Two solar farms will soon be powering 75 percent of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, whose high-tech laboratories are home to some of the world’s leading Earth and climate scientists. The new power sources are expected to cut the campus’s electricity bill by 20 percent and reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by half.
Lamont had been searching for a way to tip its electricity balance toward renewable sources, but the campus, about 20 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River Palisades, is too heavily forested for solar panels. Working with SunEdison and Siemens Industries, Lamont officials came up with an alternative: a power purchase agreement that includes solar arrays to be built on vacant land in nearby Orange County, New York
