Eva Altizer, Asst. Features Editor

Denison has been moving forward with the Net Zero 2045 initiative, having turned on its second large array of solar panels near the Homestead in June. The site is 25 acres and generates 5.4 megawatts of electricity. The goal is to eliminate the university’s carbon gas emissions until the footprint is net zero. 

In 2025, that solar power made up 10- 12% of the school’s power draw, and was expected to reach around 40% by spring 2026 after finishing the construction of the new array. According to Jeremy King, Denison’s continuous improvement manager, that percentage has now come true. 

“About 30% of our total energy use will come just from this array. Denison has 10 other arrays on campus and another significant ground mounted array in the bioreserve,” King said. “All of our arrays together that we have on our campus cover about 40% of our annual electric use. That’s a pretty big deal.”

According to King, the eight megawatts of solar power being generated on campus is more than any other college campus in the state of Ohio.

But with 19 years until the 2045 initiative deadline, the question arises of how Denison will achieve “net zero” in that time. King said that the main obstacle in the way of more clean energy infrastructure is cost. 

“Denison doesn’t have infinite resources, and so we start thinking about how we allocate the resources that we do have and we prioritize those. Something like a ground-sourced geothermal well field and system that’s $180 million or $200 million – where does that sit in our list of priorities?” King said. “Can Denison operate without that? Yes, we can. Can we meet our sustainability climate goal without doing that? Probably not.”

King said he wants to believe that Denison can achieve it. 

Christopher Chao ‘23 returned to campus during the Big Red Career Expo on Sept. 17 in the Mitchell Center. Chao is an account manager for Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, and represented the company at the Expo. “I want to be an optimist. I think we can do this, and I think we will do this. Are we going to start a big geothermal project next year? No. Are we going to start one next five years? Probably not. Will we start one in the next 10 years? Maybe,” King said. 

Among students, concerns about the project continue. The Green Team, an environment and sustainability club on campus, has the Net Zero Initiative, a project in the club that advocates for the progress of Net Zero 2045. 

Eleanor Megeath ‘28 is a double major in data analytics and psychology and is president of the Net Zero Initiative. 

“Our grid is unable to support any more solar than the new solar array, and so for Denison to be able to establish enough, they would have to completely redo the grid,” Megeath said. 

In 2021, several Green Team members were pushing Denison to make progress on the carbon neutrality by 2030 initiative, so President Adam Weinberg created the university-wide initiative for net zero. The Green Team Net Zero Initiative was made to help the administration in that goal. 

“Climate change is already screwing up the Earth. We’re seeing that there is no way to completely undo what we’ve screwed up. All we can do is decrease the rate at which we are screwing up the Earth, and I feel like everyone needs to be working on that wholeheartedly and doing everything we can, and part of that is just making sustainability part of the everyday,” Megeath said. 

Megeath communicates with the university on this project, and is assured of the administration’s continued support. But much like King, Megeath worries about the money. 

“The administration is on our side. It is purely a money question right now, which makes it frustrating because, on paper, Denison has the money. On paper, Denison has the donors. It is just a matter of connecting to those donors,” she said.