by Jbs021610 e3 — February 17, 2010—Cornell University held a grand opening event in recent weeks to demonstrate its new, super-efficient combined heat and power (CHP) plant, which the Sierra Club says will serve as a model for other universities and colleges that are being encouraged by the Campuses Beyond Coal campaign to close down their coal-fired power plants.
The new plant is expected to cut Cornell’s carbon emissions by about 75,000 tons per year, or 28 percent. The university will discontinue its coal consumption once the coal it already has stockpiled is depleted, thereby also saving a reported 100,000 gallons a year of diesel fuel used to deliver the coal from West Virginia. Cornell already owns a spur from an interstate natural gas pipeline located near campus.
In the CHP plant, turbines fired by natural gas generate electricity, then waste heat from the turbines make steam that runs another generator, and the steam, now reduced in temperature and pressure, is finally piped throughout the campus for heating, with so little energy wasted that solar collectors had to be installed to provide heat and hot water for the new offices and locker rooms attached to the facility. The exhaust is scrubbed to remove carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, adds Cornell.
The university expects the output to reach 30,000 kilowatts of electricity, or about 70 percent of campus usage. The campus also draws power from the small hydroelectric plant on Beebe Lake, and some power is purchased from the grid. The total cost has been estimated at about $80 million, part of which was funded by state and local government entities.
The new plant is only a small step in meeting the university’s goal of zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Cornell President David Skorton pointed out. In February 2009, Skorton became one of the first university presidents to sign the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment to meet that goal.
