One building gives the University of Washington most of the school’s sizeable impact on the global climate.
Inside the UW steam plant, boilers the size of school buses capture energy from burning natural gas. Just outside, a 20-story smokestack puffs out enough carbon dioxide from the boilers to make the university one of the state's biggest climate polluters.
Mark Kirschenbaum runs the plant. He opened a lid on a tiny glass window for a visiting reporter to see the flames whipping around inside one of the boilers.
“You're looking at a 2,000-degree flame,” Kirschenbaum said. “By the time this exhaust gas leaves the boiler, it's down to 200 degrees. That's fairly efficient. All that energy is transferred into the water to make steam, and that steam carries the heat to the buildings.”
