A new plan for sustainable development on campus was passed over summer. The plan will improve the University’s energy sustainability to reach a new goal of net zero increase in campus energy use from new development projects.
The Oregon Model for Sustainable Development, which was signed and approved by President Richard Lariviere last July, includes any new development already underway, as well as several other projects set to start within the next year.
All new development and landscaping projects that are subject to State Energy Efficiency Design (SEED)@@CE@@ will adhere to the University’s new plan, and achieve Leader in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)@@CE@@ gold certification. The Oregon Model has been drafted to address the unique characteristics of campus buildings and landscapes by concentrating on three main areas: energy, water and people.
“Anytime we build a new building on campus and we need to find additional energy sources to power it, we are not going to EWEB or Northwest Natural for that,” Sustainability Director Steve Mital said. “We are going to look internally.”
The University will achieve this by installing energy harvesting retrofits to older buildings, which deposit unused energy into a bank that other structures, new and old, can access.
The plan comes from the Office of Campus Planning and Real Estate, after internal pressure for a better plan concerning sustainable development. Roundtable discussions attended by faculty, engineers, architects, University staff and students, as well as a review of other universities’ sustainability models, contributed to the development of the new plan.
“Educated people were starting to realize that maybe the way we have been developing was not the best practice,” student and campus planning committee member Nathan Howard @@CE@@said.
Howard said the new plan is a confluence of policies stemming from the understanding that infrastructure on campus will at one point be antiquated, and the new plan addresses this issue in order to make new and old campus structures sustainable for decades to come.
The plan will not only commit the University to staying within the electricity budget, but it commits every building to meeting the Advanced Energy Threshold (AET), which entails being 35 percent@@http://uplan.uoregon.edu/subjects/Sustainability/OMSD/OMSDHomepage.htm@@ more efficient than Oregon code requires. This commitment is expected to conserve energy for use in other areas in order to stay within the new cap.
“I feel that it is an innovative idea, and we’re really proud of it and how unique it is,” Campus planning associate Christine Thompson@@CE@@ said.
The Oregon Model also focuses on the issue of storm water treatment that is affected by new development. New projects will be required to fund treatment of storm water run-off for an area equivalent to that of the project site’s total area.
All new development projects will also be required to fund educational training opportunities about the building or landscape. The goal of this is to shift occupant behavior to support energy sustainability through informational materials and training sessions that will educate people on new technologies used at the University to improve sustainability.
Sustainable technologies used on campus include solar energy, energy-generating workout ellipticals, composting services for food and paper, efficient outdoor lighting and one of the first instructional green organic chemistry labs in the country. Along with sustainable technologies, programs such as the energy usage competition between the University’s eight residence halls have also been implemented to inspire green behavior.
The model proposes that development costs be shared between individual building projects and central funding sources. The total cost of the 10-year model is estimated at approximately $10 million for 1.3 million square feet of development, but the central energy fund is expected to be replenished with savings from energy usage.