What’s black and gold and commutes an estimated 571,122 miles per day? The people that learn, teach and work at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Which means: How they commute is pretty important.

David Cook, alternative transportation manager at CU, mentioned at a recent meeting of Boulder-area transportation managers the total mileage that he estimates students, faculty and staff at his university commute on a daily basis: nearly 600,000 miles.

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The Colorado Carbon Fund (a new carbon offset program from the Governor’s Energy Office that will fund energy efficiency, renewable energy and greenhouse gas mitigation projects throughout the state) is ramping up. On Feb. 14 the state issued a request for proposals seeking a “third party administrator” — a company that will manage the CCF on behalf of the state.

Interested parties will have to move fast. Inquiries are due 5 pm, Feb 29 (this Friday).

Recently I spoke with CCF program manager Susan Innis, who explained the process of deciding which projects will get funded — and who will buy the offset credits to pay for the projects…
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Dave Newport, director of the Environmental Center at CU, isn’t into renewable energy credits.

“One, RECs suck,” he said. “Two, RECs suck, and three, RECs suck. Anything I do is better than a REC. It was the tool of choice when that was the only tool in the toolbox.”

University of Colorado-Boulder students have set aside $50,000 to ultimately go to the Carbon Fund, an initiative coming from the Governor’s Energy Office.

“At this point we’re just pledging to work with them,” Newport said. “They don’t have a product yet, but they will.”

He said that the local carbon offsets that the Carbon Fund will offer are a step beyond the RECs that CU had been buying from Community Energy. Newport said that it’s hard to explain RECs, because they don’t go directly to new projects, but pay — in a way — for projects that have already started.

“No real behavioral change comes with a REC,” he said. “[A] turbine’s gonna turn when the wind hits it, not when money hits it.” But with the Colorado Carbon Fund, which plans to sell carbon offsets generated by local projects, he said, “You’ll be able to touch and feel your specific project.”

Kind of like adopting a highway, a carbon offset purchaser could know which Colorado-based project they were helping to fund.

Another benefit for CU getting involved early with the Colorado Carbon Fund is that Newport sees growth not only for the CCF, but also for the university. “We may get to the point where our students can develop local projects and [we] could be a seller of local offsets to the Colorado Carbon Fund.”