As a Top Ten finisher, EMU was awarded the grand prize of a one-year license to equip two buildings on campus with competition sponsor 鈥檚 energy monitoring hardware and software.

The accomplishment was particularly notable. “As a first-time participant, EMU placed solidly in the top 10 reducers, consuming 21% less electricity in just three weeks,鈥� said Lucid CEO Vladi Shunturov. 鈥淭he commitment from EMU鈥檚 students and staff is truly inspiring.”

The win is 鈥渁n affirmation of the 草莓社区’s long-running commitment to reducing our school’s energy use,鈥� said campus sustainability coordinator .

The end result of the CCN competition not only raised awareness about individual consumer habits, but resulted in a substantial savings of resources and finances. The competition monitored 1,374 buildings used by approximately 345,000 student, faculty and staff, and reported a total savings of 1.9 million kilowatt hours, 394,000 gallons of water, and $290,000.

According to the CCN website, this is the equivalent of removing 182 homes from the grid for one year, saving 1.5 million one-liter bottles of water, and averting 2.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide.

CCN, in its fifth year, is hosted by the at the , Lucid, the and the .

Campus ‘climate’ contributes

From March 8-28, ten campus buildings were monitored for energy usage. Roselawn came out on top with a 40.2 percent reduction, followed by Maplewood (39.7 percent) and Elmwood (37.3), Hartzler Library (28) and Cedarwood (23.2).

The results make sense to Lantz-Trissel: such as Roselawn, and the LEED-certified dormitories 鈥渁re carefully designed to heat and cool efficiently in small zones, where older buildings have fewer thermostats and less flexibility and response to users or outside temperature changes.鈥�

However, plays a large role in this success. 鈥淲e also have a strong community ethic to conserve and care for creation, which means in a competition the community responds to the challenge to reduce energy or recycle and EMU usually outperforms our peer schools.鈥�

, whose job is to implement energy management, efficiency and sustainability measures as EMU鈥檚 building automation coordinator, had some idea of how competitive faculty, staff and residents were getting when he heard some voicing disappointment during March that 鈥渢heir building wasn鈥檛 doing better.鈥�

That bodes well for next year, Sachs said, when he plans to implement a social media campaign to raise awareness and get more people involved.

The competition also includes regional sub-competitions, such as the Big Ten Unplugged, the New York Negawatt Challenge, the California State University Conservation League, and the Campus ConseRVAtion Nationals, featuring three Richmond area schools.

Sachs hopes to invite Shenandoah Valley area universities and colleges to compete next year. He鈥檚 also pondering a friendly rivalry among Mennonite colleges.

鈥淚t鈥檚 amazing to watch the influence of CCN continue to grow,鈥� said Chelsea Hodge, director of programs at Lucid. 鈥淓very year, more and more students and staff prove through CCN that they are committed to using behavior change tools to achieve short and long term reductions in their campuses鈥� carbon footprints.鈥�

Publicizing user habits

The grand prize of Lucid hardware and software will complement the monitoring system already present on campus, according to Sachs. Preliminary plans will enable a more public showcase of campus sustainability efforts, with television screens projecting constant data to building users.

鈥淲e were planning to place one monitor in the , which gets a lot of foot traffic and would be a nice feature for that building鈥檚 users,鈥� Sachs said, adding that he鈥檇 also like to track energy use and trends in the newly renovated building.

That feedback will help users adjust their behaviors, 鈥渕uch the same way a fitness monitoring app might help a person be more active, lose weight, or work to improve in a sport,鈥� says Lantz-Trissel. 鈥淏ut in just the same way as a fitness app, data monitoring is only so useful, and improvement is up to the habits and behaviors of the building’s occupants.鈥�

EMU has a history of engaging its competitive spirit towards sustainability efforts: the campus recently , and has .

Last year, the university was awarded a silver ranking by the , based on its sustainability initiatives in operations, curriculum, planning and other areas.

Committed to eco-great buildings

With the completion of renovations to in time for the Fall 2011 semester, all three residence halls surrounding the 鈥淲oods quad鈥� at EMU 鈥� Cedarwood, Elmwood and Maplewood 鈥� have been constructed or renovated to meet LEED Gold standards for environmental sustainability.

and residence halls have LEED 鈥淕old鈥� certifications from the , with the Gold certification for Maplewood pending in the winter of 2012.

As of July 2012, EMU鈥檚 two LEED Gold-certified buildings were among just 123 such residence halls on university campuses across the country. Besides the ones at EMU, there is just one other LEED Gold building on any Virginia university campus, according to the U.S. Green Building Council.

Cedarwood, built to replace the old Oakwood residence hall, opened in the fall of 2009 and was the first to receive the LEED Gold certification. Elmwood was renovated in time for the Spring 2011 semester.

Local and recycled materials

Green features of the residence halls include the use of numerous recycled materials, recycling of nearly all construction waste, high-efficiency lighting and plumbing fixtures, extensive natural lighting, low-VOC materials and an emphasis on locally sourced building materials.

Surrounding the buildings is landscaping with native plants that require no permanent irrigation system and the use of 鈥渂iorentention鈥� beds around the residence halls to control storm water runoff.

Highly efficient 鈥渧ariable refrigerant flow鈥� heat pump systems and other features like efficient exhaust systems afford the two dorms energy cost reductions of about 30 percent compared to conventional new construction. Additionally, after the first year of operation, electrical use in the dorms is more than 15 percent further below those projections.

Each room in the new residence halls is equipped with a switch that automatically turns off the room鈥檚 heat or AC when the windows are open, allowing students to let in fresh air without wasting climate-controlled air from the inside.

鈥淓ven though we鈥檝e upgraded these dorms and made them fully climate controlled, our energy use across campus has gone down,鈥� says , director of .

Reduced energy consumption

After the new constructions and renovation, says Kurtz, EMU added about 80,000 square feet of new air-conditioned space (none of the Woods dormitories were previously air-conditioned.) At the same time, the campus鈥� total electric and gas bill, which averaged an inflation-adjusted $572,000 per year between 1999 and 2008, fell to $519,000 for the 2011-2012 fiscal year 鈥� a 9 percent reduction in campus-wide energy costs since the overhaul of the Woods quad.

, an architecture firm based in Mishawaka, Indiana, designed all three buildings and worked with EMU to meet the stringent LEED standards.

From an energy consumption standpoint, heating, cooling and powering buildings on campus consumed about 45,000 British thermal units (Btu) per square foot of building space 鈥� a common way of measuring energy use 鈥� over the course of the 2011-2012 fiscal year. That鈥檚 a 26-percent improvement from 1999 to 2008, when EMU used a yearly average of 61,000 Btu per square foot across the entire campus.

EMU consumed about 49,000 Btu-per-square-foot on campus during the calendar year 2011, according to data from the , or APPA. The average figure that year for 38 American universities with enrollment between 1,000 and 2,000 students that participated in the APPA survey was 89,000 Btu per square foot.

Because of several concurrent sustainability initiatives on campus, however, including the , it is difficult to measure the precise impact of the dorms alone on EMU鈥檚 total energy use and cost.

A $6 million residence hall renovation project is under way at 草莓社区.

Environmental upgrades to both Elmwood and Maplewood dorms will modernize the building and be complete by summer 2011. (Photo by Marcy Gineris)

The project, funded through student rooming fees, will modernize Maplewood and Elmwood

residence halls, two of EMU’s oldest dorms.

Both buildings were built in 1963, says Eldon Kurtz, the university’s director of the physical plant.

The renovations will serve as a total overhaul for both buildings, Kurtz said.

“We feel like it’s more efficient to do a comprehensive renovation of the entire building when we do a renovation, rather than just address a particular concern,” he said.

Environmental upgrades

Improvements for both buildings will range from the addition of elevators and fire alarm and sprinkler systems, to new windows and larger lounges for students, Kurtz said.

The buildings also will have environmentally friendly heating and cooling systems installed, along with lighting and water fixtures, among other features, Kurtz said.

LEED certification

When renovations are finished, the university will most likely seek LEED certification for both dormitories, he said.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Certification comes from the U.S. Green Building Council and features four levels, based on the number and type of “green” related systems or designs used in the building process: Platinum, gold, silver and certified.

“I would be fairly confident that we’d be able to get silver,” Kurtz said.

Redesign of dorm quad

The renovation will also include aesthetic improvements, including a change to the buildings’ silhouettes, he said.

“We’re changing the roof line so that it has a pitched roof … so it will look like other dorms on the campus,” Kurtz said.

That includes Cedarwood, the university’s newest residence hall, which shares quad space with Elmwood and Maplewood, Kurtz said.

The roof lines of Elmwood and Maplewood will more closely match Cedarwood, EMU’s LEED-certified dorm that began housing students in 2009. (Photo by Marcy Gineris)

“When we’re done the intent is that those three buildings on that … quad will appear like they might have actually come from a similar era,” he said.

Work to finish by summer 2011

The first phase of the project, which began in May, is expected to be finished in December, Kurtz said.

“Our expectation is to have [Elmwood] completed about Christmas, and then the students that are in the other dorm will move over to the newly-renovated dorm,” he said. “Then we’ll start the process in [Maplewood].”

The entire project should be finished by next summer, he said.

More info

• Maplewood residence hall
• Elmwood residence hall
• EMU’s sustainability principles