Universities, colleges eye ways to lower energy usage

SYRACUSE — Whether it’s to help keep costs down or recruit new students, embracing energy efficiency is a hot topic on college campuses these days.

Colleges and universities spend an average of $1.95 per square foot on electricity and 15 cents on natural gas, according to a recent study, entitled “The Changing Energy Landscape and its Effect on College Campuses in the Northeast, from CHA Consulting, a unit of CHA (Clough Harbour & Associates). CHA is headquartered in Albany and operates an office in Syracuse.

Those energy costs have increased about 77 percent in the past decade, and the average university or college spends about $105,000 annually on energy costs for a 50,000-square-foot building. Multiply that by 15 buildings across a campus, and energy costs are a big concern, says Michael Tsakaloyannis, director of energy and infrastructure at CHA.

“There has been a lot more interest in energy conservation and some of it is for financial reasons,” Tsakaloyannis says. The other component is the changing attitude of students, who are concerned with things like how large a campus’s carbon footprint is or if the university has a climate action plan.

“We’ve seen that both of these factors are motivating colleges to upgrade,” he says. Firms such as CHA can assist universities with that process, he contends, starting with conducting studies to help campuses learn their energy-usage statistics and come up with a plan to implement effective conservation measures.

Those measures can include an array of projects, Tsakaloyannis says, ranging from lighting upgrades to large projects such as the combined heat and power plant that Cornell University installed following the 2009 release of its climate action plan. Cornell has a goal of reducing its carbon emissions to zero and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, and the 15 megawatt, combined heat and power plant has already reduced greenhouse emissions on campus by 32 percent, according to the CHA study.

“It’s a more efficient way of producing energy,” Tsakaloyannis says of the plant, which produces electricity and captures the “waste” heat generated during that process to utilize for campus heating requirements.

The project is so successful that other schools tour Cornell to learn more about it and see if a similar project would work on their campuses, he says.

Cornell has also taken things a step further and made energy conservation a lifestyle on campus through an online dashboard where anyone can monitor the energy usage in Cornell buildings and by hosting fun contests that promote a “greener” life on campus.

“When you educate and have that information out there, you will drive energy conservation,” Tsakaloyannis says. Typically, such efforts can yield between 2 percent and 5 percent additional reduction in consumption as people adopt conservation-friendly habits.

Whatever approaches a university decides to take, government and utility incentives are available to make projects more feasible, he adds. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) offers incentives to cover up to 50 percent of the cost for energy audits right on through to specific projects. In addition, many power companies offer an array of incentives to help make projects more affordable, Tsakaloyannis notes. “We’re all kind of in this situation of tough times and difficult budgets, so you have to use your resources wisely,” he says.

Headquartered in Albany, CHA (www.chacompanies.com) is an engineering and design firm. The company has offices across the state including Buffalo, Newburgh, New York City, Rochester, and Syracuse. CHA also has offices in Georgia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Vermont, North Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Missouri, Wisconsin, and South Carolina, along with a number of international locations.

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