A Boost for Tufts’ Environmental Goals

In moves designed to advance its ambitious environmental agenda, Tufts will create a sustainability investment fund and build a new energy plant on the Medford/Somerville campus that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by twenty percent. The Board of Trustees approved both actions in November.

The new Tufts University Sustainability Fund will give donors the option of designating that their endowment gifts be invested in a way that acknowledges the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. The fund will be launched with seed money from the university.

The energy plant will replace the sixty-year-old central heating plant behind Braker Hall and the Lincoln Filene Center. The project supports the goals of the Campus Sustainability Council, including reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse gases.

“I applaud these forward-looking decisions by our trustees,” said President Anthony P. Monaco. “Sustainability is deeply ingrained in our campus culture,” he added, pointing to the eco-ambassadors program and other initiatives of the Office of Sustainability as well as the ongoing assessment of the potential for solar power on the Medford/Somerville and Grafton campuses.

Exploring the establishment of a sustainability fund was a key recommendation of a working group of students, faculty, administrators, and trustees that Monaco appointed in April 2013 to examine the university’s role in mitigating climate change.

ESG investing is relatively new. “The sustainability fund gives us an opportunity to learn more about the feasibility and effectiveness of these kinds of investments,” Monaco said. Ideally, income generated by the fund will support sustainability programming in both academics and operations, he said.

The sustainability fund will be part of the university endowment and will likely be available as an option for donors this year, said Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell.

Estimated to cost $36 million, the new energy plant will meet the needs of the Medford/Somerville campus for generations to come and will pay for itself in a dozen or so years through anticipated energy savings, Campbell said. The plant will have the capacity to serve new buildings on campus, including the Science and Engineering Complex, which is scheduled to open in 2017 on a site fronting Dearborn Road near Anderson, Bromfield-Pearson, and Robinson halls.

The plant will take advantage of the latest high-efficiency cogeneration technologies, which use a single fuel source to generate both heat and electricity. Thermal energy for heating that otherwise would be wasted will be captured to produce electricity. Cogeneration will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated twenty percent compared with the existing boiler system in the aging heating plant, Campbell said.

The new plant, to be built next to Dowling Hall on Boston Avenue, will contain a chilled-water production system that will cool campus buildings and equipment. It will also provide learning opportunities for students, according to Monaco. “I envision the Campus Energy Plant as a living laboratory, one where our students can obtain real-world experience with innovative energy-conservation technologies and systems,” he said. “This facility will demonstrate in tangible ways how appropriate technology can impact sustainability.”