• P3 is a partnership between the public and private sectors to achieve the mutual goals of economic prosperity while protecting the natural systems of the planet and providing a higher quality of life for its people. The P3 competition will provide grants to teams of college students to research, develop, and design sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. P3 highlights people, prosperity, and the planet – the three pillars of sustainability – as the next step beyond P2 or pollution prevention. Click the logo above to visit the official P3 website.

Our Goal:

• The vast majority of the scientific community now agrees that recent changes in global climate are anthropogenic and that burning fossil fuels is a major component of these human-induced climate changes (IPCC, 2003). Local sustainability will diminish the dependence of countries on foreign energy sources that leads to economic instability. Biodiesel is growing in availability and can combat the effects of fossil fuels on the environment and countries’ economies.

  In 2002, Middlebury College burned 1,685,000 gallons of #6 fuel oil, 142,000 gallons of #2 fuel oil, and 7,815 gallons of diesel fuel. The heating oils alone released over 22,000 tons of CO2 and 125 tons of other pollutants (Hand, 2004). Without many changes to the existing infrastructure at Middlebury we could burn biodiesel instead of the 1,842,630 of petroleum fuel drastically reducing the 22,000 tons of CO2 and 125 tons of other pollutants (Hand, 2004). It was our interest to examine whether this was chemically, economically and geographically feasible.