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( applause ) >> Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Thanks for being here.
It's my pleasure to be here. I have asked some of you to be
very nice to me today, because I am standing here, right?
But what I'm going to do today is to go through and give you
some background on the energy consumption profile of the
university facilities, and then tell you what we're doing about
reducing this consumption. If you have any questions
in the process, please ask. I don't know what the format is,
but I'm told that it's a very easygoing group here.
So, let me talk about energy here.
First of all, you're talking about water as part of our
conservation energy program. So last year, you'll notice
that we spent over $50 million in energy costs.
And approximately 40% of it is for electricity.
To give you a perspective of how much electricity that is, that's
400,000,000 Kilowatt hours. It's enough to meet the needs
of 30,000 good-sized homes. This is despite the fact that
in the past five years, especially the past five years,
we have spent over $29 million to improve the efficiency
of our facilities. And you will see all the things
that have been accomplished. And I had the honor of receiving
the national award for this. This is the envy of many
universities to be able to have these sort of things done.
The reason for this cost though, despite our conservation efforts
are very many. Some I have put up here.
One is that we keep growing this campus.
We have higher expectations. We have higher indoor
air quality standards. Plus, the most important one
is the skyrocketing fuel and electricity prices.
This graphs shows you, in the past five years,
the blue shows you the growth of the campus, sq. footage wise.
And the other bar shows you the cost of energy, so as you see,
our campus is seven percent larger than it used to be
five years ago, but our energy cost is 77% higher.
In one year alone, energy costs jumped by 24%.
And we really don't know what the future is going to bring.
So where do we use all this energy?
We use all 70% of this energy for providing heating, cooling
and ventilation for these campus buildings.
It's only five percent that goes to electricity for lighting.
And you can see the rest of it is for our plants,
for our laboratories. But 70% is heating and cooling
and ventilation. Laboratory buildings, obviously
they demand a lot more HVAC. Therefore, you see that
they are much higher users. This is an interesting
graph here. This shows is December '04.
This is typical of any month. This shows you our electricity
consumption patterns. So right here
is a Monday morning, 3:00am. That's a Monday afternoon
3:00pm, Tuesday, Wednesday. These two little guys
are weekends. So right there,
that's Christmas Eve. You could not find a dog walking
on these streets. We are using close to
30 Megawatts of electricity on this campus.
This is very important, because this tells you that how much
of our consumption is because people doing work on campus
and how much of it is to keep the campus running.
In this area, there are over 10,000 electric motors
running continuously. So, this is what it takes
to use $50 million of energy. But you know, I talk about
money, the reality is that money is just part of it.
In my personal opinion, high prices is a good thing,
because it's causing everybody's attention to deal with this
huge issue, because we have-- There are many other factors
here, as you know. We put out 25% of the greenhouse
gases produced in the world, but we only have four percent
of the population. So I am not going to go in
there to talk about global warming, but I have put some
slides here for you to tell you what the other impacts are.
Today, I heard on the radio that 2007 has tied the record
for hottest year. And you are seeing what's
going on here, basically. I'm not going to read through
this, but right there in Montana, Glacier National Park,
there are only 27 glaciers now versus 150 in 1910.
This has health impacts. This is heaven for mosquitoes.
They love it. And as a result, there is
going to be a lot of problems if this trend continues.
Economic factors are huge. The estimates are that this is
going to cost the world up to $20 trillion by year 2100.
And it's just a costly proposition if we keep going
with this global warming business.
Ecosystem impacts are huge. Right here, it says polar bears,
they're having two weeks less for hunting season, as a result
they're losing weight. And security impacts are huge.
As people run out of water and land to farm, they're going
to migrate to other places. That's going to create tension.
So there are a lot of realities out there that I think
we have to accept as security, international
or national security. And the impact on human rights.
You know, we're sitting here, lights are on,
computers and everything. People who are suffering
as a result of this are the people that don't know
what lights are, perhaps, but computers are,
or what air conditioning is. And when those people
are suffering, then the world is going to be a worse place.
The top number is that they're talking about refugees around
the world will top one billion by 2050.
That's one out of six people. And other impacts, perhaps more
important, are-- my favorite is wine.
Wine is not going to taste the same, because of the heat
and the patterns of flavor development in the grapes
versus alcohol content. So what we really need to do
as a society, and I look at UW-Madison as a society
of 60,000 people. If you take UW-Madison
from Madison and land it somewhere else
in the state of Wisconsin. you're looking at the sixth
or eighth largest city in the state of Wisconsin.
So it's a huge community. And therefore, what we really
need to do is to demand and promote accountability.
And we do have choices. Our lifestyles, our choice of
type of fuel that we use, and more importantly,
is the last point in my opinion. We may not agree or disagree
with the existing policies, but we are generating the future
leaders of the world. And those people need to be
conscious about this issue. And we also have something
going for us, and that is the current environment.
Energy crisis have hit every home, so people are aware
of this thing. Iraq war has made a difference
in there. The fact is that energy costs
are competing with other funds for the university,
and the university community is demanding a lot more
accountability in this, so the atmosphere is ripe to deal with
some of these issues. So, the University, about a
year and a half ago, decided that we would actually have
a more aggressive energy conservation program
for the campus. So therefore, we set up
the "We Conserve" program. Some of you have seen the signs
on the buildings and everything, but this campaign basically has
two goals. Goal number one is to instill
the energy conservation spirit in the community's
consciousness. And this is not
just UW-Madison community. It's whatever you wish
to define it. The second goal is to
reduce energy consumption, per square footage, by 20%
by the year 2010. So to tell you how daunting of
a task this is, I'll leave that one for your imagination,
how are we going to get people to really care
and change their minds. But this one here, if you
turn all the lights off on this campus permanently,
if you unplug all the computers on this campus permanently,
and if you remove all the laboratory equipment
on this campus permanently, you're not close
to 20% reduction, okay? So that's to give you
a perspective of what 20% is. So, the issue
is not just these signs. You've seen some of these signs,
and the strategy on these signs is not to say conserve energy,
it's to promote some kind of a conversation about this, okay?
So, I don't know how many of you know what Gaia is.
Gaia is basically the Greek "Mother Earth."
I'm just going to walk through some of these things.
They're on the buildings.
This one, when we put it up I wasn't sure if I was going to
have a job the next day or not. ( laughter )
And this actually has created a lot of questions, because
people are questioning how they should read this.
And that's the intent, a conversation about this issue.
So, our campaign basically, in order to meet our goals,
there are four principles that have to take place here.
And I call them the four legs of the table.
To reach our goals we have to have efficient systems,
informed people, realistic expectations,
and responsible actions. Those are the four legs
of the table. One without the other, we're not
going to produce the results the way we should.
So, for each one of these, there are certain strategies
that we put together and certain activities for each strategy.
Let me stop here and see if I can answer any questions,
or get a feedback of how I'm doing so far.
When you're talking about lab equipment, you know,
does that include fume hoods? Even if you shut down
all the fume hoods? >> No, no, no.
Let me ask if all of the buildings, or many of the
buildings are outfitted with the solar panels?
No, none of them are. To give you information on that,
in Madison area, officially we have 129 days of sunny days,
the rest are not. And when you look at the cost
of installing these solar panels and the cost benefit analysis,
basically it puts this thing at almost four times more expensive
than buying the electricity. So, that's why it's not
happening. Ma'am?
Isn't that part of the cost that we have to take on now
for the future? I mean, isn't that part
of the cost we need to pay to get where we need to get?
Philosophically, you're absolutely correct.
There is no question on that. But there may be other options
that are easier to do and more productive.
So in this climate, I would not promote necessarily
solar panels, but I would promote wind farm, okay?
Can you put a wind turbine up on the roof?
It has got to be a lot bigger than that, so I think
we need to get a farm first. But you know, it's a big
operation, but it's completely doable, completely doable.
And when I say solar panels like in Germany.
I saw a documentary. They have gone really big
on this thing. All the interstates, they have
it so sun is hitting it, and so, but it's a huge investment.
And there may be a lower hanging fruit for our solutions.
But I think you're absolutely right.
Philosophically, we need to do that.
Okay, so I'm going to go through our process here.
So let's talk about efficient systems.
What I mean by that is that we need to insist on smart designs.
Unfortunately, when we design buildings on the campus here,
we look for buildings that look beautiful.
Each architect, this is their opportunity to put their legacy
in the history book. And therefore, everyone wants
it nice, and big, and open, and lots of glass,
and lots of this. As a result we end up
consuming a lot more energy than we should.
The other thing that has been going on here, is when they
build buildings in this campus 100 years ago, those buildings
are still standing very well. But the problem is that these
buildings were designed for specific activities,
let's say laboratory. A laboratory from 1950-1970
did not change in its requirements.
But now, laboratories are not the same laboratories
as even five years ago. So design has to also
be something that is flexible for the programmatic needs.
And it also needs to be maintainable.
I have some pictures here, I'm not going to show today,
but I had some pictures where you'd really laugh.
Maybe at the end of this thing, I'll show those pictures to you.
You have to be -- to get into some of these
things, to be able to just maintain it,
but it looks beautiful. So, therefore we did it.
That is one issue that philosophically is a mind change
that we have to have. Now, right now in this campus,
there is over $700 million of construction taking place,
another $600-$700 million is in design, so we're
talking about $1.5 billion of construction
that is going to happen in one form or the other.
Some of those buildings are going to be energy efficient,
but some, I think we woke up a little late
to deal with the issues clearly. Ma'am?
Do you know if the new discovery center is?
It's going to be a very smart building.
It's going to be highly ranked from a lead point of view.
So yes, yes. For the building that it is,
it's going to be very efficient, yes.
It's an excellent start, an excellent start.
So efficient system also means efficient equipment.
This is where we have done very well.
This is where most of that $29 million,
went into this category. We have gone over and replaced
over 200,000 light bulbs. We have over 10,000 rooms
that have occupancy sensors, and you see that basically.
So, we're doing pretty good in that area, compared to others
in my opinion. And energy saving devices
are in the same category here. We have 10,000 occupancy
sensors, as I mentioned. We have many buildings
that are old. Even those are shot.
And if you replace a window because of energy conservation,
it has a perhaps a 40-year payback.
So what we've done is we've gone through these buildings.
So you walk into a building, and all the windows are open,
we are air conditioning the great outdoors.
And in the wintertime, there is such infiltration, because the
old windows and leaky windows, that when you hang the filter,
the curtain stands here in the middle of the window.
So we fabricated these panels that go from inside.
It makes the window shut permanently, but we create
a double layer situation there. For $250, we can do that
per window. So we've installed
over 8,500 of those so far, which has proven to be
a very good idea. But those are the things
that we need to be doing here. In the area of
re-commissioning, you know this is very important
for me to say, because without this particular strategy here,
it is impossible for us to reach our 20% goal.
This is where we go through buildings, room by room,
and actually decide what their needs are
from an energy point of view. And then we address the building
systems to provide that. John, sitting here,
is from our safety department. He has been assisting us.
So we go through these laboratories, he decides what
level of hazards this activities are going on here.
So with that, he gives us a ranking.
Then our engineers analyze it to see how we can reduce the
amount of air going in there. In Engineering Hall,
which I assume most of you are familiar with.
Engineering Hall alone, this process has identified over
$650,000 of savings per year. That's a big number when you
have $2 million of energy costs for that building,
that's almost 40% reduction. We also have to utilize
technology here. Technology is a double-edged
sword. If you are going to have
technology in place, you're going to put all these
sophisticated controls and sophisticated solutions,
then you have to have sophisticated staff
and sophisticated money to maintain it.
But assuming that you do, there is a lot of potential out there.
In Chamberlin Hall, VAV stands for "Variable Air
Volume System," where basically, it's the same amount
of air coming into your room. It's controlled based on the
occupancy, and that type of stuff, so we send the right
amount of air, as needed, basically.
With that process, and being able to schedule unoccupied
periods, we are talking about reducing consumption
in Chamberlin Hall alone by $850,000 a year.
This is how we're going to get to our 20% goal.
And 20% goal on $50 million, you're talking about
$10 million savings, okay. We also have to practice
better maintenance. Our maintenance budget
is not what it should be. One of my responsibilities
for the campus, I should introduce myself a little bit
at this point. What I do, I'm responsible for
the maintenance of the campus, in-house remodeling activities
of the campus buildings, production of utilities
and distribution of utilities, energy conservation
and fleet management. The maintenance aspect
of our operation here costs us about $14 million a year.
That's in the budget that we have.
That is feeding an elephant with a teaspoon, in reality,
because to do this thing right, it takes a lot more.
But everybody's caught in the budget problems and everything.
So we do need to have specific programs, and we also
need to have better control on our design
and construction processes. These new buildings are
finished, they look beautiful, and then we go discover
that there are problems. So we have programs
to improve that in a major way. So, the second principle
is to have informed people, and I don't mean to have
informed people as informed students,
informed faculty. The informed everything.
The concept of information has to be part of this thing.
We have to analyze the reality that this is a $50 million
business, so you've got to run it like a business
and think of it in that sense. So therefore, we need to have
everyone involved. So the first thing is we need
to involve all the stakeholders, whether they are administrators,
alumni, Department of Administration,
legislature, whatever it is. We have to create some kind of
a team that thinks the same way. And one of the things that
high costs has created is people have come together
closer on these agendas, but we have a long way to go.
We also have to invoke values and convictions.
There are not going to be many people that you run into that
would say energy conservation is not the right thing to do.
That's not the question. The issue is what is their
reason to conserve energy. As a director of this program,
I really don't care what their reason is.
Their reason could be to save money.
It could be the environment. It could be the polar bear.
It could be social justice. Whatever it is,
it doesn't matter. We need to go in there and say,
"For whatever reason you want to get involved,
let's put our heads together and energies together
to do something." And that's where we
have to invoke those values and convictions.
We also have to go through a very extensive
education program. An education, not only on how
we should conserve energy, but more importantly,
why we should conserve energy. This is not a one-time deal.
I have two kids. One of them just started going
to school here, the other one is in high school,
and I'm seeing the mind set. I'm seeing what they're used to.
I'm seeing that after 50 million times saying to them, "Turn
the lights off in your room," they still don't, okay.
( laughter ) And it's not apparently
my home, only. But, we would like to actually
have a situation where every student coming to this campus
would come in, and as part of their education,
be exposed to this issue in a very formal level
from an academic point of view. They should know why
conservation is important. They should know truly what
the impact on ecosystems are. They should know what the impact
on national security is. So if we did that and they got
three hours of credit for it, it's not a bad thing, because
those people are going to be the parents, professors,
policy makers of the future. So that's going to be very
important for us to have that education program.
And we have to manage by information here.
As I said, this is a $50 million business here.
We have to have facts and data. When we go through these
buildings and we analyze them, whether it's Engineering Hall
or Chamberlin Hall, it takes us about 4-5 months with a team
of very expensive people to go through and figure out
what needs to happen, but it's worth it.
But then we know what we're talking about, so the reality is
we would like energy conservation to be something
that is balanced. The mission of the university
has to go on, and energy is simply a cost of doing business.
It's the waste that we're trying to cut out.
And we have to have measurement and verification
of what's going on. Now the problem is, on the
one hand, people are saying that in order to really reach
the goal, you've got to hit the people in the pocketbook,
so you should put meters in these buildings and
charge the different departments for energy use.
And if you do that, then they will take it seriously, because
they're not paying for it now. It is a reality, but you know,
it will take us millions of dollars,
millions of dollars literally, to meter these buildings
the way we would have to. It would take millions of
dollars to interpret that data, and it will take millions
of dollars to stop fights and misunderstandings.
And instead of that, what we need to do is we should put
meters when it's smart, and we are doing that.
We should have those meters provide us unlined information.
So for example one of the things we're doing with Engineering
Hall, and these other buildings that we've gone through,
their energy consumption is being sent to us via the Web.
So, I can see a continuous curve of what's going on.
And imagine if we put that on these big screens in
the hallway, and we put some targets there, and we get people
to see what they're doing. That modeling and measurement
has to be part of our strategy here, but we've got to have
entirety in coming together. And the most important thing
in my opinion is focusing on success.
The problem we have is this attitude of apathy, "Well, what
am I going to do about this?" We have to focus on success
and we have to kind of fight this cynicism, and create
believers out of people. And that's not going to happen,
in my experience in this society unless we are winning.
When I came here in Madison, 16 years ago--
I came from the University of Iowa, that's where
I finished my school. The first football game that
I went to was with the Iowa Hawkeyes, and at those days,
you could hardly find anyone in the stadium because Badgers
were not doing that good. Two years later, they're
doing great, you cannot find a ticket anymore.
So there is a huge draw from people to associate themselves
with successful things. So we have to make this
successful, so people become part of it.
The third thing is realistic expectations.
And this is quite important I think, because we can have
the tools and information, but people's expectations have
to be manageable and realistic. First, I think as a university
with all these intellectuals, there has to be--
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that we should put our
heads together and come up with a vision for the future.
We should clarify what our true requirements are.
Do we need to have professor X's room be 70 degrees
at 11:00 p.m., because he or she may come into their room
and correct some papers? Is it reasonable for computer
laboratories to have all the computers on so when students
come at 3:00 in the morning, they can choose which angle
they want to sit? These are reasonable things.
But I want to tell you, it's not just on that level.
Example is Kohl Center. Kohl Center, I'm sure you
all have been there, has eight air handling systems, units,
that basically provide air to that space.
Those units have been running the same rate, when there are
16,000 people watching a men's basketball game,
or when 3,000 people are watching hockey,
or when the custodian is pushing the broom.
The same amount of air, we treat the same way.
For an investment of $3,000 and the cooperation
with the Kohl Center people to put their schedule,
this event is coming up here, this is what we anticipate,
Today there's not going to be much, here is a concert, by
putting that together, we have adjusted the schedule to match
their agenda. And as a result we are going
to reduce that consumption by $250,000 a year.
Nobody is going to notice any problem with it.
But that is a quarter of a million dollars that you were
throwing out the door just because we can.
Sir? >> Will you install programmable
computers, or something? >> Most of these heating and
cooling systems these days are pretty sophisticated systems.
They sense all sorts of things. They sense temperature, humidity
and all that, and then they adjust themselves continuously
to provide you what you need. >> But they can program it?
That's right. >> They can change the schedule
from time to time? >> That would be one way to
do it, or as conditions change, the program reacts
to it as well, but yes. For example for this,
after we leave, this room is not going to be the same
temperature as it is now. It will cool down, until say,
6:00 in the morning. We anticipate what the weather
is going to be tomorrow, what the humidity level is going to
be, and then the units kick on, so that at 8:00, for example,
when there is a class here, when people come in, this
is an acceptable temperature because of the conditions.
So, we have a lot of sophisticated systems in place
to do these things with. Not enough of them necessarily,
but we have enough, and the Kohl Center was one
that we could use. It's just a matter of the will
to do it, okay, and the attention to do it.
It's not that expensive? >> It's not expensive, but there
are some issues with it. The issue is that, and I'm going
to get to it, but let me talk about it right now.
One of the major, major problems that we have on this campus,
and it's not just this campus. In my opinion,
it's a statewide problem. All these years,
the university, our operating budget, has not been responsible
for energy costs. So the energy bill from MG&E
would come to the Department of Administration.
And they write them a check. But if you or me have had no
incentive to design buildings that are energy efficient, to
operate them in an energy efficient manner, and to spend
the time and allocate resources to do the things that adjust it
here, watch it there, monitor it this way.
Because the fact is I have a maintenance person.
I have a choice of this person changing filters in the air
handling system. That's what his job is.
If I pull him out of that and have him go treat the HVAC
system for energy efficiency, I'm going to save energy.
That money's not going to come to my pocket.
It's going to save the state money.
But those filters remain unchanged.
That is a very fundamental problem that we have.
Recently, it's changing. They're kind of giving us some
allocation. And they've drawn a line in the
sand saying if you go beyond this, you're going to have to
come up with the money yourself. But the reality is we have a
long way to go before we change this around.
These projects that I'm talking about here, we have identified
these projects, some of them, for the past year or year and a
half. And there is still not a clear
decision about how the funding is going to come.
Don't you have to have people that you trust to program the
thing right. Otherwise, you come into a
basketball game and it's like 90 in the building.
It takes money to save money. And that comes in the form of
cash and resources. You're absolutely right.
These are very sophisticated computer systems.
But you have to have somebody who knows how.
Oh, yeah, we have, in our physical plant division, we
actually have a division. We have seven or eight people
that are the best in the state, that work for us.
That do just that every day. >> Sometimes it's hard to make
things idiot proof. >> Examining HVAC standards.
This is where we are finding a lot of money.
See, one of the things that happens in a laboratory, air is
entering the laboratory. I keep talking about this air,
but let me give you a perspective of what this air is.
Every minute that I'm standing here, we bring nine million
cubic feet of air from outside, in this cold weather.
We heat it. We bring it to these rooms and
then we suck it from the other end.
Every single minute. Now, in this room, air coming in
leaves this room and re-circulates, a certain
percentage of it. In a laboratory, air entering
this room must leave this building.
It cannot re-circulate. The engineering safety codes
require that in an given hour, so many times we would change
the volume of air here. Eight times, 12 times, 14 times,
it depends on the level of hazardous activity going on in a
day. That's why John has been very
great in helping us, to tell us what that level should be, to
help us reach that. So the room, the laboratory that
will be changing air 14 times. Now we're changing it six times,
because that's good enough. And that's how we're saving the
energy. But there has to be those
standards. We have to deal with also
things. For example, the fresh air.
In a room like this, I told you that a certain percentage of air
circulates back. The other percent, the remaining
percent, has to come from outside.
That's too make sure that we do not fall asleep here, so the
carbon dioxide does not build up.
So we can do that two ways. One is to say okay, I'm going to
throw 20% fresh air, 80% return air.
And that's good enough. Or, we can actually have sensors
in here that senses the carbon dioxide level, and sends a
signal to the unit saying, you know what, it's getting a little
stuffy here, open it up and bring more air.
That is a sophisticated system that we have to install, manage,
have the qualified people. But it is the right way to do
it. And the customer expectation
management is also huge. People wear a thick jacket in
their home and they throw a little pillow or a blanket on
themselves. In here, they walk around with
shirtsleeves and they demand that this kind of chilly in
here. That's not a reasonable
expectation. Laboratory operations,
I mentioned to you. This is huge.
We have closed to 3000 fume hoods.
John was talking about fume hoods.
These fume hoods must be there in order to protect when they do
laboratory experiments with chemicals, and stuff, to make
sure that the fumes do not come back into the room.
So there is this continuous sucking of air through this.
These hoods are necessary. They're a safety requirements,
and it's just the cost of doing business.
But the reality is that we have a lot of hoods.
And at times,we don't need that many.
If people decide to share, we don't have to have 3000 fume
hoods. Maybe we can have 2000.
If people decide to keep a tidier laboratory, then we may
not need to have such a huge level of air movement in these
hoods. But that's what we have to have.
There are laboratories that have fume hoods in them, and these
fume hoods are being used as a bookshelf.
And when we go to the professor, he goes, "Oh, next semester,
I'll use this. Don't touch that."
( light laughter ) This is the reality.
Those are not reasonable expectations.
Computers and office equipment here.
I would like to ask you something.
How many computers do you think we have on this campus?
( inaudible ) Please make a guess.
100,000 computers? That's a lot.
( inaudible ) Include whatever you
want, just give me your perspective here.
What do you think? >> I'd say about 40,000.
Okay. Sir?
Okay. We have 27,000 departmentally
owned computers. Departmentally owned computers.
Ninety-seven percent of the students report that they have
one computer. Twenty percent of students
report that they have two computers.
Just those three categories are close to 80,000 computers that
are humming around on this campus.
Okay, it's the cost of doing business.
We have a software program that we were able to use where we
monitored 800 departmentally owned computers.
This thing gave us reports on an ongoing basis.
Is the computer on or off. If it is on, is there keyboard
or mouse movement, or is it sitting there idle.
So we gathered all this data for a month, on 800 computers.
And then we ran this program on it that said, okay, let's assume
the computer will go into sleep mode after 20 minutes of no
activity. And you come in and hit a key
and it will come back up. What would be the savings for
energy? What do you think that was?
Eighty-five percent. In other words, if you go to
sleep after 20 minutes, you're going to save 85% of electricity
that you're using. That is about a million and a
half per year. But in addition to that waste of
electricity, these computers generate heat.
We have to send more coolant to remove that heat.
And 20 minutes is a long time. We have people, ladies and
gentlemen, that don't have any business having a computer.
( audience reacts ) No, it has become
part of the culture. It's become, if I have a job,
I have a chair, I have a desk, I have a telephone, and now
I have to have a cell phone, and a computer.
We see some of these people, they come in they turn their
computers on in the morning and we see no activity all day long.
The only activity that takes place is they turn it off at the
end of the day. But looks great, okay.
Those are not reasonable expectations.
You go to laboratories-- And I should've mentioned on the
previous slide. You go to a laboratory, and the
laboratory has three freezers. One from World War I, one from
World War II, and one from the recent grant.
They have no incentive. They don't have time.
They don't think about the issue of let's consolidate these into
one, perhaps. Because they don't have the
incentive, and many other reasons.
Paper reduction. Recycling, I'm just going to
mention something here about recycling.
Do you know how much material is discarded from the campus each
year, 10,000 tons. We recycle 25% of that.
The rest goes to the landfill. And I can tell you that we are
dealing with trying to improve the situation here.
We have all these bins. So when you come in, if you have
trash, it goes in there. Paper goes in there.
Plastic goes in there. And everything is going fine.
Some person comes in with a half-chewed McDonald's Big Mac,
boom, that bin is junk now. That's the mentality and
reasonable expectation that we need to establish.
( inaudible ) Please.
Does the university charge, is there a student fee for
computers? >> Not that I know of.
Other universities, as part of their fee, students are
charged $100 or $200. >> Not that I know of.
I do not believe so. >> Are faculty charged a
computer fee? >> Nobody's charged anything.
As I said, the problem is, has been, and continues to be that
they haven't had to include that as part of their costs.
Because in certain ways, they are right, in certain ways.
What they are saying, some people, just a hypothetical
argument here, is that when we bring grants to us, and we bring
$800 million worth of grants, 40% is the indirect
reimbursement fee that comes. So if my grant is going to cost
$100,000 I'm going to charge NSF for $140,000.
And that difference comes to the university.
That means you guys take care of the facilities, energy, this and
that. That money does not come to the
facilities. That money gets washed with
everything else, partially to the history department, to this
department, to physical plant. So the problem is that on the
one side, and the fact that the state has been picking up the
energy bill on the other. People have not had the
incentive to think it through as, if I do this, this is a cost
of doing business. Are there any other comments?
You're talking about the beginning.
You're talking just about the University of Wisconsin, so that
if you took a building like the Capitol, and Monona Terrace, and
other buildings, you'd come up with a tremendous amount.
Absolutely. But you know, just in Madison,
I'm saying this is like no hostility to anybody.
If a reasonable system exists where you identify reasonable
project, you get reasonable funding for it, and you
implement it, and people play ball, okay, in a reasonable way,
I can tell you that losing 20% is not a big deal for me at all.
Actually, in my heart, I would like to see a day where before
the year 2010, a few years, that between now and then, I want to
go to all these signs and slash the 20% and put 30%.
But you know what my worry is? My worry is that if we can not
get funding, and we do not do these things, we do not create
the success of momentum, I may have to go to the signs and put
a cross over "We conserve," and change it to "We failed."
I really think we're going to succeed.
We have identified a lot of things that are going
to happen, but there's just a lot of potential.
This is just the first round that I am seeing the potential
of 20% savings. That stays everywhere.
This is based on all the work that we have done in the past
ten years. On top of that, we're talking
20%. Many campuses, many facilities
haven't done anything. So for them, 40% or 50% is a
very reasonable goal. Temperature guidelines is
another issue here. The state requires in the
wintertime, for example, the temperatures be set to 68
degrees in these rooms. The fact of the matter is that
people don't want to be that. They consider that to be too
cold. So we have an executive order
from the governor several years ago that says everything has to
be set to 68 degrees. So it took us about six days to
go through every single room and adjust it.
So we have two types of thermostats.
Almost 50% of them are the kind that you can control with a knob
yourself. And the other percent, you
cannot. The intent is that you wouldn't
touch it. So how many thermostats do you
think we have on this campus? Over 10,000.
We had to go to every single one of them and say, hello, we're
going to change this to 68 degrees.
I want to tell you this story here, because I'll never forget
it. I was doing my--
I was doing a class on a Saturday in Grainger Hall.
So I left the room, and in the hallway, I run into a
maintenance guy. I said, "Hey, Pete, what are you
doing here?" He goes, "I just got done
adjusting all the thermostats." " I said, "How was it?"
He goes, "Terrible, man." This room, as you know,
is not the adjustable kind. Every single thermostat has got
some kind of a screwdriver pushed in it.
And this is Grainger Hall. This is not that old of a
building. So I can only shake my head.
On the way back to my class, I run into one of the higher-ups
over there. And the person says, "Oh, I saw
you talking to Pete." I said, "Yes, Pete was doing
the thermostat adjustment." The person pulls out this
little device from their pocket and says, "Don't worry about it,
I'm fixing it. You go back to class
and don't worry about it." ( laughter )
There is a cat and mouse game. Any time you tell people you're
going to set their thermostat to 68 degrees, "No, that is too
cold." You set it to 75 degrees,
that's too high. So the point is therefore,
I don't want to get into a cat and mouse game.
All I want to do is people, please do the right thing.
I don't know what your body temperature requirements are.
And it's not going to hit us if it's one degree this way, one
degree that way. The fact is if we set everything
at 68 degrees, and then decide to change it to 69 degrees, that
one degree temperature change is going to cost us about $400,000
a year. It's not the end of the world
when you're talking about $50 million.
Sir? >> Let's say about winter, like
if air is cold outside, it wrings all the moisture out of
the air. So it makes the air inside
really dry. So, 68 degrees in the wintertime
doesn't feel as comfortable. >> Absolutely.
Most people, in the summer, when it's relatively humid,
you're not taking into consideration humidity.
Plus, having lived in Phoenix, you know, I get tired of you
touch the TV and you get electrocuted.
You go through doors backwards. If somebody shook hands, you get
electrocuted. I mean, it's too dry.
That's why I'll tell you something.
I have like -- ( inaudible )
Sure. >> And my electric bills were
like a fifth of other people, because they figure
refrigeration costs more, so it must be better.
I appreciate that. But the thing that you must also
consider in wintertime, you spend hundreds and hundreds, if
not millions of dollars to humidify things.
That's one. >> I think it's health.
No question. And I'm not really talking about
pushing 68 degrees. But in the summer, it's
interesting. In summer, it's 75 degrees, or
78 degrees, I get them mixed up. The problem is this.
On our campus, in the summertime, which one do you
think is going to save more energy?
If you set your thermostat to 78 degrees, or you set your
thermostat to 68 degrees, which one do you think is going to be
more costly? >> 68.
68 degrees is going to be costlier in the summertime,
right? But that's not true.
Because what happens in the summertime, because this region
has the humidity factor, when we bring the air from outside,
right at the air handling system we chill it down to 55 degrees,
to get the humidity out of that air.
So that comes to your room at 55 degrees, which is very cold.
Now, your thermostat warms that air up to what you want it to
be. So I'm better off for you to
have real cold rooms in the summertime, because warming it
up is going to be costing us. That's a major difference
between a home HVAC system and sophisticated buildings that we
have here. But the bottom line here is we
have to have a sustainable solution.
If we set things to be unreasonable, people are going
to fight it. But if they operate these
thermostats in a correct way, leaving for the weekend, turn it
down, come back, turn it up. It takes five minutes.
If we establish those things, I think we will realize
a savings. And the re-thinking
budgetary policies. Yes, ma'am?
In your previous slide, your one said inoperable windows.
When you talked earlier about putting up panels that make the
windows not operable, so. >> No, I am not suggesting that
we should or should not have operable windows on this slide.
I am saying that as part of reasonable expectations, we
should agree to standards. For example, if we are air
conditioning a building, there is no reason for anybody to open
the window. When they open a window,
they basically screw up the entire building.
However, people are saying that it is my human right
to have fresh air. So therefore that window
has to be operable. That is an issue.
Okay? >> Are there fire code
requirements for having operable windows?
No. That is a case in your home,
where you have to use it as an exit in case there's fire.
That is not the case here. So basically, a point is
reasonable expectation says you've got to do this or that,
and that. And that becomes a standard
that this campus agrees to, so that we can set our systems
accordingly. >> How about drapes?
Some place like a house would have drapes that are rated for
insulating? So like in the summertime, you
know, you could pull the drapes. >> Absolutely.
And it's another dead air space that's a barrier.
Absolutely. >> You know, like in Grainger
Hall, they have those windows. If there's heat loss, through
some of those things would just have some drapes or something
that could be clear to let the light in, just create a dead air
space. >> Absolutely.
And the lighting, for example, the lighting systems now are
sophisticated enough that they can sense the ambient light, and
turn off and on accordingly themselves.
But it comes back, again, to the standards.
I want to give you-- We are in the old section
of the Biotech building, right? The new section here,
my friend designed it. And you would notice that
basically, all that glass, okay, facing south, which is great in
the wintertime. But in the summertime, it's not.
This place is cooking. And I told him, "What kind
of design did you do? Why do you call yourself
an architect?" ( laughs )
He said to me, he said, "You know, I had these windows
recessed a little bit." So naturally, the building
provides a little awning for these windows.
And then they said, no, no, no. We would like the look of this
thing to resemble a computer chip of some sort, or something,
I can't remember. That's the case, okay.
If I put drapes in some of the rooms, it's not going to look
very nice. And that's an issue.
So it all comes down to expectations.
This whole issue. I don't want to beat this thing
too much. But it all comes down to that
point. Sir?
Certain neighborhoods-- ( inaudible )
You're not allowed to have anything on your roof.
It doesn't look nice. I had solar collectors.
They trap the sun for hot water. It worked great.
In certain neighborhoods, it doesn't look nice,
you can't have it. You're not allowed to have
clothes drying on a clothesline. It's like, it doesn't look nice.
We don't like it. We don't care if our electric
bills are $300 instead of $50. >> Absolutely.
This is how we got here. I mean, the situation that we
have is not the creation of one or two days.
And it's not going to be solved over one or two days.
So the question is, what can we do that's the middle ground.
And the way that I have drawn it in this campaign is you're going
to cut waste. You're not going to create or
ask for austerity, because I don't think austerity
is sustainable. There are campuses that have
made 68 degrees, or whatever, the rule.
And there's a chain of email that they're sending to one
another saying, "Oh, what are you experiencing?"
This campus sends me pictures that the university has actually
issued gloves to people, fingerless gloves.
They have issued these little, I thought they were towels, but
they're actually blankets for you to throw on your lap when
you're working. How long is this going to last,
do you think? And they're asking me, "What do
think we should do?" Chill out is what I think.
( laughter ) So the rational and
incentive-based energy budgeting and funding has to be part of
the discussion. Because without it, people are
not going to take it seriously. My kid is not going to take it
seriously unless that light that's burning for nothing
starts to compete with her beer money.
Then I can maybe, maybe at that point, some things will change.
So the last one is responsible actions in our principles.
Basically, I start talking about this vision for the future here.
We need to promote an environmental protection and use
of alternative energy source as a campus.
That's what intelligent people do.
We can't not talk about this. That has to be a vision for the
future. We have to contemplate what we
want to be. Just because somebody comes in
here and says "This is a $50 million as a gift.
Build a building and put my name on it."
Should we do it or not? I'm not saying we should or
should not. That's not my place.
But I'm saying that this university should have that
dialogue, should be able to contemplate what they want to be
later on. Because at times, I feel that we
are doing things just because we can do it today.
And that's a serious issue, I think.
But we have to accept-- Whatever we do, we have to agree
that we are going to have to accept responsibility
for the results. If you are willing to accept
that responsibility, then whatever we do is just fine.
We have to do waste prevention, as I mentioned to you.
We have to practice common sense.
We have to reduce unnecessary equipment.
We have to consider energy use when we're purchasing things.
But again, it all comes down to waste prevention not austerity
as the message. And it is a responsible action
to prevent waste. We need to get involved in the
motivation of people. I want to talk to you about this
just a little bit. We have a Web site called,
conserve.wisc.edu We put this up.
It has some information about what we're doing.
It also has this one part where you can go and you can say I
pledge that I'm going to put my computer in sleep mode.
I'm going to turn lights off when I see them on
unnecessarily. I'm not going to waste water.
Common sense things. And you can pick which ones
you're going to do, and that becomes your pledge.
So I consider this to be a success because in the past year
and a half, we have had close to 13,000 people that have visited
this site. That is a significant number.
Most are from UW-Madison. So that accounts for a big
percentage. But furthermore, we have from
every like 12 people that have come to the site to visit the
site, one has pledged. So that also is a good thing.
That says that we care. We want to be involved in this.
We need to get these people. So we're going to campaign using
those people, because we know who they are.
We know that they have an interest in this.
We have established, basically, a grassroots campaign.
So we will establish, this coming semester, a student
chapter for We Conserve program, we will actually have a
formal organization that students are involved, from
educational programs all the way to concerts, all the way to
fundraising, they need to get involved.
And I hope that the same thing will happen with the alumni.
That's why it's really my pleasure to be here today.
To just be able to tell you what's going on.
Why is it okay for the alumni to come in and give us $50 million
to build a new building? Why shouldn't they say this is
$5 million to improve the energy efficiency of the school?
It's not an unreasonable expectation.
Collaboration and cooperation are also huge, as you know.
Without that, especially on this campus, nothing is going to
happen. We need to tap into student
passion. We need to brainstorm.
And we need to align, most importantly, partner with and
align our activities with the academic activities.
This is a world renowned university for energy research.
We should create some kind of a synergy between what we're doing
and what we're doing in our academic set.
We also have to create opportunities.
I mentioned to you seeking gifts and grants.
Embedding conservation agenda in all projects.
It's a state of mind, because when you come in and you say I
have to change the heating system in this building because
I have a more efficient one to put in, what you really are
doing is you're also getting rid of this 80-year-old junk that's
sitting there. That's deferred maintenance.
So they come hand-in-hand, your energy conservation projects can
resolve some of your deferred maintenance headaches.
And the same way, if you are going to come in and do some
maintenance work, you should think it through and do it in a
way that will also save energy. And they go hand-in-hand.
And this rebate program here. There's a program called focus
on energy that the state has. Now, this year has become
eligible for us. We're going to go big time after
them for some money. And we have to ensure
compliance. This business of this is a
faculty governance, you can not force anyone to do anything.
I agree and I respect them a lot, but there has to be some
agreement that this is what needs to happen.
So with all that said, is the mission possible?
I say yes. I wanted to give you some
reports right now. We have identified, just so far
in the past year and a half, we have identified in the heating
and cooling area, $2.7 million of savings.
We've implemented some of those. We have identified computers
to be a target for $1.5 million.
We have reduced our electrical consumption by close to
a million dollars. We have gotten 13,000 people who
have seen our Web site, you know, one out of ten have gotten
involved in the pledge. And this is what's going on.
So I consider those to be possibilities that will lend
themselves to our success by year 2010.
And the reward for success is huge.
Because if we reach our goal, we will reduce our emission of
carbon dioxide by 100,000 tons per year.
We will save $10 million cash. Every year, we will graduate
6,000 students from this campus that know what the real issues
are. And they're going to be the
leaders of tomorrow. It will showcase our
university's values and resolves.
And we will sleep better! So as one of the sign says,
"If Not Now, When? If Not Us, Who?"
So with that, I am happy to take any questions
from you, please. ( applause )
Thank you. Yes, ma'am?
Looking around the room, do you see anything
that could be maybe? >> I think part of this thing
has to be done for the television crew.
I understand that. But your point is well taken.
We actually are going to do something.
I want to talk about this. It's called the Energy Smart
program. We will come to your office, and
we'll work with you to see all the opportunities that you would
have in your office. Put your computer in sleep mode.
See if you have too much lighting, adjust it.
See what your heating and cooling problems are.
What your thermostat situation is.
What your work schedule is like. To try to see opportunities that
will tweak your energy consumption patterns.
And that clearly, this room would be one of those that we
would come to. But point well taken.
Dare I bring up the issue of coal fired plant that we are
using on campus? What's the future of that, and
what's happening or is going to happen?
I mentioned to you the pattern of consumption.
What we have to have-- These two plants, we have the
Charter heating plant, which is the coal one.
And we have one on Walnut Street that's gas.
And next to it is the new Co-Gen plant that's also gas.
These plants produce steam. We transport the steam through
the tunnels. There's about seven miles of an
underground tunnel system here to the various buildings.
We use it for the heating. At the same time, the
summertime, and a certain degree in the wintertime, we used
chilled water and distribute it as well.
And then we return the condensate back and we heat it
or cool it and that's what happens.
That is the bloodline for this campus.
Without energy, for every one hour, just for cost, for every
one hour, the chancellor likes to say that this university's
shut down, it costs us a million bucks.
But it's more than a million bucks issue.
We have research that has been going on for 50 years.
And if the fluctuation of temperature exceeds five
degrees, perhaps, that whole thing would go down.
So not providing resources, energy to these buildings is not
a possibility. So with that established, the
reality is that 70% of our energy is produced by the
technology that's very old. Those boilers that we have in
the Charter Street heating plant, they were purchased, as
Al Fish likes to say, "Certified pre-owned"
in the 1950's. They are that old.
And to replace them with something else, you've got to
balance out several issues. One is the cost.
So let's say hypothetically, right now, I do this magic and
we can turn that off. And we create some plant
somewhere that uses natural gas. Let's just say that.
That's impossible. The infrastructure is not there.
But let's say that's a possibility, hypothetically.
What that will do, it will increase our energy price
by $20 million a year. It will reduce our emissions,
but will not get rid of them. Gas has emissions, as well.
Not as bad as coal. But secondly, if there is a
problem with gas supply here, we are out of luck.
And the consequences are huge. So what we have been
trying to do-- So that's one side.
The state statute requires us to use the least expensive fuel.
So it's not our prerogative to go out there and spend on gas,
because we're going against the statute.
So what we have to do here, in decisions for our production
side, we have to balance four things.
And not necessarily in this order, but those are the four
issues we have to balance. One is the economic factor.
The second thing is the environmental factor.
Third, is the laws and the regulations that we have to
have. And the fourth is reliability.
Those are the four things that we have to have.
Money, we have to meet the money budget that we have.
Rules, whether they are coming from EPA or from the statute
that are set or DOA, whatever the rules are.
We have to maintain reliability. And we have to have enough
capacity that when something goes down, the other thing is
ready to jump in and pick it up. So there are clear technologies
that will provide us this. And that's what we're pushing
for. We do not like this coal either.
However, it will cost somewhere around $300 million of
investment to go and use a technology that burns coal,
perhaps coal or something else, but also uses biomass as a
burning fuel. It will save a lot of money for
us and will pay for itself in a very short period of time.
But also, when we generate the steam, as a byproduct of that
unused steam, or the pressure that we produce, we are able to
generate electricity. So right now, just under 10
Megawatts of electricity is produced here locally.
This accounts for somewhere around one-sixth or so of our
consumption. That will increase our ability
to co-generate more. But again, it takes money to
save money. It takes money to protect the
environment. Austerity is not the solution.
We have to, the show must go on. That's the important thing that
we have to have. The show must go on.
And these are the tools that we've got.
We don't have enough gas boilers to meet the needs of the campus.
The location and distribution system of the campus is such
that we have to have that location as a hub for a lot of
things. And what
we've done, even though it was decided that we were in
violation of some EPA rules, in my opinion, we have done the
right thing. We have basically done what it
takes to keep this machine running.
And as a result of that, we've made it more efficient than it
used to. So what we're guilty of, we're
guilty of some technicality, okay.
But it is what it is. Now the Sierra Club thinks,
says, we're going to reduce consumption by coal burning by
15%. What that really means is that
we're going to push that to gas. We have that much capacity to
shift. It's going go increase our
costs. And we're also hoping that with
conservation and other things, we will reduce our consumption.
So it will sort of balance out that 15%.
But we are working with the state to decide financing and
political issues to solve this problem.
But it's not as simple as the newspaper or a sentence here and
there, they kind of make it to be in the newspapers and
articles. Sir?
How long is it going to be before LED light bulbs become
economically feasible? And at that point, will they be
much of an advantage to use those?
LED lights, right now, are being used.
All the exit lights that we have on campus, they're all LED
lights, as far as our investments.
There are over 6,000 of them. The lighting technology is
changing so fast that as time, one, matures and you invest in
it, the other one comes along. Clearly, from fluorescent
lights, from going to the kind that we had to what we use now
by changing that electronic ballast and the bulb, going from
T12 to T8. That action right there reduces
consumption by 30-some percent, on the spot.
That's a great investment. We now, on a campus this big,
last year, our total usage of incandescent light bulbs was
less than 3,000. That means that we've changed to
compact fluorescent lights, and this and that.
So I do not know what the technology is going to do.
The lighting technology, they're going to make sure that you're
going to spend your money first on the T8.
Right when you're getting done with that, they'll introduce T5.
And right as you do that, they'll introduce LED.
So it is a game. And where you draw the line,
I don't know. But I would not, at this point,
worry as much about lighting on our campus, as I would worry
about HVAC. Because HVAC accounts
for 70% of all usage. Lighting, 5%.
So I think we have a much bigger bank to rob on the HVAC side
than in lighting. But eventually, after this
campaign is successful, I would like to have another run, with
another 20% goal. At that time, these issues
will come up. Sir?
A lot of these buildings, do you measure the humidity along
with the temperature much? >> Depends on the system.
Yes, in some buildings, it is part of our HVAC.
In some we don't. It depends on the age and the
technology that's there. >> This building seems pretty
dry right now. To me, just here.
In my room, I've got one of these temperature and humidity
things. So I track it.
Right. >> As long as it's in a certain
range, when you're health-- When your nasal passages and
stuff dry out, you get bloody noses.
I appreciate that. Again, I'm not suggesting that
we have it right everywhere. Because in some buildings we can
not get it right. In this building, I think we
should be able to get it right. But humidity basically means
that we've got to produce the steam over there and we've got
to dump it in this room. >> A little bit.
Bleed some in once and a while. >> Right, and I believe that
we're doing it. Whether we're doing a great job
or not, it's a matter of room by room, building by building.
I don't know what the profile in this building is.
Sir? >> The 20% by 2010 number.
How did the 20% by square foot reduction, compared with 20%
reduction overall? >> This campus--.
I'm trying to get a hold of that number in my head.
Why the square foot, I guess. >> Why the square foot is that
right now, the campus is growing, leaps and bounds.
So if I were to say 20% reduction overall, that means
that I have to anticipate exactly what the growth is and
calculate accordingly. And at that time, it's not going
to be 20%. At that time, maybe it will be
9%. So the 20% is a goal, where it
says per square foot, on average, I want to reduce that.
And if a new building is going up, like Microbial building,
this is a major, major building that came.
It's a half a million square feet.
I don't know if you've seen it or not.
It's beautiful. It's gorgeous.
Open. And lots and lots of energy is
going to go there. When they designed that
building, the details are not correct, are not available to
the engineers of who's going to use this room for what purpose.
So we have to let things settle. Then we will go to that building
and we'll do this re-commissioning process that I
was talking about. Then we will set it to what it
should be. At that point, if you want have
a Microbial research building, this is the cost of its
business. So my goal is to right-size our
energy usage. And the other end of this thing,
on the production side, is to right-size the production tools
with better technology for boilers and this and that.
But if you're going to grow this campus, you've got all these
parking lots right there. In a few years from now, a good
percentage of these parking lots are going to be eliminated.
They're going to be ramps, because we need that space to
build a new building. $1.5 billion of construction
is a lot of construction on this campus.
So that's why. John, and then you.
Do you know off the top of your head, because you know the
campus and its buildings, what are the couple of building that
are really bad energy usage per square foot.
Is it the older ones? >> Laboratories, clearly.
Your most expensive building to run per square foot base is
Biotron. The most expensive building to
run, doesn't matter the square foot, is the Chemistry building.
The Chemistry building, we just got done with our commissioning
process. And in Chemistry, we identified,
it depends what we end up doing, anywhere between $600,000 to
$800,000 of savings per year. In Biotron, we just got the
closing study. And in there, we were only able
to find $100,000 worth of savings.
Biotron has got these rooms. These rooms are small rooms,
okay. But they each have their unique
ability to produce any climate that you want in the world.
So you can set this room up to resemble Alaska, and the next
room to be the forest in South America.
That's the research that goes on there.
So if you're going to do that kind of research, I don't care
that it's in Madison, Wisconsin, or Iran, it's irrelevant.
It's going to cost you. That's the cost of doing
business. And there's nothing wrong with
that. Energy is there for proper use.
So with Biotron, all these years has been the sound bite of,
"Look at that waste." We went out there, there isn't
that much waste. And the $100,000 savings, we're
going to do in the next few months, hopefully, and we'll be
good. But what you see on the surface
is really not what it is. The non-laboratory buildings,
clearly, have no business using as much energy.
But in there, I want to give you an example of this.
It comes ties to this reasonable expectations business.
So how many of you are familiar with Teachers Ed?
Teachers Ed is a building where you have a library and offices.
So imagine this building as four columns, just for the purposes
of my discussion here. Each column, so many floors
high, each column has its own air handling system.
So we provide cooling and heating to that unit, via that
unit, to that column. In three of those, let me
investigate this, in three of those, 8:00 or 9:00 at night, we
shut these units down till morning, so we're not wasting
energy during the night. We notice on the fourth one,
that's not happening. The unit is run 24/7.
And when we found the reason, the reason was that they have,
in one of these floors, they have a small room that the
department decided to use as a server room.
And the server room has to always be cool.
So therefore, here we are running this major air handling
unit, 24/7, because of that little, dinky room.
That would save us some $20,000 a year.
So we said, okay, what is the cost of putting an independent,
local system, for that room only.
The cost was $17,000. That has an eight-month payback.
But when we talked to the department and said, look, we
have some money, you guys need to come up with this because you
decided to have a server room. They actually said, "You know
what, why don't you give us a couple of months and we'll move
somewhere else." So therefore, in a building
like that, it's the occupancy that drives it.
In a laboratory building, it's not the occupancy, it's also the
safety and energy. So by default, you are going to
see laboratory buildings to be much higher consumers than
non-laboratory buildings. Sir, you had a question.
Yeah, in the summertime, the Social Science building has
films at night. It is absolutely freezing.
Why is that? >> Social Science building,
I have to assume it's because of the reasons I mentioned earlier.
We have to cool the air to 55 degrees.
And we're not warming it up for your comfort zone.
So in a way, if Social Science building has a re-heat system,
which I think it does, and therefore this is the case, then
we are saving money by freezing you in the summertime in that
building. That gives us a lot of pleasure.
( laughter ) >> That begs the question,
why 55 degrees? >> That's the temperature that
we have to bring the air to to get rid of the humidity.
Otherwise, if we send humid air to your room, it's going to be
much more difficult for us to reach the comfort zone that you
want. >> Any more questions?
Sir? >> What about some of the
venerable old buildings like Bascom Hall, North and South
Hall, and such. How inefficient or efficient are
these? Science Hall?
Those buildings, Bascom Hall is a little different.
But South Hall and North Hall, so what, it's a dinky building.
What's the worst case scenario? It does not have a sophisticated
system, so basically we are able to cool it and heat it.
And we cool it locally, so it's not an issue.
When we're talking about the big picture, from an energy saving
point of view, it does not come on the radar screen.
And the potentials are not there.
Science Hall, for example, does not have much air conditioning
in there. It's got this old one-pipe
system. And therefore, that building,
when it gets renovated, at some point in life, then it will have
a much more sophisticated system, which will increase the
energy consumption of the building.
But it will give you a lot more pleasure.
Sir? >> Efficient or not efficient,
it seems to be my opinion that it's going to be going down in
the future? ( no audio )
...other buildings are. And I would not consider
to be efficient or inefficient. It's always somewhere
in between. It has 28 or 34, I believe
it's 28 separate air handling units for the whole thing.
So we are able to control them in a better way, so I would
not consider it to be a headache for us.
Maybe two more. >> Yeah, your mic died,
so let me give you another. >> Okay.
Thank you so much. Ma'am?
This university is very lucky to have someone like you.
Thank you very much. >> I hope you get to give this
talk to faculty groups and to many others.
I'm trying to. Thank you very much.
I really do appreciate this. I am trying to do that.
As a matter of fact, one of the things that has proven to be
quite successful is some faculty has invited me as guest speaker
to the students. And my biggest complaints with
the students have been is that they are not getting involved.
They're not taking the matters into their own hands.
They're waiting for somebody else to do this.
And I tell them, who is the somebody else?
I'm an old man. I'm going to go.
If you don't take it. And then we're also working with
the faculty. So that's what we're trying to
do. Yes, ma'am?
Go ahead. >> I was wondering about a
graduation requirement in basic conservation, a course in basic
conservation. >> That would be my goal.
That is what we're working towards.
We already have programs for internships for people.
But I would like it to be a much bigger program.
So if you're going to come to this university, you want to be
a Badger, and you also want to be a member of the We Conserve,
and when you graduate, you know what you're talking about.
Whether you practice it or not, that's not my responsibility.
But I think we need to make sure you got exposed to all the
realities of life. And you know what to do, and
it's then your choice not to do the right thing, which is just
fine. ( applause )
Thank you very much.