University of New Hampshire
OP-6: Clean and Renewable Energy

We have a campus co-generation plant, powered by landfill gas, which supplies the vast majority of our electric needs. However, we sell the associated RECs, so claim 0.

As mentioned above, EcoLine, a landfill gas pipeline constructed by NH in partnership with Waste Management, is the primary fuel source for the on-campus COGEN plant for heating, cooling and electricity. UNH sells REC's for the electricity generated off our EcoLine landfill gas pipeline into our cogeneration plan - but retain the rights to the environmental attributes of the thermal energy generated. http://sustainableunh.unh.edu/ecoline We also have a small solar thermal installation on campus.

While we do not retain the RECs--we are using a renewable resource for our electricity. For the modest portion of our electric needs that does not come from our cogeneration plant, we recently went to market with an RFP for 3-4 mWh's annually for renewable energy. In 2015 we began partnering with a small local hydro provider; the contract with UNH (including the stipulation that the RECs would be sold) helped make it viable to expand the production at the small local dam we are using. For the bulk of our electricity we use our cogen plant, fueld by the EcoLine landfill gas pipeline. This is a 12.7 mile underground pipeline that delivers purified methane gas from Waste Management's nearby Turnkey Recycling and Environmental Enterprise (TREE) landfill facility in Rochester. The landfill methane gas is collected from 300 wells in the landfill, purified, and then piped to the on-campus Co-Generation Plant (COGEN). The landfill gas replaces commercial natural gas as the primary fuel in UNH’s COGEN plant. Construction on the EcoLine project began in 2007, and in April 2009 the pipeline came online to begin delivering up to 85% of the campus' energy needs. UNH is the first university in the country to use landfill gas as its primary fuel source. EcoLine cost an estimated $49 million - all internally-funded - with an anticipated payback within 10 years of the project. Both the COGEN plant and the landfill gas projects were financed by the campus through borrowing.

Green e Certified Wind Renewable Energy Certificates from 3Degrees Group. 70,739 RECs. Green e Reporting Year 2016 (July 1, 2015-March 31, 2017) We purchased 70,739 MWh because that was equal to our previous year's total electricity demand on campus (both the electricity we purchased and the electricity we generated on-site, and we wanted to ensure that we could legitimately state that 100% of our electricity use is renewable.)

UNH is powering its campus with enriched and purified natural gas, courtesy of the local landfill, meaning that every bit of trash that ends up there ends up powering the university (Durham) while lowering energy costs and decreasing environ- mental impact. UNH sells Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) from this project and reinvests part of the proceeds back into energy efficiency initiatives on campus. As such, we cannot claim the renewable benefits associated with on-campus electricity production. To counter this, and to further support the development of renewable energy technologies and markets in the US we purchase Green Certified Renewable Energy Credits. Our generation mix indicated above, then, is based on that REC purchase.

Based on the energy allocations used for our GHG inventory (which are themselves based on best practice guidance from the EPA Climate Leaders program), roughly 60% of the energy used to power our co-generation plant is allocated to thermal energy production and 40% is allocated to electricity production. Since, as noted above, we retain the thermal renewable energy credits associated with our use of local landflll gas, the figure above under "Option 2" includes the renewable thermal energy we utilize from the Ecoline pipeline (297,443 MMBTU in FY 2017); it also includes our two small solar thermal installations (877.5 MMBTU in FY 2017).