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.
The California Energy Commission will be giving the University of California, Davis $3 million to coordinate the efforts of four statewide renewable energy programs.
With IT budgets shrinking and challenging economic conditions persisting, an increasing number of higher education institutions are being forced to do more with less. The University of Michigan-Flint, one of the university's two regional campuses, is no exception.
The Medical University of South Carolina Medical Center receives about 50,000 faxes every month. To save paper and the environment, improve efficiency, and avoid the pitfalls of paper-based filing systems, they moved to an outsourced electronic fax service. They've achieved their goals, and the staff and users are 'hooked' on the new service.
Victoria University is building a new, green data center with the help of IBM. The Australian university said it expects the data center to address its increasing data management needs for the next decade and save $300,000 in energy costs in the process.
Three Southern California campuses have installed solar systems from Solar Power Partners and are generating power. The solar systems include an 878.22 kilowatt (kW) system at the University of California, San Diego; a 357.32 kW system at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego; and a 238.68 kW system at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena.
Offering power savings, low emissions, and recycled materials, today's 'smart' classroom technology has an environmentally friendly edge.
Can colleges and universities afford to go green?
Yes, they can! Here's how to plan intelligently,
get everyone on board, and get that campus
sustainability initiative off the ground.
Richland Community College in Decatur, IL has launched a new biofuels track as part of its engineering technology program. The new offering is intended to help retrain and supplement victims of recent area industrial market layoffs.
Sun has released Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 3, a major update to the company's virtualization management suite. The new version includes expanded VMware support, Open Storage integration, and Active Directory support, among other enhancements.
A British university has selected a lecture capture platform from a Carnegie Mellon spinoff to help it deliver new distance learning classes on carbon footprinting.
A team of University of Cambridge engineering students is using software from Paris-based Dassault Systèmes to design a solar-powered car, nicknamed "Bethany," that they hope to race across Australia in 2009.
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has signed a deal with GreatPoint Energy to allow the company to use the campus' 60,000-square foot Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Center in Fall River to continue development of its technology.
Southern California's Anaheim University recently joined 614 other universities in signing the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. The commitment is a highly visible effort organizing college and university presidents and chancellors throughout the United States to address global warming by minimizing global warming emissions and providing education in an effort to achieve climate neutrality.
Butte College has turned on a massive set of solar panels from Mitsubishi Electric at its Oroville campus. The 2,400 185-watt Mitsubishi Electric solar modules, which wen live Feb. 18, occupy a sloping hillside near the community college's tennis courts, absorbing sunlight into the solar cells and converting it into electricity.
New York University (NYU) has finished a pilot of Telkonet SmartEnergy and has begun implementation of the centralized energy management system in dormitories.
