Green Power & Student Government Elections
As today is the first day of the University of Tennessee Student Government Elections I have placed my vote. The voting is electronic/web based and to my knowledge not associated with the potential fraud that plagues electronic voting machines. You get one login - one vote. However I am sure that 28000 students is much easier to manage that several million adult voters.

However for the first time in my memory there was a referendum on the ballot. It seems that a group of students, most likely S.P.E.A.K (the local environmental issues group), is suggesting a student fee for the purpose of utilizing greener power. Most interesting is that the fee is divided into purchasing green power from the local/state utility, facilities improvements, and onsite green power production. I think that this attempt is well thought out and I hope that it passes.

Lets analyze this proposal a little more by looking at the numbers:

Total Fee: $8 * 3 semesters * 28,000 students = $627,000

Green Power Purchase(50%) = $336,000
Facilities Projects(25%) = $168,000
On-site Power Production(25%) = $168,000

The students will be able to purchase 12,600,000 kilowatt-hours. This is obviously slightly off as the UT power cost is different than the residential rate due to the power consumption levels being very different. 12.6 million kilowatt-hours is roughly the same amount of power consumed by 840 homes (assuming that 150 kilowatt-hours is roughly 12% of the monthly power usage of a typical home.) The University purchases roughly 234.5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity from KUB. This number is about 47% of total energy used by the university with the remainder being generated on site (we have a coal power plant). Therefore the students would be able to purchase roughly 5.4% of the yearly electricity required by the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. One thing is obvious that UT uses a massive amount of power.

Well regardless of how you feel about fees, and I as an engineer pay a $200/semester fee just for being an engineering student, I think its a good idea. My main caveat is that the students insist, no demand, that the money be openly accounted for and all the transactions be transparent. This is in light of the recent money shenanigans by the former UT President and the fact that I have virtually no clue where my $600/year Engineering Fee is being spent.

Perhaps in the future I will write about the actual pollution produced by the power generation mentioned above. Perhaps.
- posted by Samuel @ 11:10 AM