Maryland Matters
Summary
Greg Barnett, a senior at Frostburg State University, grew up in Charles County and spent a lot of time visiting his grandfather in Washington, D.C., so Western Maryland is a different world for him. But he has come to love the mountains and the slower pace.
“It’s not city life,” he says. “I like that the area’s quiet. You can enjoy that the area’s quiet. It’s really beautiful. The air is so fresh.”
Until recently, Barnett had no idea that he was going to school in the heart of what had once been Maryland coal country. He doubts that many of the 5,600 students on campus know it, either.
“As a student at the university, I don’t think that’s something that I’ve ever heard anyone say,” Barnett concedes.
The far reaches of Western Maryland, including the hilly Frostburg State campus, are very much like the rest of Appalachia, where coal production has dominated the local economy for generations. But there’s very little evidence at Frostburg State that the university, which started in 1898 as a training school for teachers, later pitched itself as a place to educate the children of coal miners. In fact, visitors who approach the campus from the east, along Interstate 68, are greeted by the awe-inspiring view of wind turbines off on the horizon, which provides a different kind of impression — literally and figuratively — about the energy landscape in the region.
Not until Barnett began working to bring clean energy to the Frostburg State campus, in the early summer, did he realize that coal was once king in the region.
“In the short time I’ve been doing it, I’ve learned so much more about Frostburg,” he says.
Barnett is an intern for Optimize Renewables, a company based in Hagerstown that serves as an adviser on clean energy projects across the globe. Last year, Frostburg State won a $100,000 grant from the Maryland Energy Administration to explore the possibility of setting up a microgrid on campus, fueled by renewable energy. And university officials hired Optimize Renewables to help them in that effort.
The microgrid proposal itself, if it comes to fruition, is fairly modest in scope. University officials envision setting it up to power critical campus operations in case of a major electricity outage in the region.
But symbolically, the project means a lot, and also says a lot, about the university’s — and the region’s — clean energy ambitions.
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