The E-Festival on Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 marked the beginning of VCU’s Year of the Environment, bringing a worldwide discussion of advances and challenges in conservation and sustainability to the campus community.
In April of 2008, former VCU President Eugene P. Trani signed the climate commitment. He and 654 other college and university presidents recognized the need to “reduce global emission of greenhouse gases by 80 percent by mid-century,” states the American Colleges and Universities President’s Climate Commitment.
Robert Bennett, the founder of Energy and Environment Inc., a specialist energy project advisory services company, said colleges and universities can act as a barrier in the efforts for conservation and sustainability.
“One of the last things (universities) think about is sustainability, efficiency and conservation,” Robert said. “What they do is design a whole fancy building and then say, ‘Well we need to do something about conservation.’ They need to do it in the very beginning. They need to start out saying, ‘OK, what are my priorities?’ ”
Robert sat on the E-Festival discussion panel “An Age of Limits, or An Age of Innovation?: Challenges for a Sustainable Energy Future” with Bob Blue, who represented Dominion Power Corporation, and Art Reber, an adjunct faculty credit instructor for VCU’s physics department.
The Science and Technology Society sponsored the E-Festival. Karen Rader, STS Director, said the goal of the E-Festival was to present controversial environmental topics through multiple perspectives.
“The first step is coming together to debate, discuss and understand what the