A white plume of smoke dissipates into the frozen Moscow air, escaping from an aged smoke stack high above the intersection of Sixth Street and Line Street.
Below, cars putter along the icy roadways, sending their own gasses into the atmosphere.
Despite coming from different sources, these nearly invisible emissions each introduce foreign chemicals into the air, combining to create a more harmful effect than once realized — climate change.
“Climate change, with its long-range and pervasive effects, is a tremendous concern that we all face,” wrote former University of Idaho President Duane Nellis in 2010. “If we take action now, we will have a greater chance to mitigate the impact of global climate change than if we take a ‘business as usual’ attitude.”
Nellis, whose statement introduced the UI Climate Action Plan, called for an unprecedented change to campus life — carbon neutrality.
Bottles of different chemicals fill the lab used by the Vandal Clean Energy Club.
Joleen Evans | Blot Magazine
Carbon neutrality, a complex method of describing clean energy, took hold of the UI campus after Nellis announced his ambitious goal: the campus would become completely carbon neutral by the year 2030.
No school had yet reached that goal at the time. Not much has happened to spark radical change, in the last eight years, according to students of the Vandal Clean Energy Club.
For Melissa Marsing, the president of the club, there has been progress, “just slow progress.”
“The rate that the university is showing improvement is not fast enough to reach that quick of a goal,” Marsing said.
A transfer student from the College of Southern Idaho, Marsing said it took time to realize her passion for sustainable energy. Now, she leads younger UI students in creating change on the Palouse, specifically by making easy-to-use ways for the university to access carbon-neutral fuels.
Brian Hanson, one of the founders of the Vandal Clean Energy Club, said leaders — like himself and Marsing — develop projects new members can contribute to, such as a new fuel tank made to distribute bio fuels, which is in the works.
The university utilizes multiple vehicles — mostly Dodge models from the late 90s and early 2000s — which were originally intended for normal petroleum-based diesel, Hanson said.
One of the benefits of diesel engines is they can be easily converted for fuel created from other forms of common waste, such as cooking oil, Marsing said.
Brian Hanson lights biodiesel on fire to illustrate the benefits of carbon-neutral fuel.
Joleen Evans | Blot Magazine
Unlike petroleum, cooking oil is commonly plant-based, resulting in emissions that do not add any additional carbon into the atmosphere. Instead of harvesting ancient fossil fuels from below the earth’s surface, biodiesel could easily be sources from the average restaurant.
“One of the best things about biodiesel is that it’s a drop-in fuel,” Marsing said. “You can drop it into any diesel vehicle and you’re not going to have any issues with it.”
One of the ways this fuel is collected, is by visiting locations on campus and in Moscow where large amounts of cooking oil are thrown out, such as the Hub or various local restaurants.
From there, the oil is treated with chemicals, making it suitable for powering a vehicle, a much cleaner — albeit time consuming — process than visiting the nearest gas pump.
The process of creating biodiesel might seem intimidating at first, Hanson said. But the benefits greatly outweigh the cost, environmentally and financially.
One of the best examples of this, he said, was the BioBug, likely the most easily recognizable biodiesel mascot on the Palouse.
The BioBug, a Volkswagen Beetle originally donated to the UI Biodiesel Education Program, was first used in the early 2000s as a test for how everyday engines can handle cleaner fuel. Nearly two decades later, Hanson said the bug continues thriving.
With a range of 55 miles per gallon of fuel, Hanson said it still shocks him that some people are wary of biodiesel and its benefits.
Hanson and an associate made one of the most common expeditions a UI student will make — from Moscow to Boise and back — on a single tank of fuel. It was all done in the Bio Bug off a single tank of gas — twelve gallons good for 600 miles of travel and then some.
“We drove down there on fuel we made ourselves, and one tank of fuel got us all the way there and back, including driving around Boise and McCall, on one fuel tank. That’s 12 gallons of fuel,” he said.
The difference in fuel, Hanson said, is most easily observed in candle form. When presenting clean energy initiatives to young students, he said he often burns two candles — one made of biodiesel and the other of petroleum.
The two kinds of smoke produced look like exact opposites, with thick, black smoke emitting from the petroleum wick and clean, nearly invisible smoke drifting from the biodiesel.
The club, Marsing and Hanson said, efficiently creates biodiesel, making it readily available to campus vehicles capable of utilizing it has posed another challenge.
That’s why the club has tackled the project of building the state’s only B100 fueling station, a gas pump dedicated solely to providing biodiesel to UI facility vehicles. Hanson said this can help ease the process of filling up.
“One of our big issues is that we’re collecting oil at a faster rate than the school is consuming fuel, even though the school consumes over 36,000 gallons of diesel annually,” he said. “They don’t really utilize biodiesel on campus. We have multiple vehicles on our own personal fleet that run 100 percent biodiesel. However, that use is not enough to keep up with the oil collection.”
The issue with clean energy is not just contained to those invested in the business of biofuels.
According to a 2018 campus-wide survey conducted by the UI Sustainability Center, 100 percent of UI administrators believe climate change exists and 73 percent of respondents would support a student fee increase of $5 or less “to help fund campus solar arrays or other energy conservation infrastructure.”
Additionally, 56 percent of respondents said it was important for UI to reach its 2030 goal of carbon neutrality.
One of the individuals within the university helping to reach the 2030 goal is Scott Smith, central plant manager of the UI Energy Plant.
Scott Smith sifts through cedar mulch before it is delivered to the UI Energy Plant.
Joleen Evans | Blot Magazine
Smith, an employee of the plant for nearly 16 years, said the aging building on the corner of Sixth and Line streets is one of the biggest players in producing cleaner energy and reducing overall energy usage across campus.
While internal combustion engines used in campus vehicles play an important role in the fight for carbon neutrality, Smith said heating campus buildings with steam helps eliminate about 97 percent of electricity usage. This keeps reliance on utility companies, such as Avista, low.
Reducing energy usage overall, he said, has helped UI take the necessary steps toward the 2030 goal.
“The recent changes on campus haven’t been about trying to eliminate that three percent of natural gas or trying to offset that piece of Avista that’s not coming from a clean source,” Smith said. “Most of the focus has been about reducing our energy usage.”
The process of producing steam begins not in the plant itself, but in a roughly 30-mile radius around Moscow, where towering cedar trees are harvested.
When logging companies need a place to dispose unusable lumber, the waste is sent to the energy plant, where wood chips are heated to extreme levels.
Boilers powered by this process create the heated vapors required to warm the average classroom or office. The steam is then shot across campus to most of UI’s buildings through underground pipes. These pipes, Smith said, serve another useful purpose: heated sidewalks.
“The intent was never to heat the sidewalks. It just so happens that you know you’re going to lose energy from those pipes that are carrying steam. You might as well put those underneath the most used walkways to keep them free of snow and ice in the wintertime,” he said. “It’s actually capturing some of that waste that we would have otherwise lost.”
Meanwhile, Hanson said he hopes those students who benefit from initiatives, such as the UI Energy Plant and the Vandal Clean Energy Club, will take a moment in their own daily lives to try and live more sustainably.
It all comes down to emotions — the primary reason why he said UI resists changes to its facilities, Hanson said. Experimenting with biodiesel in university lawn mowers was a simple action taken by the administration, a result of numerous pleas by the club.
However, with 2030 swiftly approaching, Hanson said he hopes more aggressive action will be taken to hit that goal, not just simple lifestyle changes.
“We’re not looking to just help this school,” Hanson said. “We’re looking to help the world.”
Story by Brandon Hill
Photos by Joleen Evans
Design by Ethan Coy
Graphic by Riley Helal