ACUPCC Annual Report: Campuses Modeling Behavior for External Communities

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

The new annual report for the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) is available now (PDF). It includes vignettes about successful projects on a wide variety of campuses, and describes efforts to facilitate using what has been learned on campus in local and regional communities.

The ACUPCC grew in impact, stature, and size in 2009. With 665 ACUPCC signatory schools by the end of 2009 and a 5400% growth since the launch of the program, the higher education sector is now the first in society to substantially commit to achieving carbon neutrality. Notably, 195 Community Colleges, where thousands of students are being trained for clean energy jobs, are now a part of the ACUPCC, with 29 having joined in 2009.
After completing their greenhouse gas inventories in 2008, the first cohort of signatories reached their next major milestone in 2009: the creation and public release of Climate Action Plans. The Plans, available online at the ACUPCC Reporting System, illustrate the specific steps schools are taking to reduce their emissions through strategies including: using renewable energy, improving energy efficiency, reducing waste, and improving public transportation options. Schools also outline in their Plans innovative ways they are re-orienting their educational offerings to prepare the approximately three million students who graduate each year from their institutions to meet the massive challenge of climate change.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Overcoming Obstacles to Going Green

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Writing in American School & University magazine, Mike Kennedy surveys the barriers to going green in the design, construction, and operation of education facilities. One of those barrier may be tradition:

"To come up with the most effective green strategies for a facility, designers have to determine how the various design elements interact with one another; a seemingly innocuous change in one feature can weaken the environmental benefits that other features are expected to provide.

"Architects need to bring in engineers earlier and work out issues such as artificial lighting, daylighting, heat loads," says Dordai.

It's what architects call "integrated project delivery." "It's everybody contributing — the whole team focusing on the whole building and coming up with one vision," says Dordai.

Such cooperation seems like common sense, but for architects and engineers used to working a certain way, it can be difficult to break old habits."

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

US Campuses Dig for Geothermal Energy

Sometimes it's lonely on campus, being a planner. Start planning now to attend higher education's premier planning conference for 2010, SCUP–45, July 10–14 in Minneapolis, where you can network and converse with more than 1,000 of your peers and colleagues.

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Geothermal just makes sense, where it makes sense. With only 5 buildings done out of the planned-for 18 to be upgraded to geothermal, the Theological Seminary in New York City already saved $200,000 in energy costs in the last year. A lot of schools, like Ball State University in Indiana, are building geothermal. BSU, with the charge led by SCUPer Bob Koester, is upgrading all 45 of its buildings and will save $2M per year. And dozens of schools are collected their portion of hundreds of millions of dollars in related federal grants, for construction and research.

So far this year, the Department of Energy has announced $400 million in grants to advance geothermal projects like those under way on a handful of campuses.

Geothermal technology has been around for decades, it works and it's increasingly affordable. At colleges that must maintain dozens of large buildings, the savings are magnified.

Those involved in the decision to pursue geothermal technology say they wanted to use less coal-fired power, although the schools also had to save money to justify the move.

Financing Approaches for Funding Renewable Energy Initiatives

Writing in Business Officer, Michael Philips and Lee White show us how it is still possible, even in the face of the financial crisis, to fund alternative energy projects. Their subheads are: Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, Governmental Purpose and Private Activity Bonds, Endowment Fund Loans, Private-Sector Tax Incentives, Performance Contracts, Renewable Energy Hedge Agreements, Power Prepayments, and Financing Energy Security.

Across the United States, an increasing number of higher education institutions are pursuing large-scale renewable energy projects, in some cases as part of their commitment to achieving carbon neutrality under the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment (www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org). While many projects benefit from some grant or gift funding, very few are funded exclusively this way.

So, where does the rest of the capital come from? What financing structures are available to institutions that want to install solar, wind, geothermal, or biomass systems that can generate a sizeable share of their campus energy needs? And, how can costs be lowered by structuring deals with private investors? What follows is an overview of some of the more common and emerging financing sources and structures for campus renewable energy projects.

Understanding More About Geothermal Systems

Even if you're not in facilities planning, you may want to be a bit more knowledgeable about "geothermal." If that's the case, this brief article by Bill Johnson (PDF), from Facilities Manager, is for you.

[T]he rising cost of energy has your institution focused on improving energy efficiency on campus. Now it’s up to you and your fellow campus facility managers to create mitigation strategies. One such strategy might be right there under your feet. Ground source geothermal energy enables us to tap into the earth’s stored renewable energy for heating and cooling facilities. Proper application of ground-source geothermal technology can have a dramatic impact on the efficiency and financial performance of building energy utilization (30%+). At the same time, using this alternative energy resource can provide significant contributions to an institution’s carbon reduction goals. How can you take advantage of this potential energy source to meet campus carbon footprint reduction goals, capital budgets, and return on investment?

This article reviews the state-of-the-practice and the kinds of engineering and programmatic expertise that are required to properly scale geothermal applications up to the institutional level and provide optimized benefits. Some pitfalls of poorly-designed systems are described, and approaches to avoid these are presented. But first, the big picture on geothermal systems.

Guest Blogger: Are American Colleges Living Labs for Renewable-Energy Use?

This first item was not a session at the AASHE conference, but is a guest blog post from AASHE staffer Niles Barnes on the "Buildings & Grounds" blog at the Chronicle:

What worries me is that I don’t see much happening with renewable-energy sources such as ocean thermal, ocean current, or tidal power. Is it cost that is holding back development of these and other potential resources?

I’m interested in hearing from others who may be involved in or know of other innovative and creative renewable-energy projects on campuses. What else is being studied, installed, or perhaps flying under the radar? Will the United States, through the leadership of colleges and universities, reach the goal of achieving all renewable electricity production by 2018, as Al Gore has advocated? Is there specific legislation that the next administration will need to support to encourage the development of the necessary infrastructure?

In 'Hot, Flat, and Crowded', Thomas Friedman Calls for a Green Energy Revolution

Many SCUPers enjoy Friedman's insights. Here is a brief review of his latest book, from Wired magazine:

Thomas Friedman is about to dive into the green-tech fray. In his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, the multi-Pulitzer-winning journalist says everyone needs to accept that oil will never be cheap again and that wasteful, polluting technologies cannot be tolerated. The last big innovation in energy production, he observes, was nuclear power half a century ago; since then the field has stagnated. "Do you know any industry in this country whose last major breakthrough was in 1955?" Friedman asks. According to the book, US pet food companies spent more on R&D last year than US utilities did. "The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stone," he says. Likewise, the climate-destroying fossil-fuel age will end only if we invent our way out of it. . . . Coming out months before the presidential election, Crowded is sure to bigfoot its way into the campaign. "McCain and Obama come from the right side of this debate," Friedman says. "They have the right instincts, but neither is quite there yet. They haven't yet thought it through fully." The battle over "green," he believes, will define the early 21st century just as the battle over "red" (Communism) defined the last half of the 20th.