Correction: A previous version of this column incorrectly stated that the pilot project could be run continuously. The project has a set timeframe running from Jan. 5 through Feb. 28.

The city of Eugene’s largest source of climate-warming emissions isn’t a factory or power plant. It’s the methane gas boilers on the University of Oregon campus. And after a new surprise agreement with our public electric utility, Eugene Water & Electric Board, this pollution could get even worse. 

It’s a striking contradiction: UO, a public university with one of the best environmental programs in the country, teaches thousands of students every year about the catastrophic impacts of climate change — in classrooms heated by the city’s largest source of climate pollution. How could the university that taught us about climate impacts be so slow to act on its own emissions?

In 2017, students with the Climate Justice League formed the CAP the Carbon Campaign to push UO officials to come up with plans to reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 by, in part, replacing the polluting gas boilers with more efficient electric alternatives. Initially resistant, UO administrators eventually agreed to update its Climate Action Plan and commit to a feasibility study on “low carbon heating.” 

By 2022, the university launched a Thermal Task Force with administrators, faculty experts and community members, looking at the results of the study and considering the options to transition the system off of fossil fuels. There was overwhelming community support for the transition, which included dozens of organizations and elected officials.

In the spring of 2024, after multiple years of deliberation and stakeholder conversations, and with widespread community support for decarbonization, the task force provided a final recommendation to the UO Board of Trustees to move forward with the replacement of one of the gas boilers with a carbon-free alternative.

And then: Nothing happened. 

Despite all the advocacy of the community, the technical work of university staff and the time spent studying the various options by the Thermal Task Force, the university took no action and the boilers kept polluting.

Then, just a few weeks ago, students discovered that the UO had entered into a “pilot project” with EWEB to turn on a largely unused additional gas turbine, in order to sell fossil fuel-generated electricity to the utility. This pilot project was initiated by both public entities with barely any notice provided to students, ratepayers or the community at large, and no opportunity for public comment. And to make things worse, the project’s effects on climate and air pollution are huge.

The generator would increase its fossil fuel use by 65 percent if the boilers were run regularly. With the current emissions of the boiler facilities at over 20,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent a year, we could assume that these emissions would exceed 30,000 tons under that scenario, the equivalent of the emissions of 6,998 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year. 

Beyond climate pollution, the pilot will also significantly increase the already significant air pollution emitted by the boiler facility, as burning methane gas releases toxic byproducts into the air, including particulates (PM2.5) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) and has significant impacts on public health. According to the EPA CO-Benefits Risk Assessment Health Impacts Screening and Mapping Tool, using pollution data provided by Lane Regional Air Protection Agency, business-as-usual use of the boilers generates over 14 tons of health-harming nitrogen oxides pollution annually, and costs Lane County an average of $190,000 per year in public health impacts. If we assumed a rough increase in air pollution parallel to the proposed pilot’s 65% increase in fossil fuels used at the facility were it run continuously, the air pollution costs would increase to $313,500 annually.

This pilot not only pollutes our air and contradicts past UO climate plans, it conflicts with the city of Eugene’s Climate Recovery Ordinance, which calls for a 50% reduction in communitywide fossil fuel use by 2030, and EWEB’s Strategic Direction Policy 15, which sets a goal of 95% of the electricity the utility provides coming from carbon-free sources by 2030.

While EWEB claims that this project is necessary to avoid “rolling blackouts” and to address a projected power gap, there is nothing in their regional report that supports the claim. In their own recent press release, EWEB acknowledges that using low-cost hydropower is helping keep up reliability better than methane gas can. And to add insult to injury, a recent analysis by Gridlab found that many of the assumptions about increased energy demand in the northwest that EWEB is relying on to justify this project are overhyped and not supported by the data. 

So instead of reducing energy demand by using more efficient technology and cleaning up local pollution, UO and EWEB have unilaterally decided to disregard close to a decade of community engagement, research and advocacy in order to massively ramp up fossil fuel use in our town — climate goals be damned — with a complete lack of accountability to the public and with no logical justification. 

We are calling on the EWEB Board and the UO Board of Trustees to immediately cancel this pilot project. As our community directly experiences the impacts of the climate crisis, steps must be taken now to implement the recommendations of the UO’s own Thermal Task Force to begin UO’s transition off of fossil fuels, and to work with students, alumni, faculty and community groups to build the clean energy future.

Dylan Plummer is a UO alumnus and Eugene resident, and currently works as a deputy campaign director for the grassroots environmental organization Sierra Club.