We Conserve: Be the We

This column features the We Conserve program and its work on campus.

There are more than 4.8 million commercial and educational buildings in the United States. They consume more than $107 billion worth of energy each year and emit 28 percent of the country’s total greenhouse gases.

UW–Madison’s portion of this expenditure is more than $50 million. This is three times more than our annual budget for maintenance of campus buildings and one-tenth of the entire financial support the university receives from the state.

Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) for the 20 million square feet of campus buildings account for 70 percent of this energy usage. Every minute, more than 9 million cubic feet of outside air is brought into our buildings to be treated to provide a comfortable and safe working and learning environment for our 60,000 students, faculty, staff and visitors.

Although the nature of our university’s instructional and research activities make this high energy use a true “cost of doing business,” the importance of energy efficiency and conservation is not lost as a top priority for the campus. Between 2001 and 2006, more than $29 million was invested to improve the efficiency of the buildings’ energy-consuming equipment, which resulted in annual savings of more than $3 million. These efforts included installation or upgrade of the following:

• 200,000 high-efficiency fluorescent lights
• 10,000 occupancy sensors
• 2,000 premium efficiency motors
• 6,000 LED exit lights, and
• 643 direct digital controls on air-handling systems.

Under the banner of We Conserve, an analysis has been underway since 2006 to understand and rightsize the energy usage of the campus one building at a time. The results of this approach have been nothing short of astonishing:

• Chamberlin Hall: 70 percent energy reduction, $860,000 annual savings.
• Engineering Hall: 45 percent energy reduction, $740,000 annual savings, and
• Chemistry Building: 37 percent energy reduction, $750,000 annual savings.

Currently, energy audits and follow-up HVAC and lighting system upgrades of 11 major research buildings are in various stages of completion. The annual energy reduction realized from just these 11 projects is estimated to exceed 1 trillion BTUs, which is more than the combined annual energy usage at UW-Parkside, UW-Superior, UW–Green Bay, UW-River Falls and UW-Stout. The annual cost savings of these projects will exceed $10 million and will make the 20 percent energy reduction goal of the We Conserve initiative a reality.