Burlington, Vermont - UVM Senior Audrey Burns says the $13 million investment into green energy for the campus is just one more in a series of good improvements for the college.
"There have been a lot of great things that have happened. I mean the Office of Sustainability and the Clean Energy Fund," says Burns.
Now, add the Billion Dollar Green Challenge to the list.
It urges other colleges and universities to invest $1 billion in green upgrades to their campuses.
"5% return and it will pay back the principle within seven years," says UVM Vice President of Finance and Administration Richard Cate.
He says the money comes from a disposable fund that always has a minimum $130 million.
"That money comes from tuition-- from all of our state purposes," says Cate.
10% of that money is now invested into making UVM even greener.
"The fact that the money is always being paid back is an important aspect of this," says Cate.
The campus is looking at about four different projects to jump start implementation. On the top of that list is installing LED lights across the campus. They hope to have some of the projects started in the fall.
"That's an $8 or $900,000 project right there that would have a significant drop in our electric bill," says Cate.
There are some stipulations for the proposed financed projects.
"Projects will have to pay for themselves in a seven year period and less than $3 million in scale," adds Cate.
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