This spring and into the fall, the school will have workers laying panels on three of the buildings on campus. There will be approximately 5,000 solar panels (about one-third at each site on campus).

"Each panel will generate 235W of power for a total of over 1MW of power to the campus. The Desert Studies Center will be a separate 51kW system and will completely power that entire complex," said Doug Kind, manager of commissioning and energy at the Physical Plant.

There are four locations on campus where the panels will be placed. The Kinesiology and Health Science building will have 1,680 panels. The Performing Arts Building will have 1,764 panels. The Eastside Parking Structure will also be joining in with 1,512 panels. There will also be panels installed off campus at the Desert Studies Center.

Kind said the long-term benefits of lowering the carbon footprint of the campus are approximately $8 million of savings over the 25-year life of the system.

"The system will remove a total of 16,000 tons of CO2 emissions for the campus over the 25-year life of the system. Currently, there is not an official monetary value to CO2 reductions," Kind said.

Kind also added that it is expected to happen in California fairly soon.

"If we used an average value for CO2 offsets, this would equate to an approximate value of an additional $1.5 million of savings to the campus that would bring the total value of the Solar PV Project to $9.5 million to the campus," Kind said.

Jay Bond, associate vice president for Facilities Management and campus architect, explained that the desire of CSUF regarding sustainability is to be as energy efficient and as sustainable of a campus as possible.

"We strive for that in all our projects," said Bond.

Another project is the campus lighting retrofit project that is currently underway. Willem van der Pol, director of the Physical Plant, estimated in an earlier article by Pamela McLaren that the changes in light bulbs, fixtures and lighting controls will bring CSUF to the forefront of lighting technology and make the campus approximately 20 percent more energy efficient than it is currently.

Kind said a major goal for the Fullerton campus was the very recent signing by President Milton Gordon of the President's Climate Commitment.

"The state of California via AB32 requires a 25 percent reduction in CO2 by 2020 with an 80 percent reduction by 2050," Kind said.

CSUF has two environmentally friendly projects planned for 2012 that relate to sustainability, the first being the lighting project which will reduce the campus energy usage and thereby reduce our CO2 emissions. The second is electric charging stations which will support electric vehicles by way of the provision of Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations.

Steve Robbins, 33, an engineering major, is very optimistic about solar panels for future buildings.

“I think solar panels are going to be used in the next 10 years at least throughout Southern California and other warm climate areas. In order for the panels to be cost effective, the climate in the area has to have a large majority of sunlight days," said Robbins.

Kind is excited about more efforts being made as a community to push other schools and businesses to follow suit.

According to Kind, CSUF is currently working with a student group called Green Campus to promote energy and sustainability goals on campus.

"Currently, we are working with other CSU campuses and other businesses to develop and improve their equipment to better meet the energy and sustainability goals of the campus. In fact, we have successfully partnered with three companies to develop brand new products and bring them not only to campus, but also to the public market as well," Kind said.