**** IMPORTANT: Regardless of who you are, make sure to fill out this 15-second Google Form, which I'm using instead of this change.org petition because it can be more interactive and doesn't ask for donations. ****

 

Here's the old petition with the same information if you also want to sign this change.org petition: 

 

Petition to Create a Harper College Sustainability Fund

This is the petition for the Harper College District 512, including all or most of: Palatine, Arlington Heights, Schaumburg, Hoffman Estates, Barrington & Inverness. If you know anyone who is a student at Harper, please share this with them.

If you're signing this petition, make sure to sign the Harper rooftop solar petition: 

Introduction

Many colleges, including UIC and UIUC, have sustainability funds. This petition is one to demonstrate interest for Harper College to create the Harper Sustainability Fund. With this fund, we could install solar on Harper's roofs, build battery storage for the solar panels for usage during peak hours, replace non-LED lights with LEDs, expand the campus composting program, replace grass with native plants including prairie grasses, add EV charging stations, improve bicycle infrastructure and more, potentially based on student initiatives and interest. 

Who is affected by this?

The funding plan is to add a sustainability fee for all students. This fee affects all us students enrolled in Harper College and will affect prospective Harper College students as well as all students from now on. Families of these students would pay this fee once per semester.

What is at stake?

By ten years from now, Harper will not buy much electricity from the grid, which includes fossil fuel power plants. Instead, once the capital improvement project is complete, the community college will make its own electricity with solar power and battery storage for cloudy days. 

Why is now the time to act?

As of 2025, Illinois's electric grid runs on 15% renewable energy. The state aims to make that 40% by 2030, a 25% increase in just five years. We need to start installing solar now to help the state with its sustainability commitments.

The climate crisis is an existential crisis and is one of the most pressing problems of the 21st century. Feedback loops such as melted arctic permafrost releasing methane emissions which lead to more melted permafrost could take climate change outside of humanity's ability to act. All this is while the current Holocene extinction rate is 1000 times higher than it would have been without humans. We must act now!

How much do we need? 

(TODO: Research and find current prices. Aim for having two significant figures to be accurate to the nearest hundred thousand dollars.) 

Let's say that we want solar on every viable place on Harper's roofs by 2030, five years from now.

With 250,000 square feet of viable rooftop solar at Harper * 100 sq ft per 1 kW * $2.50 per 1 kw = $6.25 million total before incentives = $3.0 million total with incentives (TODO: don't make assumptions about this, include Harper's energy bills and go metric).

This means we need $600,000 per year. 

If we had a $10/semester fee for all Harper students with a $5/summer session fee, the initiative would raise: 13,500 students × $10/semester x 2 semesters/yr + 4,500 students * $5/summer session = $270,000 + $22,500 = $292,500 per year.

If we get Harper college to match sustainability fee revenue with capital funding, we could get it all completed by 2031!

Matching student sustainability fees will allow Harper to solarize all viable rooftops in five years instead of ten, cutting electricity costs sooner and demonstrating bold climate leadership.

After we pay for rooftop solar on all of Harper's roofs, we could build 2 MWh of batteries for the solar, allowing Harper to rely on solar during peak demand, avoiding peak demand charges on Harper's electricity bills. The system would store excess solar energy generated during the day and discharge it when demand and electricity rates are highest, maximizing the value of rooftop solar and supporting emergency preparedness.

The college could retrofit all its buildings to use LEDs only, which would drastically reduce electricity costs. Harper could additionally transform campus lawns into native meadows to increase biodiversity, reduce water runoff, and reduce spending on lawn care and irrigation needs.

Harper could use all its cost cost savings from the rooftop solar electricity generation, LEDs reducing electricity demand, reduced lawn care and irrigation on top of the $300,000/year fund to purchase renewable energy credits (RECs) and carbon offsets. 

The Harper Sustainability Fee could significantly expedite Harper's pathway to net zero carbon emissions from its current goal of 2053 by ten to fifteen years!

Who is involved in making this decision?

1. Harper College Student Government Association

The Student Government Association (SGA) is Harper's student government, which meets in the Student Senate in D157 on Mondays from 3 to 4:30 pm.

2. Harper College Sustainability Manager

The college's recently hired Sustainability Manager is tasked with collaborating with campus groups to integrate sustainability into college operations. They will serve as the faculty representative for college sustainability efforts.

3. Harper College Faculty Senate

Harper College Faculty Senate represents Harper's faculty. The group meets online twice a month on Thursdays starting at 12:30 pm.

4. Dr. Avis Proctor

Dr Avis Proctor is President of Harper College.

5. Harper College Board of Trustees

The Harper College Board of Trustees is the official board which approves any fees at "Regular Board Meetings" on the third Wednesday of each month at 6 pm at the Wojcik Conference Center Amphitheater (Building W).

Thank you so much for reading this petition! Make sure to share it with other members of the community with the QR code below because the more signatures we get, the more likely the Board of Trustees will consider starting this fund.