A lot of the environmental initiatives at local college campuses are generated equally by students who are motivated to save the world as they are by college and university employees looking to save money. Richard Miller, who was hired as the University of Connecticut's director of environmental policy in 2002, said that the motivations to create an energy-efficient campus came from two contrasting places.

"The operational staff and senior administrators here tend to be driven by the bottom line. The students and faculty are more idealistic. There is a happy medium," Miller said.

The area's private liberal arts colleges are seeing a similar push towards sustainable energy from students and school officials.

"There's long been a push from the students, but also the faculty and the administration are pretty aware of this. It's just basically a smart way to run something, whether it's a business or a non profit, because of energy costs, because you can save so much money if you do it right," Wesleyan spokesman David Pesci said.

A recent Wesleyan program, Do it in the Dark, illustrates the merging of the two motivations. Environmental Organizer's Network (EON) teamed with the student faculty group Project Save to put a moderately sexy spin on energy conservation. Do it in the Dark Days targets specific buildings near Wesleyan that students live in.

"Wesleyan has about 140 wood-framed houses," EON member and Wesleyan senior Jacob Mirsky said. "Each house has an electric gauge. We put each house up against each other to compete to see which house can save the most energy."

EON, a five-year-old Wesleyan student group, has a regular membership of about 30 students, and hundreds more on its e-mail lists. Since its inception, EON has worked to make Wesleyan a more environmentally friendly campus. It's had a couple of notable successes.

"The recycling system was really poor a couple of years ago when I was a freshman. We looked at the landscape and building designs and tailored a recycling program specifically for Wesleyan," Mirsky said. "We basically redesigned the entire recycling system because we saw specific problems — namely that there weren't recycling bins in dorms and outside of classrooms."

Mirsky said there is still room for improvement, though.

"Wesleyan is pretty good, but there are definitely areas that need to be addressed and changed. Probably the most important is renewable energy," Mirsky said.

Mirsky said that the administration is receptive to ideas about further greening the campus, but the school's budget issues make these efforts difficult.

"Wesleyan is in a somewhat constrained financial situation right now. A lot of these programs that get proposed definitely need to take into account fairly strict monetary issues," Mirsky said.

UConn was an early leader in campus environmental policy. In addition to hiring Miller as environmental director, school officials set strict guidelines for campus construction.

"We were the first public university to have a stringent policy that sets LEED Silver as a performance standard," Miller said.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a rating for buildings developed by the non-profit group the United States Green Building Council that measures buildings for energy efficiency and sustainability. LEED Silver buildings meet 60 percent of the requirements of the LEED certification process.

Other area schools are working to create green campuses. According to a state mandate from last January, all new construction and renovation in state schools must meet Silver LEED certification. But many schools were working towards green campuses before then.

This year, Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic was named one of the 50 greenest college campuses in America by Kiwi Magazine. The magazine cited the college's three energy-efficient dorms and its minor in sustainable energy studies.

New Britain's Central Connecticut State University also has several energy-saving programs in place.

"We have a co-generation facility," CCSU Director of Engineering Robert LeBaron said. "We generate electricity and at the same time we use waste heat to make steam from the generators. We also use steam absorption to make chill water on the campus."

The University of Hartford, a private school, has several active campus energy-sustaining efforts in place, including solar panel energy generators, composting and other projects.

In addition, the University of Hartford's Clean Energy Institute brings green ideas off campus. The students and faculty members work with Connecticut businesses interested in working with issues of sustainability. Barry Lubin, the faculty adviser for the institute, said they are working with the Milford company LiteTrough in their efforts to build a concentrated solar collector.

"We're a resource without an ulterior motive," Lubin said. "We're not looking for pay, we're looking for information we can use in teaching courses and promoting renewable energy."

Some energy-efficiency measures taken at area schools aren't investments that will save the colleges money. Miller talked about a recent investment UConn made in recycling containers that cost over $100,000.

"We're not going to see a return on that investment. We do it because we want to be a leader," Miller said. "We want to tell students and visitors that we think it's important to value this environment."

However, one indirect benefit for this kind of work is how it could appeal to future students. The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a Kentucky-based non-profit organization that furnishes schools and other institutions with sustainability resources, has noted that prospective students seem increasingly interested in green campuses.

"Sustainability is starting to become the brand of a university. Campuses are starting to advertise it," said Niles Barnes, an AASHE press relations officer. "They understand that students sometimes choose their schools based on the school's commitment to sustainability. We're seeing it used as a marketing tool to attract students."

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