This spring, a new energy conservation program called SPARC (Save Power and Reduce Costs) was implemented at Dartmouth. The purpose behind the program is simple: to give the Dartmouth student population an opportunity to actively participate in conservation and receive a tangible benefit for doing so. There is, however, more to this program than meets the eye.
As an institution, Dartmouth has made great strides over the years in making the Big Green a "greener" place through the introduction of recycling programs, composting, organic farming and replacing old hall lights with more energy-efficient models. However, until SPARC, nothing had been done to try and change student consumption of energy. SPARC was created by students during the fall of 1997 in response to a trend of increasing electrical usage in residence halls. The basic idea was to use statistics on electrical consumption in each dorm from past years to create a trend. Anything that a dorm saved below the trend was given back to the dorm in the form of 50 percent of the savings in cash. As an extra incentive, the dorm with the highest percentage savings would receive a $100 prize. Active student participation in such a program creates a win-win-win situation in which the college, students and the environment all benefit.
Giving students prize money and a cut of electrical savings is a bit more complex than a simple carrot in front of the donkey bait. Studies have shown that community-based conservation is most effective when members of the community receive a tangible benefit for their work. This essentially gives the environment recognizable value. Environment is a fairly abstract concept. Our ambient environment is so large and complex that it is incredibly difficult to understand, let alone place a value on. It is also something we come into contact with so often we begin to take it for granted. Air, water and food are always there for us, so we rarely question where they come from or why. This ambivalence is also true of student electrical use. Electricity is something that is offered to us in every room in great abundance. We generally don't know where it comes from, how much we use or the effects of using it. Through the cash returns of SPARC, it will be possible for a connection to be made to the economic value of electricity. This mental connection is vital, as money is a concept very well-ingrained in all of us. It also takes us a step further than the "Vox Clamantis in the Dark" sticker program on doors could. A student seeing such a sticker could miss the point of the sticker or simply think, "The College sticks me for so much money already, I am entitled to all the electricity I want." SPARC lets us not only learn the economic value of electricity, but also to receive some of it.
SPARC is about more than money, however. The program seeks to take the economic connection made with electricity and extend it into an environmental context so that students will know the answers to such questions as where does our electricity come from and what results from using it. This was described most eloquently by Bill Hochstin, director of Dartmouth Recycles:
"Why can't we bring this [electrical use] back to our own individual responsibility to stop unnecessary waste of resources? Leaving that computer on all night because it takes so long to start up? Keeping the printer on all the time just in case you might need to use it?
"We just don't relate our wasteful practices with the oil spills or global warming because we can't see the trail from the switch to the pollution or through the intricate delivery system with myriad chances for catastrophic system failures that impact our living space. How many even think about Chernobyl? A whole section of the world that is uninhabitable. What if Three Mile Island had gone on for another 30 minutes -- no more Pittsburgh? Sure, it's a stretch from leaving your computer on all night to having a nuclear meltdown. However, when everyone wastes and makes the system produce, we do increase the odds of a serious problem occurring.
"How do we get people to understand that the light switch and the appliance are connected to the oil well, the tanker, the refinery, the smokestack, the ash landfill and the global warming?"
This challenge is one that SPARC sets forth to answer. Yes, if students participate in SPARC they will literally have an opportunity to receive money for nothing by leaving lights and appliances off. The final goal of the program, however, is for the Dartmouth student body to make the final leap and understand that their behavior has environmental consequences. Four thousand students leaving their computers on all day and night unnecessarily consumes irreplaceable resources, pollutes our air, helps dam rivers, forces the creation of new power plants and power lines, and the list goes on. A fuller understanding of these interconnections of economy, environment and self is the opportunity SPARC presents, and one I hope Dartmouth students will take advantage of.