OU can still make a deal with a conflict of interest as long as the university’s Office of Legal Affairs is given full disclosure and approves the contract.
The Turning Point Solar project was conceived by an OU alumni who serves on a university board, said Stephanie Filson, OU’s director of external communications.
She didn’t say who the conflict is, though David Wilhelm, who helped conceive the project, is an OU alumni who formerly served on the university’s Alumni Association board.
Turning Point has been supported by renewable energy advocates in Athens because it would be a “cleaner energy.”
The university currently holds a contract through 2015 with FirstEnergy.
About five percent of FirstEnergy’s power is fueled by renewable resources, said Joseph Lalley, OU’s senior associate vice president of information technologies and administrative services, who wasn’t able to give OU-specific numbers.
Yet, the FirstEnergy package was too expensive and OU has to secure renewable resources separately, said Tim Strissel, OU’s director of energy management, in a previous Post article.
“The fact that we’re still locked into a contract with them and they’re the ones blocking us from getting renewables is a conflict of interest in the sense that it makes OU look extremely dirty and extremely bad and that they would continue down that line makes it a little worse,” said Caitlyn McDaniel, president of OU’s Sierra Student Coalition and a junior studying war and peace.
Turning Point representatives didn’t return a request for comment.
After other colleges in Ohio, such as the University of Toledo and Ohio State University, made sizable investments in renewable energy, Lalley said OU administrators are feeling somewhat pressured to also do so from those on the outside.
“Unlike those other locations, we have the additional challenge of an infrastructure that is not as robust as an area like Columbus,” Lalley said.
The university agreed to goals for its energy consumption set in the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment, signed by OU President Roderick McDavis in 2007.
OU energy goals include target dates for the university to largely decrease its fossil fuel consumption in 2032, 2050 and 2075.
“This is not about Turning Point as much as it’s about how we need to find a way to meet our carbon footprint objectives both in the short term and the long term,” Lalley said. “It has to be in a way that balances the pressures of keeping tuition increases low and keeping our commitment to meeting those objectives that delivers safe and reliable power to the campus.”
@akarl_smith
as299810@ohiou.edu
This article appeared in print under the headline "Change in power"
