Skidmore College
OP-5: Building Energy Efficiency

Skidmore's 2015-2025 Campus Sustainability Plan uses the year 2000 as its baseline for tracking progress toward the institution's sustainability goals. Some of the College's earliest sustainability efforts began in the early 2000's, including several major energy-efficiency and renewable energy projects. Using 2000 as our baseline year ensures that we account for our earliest efforts to reduce institutional GHG emissions.

Skidmore Unplugged is an annual three-week energy conservation competition designed to promote energy-conscious behavior through education and action. The program encourages students living on campus to achieve the greatest reduction in electricity usage and teaches our broader campus community about the environmental and societal implications of energy consumption. Skidmore's Sustainability Representatives (S-Reps) develop education campaigns and programming to engage the community in conversations about energy use, its impact on people and the environment, and equip members with knowledge, tools, and skills to reduce their energy consumption.

Controls Systems: Skidmore's building control system allows the College to program temperature set-backs in campus buildings. The temperature ranges are defined the College's Campus Building Temperature Initiative.

Campus Building Temperature Initiative: Skidmore's Campus Building Temperature Initiative is designed to save energy during the heating and cooling seasons by raising temperature set points a few degrees during the cooling season and lowering the set points a few degrees during the heating season. The program includes policies for daytime temperatures, night and weekend temperatures, and vacation temperatures for both academic and residential spaces.

Occupancy Sensors: In the spirit of energy conservation and carbon emission reductions, Facilities Services installed occupancy sensors in appropriate offices, classrooms, and restrooms across campus. Occupancy sensors control about 90% of campus lighting.

Cold Water Wash: Skidmore's washing machines use only cold water to reduce energy demands.

The College continues to employ energy-efficient lighting across campus. Skidmore converted all street and walkway lighting (about 550 light posts) from high intensity discharge bulbs to induction lighting. This transition saves about 18% in electricity consumption within our outdoor lighting system. The College also transitioned from T12 to T8 lighting in many buildings, and we continue to test LED lighting in many buildings across campus.

Daylighting: The Arthur Zankel Music Center and the Murray-Aikins Dining Hall were designed to take advantage of daylight. Large window facades to allow light to fill the buildings and reduce electricity consumption.

Geothermal: About 35% of the campus is heated and cooled with geothermal energy. The Arthur Zankel Music Center, Filene Music Building, Saisselin Art Center, Northwoods and Sussman Village Apartments, Murray-Aikins Dining Hall, Wiecking Hall, Tang Teaching Museum, and Dance Center utilize geothermal heating and cooling systems. These systems provide 100% of the cooling needs and about 70% of the heating needs of most buildings and about 95% of the heating needs of the dining hall.

In 2012, Skidmore College won the Best Campus Sustainability Case Study Award from AASHE for our innovative district geothermal system. A district field is one that supplies heating and cooling energy to multiple buildings, unlike stand-alone systems that provide energy to a single building. Two district geothermal systems are operational, and a third district system was built to support an additional 10% of campus square footage. The College has 23 stand-alone systems supporting the buildings in the Northwoods and Sussman Apartment Villages and the Murray-Aikins Dining Hall.

The Arts Quad district system is an 84-bore geothermal field designed to heat and cool Zankel Music Theatre, Filene Hall, Saisselin Art Building, and the Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater (178,300 square feet). Skidmore’s district design reduced the number of geothermal bores and total field loop size by 25% when compared to a stand-alone system. The buildings in the Arts Quad can also communicate to distribute surplus energy between buildings rather than pulling energy from the bore field.

In 2014, Skidmore installed its second district field under Wiecking Green. This 64-bore field supplies heating and cooling energy to Wiecking Hall, the Tang Teaching Museum, and our Dance Center. In 2016, the College completed the construction of our third district field. This 240-bore system is designed to support the heating and cooling needs of the Tisch Learning Center, Bolton Hall, Palamountain Hall, the Dana Science Center, and Skidmore's new Center for Integrated Sciences.

The Murray-Aikins Dining Hall and all 22 campus apartment buildings (over 200 residences) are heated and cooled with stand-alone geothermal systems.

Heat Recovery Wheel: Skidmore included a heat recovery wheel (or thermal wheel) in the Arthur Zankel Music Center's air systems to recover and transfer heat energy. The large, rotating wheel captures heat energy from the building's air exhaust system and transfers it to the air intake system. This initial conditioning step improves the efficiency of the building's geothermal heating and cooling system.

Passive Solar: The Arthur Zankel Music Center and the Murray-Aikins Dining Hall were designed with large window facades to capture and retain solar heat energy.

The College has studied co-generation but has not yet employed the technology.

When possible, Skidmore chooses ultra high-efficiency lighting, heating, cooling, systems when completing major building renovations or replacing equipment.

Skidmore replaced it's inefficient centralized heating loop with far more efficient decentralized heating systems, saving 25-30% of our natural gas load.

Any major remodeling project or new construction is designed as close to LEED standards as is feasible.