In late December, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 was signed into law. The Act included language introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) that authorizes $250 million annually in grants and another $500 million in direct loans for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects at higher education institutions, public schools, or local governments. We recently interviewed Senator Sanders to learn more about this new legislation. The full exchange is included here.

We applaud you, Senator Sanders, for championing campus sustainability. What drew you to this effort?

I have very great concerns about the environment, and more recently about global warming.

When I was elected to the Senate last year, I was fortunate in being asked to sit on both of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the committee that has been addressing global warming most directly. So I am in a great position move aggressively toward both energy conservation and sustainable energy.

I visit a lot of colleges and universities, and so I know first-hand that much of the leadership in finding realistic solutions to global warming can be found on campuses across America. Today’s generation of students sees global warming as a great challenge, perhaps THE great challenge, to their generation.

And I also know that many colleges, which would like to take bold new steps toward sustainable energy, lack funds. It is easier for major research universities, with their large endowments, to find money for green projects than it is for many lesser-endowed schools, both public and private.

This legislation has been billed as “a major new direction in sustainable energy funding for higher education”. Can you elaborate on the historical precedent this bill has set?

Sure. First, it specifically lists colleges and universities as prime beneficiaries of any funding provided under Section 471 of the larger energy bill, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

To provide a bit more detail, Section 471 authorizes $250 million annually in grants and another $500 million in direct loans for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects at higher education institutions as well as public schools, or local governments. The legislation allows for grants of up to $1 million for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, and grants of up to $500,000 for innovative energy sustainability projects. Smaller grants for feasibility studies and other technical assistance are also authorized.

And let me emphasize this: The law directs that at least 50 percent of any grant money that is awarded be directed to higher education institutions, and at least half of that go to institutions with endowments of less than $100 million. It provides a minimum of one grant for improving energy efficiency, and two grants for innovation in energy sustainability, to schools in each state.

Let me also say that, because I understand how deeply students are engaged in energy issues right now, the legislation I drafted requires that many of these ‘green projects’ involve students in planning, implementation, and evaluation. and are looking for hands-on experiences. I think students will really gain from that, since they often particularly like ‘hands-on’ experience. And, of course, America will gain from making use of not only the energy, but also the expertise, of this generation of college students.

Realistically, when could schools start to see this money?

The program has been passed into law, which means that it is authorized. Money still has to be appropriated. So we need help from the schools which are members of AASHE.

We need schools, and students, and professors, to contact their members of Congress, and their Senators, to say, “We urge you to fully fund SEC. 471 ENERGY SUSTAINABILITY AND EFFICIENCY GRANTS AND LOANS FOR INSTITUTIONS” of Public Law 110-140, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.”

How should schools go about applying for and receiving funding?

Let’s get the money appropriated first.

The bill requires student involvement in the energy projects. Why was that important to you and other supporters of the bill?

As I said earlier, it is clear that a great part of the leadership on energy sustainability and environmental protection comes from students – and that students, in particular, are willing to think in innovative terms about the problems which face us, both locally and globally.

What kinds of projects will this funding support? (And how big or small?)

Some grants are for up to $1 million; some for up to $500,000. Clearly, colleges and universities can leverage this money to support projects that are even larger.

What kind of projects? That’s why we wanted many of the grants to be to ‘innovative’ projects, and why we wanted student involvement: We do not want to close down the possibilities before we begin distributing the grants.

What role did support from schools, faculty and students play in getting the legislation into the final bill?

We had, as you can imagine, support from AASHE, who we brought in to help us shape this legislation at the very beginning. We also had support from a group of students at Georgetown who were concerned about the environment. And some of the largest college/university organizations – the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) – actively supported this legislation, and wrote a letter of support to the House and Senate.

Can you give us a preview of anything else that might be on the legislative horizon that members of the campus sustainability movement could promote and support?

There is a significant effort underway to move bold global warming legislation through the Congress. While it remains unclear when this might happen, we need all the help we can get to argue for legislation that aggressively reduces our carbon emissions, so that we are at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Additionally, I would like to see a national standard requiring that no less than 15 percent of our electricity come from renewable resources – and truth be told, I think that number should be more like 20 percent.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Energy & Climate, Funding, Government & Legislation, Julian Dautremont-Smith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.