Earth Day was Friday and the sustainability club came together with the Rugby team to encourage signatures for a petition. The hope is Dixie will receive more financing for sustainable practices.
Tracy O’Kelly believes the University can do more. She said, “we could do more sustainability projects, not as much grass, and do more recycling. When we build buildings we could put solar on them.” President of the sustainability club Chloe Lichtenberg has a petition going with almost 900 signatures to show the administration that the students want more funding to go towards recycling, solar panels and many other sustainability projects.
“The petition basically says you would support more sustainable practices on campus. It is to show the administration that this is something students and staff would like to see.”
Dixie State University is making strides to be more sustainable. Many may be un aware of the 60 panel solar array on the roof of the Science building. Energy Controls Manager Bart Peacock says there is great potential for using more solar technology in the future. On the contrary, Peacock believes the University is green and becoming even more green. He admitted we are not to the level of sustainability of other universities but we are on our way.
Bart said they have an ESCO project going and the University is in a contract with Johnson controls for making improvements on campus to be more sustainable. The payments are being made over a 16-year time.
According to Dixie State University’s annual energy report for fiscal year 2015, the university has become increasingly energy efficient. The EUI (energy usage intensity) shows a drop from 85.85 to 61.46. The total kBtu/year has dropped from $80,349,715 to 71,822,906. Bart Peacock said, “Annually, we’re using about 17 million gallons of water for culinary and irrigation.”
In the same report Peacock wrote, “DSU continues to make strides toward better use of energy and its resources … We plan to further implement strategies and technologies to become more sustainable, energy efficient and better stewards of those resources.”