Overall Rating	Gold
Overall Score	74.46
Liaison	Ciannat Howett
Submission Date	Oct. 9, 2024

STARS v2.2

Emory University
OP-21: Water Use

Status

Score

Responsible Party

3.67 / 5.00

Cyrus Bhedwar
Director
Office of Sustainability Initiatives

"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Level of ”Physical Risk Quantity” for the institution’s main campus as indicated by the World Resources Institute Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas:

Medium to High

Part 1. Reduction in potable water use per person

Total water withdrawal (potable and non-potable combined):

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Total water withdrawal	288,078,905 Gallons	306,699,704 Gallons

Potable water use:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Potable water use	225,120,313 Gallons	304,735,000 Gallons

Start and end dates of the performance year and baseline year (or three-year periods):

	Start Date	End Date
Performance Period	Sept. 1, 2022	Aug. 31, 2023
Baseline Period	Aug. 31, 2015	Aug. 31, 2016

If end date of the baseline year/period is 2004 or earlier, provide:

A brief description of when and why the water use baseline was adopted:

Emory's updated Sustainability Vision calls for a baseline of 2015 so that this decade of goals is measured from 2015-2025.

Figures needed to determine "Weighted Campus Users":

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Number of students resident on-site	4,413	4,352
Number of employees resident on-site	19	24
Number of other individuals resident on-site	896	702
Total full-time equivalent student enrollment	14,342	14,521
Full-time equivalent of employees	17,864	14,676
Full-time equivalent of students enrolled exclusively in distance education	483	9
Weighted campus users	25,796.25	23,687

Potable water use per weighted campus user:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Potable water use per weighted campus user	8,726.86 Gallons	12,865.07 Gallons

Percentage reduction in potable water use per weighted campus user from baseline:

32.17

Part 2. Reduction in potable water use per unit of floor area

Gross floor area of building space:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Gross floor area	12,152,720.55 Gross square feet	10,641,529 Gross square feet

Potable water use per unit of floor area:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Potable water use per unit of floor area	18.52 Gallons per square foot	28.64 Gallons per square foot

Percentage reduction in potable water use per unit of floor area from baseline:

35.31

Part 3. Reduction in total water withdrawal per unit of vegetated grounds

Area of vegetated grounds:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Vegetated grounds	489.28 Acres	489.28 Acres

Total water withdrawal per unit of vegetated grounds:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Total water withdrawal per unit of vegetated grounds	588,781.28 Gallons per acre	626,838.83 Gallons per acre

Percentage reduction in total water withdrawal per unit of vegetated grounds from baseline:

6.07

Optional Fields

A brief description of the institution's water-related behavior change initiatives:

The WaterHub at Emory is the first water reclamation facility of its kind in the U.S. and, by recycling sewage into usable water for heating and cooling campus buildings, reduces Emory’s water footprint by over 40%. The Water Hub continues to be a popular "tourist" attraction, with K-12, higher education, community, and government parties requesting tours regularly.

Emory has informational signage on its water-related infrastructure projects such as bioswales and rain gardens, educating the community about the importance of stormwater management and watershed stewardship. Emory's voluntary Green Offices and Green Labs programs educate and reward behavior change toward water use reduction.

A brief description of the institution's water recovery and reuse initiatives:

The Water Hub at Emory reclaims and reuses up to 400,000 gallons of water per day for makeup water in our chiller plants and steam plant, as well as for toilet flushing at the Hub and in a residence hall. In 2023, Emory’s WaterHub displaced over 104 million gallons of city potable water to Emory’s major utility plants. The facility provides 75% of the total water sent to cooling towers around campus. This volume is not included in the water withdrawal numbers to eliminate double-counting.

Since operations began, the WaterHub has used over 63,200 kWh of solar energy produced from its panels (approximately 6,036 kWh in 2023).

Emory installed rainwater collection cisterns from which we draw irrigation water and an underground storage system that collects rainwater for use in flushing toilets in two of our residence halls. These cisterns decrease Emory's potable water consumption by approximately 1 million gallons of potable water per year. A unique graywater system collects shower and sink water and repurposes it for use in flushing toilets in two other residence halls. Emory's steam plants harvest condensate water for reuse. A closed-loop laser system helps the Math and Science Center save 2.8 million gallons of water per year.

Emory has ambitious goals to use water resources even more efficiently in the coming years, and we are diligently working toward by 2025:

1) All of the water for heating, cooling, toilet-flushing and other non-potable needs across all Emory facilities will be supplied by rainwater and grey water as opposed to treated drinking water.

2) Emory will use half the water that it did in 2015.

A brief description of the institution's initiatives to replace plumbing fixtures, fittings, appliances, equipment, and systems with water-efficient alternatives:

During major renovations, plumbing fixtures that need replacement are replaced with low-flow fittings. Specific hardware is defined in Emory's design and construction standards and has been incorporated due to their conservation benefit as well as performance and ease of maintenance. Green Labs at Emory offers funding for initiatives to make research and teaching labs more sustainable, and frequently funded projects include water-saving equipment and process changes, such as replacing water aspirators and single-pass-through cooling with recirculating vacuum pumps.

https://sustainability.emory.edu/programs/green-labs-at-emory/

Emory employs smart irrigation technology known as UgMO (underground monitoring). UgMO uses specialized sensors buried in the soil to detect moisture levels. The system then uses algorithms to determine how much irrigation water is needed to maintain a healthy landscape while minimizing water waste.

Website URL where information about the institution’s water conservation and efficiency efforts is available:

https://sustainability.emory.edu/initiatives/water/

Additional documentation to support the submission:

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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

All data reported in this section are from September 2022-August 2023.