Efficiency

Energy Conservation

Look around your campus – chances are, you’ll see academic buildings where the lights are left on all night, students who don’t turn off their computer for weeks, buildings that are freezing in the summer and 80° in winter, and other ridiculous wastes of energy. But don’t get mad! Do something about it!

On this page, we provide a sampling of ways in which you can work to make your campus more energy efficient. Depending on the state of your campus, some of these may be more relevant than others. And feel free to be creative and add to this list – remember, energy conservation is largely about educating people and the more creative you are at doing that, the more effective it will be.

Energy efficient lighting & appliances

Switching to more efficient lighting and appliances may be more expensive initially, but money is almost always saved over the lifetime of the device. The most obvious first step is to make sure that your university purchases only fluorescent lighting. Fluorescent lightbulbs use only a third of the electricity of incandescent bulbs and they last ten times longer. Your university may also want to invest in motion-sensing lighting. This eliminates the problem of lights being left on all night since motion-sensing lights automatically shut off once the room is empty.

Another way to conserve energy is to replace all incandescent emergency exit signs with LED exit signs. These use less than one-tenth of the energy of an incandescent. Although exit signs may seem insignificant, remember that they are all on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Your university purchases appliances, including refrigerators, boilers, heat pumps, and many more. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Star program certifies products that are the most energy efficient. Convince your university to adopt a policy to only purchase Energy Star appliances. For more resources about energy efficient appliances for universities, see the Energy Star program’s website. In addition, many students may purchase small appliances (refrigerators, micro-fridges, etc) when they arrive on campus. If your university store sells appliances and lightbulbs, make sure they are Energy Star too!

To educate students about the importance of energy efficiency, you could work with your Housing Department to set up a model “green dorm room” in which all of the appliances are energy star and everything is as efficient as possible. This can be a great educational tool. To see how this project turned out at Tulane University, see: green.tulane.edu

Fume hood education

This is an often-overlooked possibility for an energy campaign. Fume hoods are used in chemistry and biology labs to exhaust fumes from hazardous chemicals outside the building. Because they are constantly pushing air out of the building and pumping in new air that must be heated or cooled, they use a significant amount of energy (by significant, I mean a few percent of the total campus energy budget!). Variable flow fume hoods allow the user to control the amount of air escaping through the hood (other types of hoods are on all the time). When the sash is closed on a variable flow hood, the hood uses about a tenth of the energy than it does when the sash is open. Educate lab users & remind them to close the sash!

Energy Competition

Encourage energy conservation among undergraduates by hosting an energy competition between dormitories. With a catchy title like “Do it in the dark!”, who wouldn’t want to participate? You will need to start several months in advance to make sure that the event is properly publicized and that the logistics of determining the winner of the competition has been worked out with the proper administrators (probably in the Facilities department). It might be easiest to have the competition run for one month and declare the winner to be the dormitory that reduced its energy consumption the most relative to the same month of the previous year. It’s best to have each dorm compete against how it did last year because some dorms may be more modern (and therefore more energy efficient) than others. Make sure the winning dorm gets a cool prize! For examples, see Tufts University: tufts.edu/tie/tci

Faculty/staff education

Encourage faculty, staff, and grad students to follow these energy conservation tips in their home. Also, encourage them to purchase renewable energy (see our info-sheet on “Renewable Energy Purchasing” campaigns for more details about how to find out about renewable resources in your area). Since there are so many faculty and staff at your university, educating all of those people can have a huge impact.
To approach faculty members, it may be best to start with a formal letter and then follow up with a personal meeting during their office hours. A lot of professors like to be involved in what students are excited about but just don’t know what’s going on.

For more ideas about how to implement an energy efficiency campaign, check out these ideas.

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