Being green when I was in college meant recycling at most. But the students at Butte College in Oroville, California, will go a lot further, thanks to the Central Valley sunshine.

我在读大学的时候，说到环保最多就是把手边的东西重复利用。但是，位于美国加州奥洛维尔市巴特学院的学生走得更远，他们建造了巨大的太阳能电池阵列，靠着中央大峡谷的充沛阳光自给自足。

The college now hosts 25,000 photovoltaic panels on its campus, which includes a 928-acre wildlife refuge. Those solar panels will produce 6.5-million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. That's enough to power more than 9,000 US homes—and it's more than enough power for the college, even though it operates its own water system and sewage treatment facility.

该所学院的校园里，现在安置有2万5千块太阳能电池板。校园中还有一个占地928公顷的野生动物避难所。这些太阳能电池每年可以发电650万千瓦时，这些电力可以供应超过九千个美国家庭，足以满足校园用电的需求。现在巴特学院的一切用电都来自于太阳能，甚至还用这些电驱动学校自建的自来水和污水处理系统。

In effect, the college will be making more electricity from the sun than it needs and can send clean electricity back into California's grid. They call it being grid-positive. I'd call it a positive development in higher education.

实际上，学院利用太阳能发的电超过了自身需求，多余的电力汇入加州电网。有人称之为“回馈电网”，我更愿把它叫做高等教育的积极开发。

That's because the arrays will also allow Butte students to get real world training for the green jobs of tomorrow, much like the semiannual Solar Decathlon, which pits students from schools around the country against each other to design and build solar-powered houses. Oh, these crazy college types, what will they try next—saving the world from climate change?

因为，建造这些太阳能电池阵列可以让巴特学院的学生获得实际的工作经验，为他们以后从事环保工作打下基础。就像半年举办一次的太阳能十项全能比赛一样，给全国各地的学生提供了一个设计建造太阳能房屋和彼此较量机会。

嗯，这些学院的技术狂人下一步会干出什么事？——会不会是改善气候，挽救世界？敬请期待