SANTA PAULA, Calif. — A massive inferno descended upon a placid California college in 2017 that quickly became one of the largest, deadliest and most destructive wildfires in the state’s history. It was named the Thomas Fire, its moniker derived from the college that staved off the raging blaze, Thomas Aquinas College (TAC). Located in idyllic Santa Paula, about 55 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, the flames erupted a half mile from TAC and enclosed the campus, threatening to consume it.

Eventually, the fire scorched 280,000 acres in the region and 25 lives were tragically lost. TAC, however, was spared.

The inferno was ignited by a spark from a power line owned by Southern California Edison (SCE). Earlier this year, SCE settled with the federal government to pay $80 million in recovery costs.

“Since the fire, SCE regularly shuts down the electric grid when Santa Ana winds start blowing,” Thomas Kaiser, senior tutor (TAC’s term for professor) and alum (’75), told the Register.

In response to the catastrophic fire and frequent power outages grew a revolutionary plan hatched by TAC, culling together human ingenuity, cutting-edge energy management, and a general care for creation.

The result? TAC fell off the grid.

This year, TAC launched a groundbreaking alternative-energy program that has “all but eliminated its carbon footprint while saving $600,000 a year,” a May 7 TAC press release stated.

“This saving allows us to focus on other programs and initiatives within the college,” TAC President Paul O’Reilly told the Register.

The complex technological process was years in the making and involved major players in the clean energy, petroleum and natural-gas industries.

“Our initial thought was to go solar, wind and turbine,” Mark Kretschmer, TAC’s vice president of operations, told the Register.

But a concerned voice spoke up. Kaiser, who has a Ph.D. in biology, abhorred the idea of seas of solar panels dominating the picturesque campus landscape.

Kaiser put forth an alternative route: to utilize the resources of TAC’s neighbors. The region’s venerable oil and natural-gas industry remains a Southern California fixture. Adjacent to TAC is the oil and gas company Carbon California. Kaiser connected with a longtime acquaintance, Lawrence Youngblood, an electrical engineer with expertise in designing energy solutions. Youngblood also happened to be married to an alumna of TAC and was a onetime Chevron employee building natural-gas-powered generators at Chevron drilling sites in Africa and elsewhere.

“Noticing [years ago] that there were natural-gas lines traversing our property, [Youngblood] told me that if the college ever wanted to use natural gas for producing electricity, he could do it,” Kaiser told the Register.

“Now, in the wake of the Thomas Fire, might TAC procure a contract for free natural gas in perpetuity from Carbon California?” Youngblood wondered.

“We have a gas stream that comes out of the wells near the campus, and we’ve allowed the College to tap into that line,” said Carbon California President Scott Price in the May press release. That not only reduced Carbon California’s emissions but helped TAC meet its power needs.

In a state that prides itself on its climate policies — Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Catholic, was recently in Rome attending the Vatican’s climate-change summit — California imports more electricity than any other state. The energy required to power LA’s sprawling power grid comes courtesy of its neighboring states like Nevada and Arizona. In 2020, nearly half of its crude oil supply was imported from foreign countries, according to the California Energy Commission.

Enter Capstone Green Energy, a California-based gas turbine manufacturer. Capstone’s turbine “uses the most recent, best available control technology on the market,” Youmgblood said in the press release, referencing findings from the Air Quality Management District. “Rather than flaring at high emissions, we can burn gas using the turbine’s efficient combustion technology at much lower emissions,” Youngblood explained.

TAC’s energy project cost $4.5 million, an investment O’Reilly says will pay for itself within six years or less. An additional element was added to the ambitious project — the acquisition of a free, high-capacity Tesla battery, obtained from California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program. TAC is also exploring a partnership with SCE to sell surplus energy back to the grid.

The project was the first of its kind at an institution of higher learning in the United States.

It certainly was not lost on the TAC community that the project reflected the broader Church’s advocacy in caring for our common home. TAC’s Kretschmer cited the hallmark encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato Si, as a reference point to the college putting the call of caring for our common home into practice with its energy independence.

Such care for creation has been a human concern as far back as Genesis, O’Reilly remarked to the Register, recalling “human ecology” was an unsung theme of Pope Benedict’s papacy, a phrase the late pontiff first coined for the 2007 World Day of Peace. In Caritas in Veritate, Benedict’s 2009 encyclical, the Pope wrote:

“The Church has a responsibility towards creation and she must assert this responsibility in the public sphere. In so doing, she must defend not only earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to everyone. She must above all protect mankind from self-destruction. There is need for what might be called a human ecology, correctly understood. The deterioration of nature is in fact closely connected to the culture that shapes human coexistence: when “human ecology” is respected within society, environmental ecology also benefits.”

TAC is a pioneer in its steps towards energy independence — all this at a Catholic liberal arts college, not an energy engineering school like MIT, Stanford or Cal Poly Pomona.

It is an irony not lost on Lawrence Youngblood, who asked in the press release, “Why can’t TAC — which leads the way in Catholic liberal education — not also be the leader in implementing green technology as good stewards of God’s creation?”

“I’m impressed by the ingenuity and hard work that so many people put into this project, using the resources God and our neighbors have provided for us,” student Isabel Oleson (’25) said. “It seems providential to me that the college is able to channel energy that otherwise would be wasted to make the college energy self-sufficient.”