Installing solar panels
As I walked between the Engineering Building and the Science Building this afternoon, I heard the distinctive whine and rat-a-tat-tat of an air impact wrench. I turned around to see this!
This is not merely a solar PV installation.
In the Fall 2024 ENGR333 course, I asked my students “What should be the design of a Calvin solar farm?” The customer for their work was the university CFO. Together, the students, the customer, two other professors, and I did a deep re-thinking of long-held assumptions about the way some financial and university systems work.
First, we had to realize that every investment has financial and physical benefits. All investors, including university endowments, participate in “the market” to accrue financial benefits. But all investments find their way to investees who accrue physical benefits, say in the form of a new factory.
Second, Calvin had to re-envision the purpose of university endowments and how they operate. We asked ourselves the question “What if instead of investing in the market, we invest in ourselves by using endowment money to purchase and install solar panels?” We could get the financial benefits, sure, in the form of reduced electricity bills. But we could also accrue the physical benefits of reduced reliance on the grid and reduced CO2 emissions.
At the end of the semester, the students presented their findings for an engineering department seminar.
After the semester, several students made additional presentations to the board of trustees, challenging them, in the friendliest possible way, to use endowment money to invest in ourselves rather than the market. They were persuasive!
Calvin University will use electricity cost savings from the new solar panels to pay back the endowment with interest. Financial returns to the endowment will be less than a roaring year for the stock market but more consistent and never negative.
My hope is that Van Noord Arena is first of several roofs to be covered with new panels in the coming years.