A competition at the University of Texas in Austin is focusing on making campus buildings more energy-efficient. Given that this is the Offshore Technology Conference – Houston edition of Energy, we decided to take a look at it.
While the challenge has more to do with keeping buildings cool, this initiative would surely translate well to UK, and especially Scottish, universities where the challenge would be more about heat retention.
Graduate students participating in UT’s Competitive Energy Reduction project started their projects on April 1 with a view to completing within the month.
The project is sponsored by the UT chapter of Scientists & Engineers for America, whose mission is to ensure that government policy is based on scientific evidence.
The chapter was formed in January and, according to the university’s paper, The Daily Texan, is required to fulfil two projects that incorporate this semester’s theme of energy.
“After brainstorming, we started looking at lab equipment and identified buildings that used a lot of energy or that we could have an impact on,” said Jamie Vernon, a cell and molecular biology graduate student.
The competition put a five-member team at the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Building and another at the Sarah M. and Charles E. Seay Building.
Beginning on April 1, the teams spent two weeks coming up with strategies for implementing energy-conservation methods in their buildings.
UTakeCharge, an energy conservation programme adopted by the university, influenced the plan for conservation steps that influence people’s habits.
“UTakeCharge addresses hardware in campus buildings, but not necessarily the impact of occupant behaviour,” Vernon said.
“We realised that this was something we could do.”
One example of excess energy consumption is leaving computers on, Vernon said.
“With 40,000 computers on campus, you could save $40 (£30) per computer by implementing our techniques, amounting to a savings of over $1.5million (about £1.2million) in a year,” Vernon said.
The team at the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Building has focused on e-mails, flyers and face-to-face contact to encourage energy reduction among building occupants.
“Reactors, refrigerators, freezers, centrifuges and chemical hoods are all large pieces of equipment that people keep on and don’t think about,” said team leader Rebecca Knight, a plant biology graduate student.
“If people think about this for just two weeks, I predict that energy conservation may be significant.”
Vernon added: “This idea translates into policy. What we’ve provided is an opportunity to stimulate conversation about things such as air-conditioning, climate control and system-wide checks where there would be a regular policy of an audit system. People are taking ownership in their behaviour. It’s important to get scientists and engineers involved in the policy-making process.”
Energy would like to know whether such initiatives have been tried in Scottish/UK universities and what, if any, impact they have had.