A year and a half ago, Chancellor Holden Thorp stood atop the green roof of Rams Head Plaza and announced that UNC would end its use of coal by 2020. It was an inspiring moment.

"Universities must lead the transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy," Thorp said.

The announcement catapulted UNC to the forefront of universities committed to a sustainable and clean energy future. James Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote, "UNC-Chapel Hill is a model for how students and a university can work together with a civil constructive approach to ending our national addiction to coal."

Much work, however, remains. UNC is testing cleaner fuel sources for the co-generation power plant in order to meet campus energy needs. In the interim, UNC also has committed to identify and purchase coal that is certified by a third party and comes from deep mines only, rather than the environmentally devastating practice of mountaintop removal mining.

One other step remains. Fossil fuel industries are sustained also by subsidies, financial investments of third parties, and externalizing the costs of production through pollution from coal plants, health impacts, and ecologically damaging coal mining. Institutional investments are a critical peg in this. Mutual funds, pension funds, universities and others invest billions of dollars in these companies.

If UNC wishes to be coal-free, it should explore its own potential involvement in helping to sustain this dirty business. It can do this by examining its $2.2 billion endowment, of which 7 percent to 8 percent is invested in energy and natural resources companies. How much of this money is invested in the coal industry? In coal mining? In coal-burning electric utilities? And, as "a model for how students and a university can work together," as Dr. Hansen said, this scrutiny should involve students as well as faculty, university administrators, alumni, and other experts.

Currently, coal represents one of the biggest public health and environmental threats in our nation. Air pollution from coal-fired power plants presents serious health risks to infants, children, pregnant women, the elderly and other at-risk individuals. Carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal are a leading contributor to global climate change. Yet, our financial investments continue to reward an increasingly precarious industry. "Coal is a dead man walking," the global head of asset management at Deutsche Bank said recently. "Banks won't finance them [coal power plants]. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them. ... And the economics to make it clean don't work" (Washington Post, Jan. 1, 2011).

UNC has an opportunity to lead the transition away from this dying industry by scrutinizing its investments in fossil fuel industries. Along with ending of coal in its co-gen plant, divesting its funds from the worst coal mining and coal burning companies in the nation would continue UNC's reputation as a leader in innovation and sustainability among its peers. Such a step would establish a bold precedent, and it would set a powerful example for UNC's peers.

Former Chancellor Chris Fordham faced a similar situation in 1986. Students had been expressing discontent with UNC's investment in companies that were associated with the apartheid regime in South Africa. In a courageous move, Fordham, in his own words, chose to "side with the students ... on a matter of principle" and ordered divestment of UNC's endowment from those companies. He later described that decision as one of the defining moments of his time as chancellor. It was, he said, a move that allowed the University to be "part of what turned out to be a reasonably effective and humane effort."

This time around, UNC has an opportunity, not only to be part of such an important initiative, but to lead it. When the University of North Carolina committed to ending its use of coal in 2010, more than a dozen other universities followed its example, pledging to phase out their own coal-burning plants. Now, UNC should open its investments to public scrutiny and set a further example by divesting from any energy corporations that mine, transport, or burn dirty coal. In doing so, UNC will continue to inscribe its name in history as one of the great leaders in a sustainable and clean world.