- The farm would reduce Pitt’s carbon footprint and is a significant step forward for sustainability.
- The Gaucho Solar project would produce a lot of jobs for the local community.
Pitt and Vesper Energy have partnered to build the 68-acre Gaucho Solar farm near the Pittsburgh International Airport. Pitt’s executive director of sustainability, Aurora Sharrard, said the farm would reduce Pitt’s carbon footprint and is a significant step forward for sustainability. Sharrard said, “Electricity consumption at the University, just representative of any organization, represents around 50% of our total greenhouse gas footprint. Cleaning the sources of our electricity and our other energy sources is very important. And so, strategies like this partnership with Vesper and otherwise are an important step in that process for what we’re doing at Pitt and what organizations and individuals are doing nationally and globally.”
The farm will produce 37,500 megawatts of electricity annually, meaning 18% of the Pittsburgh campus electricity will come from the solar farm, reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the University by 15,452 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to removing 3,330 fuel-burning cars from the roads. The solar farm will maintain a pollinator-friendly landscape with an observation area near the solar farm for University students to use for educational experiences is in the works. “We have coal, we have gas, we have nuclear, we have hydroelectric, we have solar. We have wind in the state,” Sanchez said. “So we’re pretty diversified in terms of what we have. There are pros and cons to each one of the production methods for energy, but for Pittsburgh, we’re still producing diversity.”
Tanner Whittington, the quality manager of the site, added that the Gaucho Solar project and other solar projects would produce a lot of jobs for the local community. He said, “It’s just a good opportunity. For this, we hire locally. So it’s a good opportunity to bring people in that may otherwise be looking for work. We’re currently getting close to around 25-30 people on site. Max will probably top out around 65-70.” According to Gary Newton, the site’s construction manager, solar farm installation is moving fast, with about 5996 posts installed 5 within a few weeks. The project is expected to be concluded in April of 2023.