Published: Oct. 21, 2016
Southern Ute tribal land - CC photo by Scrubhiker

In 2012, with the leadership of student government, the Environmental Center started purchasing carbon offsets to mitigate the greenhouse gasses and climate footprint of energy used by the student-owned buildings on campus. For the previous school year, that translates to 11,670 metric tons of CO2. While CU continuously works to reduce energy use and consumption, carbon offsets are used to counteract any greenhouse gas emissions the university was unable to avoid causing.

The Environmetal Center is happy to work with Native Energy, a climate-solutions expert that often partners with Native American tribes to initiate carbon offsets and renewable energy projects. The carbon offset funds not only help mitigate some of the university's ecological impacts but also have a strong social and community benefit. This year, CU chose to collobrate on a project in Colorado that is close enough to campus for students to visit. 

The Methane Recovery Project captures methane seeping from natural coal seams, which would otherwise leak out into the environment in La Plata County on the Southern Ute tribal land. The methane is then injected it into the natural-gas distribution grid, where it is burned for either thermal energy or power generation.

This project would not be possible without the carbon offsets funding. Because of the low volume of methane seeping near the coal outcroppings, it was not economical for the Southern Ute Tribe to install conventional coal-bed-methane (natural gas) production wells and collection piping. By capturing and destroying the methane gas, this project will avoid 23,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from growing to 60,000 annually.