In a brief public ceremony on Oct. 9, several UCSD students delivered A.S. President Jenn Brown with 1,200 petitions urging the UC Board of Regents to adopt a measure that would require all new and renovated buildings to receive 25 percent of their electricity from solar panels.
John Muir College junior Andrea Cornford addressed the A.S. Council and UCSD students with some information regarding global warming and solar power. The A.S. Council followed the student councils in the UC system, including Berkeley, Los Angeles, Davis and Santa Barbara, in declaring its support for the solar energy resolution.
Students from the nine UC campuses formed a Sustainability Coalition last year and drafted this clean energy resolution over the summer. With the help of a Greenpeace advisor and a precedent set by a similar policy already in effect at the L.A. Community College District, the resolution catalyzed the statewide initiative for solar energy.
Faith Winter, a member of the Environmental Coalition, commented on the urgency of this campaign.
“”With construction of [the new campus at] Merced, UC will be the largest construction consumer in California, and we want all that construction to be done with solar power,”” Winter said.
Research cited by event organizers indicated that the cost of the solar panels and energy-efficient building materials would be repaid after 15 years of use. The earliest the Regents might vote on this issue is Nov. 17.
Though the research was conducted without input from construction companies, such a resolution would present a boon for companies like Kyocera Solar and Sharp which supply solar panels for such large scale construction applications. In fact, backers of this proposal expect it to double the demand for photovoltaic cells in California.
“”Solar power is the solution to global warming,”” Conford said in a speech delivered at the presentation ceremony.
Even nominal increases in the usage of solar power, when multiplied across all UC campuses, represent a slight but significant decrease in the release of greenhouse gases, according to Conford.
The A.S. Council passed a resolution at its regularly scheduled meeting on Oct. 9 calling for the implementation of the systemwide renewable energy policy lobbied for by Greenpeace.
The students participating in this effort remained upbeat, despite low attendance at the ceremony and the shuffling of the A.S. Council schedule.
“”This is the earliest A.S. could have done anything [on the solar energy resolution],”” Brown said, indicating the priority given to this issue.
The California Public Interest and Research Group is pursuing an emulous route of activism for renewable energy, but through a different mode.
CalPIRG has been putting pressure on the California legislature to pass SD-1079 Sher, a bill requiring at least 20 percent of the state’s power to come from renewable energy sources like wind turbines and solar panels. Though students were only indirectly involved in this process, they reveled in the recent passage of this law.
Supporters say both of these efforts arose as responses to the 2001 energy crisis in California, a situation only aggravated by the corruption exposed in Enron and other power companies.
Cornford and other renewable energy advocates feel that in the wake of the crisis, a new policy should be implemented now more than ever.
“”Timeliness is everything,”” Conford said.
