News

Since 2008 when Middlebury’s biomass plant was built, use of fuel oil at Middlebury has dropped from about 2.1 million gallons a year to 600,000 gallons in 2015 and 185,000 gallons in 2016 (when natural gas became available in Middlebury).

blog post on the website of Second Nature, a nonprofit organization that fosters climate action within higher education, Jack Byrne, director of sustainability integration, discussed the new account of Middlebury’s effort and offered a few takeaways about the institution’s nine-year journey to neutrality.

Looking to the future, Byrne writes, “While Middlebury has charted its own way to neutrality, it’s been done with a great deal of community engagement, support, constructive thinking and criticism. The College’s current status affords the opportunity to think about how it reached this point and to strategize about what our next big—and we hope bold—steps will be.”