I am a cold, cold person. No, not of the ice queen variety-more of the ice cube-without-proper-outerwear ilk. I dread the warm months of the year, when buildings are kept frigid by that most evil of innovations, air conditioning. My thumbs literally go numb as I wonder why I bother to wear anything classified as "summer weight." It's always winter to me, whether in here or out there.
So you can imagine how thrilled I am when I can switch from bundling up against the brutal gales of, ahem, Perkins, to actually removing layers when I enter a building. Whoever invented air conditioning must have been the evil twin of the person responsible for heat, whom I thank as my personal savior every time I crank up the thermostat.
But to what, exactly, do I owe that blessed warmth emanating from the vent above my roommate's bed (regardless of whether it's dispersing mold spores as well; see Causes for Few Quad renovations)? It turns out that all heat on campus, as well as all sterilization processes in the hospital and humidity controls for artwork and laboratories, are generated by Duke's very own steam plant.
"What steam plant?" you might be thinking. I was as surprised to learn about it as you may be. Even more surprising is that three of its six boilers run on coal-and lots of it. In order to produce 1.3 billion pounds of steam per year, the plant burns 54,000 tons of coal. The plant even has a set of railroad tracks leading directly to two 100-ton roof bunkers that feed coal to boilers, which allows it to stockpile between 4,000 and 6,000 tons of coal at a time.
If you don't believe me, you can go check out the heaping black mountain at the end of the aptly-named Coal Pile Drive, behind the LSRC and the hospital. An impressive sight, indeed, even if it'll never make it on to the campus tour.
At this point, you're probably expecting me to launch into a diatribe against such an easy target as coal, and indeed, it wouldn't be hard. While living for a summer in eastern Kentucky-the source, along with West Virginia, for most of Duke's coal-I saw for myself the environmental and economic devastation left in the wake of strip mining and mountaintop removal. The bleak "reclaimed" landscapes and pervasive poverty are just the start of it.
It also wouldn't be difficult to criticize the use of coal on the grounds of its contributions to global warming. Heck, I'm in Earth and Ocean Sciences 155: Global Warming right now, and my professor would probably love it if I explained how burning fossil fuels like coal not only releases "ancient sunlight" into the atmosphere but also adds greenhouse gases to it.
But a tirade on the evils of coal is not my intention. In fact, Duke's steam plant is extremely well-run, by all accounts, and it is either in compliance with or often ahead of the latest environmental standards.
Emissions must pass through 820 filters that collect particles and remove 99.7 percent of soot and ash before they are released through the smokestacks, and newly added $4.5-million "lime scrubbers" further remove gases and heavy metals. Duke even recycles 8,000 tons of ash annually to make concrete blocks, walking trails and roadbeds.
It's difficult, therefore, to come to a rigid judgment on this issue. Yes, coal is bad for the environment on many fronts, and is ultimately unsustainable as an energy source. And yes, our society should certainly move away from reliance on fossil fuels if we hope to continue living life as we've known it since the Industrial Revolution.
But what, exactly, is Duke's role in that shift? What is our role as Duke students? Workable alternatives to the current system are unclear at best. Perhaps when they finally do emerge, we should do everything we can to encourage the University to adapt accordingly.
In the meantime, I urge you to be aware of the sources of our energy and of the far-reaching implications of the tiny actions that, in aggregate, add up to a lived life. Locating ourselves within the enormously complex web of interrelated processes and systems that make up modern life allows us to see ourselves as active agents in the world, rather than passive cogs in the machine.
When fall and, inevitably, winter finally set in, I may not forego cranking up my beloved thermostat. But at least I'll know at what cost I do so-and in case I forget, I can always steal a piece of coal from Coal Pile Drive and use it as a paperweight.
Rachael Massell is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Monday.
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