Hello Campus Climateers!

Energy use and energy waste disproportionately impacts the environment. 

 

If you did not know this before, then it should be obvious after you look at the results of your first campus GHG inventory. Your campus’ energy addiction is responsible for the lion’s share of its carbon footprint. So you want to reduce GHG emissions? Then get serious about energy conservation! 

 

It’s my great pleasure this week to talk to you about one of my favorite subjects – campus energy conservation. This isn’t going to be about the technology that can be used to retrofit buildings. It’s going to about programmatic elements – which when combined like ingredients in a recipe will produce an effective campus energy conservation program.

 

In case some readers make a distinction between conservation and efficiency and like the latter better, let me explain that I use the terms pretty much interchangeably, and I like the term “energy conservation” better. One could say that energy conservation is about saving energy by giving things up, and energy efficiency is about saving energy by doing things smarter. I understand that and believe we need to do both . . . but I love the word conservation!  

 

What are the ingredients of an effective campus energy conservation program? It would be great if I could say there were 10. That’s a good even number. But I have given many talks over the years and defined 21 key ingredients – though it always took too much time to discuss all of them. Today I will offer 11. There really is no magic number.

 

1. Strong Program Leadership – It’s important to have an energy conservation program leader who focuses on identifying the sources of energy waste, developing energy conservation measures (ECMs) and projects, and catalyzing the whole campus-wide conservation effort. That person is the “energy officer.”   If you can give him or her a badge and some real authority, all the better. To accomplish much, your energy officer will need resources to work with and full backing from facilities leadership, your chief business officer, and the campus president.

 

2. Enhanced Energy Awareness – This program must be both multi-media and relentless. It should reach out to all parties on campus and enlist their help but it should also prioritize those who can do the most and target them. Who are they? Campus leadership, facilities directors and staff, resident students, building managers, your IT department. Energy awareness highlights the energy dollar savings potential of individual conserving actions but it also has a very strong environmental message – highlighting the role energy use and waste plays in climate change.

 

3. Aggressive Energy Conservation Policies – Energy policies are essential or else anything goes. The best time to develop them is during a campus budget crisis for obvious reasons. Many types of campus energy policies are possible including those which address: heating and cooling season temperature settings, building HVAC and fan operating schedules, computer operations and green computing opportunities, equipment purchasing standards (hopefully going beyond mere Energy Star-compliance), design standards for new construction, energy practices and policies for on-campus residents, and curtailment periods when campus use is minimal and energy shutdowns can be implemented.

 

4. Engaged Facilities Operations – Facilities management is key since facilities staff run the campus in the physical sense and thus control so much of the energy-consuming equipment on campus.    Facilities operations should have a standing energy conservation committee which meets monthly and is constantly developing projects and pushing the envelope to maximize conservation and wring out more savings. It is important your facilities unit be adequately staffed so it has the people power to quickly undertake projects in-house. Many facilities staffers are chomping on the bit to implement conservation measures. These good people need to be empowered, given the resources they need, and told to go do it!

 

5. Energy Smart Capital Improvement Program – Renovations and capital improvement are on-going activities that optimize campus space for educational and research purposes and keep up the property. Energy conservation must be built into capital programs so corners are not cut and opportunities not missed to make campus buildings as energy efficient as possible during the course of these upgrades.

 

6. Deliberately Targeting Worst Offenders – Every campus has them: the energy pigs! (No offense to pigs intended!) These are your most energy-intensive and wasteful buildings and energy systems. The worst offenders are typically lab buildings with lots of constantly-running outside air ventilation, electrically heated buildings, fans systems which operate at full tilt when actual loads are much less, old heating plants, and energy-wasting supercomputers. Target these with gusto!

 

7. Energy Performance Contracting – I am a believer in large comprehensive energy conservation projects which are implemented in partnership with energy service companies. These can be win-win. The ESCO makes money while your campus gets maybe ten years worth of energy conservation done in just a few years. Of course, there are better and worse ways of doing these projects -- and, yes, better and worse ESCOs! I will address performance contracts in detail in a future blog.

 

8. Green Computing – Supercomputers, large mainframe computers, and thousands of desktop computers use a lot of energy, so it is important to focus on green computing. Your IT department needs to step up and implement conservation measures in all of its operations. Faculty, students, and staff throughout the campus need to be required to implement power management features on their computers and SHUT OFF COMPUTERS when they leave for home!

 

 9. Incentives for Energy Conservation – The reality on most campuses is that energy is perceived as free because individuals, offices, and departments don’t pay (or even see) the energy bills. Explore creative ways of billing campus cost centers for the energy their operations consume. Or set up incentive programs that penalize or reward good energy saving behavior. Campuses are rife with split incentives where none of the dollar savings produced by conservation benefit those who expend dollars and effort to save that energy. Creative budgeting solutions can correct this – as can top-down mandates that say “do it – even if it doesn’t help your budget!”

 

10. Super Energy Efficient Planning and Green Design for New Construction – Let’s not keep shooting ourselves in the foot by continuing to build inefficient buildings that then must be retrofitted to achieve any measure of efficiency. Of course, the most energy conserving thing to do is not to build any more buildings. But if you are entertaining new construction, consider the lifecycle costs of inefficiency. Spending extra to maximize energy efficiency during construction will save those costs many times over during what maybe a 100 year lifespan of a new academic building. Forget about LEED Silver. Go for LEED Gold or Platinum and maximize the energy efficiency LEED points. Those are the really important points from a climate protection point of view.

 

11. Documentation of Savings – This is a key point though sometimes overlooked. Keep a log to document conservation projects and savings and publicize, publicize, publicize your accomplishments! 

 

In my first few years at the University at Buffalo – way back in the 1980s – we were going gangbusters on energy conservation, and we kept track of projects and savings. We found that in a five year period we saved so much energy that overall campus energy consumption had decreased despite the construction of six new campus buildings which increased the square footage of our campus by 20%. By tracking the energy numbers we learned that those six large buildings were running an entirely on energy conservation!  

 

Wow! 

 

It’s worth keeping track of your energy projects and their impacts so you don’t miss these exciting accomplishments.

 

There is a lot of power in energy conservation. And it may be more than you think because for each kilowatt hour or BTU saved on campus, a great many more are saved upstream bringing that energy to you. There’s a multiplier effect at work. That means even greater reductions in greenhouse gases!

 

For campus energy conservation program examples, see: http://www.aashe.org/resources/energy.php. This webpage includes links to numerous campus energy websites, energy plans and energy policies.

 

Hope this was helpful. Next week I’ll look at low cost/no cost operational energy savings.

 

‘till then climateers!

 

Walter Simpson

enconser@buffalo.edu

 

Walter Simpson, CEM, LEED AP, retired 26 year University at Buffalo Energy Officer and director of UB Green, is working with AASHE and the American College & University President’s Commitment to develop a climate action plan wiki which is expected to be initially posted in March 2009.