Donald Keough, News Editor–
With the promised Denison net-zero deadline on the horizon, Green Team and the Outdoors Club have partnered up to push the school’s progress toward the goal. They advocated for the effort this past week, and got 215 signatures for the cause and held an outdoor hike on Feb. 10th to Honey Run Falls.
The main objective of the petitioning and hike have been to urge Denison to change its source of heating to geothermal energy. Currently, Denison uses natural gas, which accounts for 45 percent of Denison’s greenhouse gas emissions. The two clubs began working together after Maaike Snider ‘26, an executive board member of the Outdoors Club reached out to Green Team, which led to Snider’s connection with Charlotte Meyer ‘26, the net-zero project coordinator for Green Team.
“[Snider] reached out to Green Team, and I was like, ‘that is the exact thing that I’ve been wanting to do.’” Meyer said. “It was perfect timing because we just started doing these weekly meetings and so we were totally ready to jump in and work on it.”
Another reason it has been easier for Green Team and the Outdoors Club to initiate the petitioning process quickly is because of a plan of action that was laid out by Ever-Green Energy, who Denison had hired to give an idea of what needs to be done to reach net zero in time for 2045. In the plan, all of the options include switching from natural gas to geothermal energy for heating.
“For a long time we had this net zero 2045 plan, and we didn’t have any idea of how we’re gonna get there,” Meyer said. “Now at least we have some direction, which is great because Green Team knows exactly what to push for because it’s what was recommended.”
Meyer emphasized the importance of the petitioning while understanding the kind of commitment it would take to reach the goal.
“Denison is a school that is supposed to be exemplary,” Meyer said. “Geothermal is expensive and it is a long process, and we might not be able to afford all of it right now. But I want to focus our messaging on setting aside funds now so that we’re prepared.”
The final draft of the petition was finished on Feb. 6th, and efforts to get signatures from students began on Feb. 8th. Meyer hopes that the petition can reach 800 signatures in the coming weeks.
“My general thoughts right now is that I want to make this a bigger thing,” Meyer said. “If the petition has 800 signatures, that’s like a third of the student population, and that looks really good.”
Green Team and the Outdoors Club are planning on gauging more student participation by possibly holding a table in Slaytor to petition, along with weekly signature collections.
The hike on Feb. 10th also catered toward bringing attention to the effort, which was led by Snider. Seventeen students walked seven miles during the trip at Honey Run Falls, and the inspiration for the hike came after attending a climate talk held by professor Joe Reczek.
“I was so excited when I talked to him because I got this sudden wave of inspiration from him,” Snider said. “I asked Reczek how I could make a difference with the Outdoors Club, after he told me about the use of geothermal we thought of the hike and raising awareness for the issue.”
Snider felt that the hike was successful.
“We saw beautiful waterfalls, a beautiful lake, lots of pine trees,” Snider said. “The hikers were super excited not just because it was really fun, but because we were also making a difference. Today went so well, and I’m excited to move forward with this goal. This is just the beginning.”
In the future, Snider hopes that more events can be held by the Outdoors Club to support the energy transition. She explained the possibility of an overnight campout for the cause, or focusing the next Outdoors Club’s trash pick-up event on the cause.
David English, the Chief Financial Officer and Vice President for Finance and Management at Denison has been overseeing the financial aspect of the net-zero effort. He said that there are a variety of ways that Denison is looking at being more energy efficient.
“Part of what we’re going to do for the next several years is put meters on all of our buildings to find out where we’re being inefficient because as we improve that, that just reduces energy use,” English said. “ It’s not going to a green source of energy, you’re just flat out using less energy.”
In terms of using green energy, like geothermal energy, English said that their intent is to slowly transition all of Denison’s energy distribution. One of the main factors in what inhibits a faster transition is because geothermal energy uses hot water to heat buildings, and currently the heating pipes at Denison use steam. So, each building would have to be individually renovated to accommodate a new geothermal energy system. Along with the high cost, projects like Intel’s eight proposed labs in Licking county have dwindled the workforce for construction in the area making the transition more difficult.
“It’s sometimes just hard to get work,” English said. “We might only get two firms to bid on our projects when we used to get four or five. I’m also worried that if we try to do [the construction] in the summer, firms may already be busy in summer for the next several years because of how their work is scheduled.”
The current plan is to start setting up buildings for geothermal energy on an attrition basis, so when buildings are already in need of repair, Denison will renovate the pipes to accommodate the use of geothermal energy.
“I think the path we’re on is the best path, which is we’re going to set up the infrastructure to be able to implement a geothermal system by 2045, assuming that’s still the best system to implement,” English said. “But we’re going to do it in a way that we don’t have to issue more debt than we can cover and do it in a measured way around campus. What we’re doing now gives us the most flexibility to be able to implement what they recommended, or implement whatever technologies we think are better by that time.”
The question that remains is what pace the implementation of geothermal energy will take. Meyer believes that it’s important to keep making progress now.
“I think it’s perfect timing to start pushing now,” Meyer said. “The longer we wait, the more stressful and awful it’s going to be when it gets to 2045 and we haven’t put aside any money for it.”
As of now, after the petition reaches 800 signatures, Green Team and the Outdoors Club plans to send the petition to the Denison’s Board of Trustees, who they hope will further push along the process of switching to geothermal energy.
In the past, Meyer said that the Board of Trustees “hadn’t talked about sustainability as much as she hoped.” By getting over a third of the student body to sign the petition, she hopes that it will give them a better chance at pushing geothermal energy to become a reality. She also hopes to keep the momentum Green Team and the Outdoors club started for the effort.
“It’s been going well and I’m excited,” Meyer said. “We started meeting a couple weeks ago and there are already a lot of students who care. We’re gonna keep pushing forward.”