The Student Environmental Advisory Board at the University of Kansas has begun buying wind-power credits from an electric utility to offset fossil fuel power to Anschutz Library on the Lawrence campus.
Student fees of $1.25 per semester will enable the board to purchase wind-energy credits equivalent to the amount of power it takes to supply the building for a year. The university says Anschutz uses about 2.8 million kilowatt hours of energy each year.
Figures provided by the utility, Westar Energy, show that every 100-kilowatt-hour block of energy the university buys enables the utility to eliminate the burning of 1,440 pounds of coal and the emission of 2,640 pounds of carbon dioxide annually. Using wind energy also saves about one gallon of water for each kilowatt hour of electricity produced by coal-powered generation.
