Sustainability Climate & Air

Amherst has an ambitious and robust Climate Action Plan that lays out our path to carbon neutrality by 2030. At the core of the plan is the procurement of large scale solar and the replacement of an antiquated fossil fuel driven steam system with a campus wide low temperature hot water geothermal system that will run completely on renewable energy sources.

Science centers are typically one of the largest energy users on a college campus. So optimizing efficiency in the design and operations are critical to keeping energy use down. The new Science Center is more than 70% more energy efficient than a typical college science center!

Valentine Dining Hall collects and composts all of its pre- and post-consumer food waste at a local composting bio-energy facility. Our food waste is combined with cow manure in an anaerobic digester, and becomes three different products: low-carbon liquid fertilizer, solid bedding for cows, and pipeline-quality methane natural gas.