In other words, at a time when we preach sustainability and act as if we are implementing it, we our increasing our electrical energy usage by 50%. As a consequence, the UO is building a New Power Plant at a cost of $101 million.
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By itself, the arena project would add an additional $200.0 million to the university's indebtedness. Other projects being developed will further increase UO's debt. The university has tentatively identified capital projects through the 2013-15 biennium for which it would also request Article XI-F (1) bond authority. These include a major upgrade of its housing and dining facilities, additional parking, a research park, a recreation center, a new alumni center, enhanced regional library facilities, a new power plant, an upgrade of the White Stag building in Portland, and other projects. Preliminary cost estimates for these additional projects total $336.3 million
With a doubling of the University's load by the summer of 2009, the reliability of EWEB's current service to campus will be greatly compromised. If either of the two primary distribution circuits to campus were to fail during a 2009/2010 summer peak cooling day, the campus will be forced to curtail loads until the failed equipment is repaired or replaced.
We bring this up because its a very good, local example, of the difference between real sustainably versus sustainability via PR spin:
Real sustainability means to CONSUME LESS
PR sustainability means that we are using energy more efficiently. This leads to the problematic situation where you claim to be going Green, because of improvements in energy efficiency but your also using significantly more energy, but you never mention that, you merely stick to the efficiency side.
Yet more spin:
The primary way in which the UO will generate more electricity (i.e. not relying on EWEB) is through a soon to be acquired and installed 7 MW generator. Green spin will play this up as a generator which is "capable of using alternative fuels" - while this is true, in principle, there is no identified source of alternative fuels at the power level of 7 MW. Instead, most all of the time this 7 MW generator will be powered by Natural Gas thus resulting in a significant increase, in our overall carbon footprint -the electricity we get from EWEB is entirely hydro driven.
There is nothing necessarily wrong with any of this, and we seriously need an upgraded heating/cooling system, its just duplicitous to spin sustainability to the point where it looks like total consumption is down. This is definitely not the case and much of this class is about peeking behind the curtain.