Stanford University
OP-5: Building Energy Consumption

FY2005 was adopted as the baseline year because it correlates to when Stanford began tracking its building energy consumption in this way. Stanford has since begun reporting its building energy consumption by calendar year to more closely align with its greenhouse gas emissions inventory.

The Cardinal Green Buildings campaign was created in 2013 to advance energy reduction programs operated by the department of Sustainability and Energy Management (SEM). Since then, the Office of Sustainability (OOS), in partnership with Facilities Energy Management (FEM) and Zone Management, has continued to develop additional sustainability opportunities for targeted energy reduction in addition to the central purpose of the campaign, which is to encourage students, staff and faculty to turn off and unplug electronic equipment and appliances before they leave for the winter break. In 2015, the Office of Sustainability included new, targeted energy-saving programs, such as installing programmable free timers on equipment such as water coolers/hot water dispensers, large coffee makers, and cable boxes; asking labs to chill up their ultra low temperature freezers; targeting buildings with high plug loads for the annual Cardinal Green Office Program, described below; and initiating a space heater swap program. More than 1,300 individuals pledged to turn off for break through this campaign, and many more were reached through the additional targeted energy-saving programs.

As mentioned above, Stanford’s Cardinal Green Office Program harnesses the actions of individual building occupants to achieve resource savings. Over the past seven years, the program has become an effective communication, education and implementation tool for the university to address building-level sustainability. The program begins each fall with recruitment of building participants. Then, Office of Sustainability staff and interns work with volunteer buildings throughout the winter and spring to conduct audits to identify potential sustainability improvements, develop formal recommendations for each building, and assist each building with implementation of those recommendations. In addition to electricity and water savings, the result is ultimately increased awareness among individuals in each participating building. In 2015, the Cardinal Green Office Resource Library was launched to better enable occupants to perform sustainability measures on their own and to assist building managers in promoting sustainability in their spaces. The resource library contains email templates, flyers, how-to guides, and other materials for building managers to use to disseminate sustainability tips to their occupants. Through this program, Stanford has been deploying smart power strips for several years, but Stanford has also launched studies to better understand the effect of more advanced power strips that offer a hardware/software solution that serves to further engage occupants. Studies of some of these advanced devices are being conducted on campus in summer 2016.

Finally, Stanford's Cardinal Green Labs program, which formally launched in summer 2015, works with lab occupants to reduce energy and improve sustainability performance in labs. It offers several resources to raise awareness about energy efficiency in labs and operates programs, such as rebates for energy efficient freezers and other lab equipment, shut-off timers for lab equipment, incentives for chilling up ultra-low temperature freezers, and free room-temperature storage starter kits.

Since the 1980s, Stanford has employed energy metering on all of its facilities to understand how and where energy is being used. In 2012, Stanford launched a project called Utilities, Metering, Billing, Reporting, and Sustainability (UMBRS), which is an initiative to bring the data from all of Stanford's energy and water meters into a central database to be used in applications such as department billing, energy use monitoring, and sustainability reporting, among others. UMBRS integrates several metering systems to provide a unified data repository and access point for real-time and historic energy and water meter data. Software systems that comprise UMBRS offer analytical tools to optimize efficiency in the campus infrastructure and operations, and allow for automatic notifications of metering issues to operations staff. For instance, the UMBRS project allowed the Office of Sustainability to launch energy and water dashboards in 2014 that are publicly available through the Sustainable Stanford website at http://sustainable.stanford.edu/buildings. In 2015, maintenance of the database was adopted by Stanford's Office of Sustainability via a Business Systems unit with 2 FTEs, which supports the system to ensure that it meets the needs of personnel throughout the Department of Sustainability & Energy Management.

Stanford regulates building temperatures with an Energy Management & Control System (EMCS). The EMCS allows Stanford to adjust temperatures based on occupancy via building scheduling through the system. Operational hours for each building are actively managed, and each week Stanford adjusts the HVAC operating schedule in up to 60 buildings to best align with specific hours of use. Stanford also utilizes a SCADA (Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition) system that provides real-time information and diagnostics of the campus power network, available at http://scadaweb/hv/.

Occupancy sensors for lighting have been installed as retrofit projects in most classroom buildings as well as the public spaces and bathrooms of most student housing on campus. Occupancy sensors and timers for lighting have been installed in buildings across campus as part of the Cardinal Green Office Program. Stanford's Guidelines for Sustainable Buildings also explicitly mention occupancy sensors as a preferred design strategy to increase efficiency, and thus these sensors are now standard practice for new construction projects. An excellent example of sensors can be found in the Y2E2 building, which includes both sensors for occupancy and photocell technology for daylight control.

LED task lights have been successfully piloted and deployed in new campus buildings and in some retrofit projects. One example is the LED task lighting in Y2E2 provided to each occupant. The building primarily utilizes natural light, but desks are outfitted with a 6-watt LED fixture that provides task lighting. The same LED task lights were also installed in Sweet Hall during a recent major renovation.

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Between 1987 and 2015, Stanford obtained the vast majority of its electricity from an onsite cogeneration facility that used natural gas as its fuel source. However, cogeneration requires a reliance on fossil fuels that comprised a significant majority of Stanford’s greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, Stanford launched a new energy system that came online in 2015 called Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI). Through SESI, the vast majority of campus building heating needs are now met by hot water generated at the CEF, which uses heat recovery chillers to recover the waste heat from the chilled water that Stanford uses to cool its buildings to create hot water for building heating. Due to the significant heat recovery and lower line losses of hot water compared to steam, the new energy system is approximately 70% more efficient than the previous combined heat and power process provided by cogeneration. By the end of 2016, 65% of Stanford's electricity supply will come from renewable sources, allowing Stanford's total emissions to drop by 68%. For more information, please visit http://sustainable.stanford.edu/sesi.

Whole Building Energy Retrofit Program:

The Whole Building Energy Retrofit Program (WBERP) seeks to reduce energy consumption in Stanford’s most energy-intensive buildings. This $30 million capital program began in 2004 to address the 12 campus buildings consuming the most energy and now includes the top 27, which represent 60% of total campus energy use. Retrofits have been completed in 15 buildings thus far and have saved more than $4.5 million per year in energy costs. The program has also yielded over $2 million in financial incentives via Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) rebates. Construction is underway on retrofits at the Mechanical Engineering Lab and Varian, and energy studies were completed for the Physics/Astrophysics Building and Lorry Lokey (Chem/Bio).

Stanford is also systematically reviewing the HVAC systems of 90 of its largest buildings, then adjusting or repairing the systems to ensure they work as designed. Technicians who conduct the reviews also recommend ways to further improve energy performance through ERP projects. The recommissioning of all 90 buildings was completed by the end of 2010 and all buildings are on a three-year renewal cycle.

Plug Load Reduction Programs

In summer 2014, Stanford conducted a Plug Load Equipment Inventory to collect data on 55 types of electricity-consuming equipment in 220 buildings across Stanford's campus. Stanford then expanded the inventory in summer 2015 to include various types of student residences, additional lab buildings, and off-campus leased spaces. The inventory resulted in a database of 204,000 pieces of electronic equipment, including relevant attributes of each type of equipment that influence its energy consumption (such as an Energy Star rating). Stanford analyzed this data and ultimately generated 33 potential plug load reduction program options that fall into 5 categories: energy efficiency measures for existing equipment (either efficiency upgrades or installation of efficiency devices such as appliance timers or smart strips), space heating, sustainability in information technology, green labs, and procurement policies. Stanford has launched initiatives in each of these program categories to effectively address plug loads in the coming years. If all 33 viable program options are implemented, Stanford could save a total of $2.3 million annually. See http://sustainable.stanford.edu/plug-load-inventory

ERP Express—Laboratory Equipment

Stanford’s Cardinal Green Labs program offers rebates to labs for upgrading laboratory equipment to energy efficient models. The program offers “express” rebates for ultra-low temperature freezers and custom rebates for other equipment. Rebate amounts are based on the energy cost savings accrued over a five-year period. The program also offers free room-temperature storage starter kits as an alternative to cold storage. Finally, the program also provides free timers for select lab equipment that will automatically shut equipment off at night. More information on is available here: https://sustainable.stanford.edu/cardinal-green/cardinal-green-labs/energy-programs.

ERP Express—Office Equipment

As a result of the plug load equipment inventory in summer 2014, Stanford launched the Timer Direct Install program in fall 2015. Pilots conducted throughout 2015 showed that installing timers on large coffee makers, water coolers, hot water dispensers, and cable boxes would pay back in under one year. Through the ERP Express rebate program, Stanford was able to fund the purchase of programmable timers up front and utilize intern support to install them on the selected equipment campus-wide in conjunction with the Cardinal Green Buildings campaign. Ultimately, we anticipate that over 500 timers will be installed as a result of this program.

Reduced electrical consumption within individual workstations and shared office areas is also a major goal of the Cardinal Green Office Program. To support facility managers and building-level "green champions" seeking an extra incentive to make strategic purchases and operational decisions, ERP Express for Office Equipment offers small rebates for the purchase and installation of smart power strips and appliance timers for any equipment besides the four included in the Timer Direct Install program. A how-to guide with more information is available here: http://sustainable.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/How_To_Obtain_ERP_Express_Funding_SmartStrips_Timers_10.15.pdf.

Space Heater Swap:
In Winter 2015, Stanford launched its first space heater swap initiative in conjunction with the Cardinal Green Buildings campaign. When individuals went online to pledge to "turn off for break," they were also given the opportunity to volunteer to turn in their space heater for a Sustainable Stanford branded fleece. Of the over 1,300 pledges collected, 50 individuals volunteered to turn in their space heaters, which were collected in January 2016.

Stanford’s new Central Energy Facility (CEF), which came online in April 2015, employs heat-recovery technology to significantly reduce the energy needed to heat buildings. The new CEF is 70% more efficient than the original cogeneration plant. The data included in this credit for calendar year 2015 includes three months of cogeneration (January through March) and nine months of the new energy system (April through December). Building energy consumption and emissions numbers will continue to drop in 2016 accordingly.

The figures used in this credit represent all the electricity purchased by Stanford in 2015, 57,847,786 kWh of which goes towards Stanford's Central Energy Facility for chilled water generation. Through the heat recovery technology employed at the plant, Stanford is able to meet 93% of its building heating needs through the creation of hot water from the waste heat from the chilled water system. The remaining 7% of building heating comes from natural gas, most of which is consumed by backup hot water generators that run when the demand for building heating is so high that the need cannot be met with the hot water produced through heat recovery. Natural gas also goes to some buildings directly on campus for building heating that do not receive energy from Stanford's Central Energy Facility.

The figure used for district steam/hot water in this credit captures only the hot water production that is generated through the backup hot water generators and the steam produced through Stanford's cogeneration system between January and March 2015, since the majority of hot water generated using Stanford's heat recovery chillers is essentially a byproduct of chilled water production and is thus captured in the "purchased electricity" credit field.