We've gone through this exercise with a number of higher education institutions for new construction as well as retrofits of existing buildings. I have not found a comprehensive source of data from other schools to reference but there are some isolated case studies out there. The Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) is also not very helpful because it groups Education as a single category. I'll be interested to see if anyone else can recommend a good source.

Instead, I would recommend looking at your existing stock of buildings as a reference. You know these buildings will have a similar academic calendar, they're in the same climate, and you can make a good comparison of space uses with your planned construction. Other standards like LEED or other recent new construction on campus can provide a sense for where targets can reasonably be set (e.g. percentage reduction in EUI).

Seth Jansen
Brendle Group

In Minnesota, any building constructed with funds from the Minnesota State Legislature follows Minnesota's Sustainable Building 2030 program (http://www.mn2030.umn.edu/). The program establishes energy performance targets for 44 different building types (http://www.mn2030.umn.edu/benchmarks_nc.html). The program is administered by the Center for Sustainable Building Research at the University of Minnesota. I'd recommend exploring the websites above and contacting the Center for more information.

Shane Stennes
Sustainability Coordinator
University of Minnesota

Thanks Seth. Your suggestion to look at our building stock as a reference point is a good one. So far have not come across any information sources other than CBECS.

Thanks Shane. We'll take a look at Minnesota websites.