Penn State Hazleton students are learning to manage resources every time they refill a water bottle, reuse a food container or ponder how to recharge electric cars.
It's all part of the quest to renew energy and recycle materials that goes on year-round. At the campus, engineering students place special emphasis on power generation. Solar panels have electrified one building since 2009, and maintenance workers have swapped out inefficient boilers, lights and windows during the past decade.
Sustainability is part of the strategic plan for the campus, said Penn State Hazleton Chancellor Gary Lawler.
Like all Penn State campuses, Hazleton accepted the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Challenge to reduce energy usage by 20 percent in the next decade.
The faculty Sustainability Committee makes recommendations on how to meet that goal, and a professor is creating a class about sustainability.
Penn State Hazleton installed two of the first electric car chargers in northeastern Pennsylvania, due in part to the curiosity David Starling, assistant professor of physics, had about the best way to get to work.
Starling calculated that buying a new electric car, even with the payments, was cheaper than driving his 8-year-old gasoline-powered car. In classes, he plans to illustrate principles of power, batteries and regenerative braking with electric cars.
“We may even try some experiments where we drive the car uphill at constant speed and... do calculations to figure out how much energy was wasted due to air drag and heat,” he said.