Stanford University
IN-25: Innovation B

Integration of utility business systems with sustainability has become a signature component of sustainability programs across Stanford University. As multiple university departments have made a concerted effort to improve utility data collection, management, and analytics, it has become common practice to integrate those systems directly with sustainability programs and teams, recognizing the critical link between accurate tracking of resources and efficient resource use and conservation.

The Sustainability & Business Systems group within the Department of Sustainability and Energy Management now oversees business systems related to utilities management for academic buildings throughout the university, in addition to steering campus-wide sustainability programs and initiatives. The new group was formed in 2016, combining the Business Systems group with the existing Office of Sustainability. The business systems group addresses utilities data integration, resource efficiency, and data analytics to effectively measure and manage Stanford’s resources. This initiative improves business processes, promotes data-driven decisions, and offers analytical tools to optimize efficiency in the campus infrastructure and operations. The program incorporates several key components aimed at streamlining data, such as data capture and integration, building dashboards, reporting and analytics, and enterprise asset management. One telling example of the success of the sustainability/business systems integration is the 30 campus-wide utility dashboards released in summer 2018, supplementing the 135 existing building-level sustainability dashboards. The new campus-wide dashboards are powered through the integrated systems infrastructure, which connects disparate building controls and metering systems with the utility billing system to provide unified access to data. The dashboards display real-time campus sustainability performance, such as central plant efficiency, campus-wide energy and water use, and building-level sustainability performance. To view the dashboards, visit http://sustainable.stanford.edu/campus-action/campus-performance

Another key example of advanced utilities management at Stanford is in Residential & Dining Enterprises. In 2017-18, R&DE centralized its sustainability and utilities office to ensure it takes a holistic approach in its more than 300 facilities across its catering, hospitality, dining, administration, and residential divisions. The new Utilities and Sustainability team has created the Utility Information Management System, which is a cloud-based software tool that allows the organization to utilize data sets like meals, work orders, weather, waste, and financial budgets in innovative ways to better understand and predict usage across its facilities. For instance, through its Utility Information Management System, R&DE is now able to track the cost of energy and water per meal served in a dining hall, how much energy is saved by installing smart thermostats by individual residence, which residences have most successfully implemented composting, and more. The tool empowers all R&DE staff to actively engage in utility management and provides access to real time and historical data analytics. The U.S. Department of Energy Smart Energy Analytics Campaign recognized R&DE with an award for the implementation of this system in 2018. Read more about sustainability in R&DE here: https://rde.stanford.edu/sustainability