The Sustainability Office is pleased to announce four paid positions for qualified students to implement and manage Colgate’s Green Living Program. This is an exciting opportunity for Colgate students to get hands-on experience putting sustainability and green living practices into action.

Qualified interns will work up to 12 hours per week, during both fall (2014) and spring (2015) semesters. Official start date is August 25, 2014 with arrival/move-in on August 22nd. Orientation is mandatory and will begin the morning of August 25th.  Weekly work schedule is flexible, however, we will have mandatory team meetings once every week.

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Colgate’s Community Garden has officially changed locations this summer and is looking forward to the growing season! The new garden is now located on Broad Street, just South of the Colgate townhouses and Community Hospital.  Colgate Community Garden interns Alex Schaff ‘16 and Quincy Pierce ‘16 are starting from the ground up, forming rows, building a compost bin, planting seedlings, and adapting to the new site.  Long-time friend of the garden, Sam Stradling from the Hamilton Food Cupboard, recently dropped off a plentiful load of plants ready to be planted in the garden.  This is the second year in a row Sam and the Food Cupboard have donated seedlings in exchange for produce to be harvested and donated by the Community Garden later in the season.

We hope to hold events in the near future, and can’t wait to have visitors..stop by and have a look at all the work being done.  Or even better, come on down and get your hands dirty by helping out!  See you soon!

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This project was made possible with the support of Facilities and Colgate’s trade shops. Special thanks to Hoyt Kelly (Electric Shop), Dan McCoach (Associate Director of Facilities), Jim Hall (Electric Shop) and Lenny Zielasko (Mason).

You may have noticed a growing number of all-electric vehicles cruising around campus. Besides a few Colgate-owned vehicles, proud owners include faculty, staff, and an increasing number of alumni and parents of current students. As the popularity of electric vehicles continues to grow, Colgate decided it was time to further support this emerging technology.

On May 22, we installed our first electric vehicle charging station on Lally Lane (adjacent to the Zipcar parking spots) near Donovan’s Pub. The dual arm Level 2 ChargePoint station has the capacity to charge two cars at once. Colgate offers free charging for the first 5 hours with a $2.00 per hour rate after that.  It can take anywhere from 3-6 hours to get a full charge (depending on the make and model of the car). The ChargePoint station will connect to any make and model of electric vehicle (though Tesla owners will need to use their adapter). The station is also user-friendly and networked permitting owners to check availability and/or status of their vehicle through a smartphone app.

Over 10 percent of Colgate’s campus carbon footprint is due to commuter emissions and our vehicle fleet. By providing infrastructure to support electric vehicles we are helping car owners overcome one of the key barriers to purchasing electric vehicles: range anxiety. Even though current models of electric vehicles, such as the Nissan LEAF®, can typically travel over 80 miles on a single charge, a lot depends on speed, topography, load, and accessory use which can drive down battery life. Even if your driving habits reduce the range to 60 miles per full charge, this is still well within range of most all faculty and staff commuters. Despite this, having a charging station on campus can help to reduce anxiety. And for those who just can’t get over range anxiety, advanced designs like the Chevy Volt, offer the best of both worlds. An onboard gasoline powered generator can provide electricity only when the battery is depleted.

An electric vehicle is much greener and cheaper to own than gasoline-powered cars. Assuming the typical electric vehicle owner charges their car at home overnight, it would cost about 50¢ to drive 40 miles on Hamilton electric rates or about $1.20 at NYSEG rates. Because most of our power is produced by hydroelectric energy, the carbon footprint of driving an electric vehicle in Central New York is near zero. Moreover, since almost all of our electricity is generated here in New York, switching from gasoline-powered to electric-powered vehicles can help to support our state economy while reducing dependence on imported oil.

For these reasons, we anticipate seeing more electric vehicles on the Colgate campus.

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