I am a little concerned about recent letters concerning the shutdown of the Lausche Heating Plant and the addition of more green energy alternatives. Even though I am in full support of moving toward clean renewable energy and in no way support a reliance on solely fossil fuels for energy, I do not believe the closing of the heating plant is the direction we as a university should be heading.
As a chemical engineer, my major deals with energy and the environment on a daily basis, and, simply speaking, the amount of energy produced by green energy alternatives is no way comparable to the sheer amount of energy that is generated by a coal plant. The amount of land and infrastructure needed to produce an equal amount of energy produced by the Lausche Plant would be enormous and would require more space and more money to build. The reason why most wind, solar and other green energies are not employed as greatly as coal is, quite frankly, their inability to provide an equal amount of energy that our society demands.
The only equal energy output green alternative would be nuclear. However, even though we no longer have CO2 waste, we now have to deal with nuclear waste consisting of radioactive isotopes with half-lives of many, many years. Also I do not know about the rest of the OU community, but I am not too comfortable having a radioactive power plant less than five minutes from where I reside. And does anyone have $10 billion (the average cost of a nuclear plant) to provide this alternative? I didn't think so.
If you want to continue having heated classrooms, dormitories and houses, shutting down the Lausche Heating Plant would not be wise. Even though they are harmful and wasteful, we should not be replacing efficient coal plants with inefficient energy alternatives. Instead, funding that would be used to shut down the plant and build windmills and solar panels should be allocated toward finding new ways to improve alternative energies or find new ways to harness the power of the earth.
Let us be beyond coal, OU, yet let us make sure we have an effective way of doing it.
Louie Delgadillo is a junior studying chemical engineering.
4 Opinion
Letter to the Editor
