SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
August, 04 2016, 12:15pm EDT
Contact:
John Courtmanche, Director of Media Relations
Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass.
Hampshire College Is Going 100% Solar, Breaking Ground Today on 19-acre Solar Arrays
The largest-known on-campus solar installation of New England colleges and universities and one of the largest East of the Mississippi
Amherst, Mass.
With a Groundbreaking Ceremony this morning attended by Massachusetts state and local officials and industry partners, Hampshire College has begun installing 15,000 solar panels on approximately 19 acres of its 840-acre campus, toward producing 100 percent of campus electricity from on-site renewable energy on an annualized basis. By its research, Hampshire is the first US residential college to go 100% solar.
Hampshire's two solar-power systems together will have a generation capacity of 4.7 DC/3.5 AC megawatts, enough to power about 500 American homes. They are expected to avoid the emission of approximately 3,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to taking almost 650 cars off the road. Construction of the arrays, representing the largest-known on-campus system among colleges and universities in New England and one of the largest in the Eastern US, is estimated to be completed by the end of this year.
Project partner SolarCity will construct the two photovoltaic (PV) solar arrays, each coupled with a 250 kilowatt (500 kilowatt-hour) battery-storage system. Under the project's power-purchase agreement, the solar arrays and battery system will be built and operated by SolarCity, and Hampshire will purchase the electricity from SolarCity at a fixed rate that is lower than what the college now pays for electricity. Hampshire is estimating it will save up to $400,000 per year for 20 years, up to $8 million total in electricity costs.
Hampshire is part of the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, under which the college has committed to implementing a comprehensive plan to achieve a carbon-neutral campus. In implementing its Climate Action Plan, Hampshire is also practicing its mission in the areas of innovative research, experiential education, social justice, forward-thinking operations, and environmental action.
"We're extremely proud of this commitment to renewable energy, and of the social and environmental benefits it provides to our community," said President Jonathan Lash, a national environmental leader before joining Hampshire and former chair of President Bill Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development. "Despite being a modestly resourced institution, in snow country, we're going all the way with solar for our electricity."
Hampshire hopes to help reduce the negative impacts across the region and around the world, especially on disadvantaged communities, of extractive industries, such as hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) for natural gas, construction of pipelines, the effects of oil spills, and the destruction of mountaintops for coal mining, as well as nuclear power.
Education is about preparing students for the future, which will be low-carbon, said Lash. "We encourage our students to question and inquire, and this project loudly asks 'Why do we accept limits on how we can change the energy system? Why can't we use solar power wherever we are?'" he said. "We should all be talking about energy use."
Congressman Jim McGovern (MA-02) and his office have supported Hampshire's project by attending calls and meetings with Eversource and SolarCity throughout the year, along with State Senate President Stan Rosenberg and his office. "Massachusetts has a proud tradition as a leader in clean energy. Hampshire College is doing amazing work to support sustainability in Western Massachusetts and these 15,000 solar panels are an exciting step forward," Congressman McGovern said. "I am proud of Hampshire for their leadership and example on renewable energy and look forward to seeing all the benefits that will come from this smart investment."
Hampshire College has been planning how to transform its ability to generate electricity since 2014. It conducted a thorough, thoughtful process involving students, faculty, and staff in discussions of land use. After reviewing possible sites for their current and future land use, Hampshire arrived at the choice of the two best locations for its large solar arrays.
The two-year process of project deliverables and approvals required close coordination between Hampshire and many players, among them the planning and conservation boards in the towns of Amherst and Hadley, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, and partner SolarCity.
Since spring 2015, a team from Hampshire has been working with its account manager at SolarCity and the distributed generation group at Eversource, the local electric utility company, to shepherd the project through Eversource's complex interconnection process and arrive at an agreement. This spring, Eversource completed the required impact studies and approved interconnecting Hampshire's solar-power systems with the regional power grid.
The College will receive credit for excess electricity sent to the regional power grid, and its system will draw from the grid when necessary. The project will use two separate 500 kilowatt-hour battery-storage systems, one for each solar array, part of a smart energy-storage solution that can be dispatched during times of peak energy demand to reduce overall costs.
Separately, Hampshire has installed three other standalone solar-array projects, approved this year by Eversource for interconnection, at three additional locations: its R.W. Kern Center, the CSA Barn, and the president's house.
PHOTO CAPTION: Actor Mark Ruffalo is one of many who recognized Hampshire College when it announced its 100% solar plan last winter.
R.W. KERN CENTER LIVING BUILDING NOW OPEN, NEW HOME OF ADMISSIONS AND KERN KAFE
The R.W. Kern Center living building, another central piece of Hampshire's sustainability program, opened this summer as the new home of admissions and financial aid, classrooms, the Kern Kafe coffee shop, and more. Designed to meet the world's most advanced green-building standard, the Living Building Challenge, the 17,000-sq-ft Kern Center supplies its own energy, harvests and treats its own water, and was built avoiding toxic "red list" chemicals to help bring attention to global issues of environmental injustice. (To learn more about how they constructed a nontoxic building, visit www.hampshire.edu/news/2016/04/14/how-to-build-a-non-toxic-net-zero-energywater-campus-center.)
The Kern Center was also designed to educate across a range of disciplines, such as environmental studies, the sciences, sustainability, math, and technology. A group of Hampshire undergrads presented their living-building research this summer at the American Ecological Engineering Society Meeting, in Tennessee, and they won an ecological design competition against teams of graduate students. (See www.hampshire.edu/news/2016/07/22/hampshire-students-win-top-design-prize-at-national-conference.)
The college is now planning a dedication ceremony for the Kern Center to take place on Friday, September 16, 2016. The theme is "What Buildings Should Do" and the full day of events will comprise a symposium and hands-on workshops around green building, sustainability, and social-justice education.
LATEST NEWS
As Trump Announces New Round of Sanctions Against Cuba, Democrats Warn Country Is Being 'Strangled to Death'
Four members of Congress returned Monday from an oversight trip to Cuba, which they described as a "silent Gaza."
Jul 14, 2026
As the Trump administration announced a new round of sanctions on Cuba's tourism ministry, energy companies, and other entities on Monday, four Democratic members of Congress returned from a trip to the island and described how the oil blockade the US has imposed there for nearly six months "is producing indiscriminate pain for the most vulnerable Cubans."
"As elected lawmakers tasked with oversight of US foreign policy, we traveled to Havana to meet with Cubans of all walks of life and political perspectives to hear about the hardships the Trump administration’s maximum pressure policies are creating for Cuban citizens," said Reps. Delia Ramírez (D-Ill.), Teresa Leger-Fernández (D-NM), Mark Pocan, (D-Wis.), and Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.). “In our meetings with religious leaders, entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, humanitarian groups, medical professionals, and farmers, everybody we heard from... agreed on one thing: that they are being strangled to death under the current executive orders and longstanding economic blockade."
The four Democrats traveled to Cuba last Thursday and spent several days meeting with local leaders, touring the streets of Havana, and speaking with President Miguel Díaz-Canel as the country grapples with the effects of President Donald Trump's January executive order that baselessly claimed Cuba poses an "extraordinary" threat to US national security and threatened tariffs against any country that provides oil to the communist country.
The president had already cut off Cuba's main energy supply by invading Venezuela, abducting its president and charging him with drug trafficking, and taking control of its vast oil reserves.
The lawmakers described how the energy blockade is "contributing to nationwide electrical blackouts—including one during our trip—buildups of trash on street corners; severe shortages of food, medicine, and public transportation; and widening inequality on the island."
Dexter, a physician, noted that Cuba's lauded healthcare system "is buckling under sanctions that the White House has unleashed on the Cuban people. This is creating a humanitarian catastrophe."
“Cuba created a free, universal healthcare system that millions of Cubans and others around the world have come to expect and depend on,” said Dexter. "I will be using all the tools at my disposal to remove the barriers to delivering healthcare to the Cuban people.”
As Common Dreams has reported, the blockade has left hospitals struggling to provide care, with 96,000 people, including 11,000 children, on waitlists for surgeries.
"Over 300 pediatric surgeries per week are compromised by shortages of drugs, oxygen, anesthetics, and consumables," wrote more than 8,000 Italian medical and scientific professionals in an open letter in June.
Leger-Fernández called Trump's policy in Cuba, which has intensified sanctions that have been in place for years, "a siege."
“We’re blocking medical supplies, fuel, and other essential inputs, leading its infant mortality rate to rise nearly 150% in recent years, from 4 to 9.9 per 1,000 live births," said the congresswoman. "I doubt any American wants innocent Cuban babies to die due to our policies.”
Pocan told The Associated Press that one person he spoke to in Cuba called the crisis a "silent Gaza."
“There may not be bombings, but there are certainly conditions that prevent people from going about their daily lives," said Pocan. "They can’t go to work, they can’t preserve their food, they can’t access medical supplies, or live as they did before."
Since imposing the blockade, Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to take over the island by force and has doubled down on claims that Cuba poses a national security threat to the US.
On Sunday, United Nations Ambassador Michael Waltz claimed in a Fox News interview that China and Russia are "collecting information around our military bases in Cuba." In May, an anonymous White House official told Axios that Cubans were “discussing plans” to launch drones at the US—even as the reporting acknowledged the country was thought to be preparing defensive, not offensive, capabilities.
As the members of Congress returned to the US and reported on the suffering they witnessed in Cuba on Monday, the administration announced a new round of sanctions on the country's Ministry of Tourism, energy firms, a state-owned financial services company, a major foreign trade firm, and a maritime transportation company. Foreign banks, insurers, and companies will be exposed to potential penalties if they work with the entities under the sanctions.
The Trump administration, said Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, "continues to intensify the war against the people of Cuba, their living conditions, and their sources of livelihood."
"The announcement on July 13 of additional coercive measures is a clear manifestation of the criminal and genocidal intent with which US rulers are determined to punish the entire population of the country," he said.
The sanctions demonstrated the Trump administration's "zeal to strangle our economy," added Díaz-Canel. "They reinforce the aggression in search of greater harm to the people. We are facing a genocidal design plan."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'At the Behest of Polluting Corporations,' Trump Guts Two National Monuments
"Today’s proclamations are a slap to the face of public lands visitors across the country, as well as the local communities and tribes that have worked for years to protect these special places."
Jul 14, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Monday signed proclamations dramatically shrinking the size of two national monuments in Utah, eliminating roughly 3 million acres of protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante and potentially opening the beloved, wildlife-rich areas to industry exploitation.
Trump's proclamations, issued at the urging of Utah Republicans including Sen. Mike Lee, aim to reduce Bears Ears to just under 121,100 acres (down from nearly 1.4 million) and Grand Staircase-Escalante to 181,541 acres (down from 1.87 million). The president declared in his orders—which opponents say are unlawful—that the areas he's stripping of their monument designation contain "several resources that are vital to energy and resource independence," including silver, copper, uranium, and zinc.
The orders were met with immediate outrage from tribes, Democratic lawmakers, and conservationists. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement that the president has "illegally opened up two of the most extraordinary landscapes in America at the behest of polluting corporations who seek to ravage them for short-term profits."
"Trump has been selling out our public lands and waters since the day he took office," said Huffman, pointing to previous attacks on the monuments during the president's first White House term. "Trump tried this once before. We fought him then, and we are ready to fight him now, because no president should have the power to give away what belongs to the American people, including future generations. Keep public lands in public hands.”
Scott Braden, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said his organization "will challenge this unlawful decision in federal court" and expressed confidence that Trump's "reckless and unlawful acts will be rejected."
“Today’s action makes it clear that Utah is the epicenter of Republican efforts to dismantle and obliterate America’s system of public lands," said Braden. "President Trump’s outrageous attack on Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments was taken at the urging of Utah politicians—Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis, Gov. Spencer Cox, and the others—who championed this action. These two landscapes deserve to be protected for current and future generations of Utahns and Americans, not opened to exploitation."
During a signing ceremony on Monday, flanked by Utah Republicans, Trump characterized his scaling back of monument protections as an effort to give land "back to the people of Utah." The president falsely claimed that people could "virtually not even walk on" the lands under the protections he targeted.
"You can’t go hunting. You can’t go fishing," the president said, incorrectly. "You can’t do anything."
Trump's proclamations cite authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906, which empowers the president to "reserve parcels of land as a part of the national monuments." But opponents of Trump's assault on the two Utah national monuments noted that the law does not explicitly authorize the president to scale back protections implemented by previous administrations.
In 2021, then-President Joe Biden restored protections to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante after Trump's first attempt to gut them in 2017. Trump's new assault on the two national monuments goes much further than the previous one. (The far-right Project 2025 agenda, which Trump has repeatedly tried to disavow despite his ties to its architects, called for the downsizing of national monuments and repeal of the Antiquities Act.)
"President Trump’s attack on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments is just as illegal today as it was in 2017,” Heidi McIntosh, managing attorney for Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office, said in a statement on Monday. "The Antiquities Act authorizes presidents to designate national monuments, not to destroy them. Today’s proclamations are a slap to the face of public lands visitors across the country, as well as the local communities and tribes that have worked for years to protect these special places. Earthjustice and our partners are prepared to vigorously defend the monuments once again."
Autumn Gillard, coordinator for the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition, said Monday that "our tribes were not informed of or asked about this decision, and that’s unacceptable."
“Today’s action is a direct strike against the federal government’s duty to consult with tribes," said Gillard. "It also profoundly disrespects our intergenerational traditional knowledge by destroying a framework for tribal co-stewardship over our ancestral lands in which we invested years of effort. Today’s action cannot stand."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Not How It Works': Critics Slam Trump Bid to Restart Legal Clock on Illegal Iran War
"The War Powers Resolution doesn’t give the president a 'free' 60 days—and the Constitution certainly doesn’t either," said one conservative critic.
Jul 13, 2026
Critics from both sides of the political aisle on Monday denounced President Donald Trump's effort to construct a facade of legality for the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran by notifying Congress of renewed military strikes on the Mideast nation.
Trump claimed in a letter to members of Congress that, on July 7, he ordered "defensive strikes against targets within Iran, including missile launch sites, air defenses, military maritime assets, military support infrastructure, and command and control capabilities."
"These strikes are limited, measured, planned, and executed in a manner designed to minimize civilian casualties," wrote Trump, whose war has killed more than 3,400 people—hundreds of them children—and wounded over 26,500 others since February 28, according to Iran's Ministry of Health.
"I am providing this report as part of my efforts to keep the Congress fully informed, consistent with the War Powers Resolution," the president added.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973—also known as the War Powers Act—requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing troops to military action and limit such action to 60 days, with a 30-day withdrawal period, unless lawmakers declare war or issue an authorization for the use of military force.
Elected Democrats and legal experts have rejected Trump's argument that the negotiated ceasefire he's now abandoned resets the War Powers Resolution's 60-day limit; absent congressional authorization, the statutory clock generally starts from the first US strike and continues uninterrupted until military action ends.
Asked Monday by CNN's Kaitlan Collins if this is "just the new normal for the American people," Trump—who has called himself the "peace president"—replied, "No, well, you know, we were in Vietnam for 19 years; we're [in Iran] for four months."
Trump said during the same press conference that "we're doing another very major attack tonight" in Iran.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said Monday that US forces "began launching the third consecutive night of strikes against Iran, at the Commander in Chief's direction."
"These strikes will continue imposing a heavy cost on Iranian forces and degrade their ability to attack innocent civilians and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz," CENTCOM added.
Responding to the president's letter, former libertarian Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.) said on social media: "This is not how it works. The War Powers Resolution doesn’t give the president a 'free' 60 days—and the Constitution certainly doesn’t either. Regardless, we’re talking about a single war. You don’t get to pause it and then pretend it’s a different war."
Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) also took to social media, writing: "Trump said the war with Iran was over. He lied."
"Now he is telling Congress the United States is at war again—and claiming another 60 days to wage it without congressional approval," she added. "He cannot end a war on paper to dodge the law, then restart the clock when it suits him. No more lies. No more endless wars."
Aaron Fritschner, Rep. Don Beyer's (D-Va.) deputy chief of staff, said that Trump administration officials "may think the Congress and citizenry are extremely stupid, and they are mistaken," adding that the Iran War "is obviously illegal."
Foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen dragged what she described as "a forever war in 60-day increments."
Politico House leadership reporter Riley Rogerson asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) whether Democrats are planning on pursuing another war powers resolution like the one passed last month by both chambers of Congress aimed at blocking Trump's ability to keep attacking Iran.
"We have advanced multiple war powers resolutions up until this point, and we will continue to use every legislative tool available to end Donald Trump and the Republican reckless and costly war of choice in Iran," Jeffries replied.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular