The Corne¬ Daily Sun Inside Cornell's Climate Projects

Cornell's plans for carbon-neutrality by 2035 continue amid challenges

By ISABELA WILSON Sun Contributor

Cornell sustainability teams have made technological strides in Cornell’s goal for a carbon neutral campus, but the decades-long struggle for legislative and community agreement continues to pose challenges.

The University’s overarching Climate Action Plan is a comprehensive sustainability program that includes campus-wide carbon neutrality by 2035. Prof. Edwin Cowen, civil and environmental engineering, is a member of the Carbon Neutral Campus Steering Committee, a council responsible for monitoring the projects that comprise the plan.

One component of the plan is the Earth Source Heat project, for which Cowen served as an executive committee member. The project’s aim is to eliminate the use of natural gas by harvesting groundwater, warming it and repeatedly cycling it through campus in order to heat facilities. Additionally, the University hopes that the project can scale and serve as a solution for renewable heating in New York and other cold-climate regions worldwide.

“It is a win for the region and the environment

[because] it would reduce our use of fossil fuels, so it lowers our greenhouse gas footprint and potentially lowers the amount of fuel we need,” Cowen said.

This geothermal energy project is the first one in Central New York and the East Coast to power a land area as large as Cornell, which Cowen said will set a precedent for future clean energy harvesting.

Solar farms on Cornell land have the ability to provide more than 20 percent of the electricity on campus. Prof. Max Zhang, mechanical and aerospace engineering, is the faculty director of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and conducts research on solar farm designs. Zhang stated that solar power’s implementation in the carbon neutrality goal has been easier in comparison to other universities, in part due to Cornell’s ample suitable land and $1.5 million grant from the Department of Energy to design tools that enable solar farm design.

The University’s sustainability goals accompany the recently-adopted 2019 Ithaca Green New Deal, a set of resolutions aiming to reach citywide carbon neutrality by 2030, five years earlier than the University’s timeline.

Ukraine Concert Raises $5,100 for Lviv Bomb Shelter

By SOFIA RUBINSON Sun News Editor

It was standing room only for Music for Ukraine, a benefit concert and art auction hosted by the Ithaca Rotary Club to raise money for an upgraded school bomb shelter in Lviv, Ukraine. Sunday’s concert and bomb shelter, held at the First Unitarian Society of Ithaca, raised $5,100 for the cause.

“The Rotary Club is really dedicated both to international efforts to do good, and also to do good in our own community,” said Ithaca Rotary Club President Mary Kane. “This concert allows us to do both of those things at the same time, which is a very exciting concept.”