the final
playoff.
Now, Dr. Levin, your footprint today is roughly the same as
Cal Berkeley's, is it not?
Mr. Levin. That is right, about 220,000 metric tons right
now.
Senator Craig. Yes. However, your institution has one-third
as many students, 11,000 students.
Mr. Levin. That is correct.
Senator Craig. All right. So your carbon footprint is three
times as large as Cal Berkeley's. Is that correct?
Mr. Levin. That is true. We are in a harsher climate and we
have----
Senator Craig. No excuses, now. No excuses. Remember, this
is a playoff.
Mr. Levin. We are in a harsher climate and we have much
higher per capita Federal support for research than Berkeley,
and research is----
Senator Craig. Oh, you're competitive. Listen, we are going
into the final stretch here so we are going to score you at
19.1 metric tons per student year. OK?
Mr. Levin. That is about right.
Senator Craig. Now, in that case, we always like to degrade
our Country as being the greatest emitter. So Yale is the
United States of university emissions at this point.
Mr. Levin. I think we are losing.
Senator Craig. You are. You are losing.
Mr. Levin. Right.
Senator Craig. That is why I am so pleased to have you get
with it.
Now, we are going to score Boise State University, you
know, that team with the blue turf that tipped upside down
college football history here a year ago. Guess where they are
going to come in, because we have the things that we like. We
have hydro. We have wind. We have a little coal, very little
nuclear yet. How are we going to score Boise State University
as it relates to their carbon footprint per student per year?
Voila. 2.7 metric tons per year Oh, those Broncos did it
again.
[Laughter.]
Senator Craig. My point here is really quite simple, and it
is as important for our Committee as it is for the witnesses
before us this morning. When we talk about the totality of
responsibility that our universities have, and we do, and you
have demonstrated that, and by using this little exercise, not
in any way am I attempting to degrade your efforts. That isn't
the purpose.
You are going to do what will really solve the climate
change problem. We can manipulate markets here. We can command
and control by public policy. But what is emerging out of this
is a consciousness in America today that all new energy
technologies have to be clean. It is really quite simple. We
will accept nothing less than that.
Now, in the midst of getting there, and it will take
several decades to get there, the question is, how do we remain
competitive? We have to continue an energy supply. There is no
doubt about it. And we need to continue to grow if we are going
to remain competitive. And that is the margin of frustration in
between.
So Madam Chair, as we look at Warner-Lieberman, as we
ultimately decide a climate change policy, and hopefully we
will not distort or damage markets or damage our
competitiveness in the world marketplace. Where the market
really is today is with these universities and what they will
and their students will produce. That is what we will sell to
the world. That is what we will make available to the world.
And that is the course of future energy, and not us thinking we
are so smart we can manipulate it and play games with it here.
I thank you for your leadership. I thank you for being
here. While I am not an alum of Boise State, Boise State is
going to be awfully proud of me today, and they are going to be
proud of you.
Thank you.
Senator Klobuchar. All right. Thank you, Senator Craig.
Again, you could have invited Boise State and we hope we will
have another hearing where we can give them their March Madness
award.
Senator Craig. Madam Chair, I just talked with the ranking
member of the Committee and he said that if the Committee and
the Chairman want to do a second hearing and give us the
accurate lead time to scope and lay it out, we would be more
than happy to participate. We just might bring one of Idaho's
clean universities to play.
Senator Klobuchar. Excellent. We look forward to it.
Senator Craig. Thank you.
Senator Klobuchar. Senator Sanders.
Senator Sanders. Thank you.
And for Yale University, what you need is a major river and
a dam in New Haven. That will help you a whole lot. You can
work on that.
[Laughter.]
Senator Sanders. I want to congratulate all of the campuses
and the colleges and universities for what you are doing, but I
agree with President Johnson that heaven is probably somewhere
near rural America, and maybe in Vermont we share some of that
as well. So I want to ask you a couple of questions because
what you are doing sounds extraordinarily exciting. I would
like to see that in Vermont. We are making a little bit of
progress. We just haven't quite advanced as far as you have.
Talk a little bit about the wind turbines, and talk a
little bit about the financial implications of what you are
doing, because as is always the case, the initial investment is
what is significant, coming up with the money to buy the
sustainable energy and then the payback period over a period of
time. And then talk a little bit, and then I want the others as
well, about what role do you think the Federal Government can
play? It always seems to me to be a very sad State of affairs
if people say, well, over a 20 or 30 year period, we can
actually save money, but we don't have the money to make those
investments right now, which is why we are working on
legislation to help colleges and universities make those
investments. Could you comment a little bit about that?
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. I appreciate the question and also
your leadership in terms of potentially providing some of these
resources for colleges and universities around the Country.
The wind turbines are not only expensive, the big ones that
we are putting up, but they are also right now not very easy to
find. That may be another kind of interesting issue
legislatively. It is very difficult----
Senator Sanders. Excuse me. Were you unable to locate that
in the United States? Are you importing this?
Ms. Johnson. We are in the process of identifying a second
wind turbine. We hope to have that up about a year from now.
The line is long for people who are trying to buy wind turbines
and that is mostly going to private----
Senator Sanders. If I could just interrupt you for a second
to talk about what a pathetic State of affairs that is. I think
all over this Country, people want to move in that direction
and we can't even buy it because we are not even manufacturing
these products in the United States, which is beyond
comprehension. It is another issue. I didn't mean to interrupt
you.
Ms. Johnson. And one of the issues for Minnesota does have
to do with Vestas, who was a manufacturer of wind turbines and
who is looking to locate somewhere in the United States, and we
would love them to come to Minnesota. But I think you are
right. The pro formas that we have established, I mentioned in
my remarks that we don't have a lot of resources. We don't have
ourself, the University of Minnesota, Morris, a big endowment,
so we don't have a lot of funds to invest. So we are relying,
for example, for the second wind turbine on the CREBs, the one
that we have been issued for that. We need to find the turbine.
The pro formas, I believe, and I believe that material has
been entered into the record, show us as paying back, as saving
money, but using the money to pay back the investment over the
course of something like 13 years. The average lifespan for a
wind turbine is 20 years. So we think even with that sort of
long payback period when we are using no-interest bonds to
purchase the turbine, we will still have some years of good
investment. I think the investment goes beyond just the dollars
that we are saving. The investment, of course, is also in the
environment and I think that is an important piece of it as
well.
So we think of that not just as an investment in the
materials themselves, but also as an investment in the earth,
if you will. That seems important. So I think the questions of
financing are really important. I think that the opportunities
for the Senate, for local legislators are there to find ways to
assist those who want to do alternative and renewable energy
sources. I think one of the challenges also has to do with
getting energy back onto the grid and some of the resistance to
that. We face that locally. That is more of a local issue. If
you have excess energy, how do you get it onto the grid so that
people can use renewable energy supplies there?
There are any of a number of policy implications that are
connected to this, but again, including the implications that
are related to being able to purchase a single wind turbine,
which is where we are. Perhaps there are ways that people could
organize collectively so nonprofit organizations, higher
education organizations, could collaborate to purchase multiple
wind turbines, and that might make it both more feasible
financially, but also more possible for us actually to find a
turbine.
Senator Sanders. If I could ask the same question to our
friends from Yale or Berkeley. Yes?
Mr. Levin. Yes. I just want to add that I agree with all of
what Chancellor Johnson is saying. Some of these concerns, like
the limited supply of the turbines, is presumably going to be
short term. Capacity will ramp up if there is demand for the
product.
Let me speak to the financing concern and tie it to why we
need a cap and trade system with a market price on carbon. Wind
power may look attractive today at the high prices we have for
substitute fossil fuel energy production or electricity
production, but there is of course a risk. One reason why it
might be difficult to finance a wind turbine by going into the
debt markets would be that there is no way to hedge the risk of
fluctuating prices.
But if you have a cap-and-trade system, a market price of
carbon, and a set of futures markets for carbon prices, then
there would be a way. People prepared to take the risk could
then be the buyers of risk, and the institutions that are
investing and their direct creditors could hedge that risk, so
it would make capital more available through the markets.
I am very much a fan of Senator Craig in this respect. I
think we ought to rely on market mechanisms as much as
possible.
Senator Craig. Excuse me, Senator.
I think your logic there fits. I mean, it clearly does. The
problem we have with wind turbines today is that we were not
producers of the kind that President Johnson talks about. They
were European. They are now here and they are being produced
here. But because of our tax credit, in all fairness, we are
subsidizing wind today and it has made it popular. I am not
criticizing that. I support it. But it has created a demand
where you do stand in line.
I think your concern about non-profits, we would want to
watch that very closely because what I don't want to happen is
for everybody to become a non-profit then, to try to get to the
front of the line. I think the marketplace, you are right
President Levin, it is going to work this thing out. I don't
decry it, Senator Sanders, because we simply weren't there. We
are now there very aggressively and they are being produced in
the Midwest. The factories are going up.
Senator Klobuchar. Senator Sanders, do you want to respond
before Chancellor Birgeneau answers?
Senator Sanders. Well, I just did want to suggest that, as
I understand it, we helped develop the initial wind technology,
and for a variety of reasons that has gone to other countries.
I think that speaks to the decline of manufacturing in this
Country in general.
But let UC Berkeley answer, please.
Mr. Birgeneau. I would like to address the innovation and
American ingenuity part of the challenge, which is that
ultimately the U.S. must lead in this area, which means that we
have to take advantage of the phenomenal research talent that
we have in this Country and the passion of young people. In
this new program, Energy Biosciences Institute, the global
energy corporation, BP, which is based in London, was under
tremendous pressure to fund that research either at Cambridge
University or Imperial College.
They ultimately decided to send the money overseas to the
State of California because of the entrepreneurial character of
the Bay Area and the scientific power of the University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a great Midwest university, combined
with Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, which is a
Department of Energy laboratory.
Similarly, the Department of Energy is investing now, and
has under-invested in energy research, and we need to see a
significant growth in support of energy research both at the
national laboratories and in our universities.
Finally, we have a generation of students who are
absolutely passionate about sustainable energy. Much of my own
knowledge comes not from our technical experts, but from our
students. I think it is time for government agencies, perhaps
the National Science Foundation, to create a new set of
graduate fellowships which will be sustainable energy
fellowships. There will be a queue a mile long of the most
talented young people in the Country who would love to have
fellowships of that sort in which they could devote their
careers to solving this problem for the United States.
Senator Sanders. Good idea. OK.
Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you, Senator Sanders.
Before I go to some other questions, on behalf of Senator
Boxer, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a
statement from the University of California at San Diego.
Hearing no objection, so ordered.
[The referenced document follows:]
Senator Klobuchar. Senator Craig.
Senator Craig. What happens among our very competitive
institutions when they compete head to head? I just turned to
staff and said, after you entered and for Senator Boxer's
benefit, ``and the competition builds!'' We are going to have a
great second hearing. I look forward to it.
Senator Klobuchar. It will be a lot of fun. I just can't
wait.
OK, Chancellor Birgeneau, you mentioned in your testimony,
just in fact in your last statement, about the BP grant. I
think some of that is going to research on cellulosic ethanol.
Are you familiar with that? It is very important in our State
as we build and expand into cornstover, as the Chancellor
pointed out, and switchgrass and prairie grass. Could you talk
a little bit about that research?
Mr. Birgeneau. Sure, absolutely. The goal is to go beyond
ethanol and to go beyond the corn to ethanol paradigm, to
basically take the incredible progress that we have made in
modern molecular medicine and take that knowledge base and
transform it into the agricultural world. So there has been
some work done already, for example, at our partner University
of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, but the relative development of
the technology on the plant side compared with the human body
side is actually quite disproportionate.
Our goal is in essence to use modern genetic techniques to
create artificial termites, so we would like to develop
organisms which will very efficiently convert, let's say,
miscanthus grass, which is a grass that grows well in the
Midwest in the United States, including in your State, an
incredibly high-density, low-fertilizer, low-water, perennial,
and grows to a height of 12 feet.
If we can develop the chemistry that will enable us to
efficiently convert those kinds of grasses, break down the
lignin and the cellulose into their constituent sugars, and
then ultimately into alcohols, which will probably be other
than ethanol, we could conceivably replace 30 percent of
petroleum products by naturally produced biofuels. That would
have a huge impact on the U.S. economy, and this, of course, is
carbon-neutral.
Senator Klobuchar. Very good. My question about the Green
Living Project, and this came out of your written testimony
where you talked about the fact that you can convert these
student resident hall rooms to be environmentally friendly
without costing a huge sum of money. Could you explain how a
green room differs from a traditional dorm room?
Mr. Birgeneau. This is actually a 100 percent student-
driven initiative, so I gave a little bit of seed funding to
our students and said, do something creative. So they just
looked very carefully at the way their rooms worked, whether or
not the computers turned off automatically when they left the
room; whether or not the lights turned off automatically;
whether or not they had waterless toilets; whether or not they
had appliances which were green.
Just by integrating a whole series of steps, not any single
one critical, but the integral is that they then have been able
to convert their dormitory rooms. This has been student-driven,
so that there are green rooms which are extraordinarily energy
efficient. This is now leading into a large-scale research
project at Berkeley of how we design homes so that homes are
energy neutral.
Senator Klobuchar. Very good.
President Levin, you mentioned that one of the most
effective steps that Yale has taken is to retrofit the heating,
ventilation and air conditioning systems in 90 of Yale's
roughly 300 buildings. How many of these 90 buildings are
historic or older buildings? How do you do this in a cost-
effective way?
Mr. Levin. Some of them are challenging. Some of our stone
neo-gothic buildings are really not very feasible for
undertaking this approach. But for the more modern buildings,
it is actually quite cost-effective. This has a positive
economic return at current energy prices to just go through and
improve the control systems, introduce centralized controls
over HVAC and lighting as well so that things switch off
automatically when people leave the room, have motions sensors
and adjust temperatures appropriately when the building is
occupied and not occupied.
These are investments that actually yield a payoff at
today's high prices of energy.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much.
Senator Craig.
Senator Craig. Again, thank you all very, very much.
Let me ask a generic question of you, all three, because
clearly Congress in response to the American consumer and the
environmental realities is awakening and that is appropriate.
We should be. And that really started in 2005 when we created
the new Energy Policy Act that is driving a variety of
resources out there today. Again, we spoke to it last year, for
example, when the discussion on cellulosic ethanol began we
bumped that up to 32-plus billion gallons annualized,
recognizing that a fair or larger portion of that total
production ultimately would have to come out of cellulosic
technologies.
At the same time, as we deal with intermittent energy
sources, and of course you at your university, Dr. Johnson,
mentioned that you are doing feedstocks, biomass energy. I
guess I would call that baseload, and the wind is intermittent.
Because we don't have storage capacities today for
intermittent, we have to have backup because the wind does one
thing that we know well. It doesn't blow all the time, and yet
we ought to be able to grab it when it does. Hopefully someday
we will be able to store it, and that will help us feed and
integrate both baseload and intermittent sources into a grid
system.
But having said that, and I trust all of you have looked at
Warner-Lieberman. Some version of climate change legislation
within the next few years will become public policy in this
Country. It may not be that per se, but there are pieces of it
that will probably become that.
Can we arrive at a reasonable climate change policy that
drives markets and investments without nuclear energy? How
would the three of you respond to that? As the No. 2 nuclear
research university in the Nation, how would you respond to
that?
Mr. Birgeneau. I am highly biased because 10 years ago I
chaired a committee for the Department of Energy urging the
U.S. Government to sustain programs in research in nuclear
energy and nuclear reactors for other kinds of research.
Senator Craig. That is right.
Mr. Birgeneau. So I am a passionate supporter of nuclear
energy. I think it should be a critical part of our energy
strategy. Because of the disappearance of funding in that area
in the 1990's, nuclear engineering departments like ours at
Berkeley really suffered.
Senator Craig. You almost lost it.
Mr. Birgeneau. We are in the process of revitalizing it.
Fortunately, we didn't lost it and we are revitalizing it.
Senator Craig. You and MIT are leaders in those areas of
research and development. Thank you.
Dr. Johnson.
Ms. Johnson. Well, I am not a physicist, so I feel a little
bit out of my league here. But just to come back to the first
element of your question, I think that has to do more broadly
with can we have an impact on climate change. I think the
answer is decidedly yes.
I want to just come back again to the concept to make sure
that stays in front of people, and that is the concept that
drives the University of Minnesota, Morris, and that is an
integrated system of energy. We have researchers at the
outreach center, and again I am not a physicist so I am out of
my league here, but who are working on just exactly the
capacities that you are talking about--wind, hydrogen, the
possibility of storing energy so that it isn't just episodic
and dependent on when the wind blows. But if you have ever been
on the prairie, there probably 3 days out of the year that the
wind doesn't blow.
Senator Craig. I have been there.
Ms. Johnson. So I think again the number of things that
have been referred to here that have to do with the interests
of young people, of college students in this, the educated
citizenry, I think it is certainly the case that we can have,
and as you see on our campus, that we are having a positive
impact.
I would like to come back in 2 years and do your final four
again.
Senator Craig. We will do it.
Ms. Johnson. I am not sure what the status is going to be.
Senator Craig. We are awfully close to deciding a total
rating system.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Johnson. I think you might have a new winner.
Senator Craig. Well, I don't suggest that you dodged my
initial question, then, because you have handled it well. I
think it is full integration. Thank you.
Dr. Levin.
Senator Klobuchar. President Levin.
Mr. Levin. Let me say first that I think supporting all of
these technologies--nuclear, biomass, solar, wind is important
because we can't know in advance which will pay off most. So
giving appropriate support to advancing them all is important.
Price signals through a cap and trade system actually do part
of that. I think direct efforts and subsidies are probably
necessary as complements, at least in these years.
Nuclear poses a particular challenge. I agree with
Chancellor Birgeneau that we ought to be supporting research in
that area. But actually the challenge is more than research in
the nuclear area because we will have nuclear plants coming
offline in the next 20 or 30 years, requiring substantial
investment to stay online.
Senator Craig. That is right.
Mr. Levin. In fact, given the long lags in actually
designing and getting a nuclear plant through the regulatory
and political barriers because of siting controversies, we will
have a very hard time, even if we ran full blast starting
today, to actually keep our nuclear capability as high as it is
today 20 years from now.
I agree with you. We have to address this. Nuclear plants
are very efficient baseload electricity plants, and they are
completely green. It is very logical to be working on them.
Senator Craig. And of the three universities, yours, Yale,
probably is the larger consumer of nuclear-based electricity
than the other two. That is a rather cursory glance. So the
reality you talk about of sustaining what we have and
maintaining its efficiency and its safety as it ages, we have
addressed that to some extent in the 2005 Policy Act.
Frankly, just before we left for the Easter Recess, we did
something else that advances that. We brought two new
commissioners to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. One of them
is a former staffer of mine, Commissioner Kristine Svinicki,
formerly from Idaho Falls, Idaho. They are now in the process
of ramping up in a way that will change those timelines
substantially as it relates to retrofitting and/or bringing new
greenfield production facilities online.
To Cal Berkeley, pick up the phone and call DOE, because
there is a new opportunity there, Chancellor. Last year,
Senator Bingaman, Senator Domenici and I authored it we put in
legislation that was signed by the President and now we are
seeking to fund the Nuclear Science Talent provision to start
bringing the incentives at universities back, to take those
young bright minds through their undergraduate degrees to the
masters and the doctorates in those fields, to broaden, if you
will, the base of that talent, both for our Country and the
world. So the role Berkeley plays, along with MIT, and my
universities in Idaho is now working directly with the Idaho
National laboratory and the Center for Advanced Energy Studies.
America has blinked and awakened to 20 years of abstinence,
if you will, in the energy field. They are not very happy with
us because of the prices involved and the realities that are
about. So hopefully, with our universities playing very
important roles in this, like the great Country we are, we will
overcome it.
Thank you, all three, very much for being with us.
Senator Klobuchar. I wanted to thank all of you for coming,
and just let you know we have had four Senators here, which
isn't bad for a smaller hearing. I think there is just a lot of
interest that is generated. Clearly, we are going to have
college and university hearing II as well.
I also wanted to thank you for the work you have done in
being leaders in this area, with not only the campus, but in
selling this to your alumni and to bringing the students on
board. In my own observations getting around our State, it is
really the younger people that have been leading the way. I am
sure you have all seen this from 8 year olds with penguin
buttons, to college kids that have shown up here in the Hart
Building with green helmets for green jobs, chanting in the
bottom of the Hart Building, but it has really been the
students that have been leading the way.
We appreciate your leadership and look forward to working
with you in the years to come. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Senator Craig, as well.
[Whereupon, at 11:15 a.m. the committee was adjourned.]