Spotlight on Green Schools
Schools are focusing more and more heavily on cutting back on the energy they use and trying to reduce their impact on the environment. The articles on these pages spotlight individual campus energy conservation programs, energy initiatives, solar installations, energy-related technology, HVAC, research, grants, policy, and other topics related to green campuses.
A new international competition challenges college students--and particularly women--to come up with creative ways to save energy in five different sectors of city environments.
Reducing servers in the data center through virtualization saved so much money for Loyola University Chicago that the move paid for itself almost before the project was complete. At another Chicago institution, Saint Xavier University, annual virtualization savings from energy cuts and less hardware is estimated at some $7,500 a year--including not just a smaller utility bill, but fewer software licenses and greater efficiency.
Seattle Central Community College has entered into an agreement that will allow it to make improvements in its energy systems with no capital investment.
With the help of a Maryland state energy program, the University of Maryland, College Park is gearing up to deploy a 631 kilowatt solar rooftop installation.
A partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Massachusetts energy company to reduce electrical use on campus by 15 percent has surpassed the initial target a year after it was formed.
New York University has completed construction of an underground co-generation plant that's expected to save the university between $5 million and $8 million annually in energy costs.
Baltimore's Coppin State University is the site of a new 500 kilowatt photovoltaic plant that will go online this spring.
The EcoCAR competition is nearing its three-year end. Along the way students have gained an amazing education in hybrid vehicle design. But that's just the beginning.
A "smarter building" initiative is helping Bryant University in Smithfield, RI reduce its data center energy consumption by 15 percent. The project, which uses technology from both IBM and Schneider Electric, helps monitor and control building systems, including heating, ventilation, air conditioning, humidity, lighting, access control, video, and physical security.
University of California, Davis has lent its support to a new public-private climate-action alliance being promoted by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA recently flipped the switch on a new solar installation that has the capacity to generate 104.3 kilowatts of electricity.
With the help of a state jobs bill and a large renewable energy company, 21 school districts and eight community and technical colleges in Washington State are funding energy conservation projects that will help create local jobs and reduce utility costs.
Engineering students at Stanford have a new home. The university recently dedicated the Huang Engineering Center, which will house 270 faculty, staff, and students from the Management Science and Engineering, the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.
According to new research, energy efficiency is more important to college and university IT managers than ever. About three-quarters of all campuses have a program in place or in development to reduce energy consumption in IT, and most of those have already begun seeing cost savings from their efforts. But barriers to more widespread energy efficiency initiatives remain.
Santa Clara University has just gone live with a new 967.68 kilowatt solar energy system financed through Perpetual Energy Systems. Perpetual, a division of Alliant, funds renewable energy projects. The system, which is the second one added to the university's solar array, is expected to generate an estimated 1.42 million kW hours of energy in its first full year of operation.
