KEELE University wants to go it alone and generate its own power.

It's claimed that a £20 million project could make the campus self-sufficient in energy.

While we must welcome this initiative as a laudable attempt to save money and reduce the university's carbon footprint, I'm not convinced that all the proposals are viable.

We're told, for example, that vegetable peelings could be used to create bio-gas fuel cells, whatever they are.

Unfortunately, I think I may have put my finger on a flaw in this particular wheeze: did you ever hear of a student peeling a spud?

Do you know a student who would recognise a potato in its natural state?

If you want to peel potatoes, you join the Army. Students have better things to do.

It's my guess that the vegetable peelings generated in the course of a week by Keele's 3,700 live-in students would struggle to power a pop-up toaster.

Then there's the idea of extracting methane gas from the acres of unmined coal that lies beneath Keele.

Surely, this would cost a fortune and create uproar among residents. If volunteers could be found among the student body to descend into the bowels of the earth and release some gas, perhaps digging coal while down there, considerable savings could be made.

Realistically, though, given the choice between watching The Jeremy Kyle Show and coal mining, I fear most students would choose the former.

Instead, bearing in mind the average undergraduate's fondness for beer and curries, the university authorities might consider harnessing methane from another source.

Installing solar panels across the campus ought not to create too much controversy, however, although it might not create too much heat either. But the great plan also dares to utter the dread words "wind turbine," a phrase that can turn normally placid country-dwellers into crazed, placard-wielding insurgents.

The proposal is to erect "a couple of turbines sited away from people's homes."

The moon or an uninhabited Pacific island might suit, but anywhere closer would lead to acts of civil disobedience and rioting in the streets.

Disguising the turbines as the posts at one end of the university rugby pitch might work for a while, but the propellers on top would be bound to arouse curiosity before long.

Another alternative energy source is said to lie in the five lakes near to Keele Hall, but I always understood that hydro-power required water to move.

The old mill stream powers the waterwheel, and dams are built to harness the power of rivers.

But mill streams and rivers flow, whereas lakes are virtually motionless. How do you harness the power of a static body of water?

I suspect all this will be horrendously expensive.

Why not just let the students themselves generate the power the campus needs?

Put undergraduates on treadmills, a thousand at a time, and allow them to work off their student loans by generating the energy to heat and light the campus.

Student power, a hitherto illusory concept, would finally be an emphatic reality.