ECO OLYMPICS
University of Illinois
Energy Conservation Competition
Think Globally....Act Locally!

ECO-OLYMPICS is an energy competition between 20+ residence halls on campus. 

Our goal is to engage, educate, and motivate students/employees/professors to change their behavior, and have a good time while doing it.

Eco-Olympics is part of a nationwide program called Campus Conservation Nationals 2014, as well as a mini Big Ten competition FMI: www.competetoreduce.org/ccn.  Trophies and prizes will be given to the successful halls.

What you can do to help:

• We need Building captains to organize a team of students to educate, promote, market, and motivate their residence hall.
• Each team will post flyers, hold meetings and create their own winning strategy designed to gain participation throughout the competition and save electricity.
• Register and put your team together (all team members need to register )
• Compete for coveted trophy and prizes 
• Make a difference in the world creating behavioral change for a better future.

You and your team members play a critical role in this incredible opportunity to make a difference in campus energy usage. 

This is the inaugural competition, so we will be creating a yearly tradition to leave behind and impact future students here at UIUC. The participants will also be able to include this on their resume as leadership, volunteering, team building and/or group participation. 

There will be meetings in March leading up to the competition that is scheduled for March 30-April 22, these meetings will train participants, go over the guidelines, and assign buildings to each team.

Thank you for your interest and participation in Eco Olympics, a Great opportunity making a difference locally and globally.

If you have any question I can be reached at gfoote2@illinois.edu

Competition Director

Paul Foote

In March 2014, F&S applied for funding from ICECF to support additional T12-T8 lighting retrofits.  The amount requested is $88,127.00.

• Structure
  
  • 10 students, 6 faculty, 6 staff
  • $1.1 million to distribute among student and faculty projects
    • Cleaner Energy Technologies fee
    • Sustainable Campus Environment fee
  • 4 Subcommittees
    • Executive
    •  Bylaws
    • Fines
    • Marketing
  • 6 topics – include more community input
    • Land
    • Energy
    • Food and waste
    • Education
    • Water
    • Transportation
• Strategic Impact
  
  • ICAP concerns  - fund projects that help UIUC reach ICAP goals
  • Projects that have no other method of funding.
• Process
  
  • Step 1: ideas get turned into specific requests and goals, submitted to SSC in application with project abstract and approximate funding needed.
  • Applications are reviewed and selected based on strategic impact goals, get invited to step 2…
  • Step 2: Specific logistics figured out, feasibility reports made
  • Step 3: Entire SSC votes
• SSC allocations
• Future goals
  
  • More student engagement
  • Expand outreach efforts
  • Get more student-driven project applications
• Some projects/organizations SSC has funded…
  
  • Green Observer
  • Bike Shop
  • Solar decathlon house

• RSO and YMCA program
• Publish 4x/year
  
  • Next issue comes out Monday, 3/17
  • In print at YMCA, Greg Hall, ACES library, Union, LAR (maybe)
• Mission
  
  • Inform students about environmental news
  • Provide students with platform to practice journalism and practice journalistic advocacy
    • Journalistic advocacy – choosing specific topics to write about, inherently advocating for those issues.
• Mutual Benefit
  
  • Goals to collaborate with other environmental organizations
    • Send press release about upcoming events (email Olivia Harris, oharris2@illinois.edu)
    • Co-sponsor events
    • Calendar function – google calendar with environmental events/talks/presentations

• 6 Project Groups
  
  • Earth Week Committee
    • Organize events for Earth week
    • Includes speakers, panels, movies, benefit concert
  • Education Project Group
    • Develop environmental curriculum to teach 4th and 5th graders
  • Florida Orchard Prairie (SSC funded)
    • Sustainable landscaping
  • Sustainable Food
    • Introduce ideas about food
    • Work with Student Sustainable Farm
    • Farmer’s Market
    • “group of friends talking about food”
  • Weatherization Committee
    • Design methods to make homes more efficient
    • Distribute packets of information and supplies
  •  Beyond Coal Committee
    • Stop UIUC from investing in “the filthy fifteen” coal companies
    • Design campaigns
• Past events
  
  • Powershift conference – social and educational events
  • Keystone XL rally
  • Sierra Club training
• Meetings
  
  • SECS – Wednesdays at 6:30p in YMCA
  • Beyond Coal – Thursdays at 8:00p in YMCA basement

Energy generation SWATeam 

Intros Ben McCall, Tim Mies, Nate Welch, Stephanie Lage, Drew O'Brien, Ben Beeber, Morgan Johnston, Mike Larson, and Scott Willenbrock (chair).   Scott did house and wants to work on changing campus.    BJM thanks. All busy people and really great that you are willing to participate in this. ISEE is newest incarnation of sustainability on campus. Have ear of administration. Set up personally by wise. Something she cares about. When I took the job in dec, obvious I can't do it alone. Mission is icap. Commitment we made in 2010 to move to climate neutrality by 2050. Very big challenge. Especially in energy generation. Also one on conservation and bldg standards.    Long term vision is to recommend policy changes to campus for how to move forward with sustainability across the campus. Don't have a mechanism in place for taking these recs and funding streams. At vc level soon to be at chancellor level. So starting with evaluate where we are now. This team can evaluate. And identify actions campus could take to meet 2015 goals. We should use the word could for now.    Once mechanism is set up, then can up charge the teams scope. Team can spawn studies Etc to make progress. Core group of six and ultimately surrounded by consultation group to feed in ideas info feedback. Also public input open sessions for whole campus.    Ben remember about ten hours per week. Org mtgs. Background research. Gather and synthesize info. Also faculty chair of group. BJM here to kick you off and let you go. Mostly won't need him cause he doesn't know enough to be an active participant to the group.    Specific deliverable. Short report or white paper before April 21. Discussions that week about campus sustainability. Prefer to have his talk vetted by a group of people. Also could have public discussions that week.    Larger role of SWATeams. Vision of iSEE will be essentially permanent teams. Annually reevaluate progress. Every five years review targets. Ongoing effort for campus. Really here at the beginning.    Scott. Trying to get mechanical engineering prof to join us.    Ben please set doodle for next week and then three weeks for now. That to be regular meeting time. Not going to meet spring break. Four working weeks to produce this report.   Verbatim from icap targets and strategies. Comments non judgemental. Just statements of fact. Here's where we are at. Just factual. Not criticism or applause just fact.    Solar farm. Sentence about timeline should be removed. Solar farm speculating about what's going to happen in the future is not really in our purview. Mike says, The project is in progress with a completion date not yet certain. Nate says this is significant land use. My group is interested in app. Sequestration infrastructure. Going to need a big pond. Rice production and similarities between that and algae. Co2 bubbling sequestration in ground. Have bubble size from a four year old study. From a large perspective there's a 20 acre demand in motion. So that's a feasible technology for rooftop and parking decks etc. Scott you are talking about stage two discussion. That's a later discussion. Are we accurately describing the campus.    By fy15 means what? Start or end. Generation by fy15. During fy15, 5% electricity from renewables. Compared to fy08 during that. If no further action what is destined to happen. Fy 14 is almost done.    So assessing where we are now and using that to see what could be done in fy15.   Drew. Talking about renewable energy certificates. Do recs count for the five percent? BJM. My understanding if you were to buy green power from wind farm. Buy recs separately from electrons. Would count per BJM.    UI is pre buying power through hedge program. Reverse auction in April for fy 15-17. Mike 15-25% pricing info and deciding ahead of time. Buying electrons and recs together. Spirit of docs is offsets should be last resort. Do what we can to reduce emissions themselves. And use offsets to meet targets. Recs are dirt cheap right now. drew sticky issue. What percentage would that bring us to? About 2%.    Tim solar projects decathlon houses? Feed into campus. I hotel. Solar charging batteries etc. All over the place. Ask Morgan for arrays on campus. Ask why it doesn't include solar decathlon houses? Two now another in progress. Tim will find out status of one at energy farm. Connected to Ameren. Paid by campus. Mike I hotel. Tim AG.    BJM 4. Cease all investment to increase the lifetime. Abott is doing maintenance and repairs to be able to use the assets. Scott AEI report in progress. BJM showed Scott a prelim draft. ICAP asked for the report to be done by 2012.  Mike can provide the exact dates. Has been going on over a year. He will give the PO info.    KCPA array. Size? Study impact. Want this to have an upside to it. Maybe slower than icap wanted. Should acknowledge the efforts being made. Nate to understand what's in motion currently. Mike can outline what we have tried. Study of biomass available in area. Test burn of wood hips. Tried to figure out how to burn Miscanthus. Have design for a biomass feed. Have coal stoker boilers. Set up for rocks. Try to put in leafy materials. Have a conceptual design. Have gone down a lot of paths none of which have been successful.   

Energy conservation SWATeam

Intros. Ben McCall, Darah Patel (USGBC), Josh Whitson, Karl Helmink, Stephanie Lage, Morgan Johnston, Claudia Szczepaniak (clerk), Claire Mcdonal, Brian Deal, Scott Willenbrock. Overlap with this group to attend as many as possible. Tight linkage between these two groups.    Brian. Sedac, icap core writer from 2010.   Ben: Thanks for coming. About iSEE. New on campus being treated equally to other institutes like Beckman and igb. Three missions. Educ and outreach and campus sustainability. Not possible to make such progress on sustainability on our campus. Or a lot if progress has been made. It wouldn't be possible for me to make a difference by myself. So formed teams.    I was told My job is to figure out how to implement the icap. SWATeams long lasting constantly reevaluating our progress strategies and goals. Long term version. To get there still need mechanisms for how to handle these recs. who would decide what is acceptable. Don't have that answered yet. Who will they answer to and who will they make recs to? Given that we don't have that framework we are kicking off this initial phase. To evaluate where the campus is and to identify what steps the campus could take. Not a should terminology at this time.    Brian. So the former executive council? Still valid? How to put something like that back together? Who is responsible for the implementation? F&S, iSEE, VCR, housing. Not yet decided.    Brian ISEE sits under VCR now right? Yes.  Working to identify the other faculty member. Six people are the core group of the SWATeam. Larger consultation team to provide input data and feedback. And future public input discussions for general campus community. Specific charge now is a short report summary of how we are doing wrt 2015 targets and goals. And actions to consider to help meet those goals.    In this team, good news story. Already exceeded the goals for conservation. May be other aspects of the strategies to consider etc. Brian says "Shut down the coal assets, Scott."   Claudia is getting class credit about ten hours per week. Clerks. Minutes. Logistics background research. Analysis. Etc. Faculty as the chair. Brian will be the chair. He asks if we still want to be part of it?   Brian says defer to josh and Karl. Karl says Kent had a Energy report from fy14.  Fy13 plus July.    The AEI master plan has three scenarios. Constant, historical growth rate and a doubling of the growth rate. Are you kidding me? What about this scenario? It isn't flat or growing. Per square foot. Do aft grow? In the icap we said you can't grow. Parallel discussion going on about formalizing the policy of space growth. Net zero by design. Well it may be even stronger than that. So much wasted space. Don't have space. Lincoln hall and natural history bldg went down at the same time. The idea was to set up a way to manage that.    These are the bigger picture questions about how to move forward in the long hall. For now evaluate how we have done for energy conservation and building standards. Josh can walk us through it. Rcx started July 07.  Not huge conservation efforts prior to that. Fy09 is when epc started. You can see how the BTU per sqft went down. Independent of petascale. Good news. Making good progress. Not weather normalized. Why up in fy13? Hot summer and lincoln hall.    In discussion about utility overall campus plan. Notice some small amounts of regression and not going backwards significantly. Improvements not maintained at the level they were. What about going back to the same buildings. Law of dimishing returns apply. Some bldgs are still hitting higher groups. Preventive maintenance to maintain the savings.    BJM recs to team to review the targets and strategies that are listed in the icap. Good to go through these and determine what happened. Per sq ft and actual. Implement decentralized energy billing. Charge colleges for energy use. Instead we have ECIP. Examine the items and what could be done.    Discussion of EUI vs total energy. Existing buildings. Uirp. Brian Don't have control over what they do. Have no say on what they do and what they build. Uirp pays for their energy. Same with auxiliaries operational control. Research stations. Allerton not operational control. Contiguous control. Operations at allerton are different. Pay their own bills. Outside operational control. Energy is not part of it.    It would be helpful for this team to clarify that point. How do we decide what counts? Dixon springs. Data from U&ES match that to the square footage. Don't count airport.    Define the scope. To compare. Need to set clear criteria to apply for whether something is under our operational control. Scott asked why include petascale. Carbon neutral petascale next time. The point is the cost of doing business. It should be built into the cost of it. Providing the power should be part of their internal costs. This is giant. Can't ignore it.    Need to identify the operational control. Contiguous doesn't make that much sense to me. Looking through EUI and sq ft etc is needed. Between now and when the group meets again, what should folks do? Become familiar with what we said in 2010.  Review it and bring questions.    Next meeting Friday is good.   

Scott Willenbrock provided the attached file as a starting discussion point for the team.

------------------

Dear committee members,

     Our first task is to evaluate progress towards reaching the iCAP fiscal year 2015 goals.  iCAP specifies various goals to be reached “by fiscal year 2015”, which means by July 1, 2014. 

      I have tried to summarize the progress, as I understand it, in two pages, attached to this email.   Some numbers I do not know, so I wrote XX.   We will discuss this summary at our first meeting on Thursday morning, among other things.

                Scott

Business students worked on a fictitious energy dashbaord company and created the attached marketing plan.  This document includes insight about potential behavior change strategies for the campus.

Craig H. Benson, the Director of Sustainability Research & Education, at University of Wisconsin-Madison, www.sustainability.wisc.edu contacted iSEE about potentially partnering on an EPS recycling program.

Intros. Ben McCall, Bart Bartels, Morgan Johnston, Olivia Webb, Guy Urugo (clerk), Dillip C. (faculty in business admin, Supply change management, Remanufacturing research, Happy to be here), Warren Lavey (wife with med school, Lawyer by training, Doing environmental progr work, American clean skies foundation in Washington, Focus on purchasing and using them to spur more clean markets and the sustainable leadership council), and Matt Murphy (Intern with green purpose in champaign).

Delighted that you've agreed to serve. Intro to iSEE. And SWATeams. Ben charged with figuring out how to make the icap happen. Quickly realized that it is impossible to have one person make much of an impact at all. So these six teams. Long term vision is these teams will provide recs to campus. Who do the recs go to and who decided what to approve. Discussion at vice chancellor and chancellor level happening now. So step one initial teams to evaluate where we are. And once it is decided where these teams report and how this process will work. The teams will be renewed to continue on.    Core team of six with a surrounding consultation group around campus. They wouldn't necessarily be involved on the heavy lifting that this group would do. Too large a group is hard to get anything done and too small is too difficult. And also public sessions for whole campus to come and give advice and feedback.    Right now fairly limited scope of SWATeam charge. We have missed a number of interim waste management goals already so Ben is declaring we will count everything before or by 2015 as a 2015 goal.    A report of assessing where we are.  Lavey - do we also have possibility of providing an action plan or expertise to bring our recs to adoption. Right now the team doesn't actually have authority to make those recs. but when the reporting / political issues are resolved, the long term program. Is there framework for developing data and reporting with respect to carbon footprint.    Bart-It is a component in our annual report to acupcc. It is in there and only based on the weights going off campus which may not be very complete.    Dillip. What format of a report? Are there milestones? BJM needs to report on it at earth week and he doesn't want to invent what to say. He wants a team of experts to present that. Vision is that one of the faculty members will serve as a chair of the group. How to move forward is up to this group.    Dillip says he should have read the icap first. BJM says there isn't a whole lot in there. Goal of 75%. Ricci report says we are at 84.5% now. That includes animal waste. But what is our personal waste diversion rate?   Discussion ensued about Marcus' report.   Janet Milbrandt hasn't responded about being on the team.    Lavey asked if there is any push on the vendor side. Bart said yes related to nitrile gloves. Explained the program Seth Rients started. If we charged an extra $1.80/box we could recycle them.  Lavey. What about recycled content of what we are buying? has there been one.    Bart had a conversation about recycled content paper. Ben noted that the BOT won't let us use recycled content paper for official business cards and letterhead.    Office award program could include sustainable 30% recycled content. BJM said they have an intern.    Ken Merrill told Bart they buy less than a truck a year at Central Stores.    Warren asks about the scope of their work. Smartway system seems like it fits within the context of saving energy and purchasing. But it is not prolly the way you think about Zero waste? Can we look at the sustainability of our suppliers? BJM encouraged to think about the charge as broadly as you can. But keep in mind we have a fairly limited scope at this time. Avoid "should" and use "could."     Olivia. We are a group of very passionate and highly connected people with a good opportunity to move this forward. How open is the admin to changing this doc formally? Or are they?   Five year revision is appropriate. Updating the document? Great support for that. How ambitious should the goals be? We won't know how far we can go until we try.    At a turning point. The iSEE is a direct action of the chancellor. A manifestation of her personal interest. Not easy. Need to build consensus.    Dillip. How easy will it be to get the data. ISEE can certainly help. Feel free to ask for what you need and guy and BJM will help figure out how to get it for you.  Bart. The decentralized nature of campus presents some difficulty. Ex gloves where are they getting it? Easier to ask vendor.  Purchase process.    The glove program is a pilot. Bart thinks that most of what we want to do will start with pilots.    Discussed chair and selected Warren. Olivia said we could also share the workload of setting agendas. BJM said yes the activist approach is needed, but there needs to be a nominal leader.    Olivia asked if we could make a list of issues. Bart read through Marcus' list of priorities. We recycle only #1 and 2, plastic bottles, paper and cardboard.  Olivia asked, What about specific items that are problem areas for purchasing? Is there a critical area for purchasing? BJM there is a lot of space.    Food. Locally sourced food. That's a different SWATeam working on that.    Cleaning products. Bart thinks There's a state program.             

Ben McCall noted this morning that Mike Bass has approved the agreement to move forward with selling our carbon emission reductions from FY12, FY13, and FY14 to Chevy.  The Contract/Agreement Routing Form (CARF) is being routed now.  The actual amount of funding will depend on the number of tons of CO2e-reduction we can count.  Ben is negotiating with Chevy’s representatives to exclude the increased emissions due to Petascale.  Once they agree on a quantity of emission reductions, the Chevy contacts will work with Mike Marquissee in F&S to explain the UI tracking system for energy use before they will confirm the figure.

Chevy’s explanation of the program is online here: http://www.chevrolet.com/culture/article/carbon-footprint-reduction.html.

See revised drafts.

E-Cyclemania

E-waste will be collected from 2-6 p.m. March 18 (Tuesday) as part of Recyclemania, a national competition to minimize waste and reduce the amount of material going to landfill. Three collection sites will be available: the Allen Hall circle drive, Ikenberry Commons at Euclid Avenue and the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center.

http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/greeninfrastructure/crw_challenge.cfm is a potential student competition program we could consider.

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)

Wednesday night marked the first ever involvement with RecycleMania on this campus, and our Illini basketball team were not the only winners that evening.  The event at the Illini-Nebraska basketball game was successful for all involved.  Over 100 student volunteers partnered with various campus organizations and departments to raise awareness about reducing our environmental impact, and to help divert recyclable materials from landfills. Our first attempt, encouraged by the competitive atmosphere of the game, enabled us to divert 31.5% of the waste from landfills. 

By weighing all of the event’s trash and recycling, a baseline data point was established and areas for improvement were identified.  While Illinois' ranking in the national RecycleMania competition won't be known until after March 30, the impact made on the community left many participants feeling like they made a difference and that our Basketball team were not the only winners that evening. 

If you have any questions contact Bart Bartels at bbartel@illinois.edu.

The first formal meeting with the Student Sustainability Leadership Council (SSLC) under iSEE's guidance was an introductory meeting about iSEE and the proposed iCAP SWATeams. 

The meeting was called by and coordinated by:

• Ben McCall – Associate Director for Campus Sustainability, iSEE
• Madhu Khanna – Associate Director for Education and Outreach, iSEE
• Nishant Makhijani – iSEE Intern, Vice - Chair Student Sustainability Committee

The key points discussed included an overview of iSEE's goals and structure, education and outreach plans, and an overview of the SWATeams.

From: Ben McCall
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 6:18 PM
To: Sealine, Alma R
Cc: Wolz, Kevin James; Lovell, Sarah Taylor; Ricci, Marcus Enrico; Nell, Marika Ruth; Tousignant, Teresa Marie Giardina; Johnston, Morgan B; Lage, Stephanie M
Subject: Re: Orchard Downs Multifunctional Landscape - Repackaged

Alma,

Can you make arrangements for this reimbursement?

Thanks,

Ben

On 02/25/2014 01:31 PM, Kevin Wolz wrote:

Ben, 

Sorry for the slow response. We appreciate your thorough and firm response. Our group will desist pursuing any project at Orchard Downs. 

We appreciate Ed's willingness to reimburse sunk costs. Total sunk costs (the amount of our grant that we spent under the assumption that everything was a go) for the project are $7,650.10. This amount can be reimbursed to the following CFOP: 

1-303692-802050-802502-802ORC

Thanks,

Kevin & the OD Team

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 5:01 PM, Ben McCall wrote:

Hi Kevin,

I'm afraid I do not have good news for you.  Ed seems to be firm in his position that this site is not acceptable because it may be needed for another purpose in the future, and the administration does not want to be "the bad guy" tearing out something that people have grown to love.  He remains open to consideration of other sites, but I understand that neither you nor the other involved parties are interested in pursuing other sites.  Ed did agree to reimburse any sunk costs.

You certainly have the prerogative to escalate this issue to higher levels of the administration, but my hunch is that such an effort is not likely to succeed.

I wish I had better news for you, and I am really sad to see this project evaporate.  One lesson I think we can learn from this experience is the importance of establishing a more thorough process for getting campus approval for SSC projects before they are funded.  I intend to discuss this with the SSC leadership and see how the Institute can be of service in preventing this sort of terrible situation from recurring.

Cheers,

Ben