SETTING A GREEN EXAMPLE

College, Eversource partner to further reduce environmental impact

MIDDLETOWN — Wesleyan University and Eversource have signed a three-year agreement officials of the company and college say will save 3.2 million kilowatt hours of electricity.

University and utility officials said they hope the action will serve as an example to businesses and other institutions in the city and beyond. The compact was signed during a mid-afternoon ceremony in the university’s Freeman Athletic Center before an audience of more than 30 people. They included U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3; Robert Klee,

“The work and our partnership with Eversource is vitally important to helping us reduce our impact on the environment and keeping operating costs down. It is also in line with our mission to think critically and act creatively to solve challenges.”

Wesleyan University President Michael Roth

commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection; and Middletown Common Councilman Gerald Daley.

Following the ceremonial signing by university President Michael Roth and Margaret Morton, Eversource’s vice president of government affairs, college personnel conducted a tour of the athletic center to show off some 8,000 new LED bulbs and fixtures installed over the summer.

“The work and our partnership with Eversource is vitally important to helping us reduce our impact on the environment and keeping operating costs down. It is also in line with our mission to think critically and act creatively to solve challenges,” Roth said.

Morton, a Wesleyan graduate, echoed his sentiment.

“We look forward to helping Wesleyan effectively manage energy costs while integrating new technologies into buildings that will deliver yearafter-year energy and cost savings, and build a better, more sustainable campus,” she said.

Since 2014, the university has taken steps that Eversource said has already saved the institution an estimated $480,000 a year. Those efforts have “resulted in annual carbon reductions of nearly 262 tons: the equivalent of taking nearly 60 cars off the road for a year,” according to utility officials.

Besides financial and efficiency goals, DeLauro said the efforts undertaken by Wesleyan also show it is taking a leading role in dealing with climate change. “Climate change is real, and it is happening. It is a fact,” she said. What Wesleyan has done “is an important step for the fight in the future,” she added.

Klee seconded that argument, saying what Wesleyan is doing is “creating the next generation of environmental leaders.” He described climate change as “the most pressing

issue,” then explained the increasing severity of hurricanes and wildfires. He also pointed to a dire report on the world’s changing climate issued by the United Nations in mid-October.

Commenting on the report at a ministerial meeting on climate finance in Bali, Indonesia, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in an online U.N. report just 12 years remain to reduce carbon levels or face a catastrophe. “Limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees will require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society — especially how we manage land, energy, industry, buildings, transport and cities,” Guterres said.

“That means ending deforestation and planting billions more trees, drastically reducing the use of fossil fuels and massively increasing renewable energy, switching to climate-friendly sustainable agriculture, considering new technologies, such as carbon capture and storage. The next few

years are critical (and) your leadership is needed,” Guterres told the ministers.

As a coastal state, Klee said, Connecticut must take the lead in dealing with issues laid out in the U.N. report. He acknowledged all of it represents a considerable challenge.

Klee reached back to the Kennedy administration for the words necessary to face that challenge. In an appearance in Houston in September 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” according to Space.com.

“For our generation, becoming carbon neutral is our moon shot,” Klee said.

Courtesy Wesleyan University Margaret Morton, Eversource’s vice president of government affairs, and Wesleyan University President Michael Roth congratulate each other following the announcement Wesleyan and the utility company have cemented a new energy-efficiency strategic partnership intended contribute to the Middletown college’s long-term sustainability plan.