College of the Atlantic, nation’s top green college, seeks to support sustainability in broader community

Courtesy / College of the Atlantic College of the Atlantic’s sustainability actions incude construction of buildings designed to passive house principles.

Write a Comment

By Laurie Schreiber

College of the Atlantic, the Bar Harbor school named the nation’s top green college earlier this month, is joining Southern Maine Community College in Portland, the University of Maine in Orono and six other colleges and universities outside of Maine to support climate action in each of their broader communities.

The nine institutions will serve as host sites for AmeriCorps’ Campus Climate Action Corps program, a new AmeriCorps program from Campus Compact, a national nonprofit organization headquartered in Boston and dedicated to the public purposes of higher education.

As a host site, College of the Atlantic will support a team of one full-time and four part-time AmeriCorps members whose goal will be to contribute to sustainability efforts on Mount Desert Island.

"We are committed to transitioning our campus off fossil fuels by 2030,” said David Gibson, COA’s director of energy. “Hosting Campus Climate Action Corps members will help us achieve this goal, and help expand our impact into the broader community to reduce energy use, carbon emissions and heating costs.”

The AmeriCorps program will host community environmental education events, conduct home energy assessments, including home energy assistance referrals, and implement low-tech home energy interventions to help advance public knowledge and increase motivation to conserve energy and reduce carbon emissions.

“It is now possible for every home to eliminate fossil fuel consumption using off-the-shelf technologies that have been proven to work in Maine,” said Gibson.

Campus Climate Action Corps members will lead community outreach to share successful practices that address climate change.

The focus is on implementing local solutions for underserved households and communities.

“To lessen the impacts of climate change and reduce human-induced carbon emissions, we need to do everything we can to mobilize higher education institutions as an important part of the solution,” said Sally Slovenski, Campus Climate Action Corps’ program director and executive director of the Maine Campus Compact.

“By leveraging the resources and expertise of higher education, there is huge potential to make a real impact on climate change.”

Ranked No. 1 nationally in the Princeton Review's “Guide to Green Colleges,” COA became the first carbon-neutral college in the U.S. in 2007 and has implemented actions such as construction of buildings designed to passive house principles.