Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, says it has cut energy-related emissions on campus and is now carbon neutral, in part by claiming credits for investments in clean energy elsewhere.
Catawba says it's the first college in the Southeast to reach the net-zero milestone, and the 13th nationwide, as certified by the group Second Nature. The 1,200-student private college has completed a long list of projects in recent years to reduce the pollution that causes global warming.
"We have lowered our emissions on campus through a combination of activities, such as employing geothermal heating and cooling, energy efficiency, like LED lighting, and improvements in our HVAC systems, and then also adding solar power to campus," said Brad Ives, executive director of the college's Center for the Environment.
But all those moves haven't completely replaced electricity from Duke Energy, which still has coal- and gas-fired power plants. And college staff and athletes still travel on airplanes and diesel buses. So the college is buying what are called carbon offsets, or carbon credits to account for the remaining gap.
Ives says Catawba will pay less than $100,000 a year for two types of offsets. One invests in a project to capture methane from an Asheville landfill. The other will help build solar farms in North Carolina.
Ives declined to be specific but said the college has spent several million dollars on energy-related projects in recent years.