College and university presidents head up "mini-cities," which may be larger in population than many towns. When classes are in session, they often significantly swell the surrounding community's headcount, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. So it only makes sense that many school presidents have come together in the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, the collegiate equivalent of the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. This type of visible leadership is just one of many ways that seats of higher learning can contribute to climate and energy efforts.

Another contribution is obvious: research. Some are taking the high-tech route, researching low- or no-carbon energy technologies. Competitions like the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon¹ spur academic engineering and design departments to new levels of creativity—creativity that's necessary to make a future of low-energy living appealing.

Two schools in Kentucky are melding energy research with agricultural research. You can read about the research at Kentucky State University on Post Carbon's Energy Farms website. The United States' land grant schools could turn out to be great players in developing necessary appropriate techniques and technologies. Small-scale, sustainable agriculture is an understudied field.

Students, faculty and staff engage in community work. Students from several Oregon universities spearheaded a project to bring district heating to a residential neighborhood in Portland, collecting information and organizing neighbors to continue the effort. A Western Massachusetts student's senior project blossomed into the nonprofit Nuestras Raíces, which encourages good nutrition, entrepreneurship, and community health through urban agriculture-related projects in Holyoke.

And then there's role modeling. Several schools have student-led associations bringing renewable energy to their institutions. Campuses are looking to implement energy efficient and otherwise "green" elements in their physical plants. Because this means a shift in the way some staff have been doing their jobs, some, like Harvard, have even created institutional arms devoted to helping make the shift to sustainability.

The real role models here may not be the schools themselves, but the students, who are not satisfied with the progress their institutions have made. Yes, greener buildings are good, but how can the university - their community - do better?

1. ^ The U.S. Department of Energy is also sponsoring a Solar Decathlon in Europe. The first will be in Madrid, Spain in 2010.

Photo credit:
Class on the quad by Steve McFarland
Texas A&M University solar house, in the Solar Decathlon set by Adam Fagen