Saving energy pays off for Christopher Hall

Clayton Glazik 3/5/2014

Since we were little our parents have told us to turn off the lights after we leave a room. That is just what the Christopher Hall residents at the University of Illinois did in 2013. By shutting the lights off in rooms not in use, switching their lights to compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs, as well as other sustainable practices, the building was able to cut back its energy usage by 30.6% from the previous year.

The campus Facilities & Services (F&S) hosted a reception at Christopher Hall on February 14 to celebrate the building’s accomplishment in the F&S Energy Conservation Incentive Program (ECIP). A campus-wide sustainability effort, ECIP provides building upgrades to facilities that produce top energy conservation results in energy advancement and occupant action categories. ECIP calculates how much money the buildings are saving in energy reduction and gives it back to the building to pay for upgrades.

Christopher Hall, which houses the Family Resiliency Center (FRC), the Autism Program (TAP), several classrooms, faculty and staff offices, and a family research home, saved nearly $22,000. According to FRC Director Barbara Fiese, a building committee recommended investing the funds in a bike rack since so many people cycle to work, as well as other items that can further reduce energy usage.

In 2010, the University of Illinois published a climate action plan that set aggressive timeliness for reducing energy consumption on campus. Currently, there are more than 300 such active projects, which can be tracked at http://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/projects.

“At the end of the day, if we really want to meet ICAP goals, we have to do more,” says Al Stratman, F&S executive director. “That is why we came up with ECIP, which mirrors the campus goals.”

At the award ceremony, faculty and students pledged to continue reducing energy in their lifestyles by taking public transportation, using natural light in their offices rather than electricity, and shopping more at local food markets instead of commercial grocery stores. With their current sustainable practices and these recent pledges, Christopher Hall will continue slashing their energy consumption, making the Illinois campus a greener place.

(from Family Resiliency Center news http://illinois.edu/lb/article/3493/82438)

Libraries Win Energy Awards

Jan 23, 2014

The Energy Conservation Incentive Program (ECIP) at Illinois awards building upgrades on campus in facilities which have produced top energy conservation results. Each year eight campus buildings receive ECIP awards in two separate categories. Those selected have demonstrated the greatest percentage of energy conservation over a one-year period.

In 2013, three of eight awards went to Urbana campus libraries. The Undergraduate Library won 1st Place in the Occupant Action category; in the Energy Advancement category, the Main Library took 3rd Place while the Grainger Engineering Library took 4th Place. These libraries will work with the Utilities & Energy Services Division within Facilities & Services at the University to implement upgrades to their appearance or functionality.

The Energy Advancement category is for campus buildings whose energy reduction is the result of central funding from a significant energy conservation project. The Occupant Action category is for those buildings which have not benefited from such projects in the last fiscal year.

To learn more about the ECIP, please visit go.illinois.edu/ecip.

(from Library News at http://www.library.illinois.edu/news/ECIP2013.html)

From: "Rients, Seth M" <rients@illinois.edu> Date: November 4, 2013 at 2:13:15 PM  Cc: "Johnston, Morgan B" <mbjohnst@illinois.edu>, "Osby, Tracy L" <tosby@illinois.edu>, "Jacobson, Debra F" <djacobso@illinois.edu> Subject: Building Waste Stream Characterization                   I am pleased to announce that your building has been selected by Facilities and Services to be one of the four buildings in a pilot waste stream characterization study for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This study is designed in support of the campus wide Zero Waste policy which aims to increase the waste diversion rate to 75% by the year 2020. Facilities and Services has partnered with the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), a unit of the Prairie Research Institute at U of I, to perform this waste stream characterization study.                   ISTC will begin examining solid waste outflows from your building during the week of November 11th, for a period of one week. During this time all discarded materials from your building will be collected, sorted, weighed, and documented in an effort to create a baseline measurement for waste diversion activities. The first step in this process is to have a kickoff meeting at your facility so we can discuss in person any thoughts, cares, concerns, or questions that you may have. We would like to schedule a meeting for this Thursday, November 7th at 2 pm. This meeting shouldn’t last more than 30 minutes. Attached to this sheet you will find some questions and answers that have been previously asked of ISTC.   Thank you for your time,   Seth Rients, PSM Project Manager for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign waste characterization study Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (217) – 300 – 4494  

We take total energy usage by building (electricity, Steam, Nat Gas and Chilled Water) convert all of those to one common unit, MMBTU (million British Thermal Units) and after adjusting for the weather differences between years, compare each building's annual usage with the year before.  We then convert the change into a percentage and then rank all eligible buildings by percentage saved.  The top four in each category win first through fourth.     Having won in FY13 does not disqualify you from winning in the future.  The goal is to encourage individual contributions to saving energy.   Mike Marquissee

Seth Rients and Morgan Johnston met to review the scope of the work requested by F&S.  Seth noted that it would be great to have scales in trucks and a system for tracking where the waste materials are generated.  They also discussed the methodology details.  Where could the waste be sorted and weighed for each building?  Can each dumpster be collected individually during the week or two of the audit for that location and driven to the sorting site?  What level of sorting do we need to meet our plans?

Sixty-four lighting fixtures in a portion of the Roger Adams Laboratory were changed from T-12 fixtures to T-8 fixtures as part of the ICECF Lighting Retrofit. This will allow an Annual kWh Savings of 10,092 hours. The Simple Payback for changing the fixtures in the Roger Adams Laboratory is 2.01 years.

A total of 1,574 lighting fixtures in the Noyes Laboratory were changed from T-12 fixtures to T-8 fixtures as part of the ICECF Lighting Retrofit. This will allow an Annual kWh Savings of 276,264 hours. The Simple Payback for changing the fixtures in the Noyes Laboratory is 0.94 years.

A total of 629 lighting fixtures in Freer Hall were changed from T-12 fixtures to T-8 fixtures as part of the ICECF Lighting Retrofit. This will allow an Annual kWh Savings of 100,595 hours. The Simple Payback for changing the fixtures in Freer Hall is 2.49 years.

A total of 379 lighting fixtures in the Main Library (6th Stack) were changed from T-12 fixtures to T-8 fixtures as part of the ICECF Lighting Retrofit. This will allow an Annual kWh Savings of 55,547 hours. The Simple Payback for changing the fixtures in the Main Library (6th Stack) is 6.66 years.