With the cut of a green ribbon, Fairfield unveiled its new combined heat and power plant facility, or CHP, Monday at a ceremony held inside the University’s on-campus Central Utility Facility.
Keynote speakers U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, Congressman Christopher Shays (R-CT) and University President Fr. Jeffrey von Arx applauded and discussed the University’s feat in regulating energy efficiency in front of a small group of students, faculty and community members.
“What we’re seeing is a university respond to a very real human need and a very real financial need, and you’re seeing government respond to help,” said Shays.
The implementation of the CHP will provide about 99 percent of the campus’s electricity and 70 percent of its heating capabilities. Because it is generating its own energy and taking itself off United Illuminating’s power grid, the University has the potential to save an energy equivalent of 4,000 residential homes.
“The CHP is expected to reduce the University’s overall carbon footprint by more than 10,000 metric tons per year,” von Arx said.
Bodman commended the University for its ability to convert waste energy, or “America’s most abundant available source of new energy,” into a viable source of clean energy through technological advances.
“I also want to commend Fr. von Arx … for the foresight that his administration has shown in the way that Fairfield University thinks about energy and energy consumption,” said Bodman. “Indeed, in an era of record energy crisis and increasing energy demand, it is incumbent upon all of us to think about how we do use energy.”
The speakers also pointed to the collaboration among several institutions in funding the $9.5 million energy-saving plant.
“Through its landmark Energy Independence Act, the state of Connecticut was able to help fund this project with cooperate effort between [the] government and private sector that will allow America to have a brighter and more secure energy future,” said Bodman.
In September 2006, the state of Connecticut granted the University $2.3 million toward construction of the CHP under the Energy Independence Act signed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell, according to a University press release.
Von Arx also expressed his gratitude toward United Technologies Carrier for its financial partnership with the University during the plant project and the cooperation of the United Illuminating Company.
Fairfield joins a number of universities across the country, including Bucknell and Rutgers, who are undertaking initiatives to move off the power grid.
Bodman cited Fairfield’s plant as an “exciting application of an energy efficiency technology that the Department [of Energy] has long supported.”
“In my view, this is a shining example of America’s technology-driven, energy-efficient future,” said Bodman.
Extended coverage will be available in the Thursday edition of The Mirror.
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