About
In January 2012, an Energy Transition Plan was recommended to President Lou Anna K. Simon to serve as a high-level, strategic plan to guide the university as it plots its energy future.
The ultimate vision of the plan is to help create an environment in which the university is powered by 100 percent renewable energy. If accepted by the Board of Trustees, the plan’s goals and targets will move the university toward its vision by balancing important variables such as capacity, environment, health, cost and reliability.
More than a year in the making, the plan was created by the Energy Transition Steering Committee, a 24-member group of students, faculty and staff whose charge was to develop a plan to help MSU reliably meet its future energy needs while keeping a close eye on costs and environmental impacts.
Creating the Energy Transition Plan
Developing a long-range energy plan for MSU needed to be deliberate, diverse, and dynamic. It needed to:
- be built on solid data and research produced by MSU’s world-class faculty and researchers, and external energy experts;
- include robust discussion and inclusion of many viewpoints; and
- allow for future changes in emerging technologies and regulations, available resources, and the latest research.
The formal process to establish the Energy Transition Plan began in 2010, with staff and administrators collecting data, creating educational and financial models, and commissioning an independent study to evaluate MSU’s energy infrastructure and emerging technologies.
Consultant Black and Veatch assessed MSU’s power infrastructure and emerging technologies and consultant Energy Strategies, LLC developed a model that integrated energy options with financial, environmental, health, capacity, and efficiency performance indicators.
By January 2011, an Energy Transition Plan Steering Committee was created and charged with the goal of creating the new energy plan. The Administration believed that the solution was likely moving toward renewable energy, and as such the plan should take steps to prepare MSU for a renewable energy future. The committee included a diverse group of 24 faculty, staff and students representing a variety of viewpoints and expertise. The Administration reached out to students involved in the MSU Beyond Coal and Greenpeace student groups to ensure their voices were part of the discussion.
The committee integrated information from the consultants and internal researchers with the previously developed background information on MSU’s current energy infrastructure, and projected demand growth by using the comprehensive modeling software program developed to analyze potential future scenarios.
After establishing assumptions, the committee brainstormed strategies to reduce energy use, GHG emissions and health effects. The strategies were modeled and through this process, physical goals were established. These goals were presented to the MSU and surrounding communities for public input. In addition, the Administration sought external opinions from those with experience in energy planning for higher education, energy regulation, and renewable energy technology and markets.
Other viewpoints were sought through aggressive outreach, including a series of ten modeling sessions to engage the community, seven town hall meetings to share the goals and strategies and allow for feedback, and through online comment forms available on a website dedicated for this project. In all, 110 people attended the facilitated educational modeling sessions where they were able to use an interactive program to design the MSU energy system of the future and then answer questions to determine which factors were most important to them. Another 157 people attended the town hall forums, and the committee also received feedback on the plan through the receipt of seven email forms and five comment cards. This feedback allowed the committee to add to and refine the goals and strategies.
The plan is available online. In April 2012, the MSU Board of Trustees will take action on the Energy Transition Plan. If accepted, it will guide future energy decisions at MSU.
