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NY Colleges Using State Clean Energy Program On Campuses

Karl Rabe / Bard

55 colleges and universities across New York state have signed REV, the Reforming the Energy Vision Campus Challenge.

Schools participating in the REV Campus Challenge are pledging to improve campus efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, and engage folks in their local communities.

Patrick O'Shei is the Director of Market Development at NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.   "One of the key principles in the REV Campus Challenges, student leadership and student involvement, and we are looking at that in a couple of ways. We're encouraging campuses to develop sustainability curriculum, clean energy curriculum. And actually encourage students to look at these avenues for careers in the future. We're also looking to bring to them awareness and understanding of how their behaviors and their choices impact New York's clean energy future. So they become a good model whether they take on clean energy professionally or they take it on as a consumer, making investment choices for themselves in the future."

There are 12 colleges signed up in New York City, eight in Central New York, seven each in Western New York and the Mid-Hudson Region, four each in Southern Tier, Capital Region, North Country and Mohawk Valley regions, three in the Finger Lakes and two on Long Island.

  • A list of REV Campus Challenge members and a map of their locations can be found here.

REV supports New York's recent adoption of the Clean Energy Standard and Governor Andrew Cuomo's aggressive mandate to achieve 50 percent renewables by 2030.
Susan Powers is the interim director of the Institute For Sustainable Environment at Clarkson University. "Most people think of that in terms of more solar panels and wind turbines, but it's the whole transmission and distribution system and smart grid, it's reducing our loads and transferring them across the hours of the day to make that system work better. It's behavioral change to encourage people to conserve and it's policies to enable all of that. And so at Clarkson, we're looking both in terms of what we are teaching our students and what research we are doing to improve those activities and what we're doing in our own operations for that whole system, which I think is really really important, to connect all those dots. You can't just have more solar panels without all the rest and really achieve clean energy."

In its first year of operation, REV Campus Challenge has already reached more than 30 percent of its goal to enroll 150 colleges in the State.

Dave Lucas is WAMC’s Capital Region Bureau Chief. Born and raised in Albany, he’s been involved in nearly every aspect of local radio since 1981. Before joining WAMC, Dave was a reporter and anchor at WGY in Schenectady. Prior to that he hosted talk shows on WYJB and WROW, including the 1999 series of overnight radio broadcasts tracking the JonBenet Ramsey murder case with a cast of callers and characters from all over the world via the internet. In 2012, Dave received a Communicator Award of Distinction for his WAMC news story "Fail: The NYS Flood Panel," which explores whether the damage from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee could have been prevented or at least curbed. Dave began his radio career as a “morning personality” at WABY in Albany.
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