AFE July/August 2012 : Page 8

YOUR RESOURCE REDUCTION PROGRAM BY ED KIRK Eight ways educational institutions can create green energy programs while lowering utility costs here is growing pressure for educational institutions to “green” campus operations, reduce negative envi-ronmental impact, and to lower campus-wide utility costs. Th is is because energy use is directly tied to an institution’s carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions. Un-like buildings and capital equipment, where you can expect to reap the benefi t of your investment for years to come, energy and water purchases are consumed and benefi ted from only once. Unless an institution is blessed with a proactive energy management or sustainability team, its buildings are not likely to be very effi cient. Th e good news? Opportunities abound to reduce waste without negatively impacting operations. Many experts agree that energy and water reductions of more than 50 percent are readily achiev-able and cost eff ective using existing equipment and technologies. So, whether addressing existing buildings or constructing new ones, what does it take to reduce utilities on campuses? T Identify Your Baseline Identify what kinds of energy-and water-related equipment are used on your campus. Th ese items include boilers, chillers, air handlers, pumps, fans, lighting and occupant equipment. Th ey are the best places to locate opportunities for saving energy. Un-derstand what your institution’s carbon, greenhouse or energy re-duction goals are within a timeframe set to reach them, and what actual annual energy reductions would be needed to reach these goals. Use your meter consumption data to track your energy and water use over time and by location. Take time to understand your current culture toward budgeting, project development, and your operations and maintenance capabilities. Ask the following questions: What can the institution learn from the data? Where are the reduction opportunities? What equipment, controls, pro-cedures or behaviors off er the greatest reduction opportunities, and how can you convey this to decision-makers or stakeholders in ways that will move the organization toward its goals? ciency and conservation opportunities. Identify and meet with your operations, maintenance, and design teams, and your institution’s fi nancial and occupant stakeholders. You will need all of their support to implement any successful changes on a campus. Learn about the culture of project management and plant operations on your campus. Meet and talk with the staff or consultants who handle the day-to-day mechanics of the institution, including lighting, electrical, plumbing and build-ing design. Make sure to ask about the metrics used to achieve energy reductions and if they are working well or not. For example, is there still a fi rst-cost mentality causing enhancements that will save resources to be engineered out or has your organization already moved toward life-cycle cost (LCC) comparisons or a net present value method? Is your culture one that plays it safe, doing things the way they’ve al-ways done them? Is it a culture that encourages innovation and progressiveness throughout its facilities design and operations? Remember, most people do not like change and the uncertainty that comes with it. Managing this conservation of resources process thoughtfully, and in a way that engages stakeholders eff ectively, will improve your chances of success. Your Leadership’s Support Understand and seek out upper leadership’s support for sustainable resource reduction projects. Assure the upper management that your initiatives will not compromise comfort, productivity or safety in any way. However, you must convey that some of the changes will require additional resources and updated training of the institution’s design and operations personnel. When these initiatives reduce energy consumption, they will save money. However, you must remember, if these initiatives were easy to implement, your organization would already be doing them. Assist in draft ing a clear proposal and outline the goals you would like the upper managers to support. Creating a proposal will off er guidance and some clear goals and metrics to refer to later. Existing Culture Understand what your institution is currently doing well and what its challenges are. You may want the help of an outside energy expert to audit your operations, utility bills and meter readings, and help identify the locations where easy reductions are possible. A good evaluation will reveal clear effi -Sustainable Efforts Remember, to be successful, you need folks across your institution and at all levels to think innovatively and progressively about energy and water use reductions, and understand the common goals needed to achieve success. Every 8 July | August 2012 ■ Facilities Engineering Journal ■ www.AFE.org

Supercharging Your Resource Reduction Program

Ed Kirk

Eight ways educational institutions can create green energy programs while lowering utility costs There is growing pressure for educational institutions to “green” campus operations, reduce negative environmental impact, and to lower campus-wide utility costs. This is because energy use is directly tied to an institution’s carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions. Unlike buildings and capital equipment, where you can expect to reap the benefit of your investment for years to come, energy and water purchases are consumed and benefited from only once. Unless an institution is blessed with a proactive energy management or sustainability team, its buildings are not likely to be very efficient. The good news? Opportunities abound to reduce waste without negatively impacting operations. Many experts agree that energy and water reductions of more than 50 percent are readily achievable and cost effective using existing equipment and technologies. So, whether addressing existing buildings or constructing new ones, what does it take to reduce utilities on campuses? 1 Identify Your Baseline Identify what kinds of energy- and water-related equipment are used on your campus. These items include boilers, chillers, air handlers, pumps, fans, lighting and occupant equipment. They are the best places to locate opportunities for saving energy. Understand what your institution’s carbon, greenhouse or energy reduction goals are within a time frame set to reach them, and what actual annual energy reductions would be needed to reach these goals. Use your meter consumption data to track your energy and water use over time and by location. Take time to understand your current culture toward budgeting, project development, and your operations and maintenance capabilities. Ask the following questions: What can the institution learn from the data? Where are the reduction opportunities? What equipment, controls, procedures or behaviors off er the greatest reduction opportunities, and how can you convey this to decision-makers or stakeholders in ways that will move the organization toward its goals? 2 Existing Culture Understand what your institution is currently doing well and what its challenges are. You may want the help of an outside energy expert to audit your operations, utility bills and meter readings, and help identify the locations where easy reductions are possible. A good evaluation will reveal clear efficiency and conservation opportunities. Identify and meet with your operations, maintenance, and design teams, and your institution’s financial and occupant stakeholders. You will need all of their support to implement any successful changes on a campus. Learn about the culture of project management and plant operations on your campus. Meet and talk with the staff or consultants who handle the day-to-day mechanics of the institution, including lighting, electrical, plumbing and building design. Make sure to ask about the metrics used to achieve energy reductions and if they are working well or not. For example, is there still a first-cost mentality causing enhancements that will save resources to be engineered out or has your organization already moved toward life-cycle cost (LCC) comparisons or a net present value method? Is your culture one that plays it safe, doing things the way they’ve always done them? Is it a culture that encourages innovation and progressiveness throughout its facilities design and operations? Remember, most people do not like change and the uncertainty that comes with it. Managing this conservation of resources process thoughtfully, and in a way that engages stakeholders effectively, will improve your chances of success. 3 Your Leadership’s Support Understand and seek out upper leadership’s support for sustainable resource reduction projects. Assure the upper management that your initiatives will not compromise comfort, productivity or safety in any way. However, you must convey that some of the changes will require additional resources and updated training of the institution’s design and operations personnel. When these initiatives reduce energy consumption, they will save money. However, you must remember, if these initiatives were easy to implement, your organization would already be doing them. Assist in drafting a clear proposal and outline the goals you would like the upper managers to support. Creating a proposal will offer guidance and some clear goals and metrics to refer to later. 4 Sustainable Efforts Remember, to be successful, you need folks across your institution and at all levels to think innovatively and progressively about energy and water use reductions, and understand the common goals needed to achieve success. Every employee is important to any institution-wide sustainability and utility reduction effort. If no goals exist for energy, water, carbon or greenhouse gas reductions, seek out goals and metrics that resonate in your institution. Certainly you can also tie into the financial goals for the operations and the building code-driven energy maximums for your designers to focus on. Building code is now addressing minimum energy performance for buildings, and now contains a design element that brings lighting, electrical and HVAC systems to the forefront of design. To meet current code, designers can no longer install conventional, over sized systems that lack occupancy controls or energy recovery. Sustainable design doesn’t mean it is just better for the environment, it also needs to be cost effective, simple to understand and maintain, and provide a comfortable, productive and safe environment for all end users. Improvements must be financially sound and environmentally and socially sustainable in order to meet institution-wide approval. 5 Vision and Mission Where no clear energy or sustainability goals exist, establish a stakeholder group to create them. Use your institution’s vision statement and mission statement to help create new sustainability goals. Your goals should be measurable. They should have a rate of change target and a time frame to reach the goal. Create a formula for success. Think about the variables in your organization and apply them to your formula. What does it mean if your organization grows or shrinks, adds facilities or loses occupants? What if capital funds dry up, operating funds become tighter and revenues decrease…or the opposite occurs? Consider reporting and sharing the progress annually with your stakeholders. 6 Feedback You are looking for the small wins that will pay off over time. Identify the areas where no-cost or low-cost changes will save big. Don’t ask people to sacrifice. Pick projects that solve comfort complaints, safety concerns, or productivity issues, and find ways in those projects to save energy and water. Use these successful demonstration projects to train your existing design, project and maintenance staff on new code requirements, and your energy and water reduction goals. Make sure that financial metrics are understood and are being correctly implemented. Work with your design consultants on new construction and renovation projects so that they understand your new goals. You do not have to compromise budget, schedule or quality to achieve sustainable operational savings, but the design team needs to know about new goals early on. Incorporate LCC analysis into all value engineering and project cost-reduction decisions. 7 Change Management No one says it is easy to change institutional procedures, standards or cultures. But that is exactly what is needed to make energy reductions work. What can one person do? Well, a lot actually. Especially once you have upper management behind you and new goals for the institution. Understand the challenges that need to be overcome to allow designers to be comfortable with your efficiency and conservation goals. Repeat and reinforce the uncompromising values and goals that your institution has agreed on. Ally with the maintenance staff and understand their challenges. Help to make sure that any new, reduced energy systems don’t add unnecessary complexity or cost to equipment or controls, and that they don’t add to the maintenance staff ’s burden. Ask your maintenance staff lots of questions to understand why they do things the way they do, what they need to do their jobs better, and what their frustrations are. Help address all the operational needs without compromising energy efficiency or conservation. Get robustness, redundancy and reliability with modular right-sized systems, not with complex controls. Find the best and brightest designers to help guarantee the success of your projects and that all targets are hit. Measure results and share both the successes and the challenges. Identify and admit failures early, and take corrective measures quickly. 8 Dashboards and Smartphones These devices are revolutionizing building operations and maintenance. Have you ever seen the Prius dashboard energy monitor? It gives you easy-to-understand visual feedback for your actions at the gas pedal. Now take this concept and apply it to each building on your campus. Who is watching the building management and energy management systems and making adjustments to maintain comfort, but also optimizing performance and energy reduction? Have you implemented any optimization soft ware or persistent commissioning strategies to keep your equipment running optimally? Smartphones have apps for just about everything, and these apps are raising stakeholders’ expectations for excellent service and lowering their tolerance for substandard responsiveness. In conclusion, it is important to remember that the value of energy conservation is globally recognized as important both inside and outside of academic institutions. It also appeals to financial personnel, commercial facilities managers, operational leadership, consumers, employees and their employers. Don’t wait for your supervisor or university president to ask what you are doing to improve the financial, social or environmental sustainability of your institution. Think ahead and become a leader among your peers. Edward Kirk, LEED AP (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional by the U. S. Green Building Council), CEM (Certified Energy Manager by the Association for Energy Engineers), is the university energy engineer at Johns Hopkins University where he has worked since 2010. He has worked in facilities operations, construction and design for the past 25 years. He holds a B.S. in marine (mechanical systems) engineering from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and a master’s degree in environmental management and policy from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

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