Campus

After facing strong opposition from students, faculty and nearby residents who maintained a fossil fuel plant did not coincide with the school’s mission to reduce its carbon footprint, the University of Delaware has scrapped plans for a 279 MW co-generation power plant that would have burned natural gas.

The University of Massachusetts is switching the Central Heating Plant at its Amherst campus from oil to a liquefied natural gas system, a project that could provide $2 million of fuel cost savings annually, according to the university’s five-year capital plan. The $1.2 million project, which is going into operations this month, will allow the plant to end its practice of burning oil when winter conditions cause gas curtailments, according to The Massachusetts Daily Collegian. The plant will rely primarily on natural gas from Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s Northampton Lateral.

Ohio University (OU) said last week for the next five months the campus heating and power plant plans a switch from coal and will run entirely on natural gas.

Youngstown State University (YSU) is planning an on-campus institute to educate professionals and provide research for the Utica and Marcellus shale industry in Ohio and Pennsylvania, university officials said.

A co-founder of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California Irvine campus, Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) has invested $1 million in Oregon-based fuel cell manufacturer ClearEdge Power. The utility has been involved in the testing and demonstration of fuel cells for the past four decades. ClearEdge has a product that is a combined heat-power (CHP) fuel cell that claims to reduce carbon emissions by one-third and other pollutants, such as volatile organic compounds, ash and particulates, to trace levels. The Sempra utility cited a recent business intelligence report for the fuel cell industry, projecting a 10-fold increase in the sector from, $2 billion to $20 billion. SoCalGas said it envisions the advance of fuel cells as greatly reducing the nation’s reliance on coal and helping boost its use of natural gas.