Dickinson College has partnered with Cool Effect, a nonprofit organization, to ensure that the college reaches its goal of becoming carbon neutral in 2020 through the purchasing of carbon offsets, according to the Dickinson College website.

In the summer of 2019, discussions began between members of the Center for Sustainability Education (CSE) and Blake Lawrence ’13, whose family founded Cool Effect, in order to establish the partnership and open the purchase of carbon offsets to Dickinson College students, parents, alumni, faculty, and staff. Following a visit from Lawrence for BE.HIVE on Campus: Climate Change Needs Behavior Change, Director of the Center for Sustainability Education [CSE] Neil Leary, Assistant Director of [CSE] Lindsey Lyons and Associate Vice President for Sustainability and Facilities Planning Ken Shultes confirmed plans in the fall to partner and decided to launch the initiative to offset Dickinson College’s carbon emissions. 

As the Dickinson College website states, in order to reach carbon neutrality in 2020, members of the Dickinson College community are able to purchase carbon offsets. These purchases through the joint initiative with Cool Effect fund a forestry project at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary located roughly 80 miles from campus at Kittatinny Ridge. Dickinson College selected Hawk Mountain Sanctuary from a portfolio through Cool Effects, opting for a local project. 

“[I]t protects a globally important flyway and wildlife habitat and it provides educational and research benefits while also keeping carbon out of the atmosphere… [The sanctuary] is a 2,380-acre privately owned forest that provides habitat for raptors and other wildlife,” CSE director Neil Leary added. Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is also home to Hawk Watch, “an overlook and site for birding and hiking that Dickinsonians have visited and loved for generations,” Leary said.

While Willow Huppert ’20, the Carbon Neutrality Coordinator at CSE and an environmental science major, noted that carbon offsets can often be discounted as not effecting, she stated that the purchase of carbon offsets are in fact a route a lot of climate scientists recommend we to do today in an effort to take climate change more seriously. As a college, Huppert mentioned, there is only so much we can do, but carbon offsets are an important part of the transition towards a more carbon neutral society. 

The college has integrated climate change and sustainability into the curriculum, a decision that has earned the college national recognition. Second, the college aimed to reduce the college’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 to at least 25 percent below their level in 2008. According to Leary, the college has made “…great progress on this goal and expect to reach it.”

The third and final component to the sustainability commitment is to reach zero net emissions and become carbon neutral. Through the carbon offset project at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, students, employees, and parents can purchase offsets on behalf of the college itself. According to Associate Vice President Ken Shultes, the college has surpassed 350 carbon offsets which is equivalent to 350 metric tons of carbon emissions. 

“In addition, Dickinson College purchased 13,000 megawatts of Renewable Energy Credits this year, equivalent to 5,000 metric tons of carbon offsets, and 7,000 metric tons of offsets from a project that is modifying the process for manufacturing fertilizer at a plant in Oklahoma to eliminate emissions of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas,” Leary added. This has yet to be combined with the carbon offsets from Hawk Mountain.

The Dickinson College website also breaks down the potential cost of one, two, or five metric tons of carbon offsets equivalent to one domestic round-trip flight, one international round-trip flight, or a 12,500-mile drive respectively.

The partnership between the college and Cool Effect is just one of a variety of efforts to help reduce emissions. Other programs include the Dickinson Park Solar Field, more efficient water heaters and improvements to water chillers across campus.

“[O]ur carbon neutrality commitment allows students and the greater Dickinson community to connect issues related to climate change to their own campus.  It makes the issues and the solutions more tangible and real.  It elevates campus operations to a more meaningful element of the overall Dickinson experience,” said Shultes.