At the end of a semester that presaged one of the hottest summers on record, the students in associate professor Michael Sheridan’s business class were pitching proposals to cut waste and emissions on their campus and help turn it into a vehicle for fighting climate change.
Flanking a giant whiteboard at the front of the classroom, members of the team campaigning to build a solar canopy on a SUNY New Paltz parking lot delivered their pitch. The sunbaked lot near the athletic center was an ideal spot for a shaded solar panel structure, they said, a conduit for solar energy that could curb the campus’s reliance on natural gas.
The project would require $43,613 in startup money. It would be profitable within roughly five years, the students said. And over 50 years, it would save the university $787,130 in energy costs.
“Solar canopies have worked for other universities, including other SUNY schools,” said Ian Lominski, a graduating senior who said he hopes to one day work for the New York State Department of Environment... Read more
