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Jill Willis
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Interview with the Center for Research and Creative Activities
Last December Salem State received the "Leading By Example" award from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a result of their decarbonization efforts on campus. Sustainability and Environmental Health and Safety Coordinator, Tara Gallagher, and Energy Manager Scott Davidson attended the award ceremony and accepted the award on behalf of Salem State. They shared the award with fellow campuses that are also working on decarbonization plans including, UMass Amherst, UMass Dartmouth, and UMass Lowell. Tara also served as a leader on the project itself.
Tara and Scott have been key players in Salem State’s decarbonization efforts. When asked for background on what led to the award Tara said, “My job is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The most challenging part of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from our operation is, how do we transition heating and cooling away from fossil fuels?… So we began building a roadmap so that we can better understand the technical approaches and avoid making a mistake in transitioning.” In the past, the campus has been very successful in transitioning to renewable energy through the installation of solar panels. “We work with a statewide contract at no cost to Salem State," Gallagher said. "A private company maintains the solar and we buy the solar energy back from them at a reduced rate guaranteed to be below what we would otherwise pay.” However, transitioning the heating and cooling systems will not be as easy. Due to the centralized boiler on north campus and individual boilers in other buildings as well as radiators and piping, planning is essential and the project will be a little more complicated.
Prior to initiating the decarbonization road map, Gallagher obtained a $100,000 grant from the Department of Energy Resources Leading By Example program to support the work. With money from the grant, the team was able to hire associates from Salas O’Brien. Gallagher said that planning has truly been a team effort and they have been fortunate to have great partnerships to aid in their work as well. “We were fortunate to get the grant and have fantastic partners along with an internal team at Salem State. We also had someone from DCAMM, a state agency that owns and manages our non-residential buildings. We had a larger working group of the Department of Energy, National Grid, and MA State College Building Authority that manage the residential halls.” This project was truly a collaborative experience.
Since receiving the award the team has only continued their planning efforts even further, Gallagher noted that it is, “important to understand how you’re going to get to a later goal, especially when the different gas boilers need to be retired at different ages.” It is also important to take into consideration the big picture when it comes to making important decisions. The team also faces another major question of whether or not they should retain the centralized system on north campus or move to building-by-building solutions. Gallagher explained, “we need to take what we learned, the principles and the technologies, on North campus and kind of develop a larger study so that we know technically where we’re going on the other campuses.”
Though students did not work on this project specifically, Gallagher says there are lots of ways for students to get involved in sustainability on campus. “I think students should be proud of this award…The student concern for climate change is tremendous and I think it's important for students to know what Salem State is doing and be inspired by it.”
Students can stay up to date on what is going on by following Salem State Sustainability on Instagram at sustainable_ssu. Gallagher also runs an internship program called the Sustainability Council Internship where students receive academic credit in return for their work on the council, it is usually four students per semester. This year they will be working to bring pollinator habitat to campus. Students can also look out for Earth Days coming this April 11th through the 15th.
Congratulations on receiving this award to everyone who has been a part of this project! We are excited to see what more comes out of the important work you are doing.