UND Today

University of North Dakota’s Official News Source

First among equals

That’s the role sustainability plays at UND, this reflection on the 50th observance of Earth Day suggests

UND archival image.

The UND Strategic Plan — the governing document behind almost everything the University does — defines five Grand Challenges to help the University reach its research and academic goals.

With this week marking the 50th observance of Earth Day, it’s worth noting that the first of those Grand Challenges is the following:

Promote energy security and environmental sustainability

First among equals, one could call that challenge. And this prominence helps explain why UND shows its commitment to sustainability in everything the University does.

As evidence of this, here is a list of recent activities, all of them intended to promote sustainability and all of them reported on in just the past few months.

• The University’s commitment starts with the campus itself. With that in mind, UND has hired both an arborist and a horticulturalist to manage the health of the tree populations and other vegetation across campus.

This spring alone, UND Arborist Jared Johnson will be heading up the planting of 100-plus trees on the Ray Richards Golf Course, Johnson said in an interview.

Also this spring, UND is seeking Tree Campus USA designation from the Arbor Day Foundation. After all, trees not only provide beauty, shade, and shelter from the wind, but also “significantly reduce the amount of energy a campus, and community, needs to generate,” the Foundation notes on its website.

Planting and maintaining trees also helps reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Moreover, by meeting the annual standards and being recognized as a Tree Campus USA college, UND can “create a campus that not only benefits the environment but instills pride in the students, faculty, and community,” the website continues.

That’s UND’s goal. And with Johnson and horticulturalist Melissa Grafenauer’s help, the goal is well on its way to being fulfilled.

• In March, and after more than a hundred years of burning coal to power the campus, UND’s old steam plant accepted its last load of low-sulfur subbituminous coal. That’s because a new, $75 million facility will come online in the next few months and burn not coal but natural gas.

As the Grand Forks Herald reported, the last pile of coal marks the start of “a new, and greener, era for UND.”

Annually, the new steam plant and related improvements will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40,000 metric tons of CO2.  That’s the equivalent to the carbon sequestered by 74 square miles of forest, or an area the size of Grand Forks and Fargo combined, the Herald noted.

Another way of thinking about the impact: The change will be like taking 8,600 cars off the road.

Representatives from UND and Johnson Controls, Inc., along with Grand Forks Mayor Michael Brown and State Sen. Ray Holmberg, threw the ceremonial dirt on the new steam plant project that will replace the century-old coal plant. UND archival image.

• In November, Navigant Research completed a benchmarking analysis of sustainability reporting data from 88 universities, including 50 flagship universities and 34 universities leading in low carbon emissions and renewable energy generation.

“The exercise gathered and synthesized data and information on total carbon emissions, percent change in emissions, total building square footage, enrollment, renewable energy generation, and carbon neutrality date,” Navigant Research reported.

The results?

“In comparing this data, UND currently ranks second among flagship universities and in the top 10 overall among the surveyed schools,” the company concluded.

• UND has adopted the Single-Stream recycling methodology, which allows for aluminum, glass, paper, cardboard, books, magazines and plastic to be collected in one container.

Individuals collect and place recyclables into conveniently located receptacles within the buildings.

These efforts pay off. In one recent year, UND recycled 483 tons of waste, which helped the University avoid nearly $26,000 in landfill fees. That same year, recycling paper on campus saved the equivalent of 945 trees, and simply recycling cardboard saved enough money to power between one and two homes.

• Project Tundra is a bold initiative to build the world’s largest carbon capture facility in North Dakota. North Dakota-based Minnkota Power Cooperative is leading the project, with the Energy & Environmental Research Center at UND providing research support.

• Speaking of the EERC, the center also is managing the Intelligent Pipeline Integrity Program (iPIPE), an industry consortium that’s developing new approaches and technologies to improve pipeline leak prevention and leak detection.

Among iPIPE’s ingenious technologies are Pipers, golf-ball-sized sensors developed by a company called INGU Solutions. Each Piper packs sensors that can spot corrosion, see potential weakening at welded joints and hear the hissing that signifies a pipeline leak.

“It’s a new tool in what was an empty slot in the tool belt,” said Jay Almlie, iPIPE program manager and EERC principal engineer.

No wonder iPIPE was recognized by the American Petroleum Institute with its Industry Innovation award.

The UND Energy & Environmental Research Center’s iPIPE program is meeting with success in developing technologies and attracting new members. Jay Almlie is the iPIPE project manager. UND archival image.

• The list goes on: UND economist Haochi Zheng studies the balance between economics and the environment.

UND’s Biology Department and Research Institute for Autonomous Systems are working with Microsoft, Xcel Energy and Airtonomy to study how to reduce avian mortality at wind farms.

Meanwhile, the Biology Department’s research on prairie wildfires relates to the wildfires’ impact on the environment.

UND’s Center for Innovation and the College of Engineering & Mines are working with ELF Technology to make wind energy more efficient and less costly.

Materials science students at the University are figuring out how to make biodegradable plastic from corn.

Aerospace and Petroleum Engineering researchers will use a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine grant to study whether aviation safety concepts can help prevent offshore-drilling oil spills.

And last year, UND faculty and students climbed to the largest concentration of glaciers in the American Rocky Mountains to study the impacts of climate change.

At UND, going green is more than just a school color, in other words. By finding solutions to environmental problems and training students to do the same, the university drives world-changing developments.

And that’s just the nature of the ecosystem at a school where sustainability is Grand Challenge 1.