Recently, Fort Lewis College has received multiple bids to add solar panels to multiple buildings on campus.

“If we are really saying that we are preparing citizens for the common good, I think it is also in our best interest to be that common good,” Rachel Landis, coordinator of the Environmental Center at FLC, said.

FLC plans to install solar panels to five buildings on campus in the spring, Landis said.

Purchasing the panels is very expensive so the panels will be owned by private investors that will get tax benefits for buying them for the school, she said.

“Any time we have an opportunity to replace fossil fuels with alternatives and even better yet if those alternatives are renewables, there is benefit,” Laurie Williams, associate professor of engineering at FLC, said.

This is mainly about creating a sustainable energy resource for FLC and in today’s world, solar and wind are the most rapid growing power technologies and in both cases they are cost competitive with fossil fuels, Williams said.

“In 2007, we, as an institution, signed on as a charter signatory to the president’s climate commitment which is the APUCC,” Landis said. “In effect, what we set into motion is that as an institution we are committed to being carbon neutral by 2080 and in order to get there, there is a lot of work that needs to happen.”

APUCC is an acronym for American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment

Landis said there are three main sources of emissions.

Scope one is whatever is feeding into the institution, like the grid, she said. Scope two is what is being produced  on campus and scope three is feeding off FLC’s waste stream.

The solar panels will help reduce FLC’s scope one and two emissions, she said.

“If you were to compare solar panels to coal, that carbon contribution is maybe, a ninth  of what coal is,” Williams said. “If you were to contrast it to natural gas, you’re talking somewhere between a quarter and a half of the carbon contribution for the life of the panels.”

The institution of solar panels on campus would help in many ways, including helping sustainability because the energy provided by the panels would be emissions free for the long haul, Landis said.

The visibility of the solar panels could also bring attention to the issue of emissions and show students, staff and faculty that reduced emissions are important to the college, she said.

“There is a lot of educational opportunities with a big solar install like this,” she said.

These educational opportunities include everything from tracking, to doing the cost-benefit analysis embedding projects, Landis said. This will provide students with more opportunities in their academic classes and more knowledge of the renewable energy sector.

Williams said there is a special benefit to students from solar panels because this is an industry that is going to grow rapidly and there will be many job opportunities in the future.

The more that students can get educated in the operation and installation of solar panels, the more opportunities they will have in getting a job in the field, she said.

“As the population of the country and the world grow, we need to come up with some type of new energy economy, and solar is going to be a part of that,” Williams said.