University of California, San Diego
OP-5: Building Energy Efficiency

2008 is the baseline year because the campus expanded significantly in prior years, making 2008 a good baseline for comparison to today. 2008 is also the first year for which we have third-party verified climate data.

Facilities Management, Sustainability, Procurement, and Housing/Dining/Hospitality all work together to educate faculty, staff, students and community members about saving energy. Examples of outreach programs include the 2019 UC Cool Campus Challenge, a 10-week competition between all UC campuses aimed at reducing the UC carbon footprint and creating a culture of conservation across campuses; plugload reduction and shut the sash education for labs through the university Green Labs Program; plugload reduction and energy conservation behavior change through the university's Green Office Certification program; and outreach to students by the HDH EcoNauts, Sustainability interns, Facilities Management interns, and more.

A computerized Energy Management System connects all major campus buildings and centrally monitors and controls mechanical systems — heating, ventilating and air conditioning — based on occupancy. The programmed system reduces energy use during evenings, weekends and holidays. Precise programming reduces peak-time energy demand, maximizes conservation and allows for efficient room temperature management and long-term trending and comparative analysis. Thermostats in offices and labs are centrally controlled for efficient and accurate temperature settings. (See the table below for settings.) In some instances; however, office members can make slight manual adjustments to these controls if the workspace is too warm or cool.

Office/ administrative spaces

Setting: Occupied 6 a.m. – 6 p.m. weekdays
Heating Mode: Keeps temperature above 70°
Cooling mode: Keeps temperature below 74°
No heating or cooling occurs between 70° and 74°

Setting: Standby 4:30–8 p.m. weekdays
Heating Mode: Keeps temperature above 68°
Cooling Mode: Keeps temperature below 76°
No heating or cooling occurs between 68° and 76°

Setting: Unoccupied 8 p.m.– 6 a.m. 7 days a week
Heating Mode: Keeps temperature above 66°
Cooling Mode: Keeps temperature below 78°
No heating or cooling occurs between 66° and 78°

Labs
Setting: Occupied 6 a.m.–6 p.m. weekdays
Heating Mode: Keeps temperature above 70°
Cooling Mode: Keeps temperature below 74°
No heating or cooling occurs between 70° and 74°

Setting: Unoccupied 6 p.m.–6 a.m. 7 days a week
Heating Mode: Keeps temperature above 68°
Cooling Mode: Keeps temperature below 76°
No heating or cooling occurs between 68° and 76° "

Three parking lots, one parking structure, two gas stations, the Birch Aquarium exhibit areas, and 10% of campus walkways are lit with LED light fixtures, with plans to transition all exterior lights to LED installations for both interior and exterior applications.

Two outdoor Olympic-sized swimming pools are heated by solar thermal systems.

The cogeneration plant provides 85% of the campus’s annual electricity needs. 54% of the campus’s 60 MMBtu/hr heating load is served by waste steam from the campus's cogeneration plant. Heat recovery from the cogeneration plant also drives 3 steam-expansion chillers that together provide 9,750 refrigeration tons. A 3.8 million gallon chilled water storage tank is connected to the chilled water system, and it permanently load shifts from on peak to off peak 3 to 6 MW per day. The combined heat and power achieves 66% overall simple efficiency. The two gas turbines in the cogeneration plant use a non-ammonia catalytic emission reduction system that produces only 1.5 ppm NOx.

Thanks to recent regulatory authority for piping ""directed biogas"", efforts are underway to contract for supplies of remote sources of biogas for use in the gas turbines as a substitute for natural gas.

In addition to the gas turbine cogeneration plant, UC San Diego has a 2.8 MW fuel cell that runs on directed biogas from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant. Construction is currently underway on a 350 ton absorption chiller that will run on the exhaust heat of the fuel cell.

In the last five years, UC San Diego’s energy efficiency program has prevented energy use totaling 42 million kilowatt-hrs and 2.7 million therms of natural gas, saving $7.4 million per year on our energy bills. Since 2008 we have invested over $100M in energy efficiency projects, and we plan on doing nearly $100M more through 2025 and beyond. Total cost to implement these projects was $42.9M, of which $11.5M was offset by incentives from the UC/CSU/IOU Partnership, delivered by SDG&E.

The program includes the following, among other projects: (1) major HVAC retrofits in all major lab buildings built prior to 1992 – seven completed and eight more underway; (2) recommissioning of 26 buildings; (3) elimination of all T12 fluorescent lighting on campus; (4) several LED and induction lighting installations, with occupancy sensor control; and more.

Note that this includes the Main Campus in La Jolla (including East Campus), but NOT the Hillcrest campus or other off-site facilities. This sum includes gas input for the onsite cogeneration plant (since UC San Diego owns the plant), electricity output of the fuel cell (since UC San Diego purchases the electricity from a third party through a power purchase agreement), electricity purchased from the utility, electricity generated by onsite solar panels, and gas purchased from the utility.