University of California, Merced July 2011

Alliance to Save Energy’s Green Campus Program

UC Merced Green Campus team attends the CA Higher Education Sustainability Conference 2011

Upcoming Projects

Fall 2011

• Take the Stairs o Oct-Nov.

• Water Competition o Sept- Nov.

• QR Codes o September

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Energy Competition Goes National in the spring

This year UC Merced wants the residence halls to go national with competing in an energy and water competition, not only within the halls but other schools around the United States. At the California High Education Sustainability Conference there was a session that was able to break down how to run an energy or water competition within the residence halls. The session was able to describe how metrics and savings were collected, along with how to motivate the students that were living on-campus how to save water and energy.

When conducting an energy and water competition there are various aspects to consider. Being able to include great marketing, such as Facebook, creating press on campus and having not only the people on campus get involved but also the whole school. It was insightful to listen to other Green Campus teams from different schools, see there tactics to a successful energy and water competition, and notice that teaming up with other organizations could potentially get more outreach to the UC Merced community. After attending that session UC Merced Green Campus has been working on creative ways to reach out to the community and is excited for the upcoming water and energy competition for the school year.

By JASMINE MCCLAIN

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From July 10-13th, Green Campus Interns participated in the 2011 CA Higher Education Sustainability Conference at CSULB. The conference offered numerous workshops in energy auditing, water conservation, Best Practice Award Projects, recycling, sustainability in healthcare, and many more. This year, EDR (Energy Design Resource) and Southern California Edison Partner to bring a an Integrated Design Charrette where the GC Interns at UC Merced participated along with other scholars from numerous universities. Competing where 5 teams of 5 students along with 2 professionals (architects, engineers) per team.

The competition was two days where we explored integrated project delivery and outcome. On the first day of the competition we studied design concepts and the second day consisted of the actual work, designing a high school library, classroom, and administration building. The building had to be a zero net energy building, use low amounts of water for operation and landscaping, meet LEED standards used for Certification and most importantly make the building sustainable from the grown up.

I worked with 4 other college students from UC Santa Barbara, UC San Francisco and UC Irvine to design the high school building. In our design we kept in mind several factors such as the location, temperature, wind, sun and design a perfect building to make use of these factors in a beneficial way. The building landscape consisted of native plants that require less water, a kitchen garden that connected the community with the school and wall gardens.

Our project was recognized with first place and all winning team members were given free iPads. This was a fun project to have been able to participate. For more information about the project visit:

www.energydesignresources.com

Sustainable Design Charrette By MARTIN FIGUEROA

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The California Higher Education Sustainability Conference was astonishing. Aside from the huge networking opportunities, the conference was filled with remarkable workshops. One of these workshops was the Energy Audit training instructed by Jeffrey Steuben. This workshop allowed the participants to gain a hand on experience of how to perform an energy audit. During the Energy Audit training, energy auditing tools were accessible for participants to become familiar with the equipment Tools such as light meters, electrical circuit tracer, and digital thermometers were demonstrated and afterward, available for participants to gain experience of the devices. The workshop also contained a written exercise, which provided knowledge on metric conversions. This exercise was on basic energy auditing such as how to many therms is in a BTU or kilowatt to watts. It also explained how to calculate savings and payback period.

This was a very beneficial workshop. It consisted of knowledge every energy auditor will need to know. It also provided a rich experience as one becomes familiar with the equipment necessary for an energy audit. This was one of many amazing workshops available at the conference. I have learned a lot from this conference and looking forward to the next conference in June!

University of California Santa Barbara has an excellent collaborative of research professors, custodians and activists dedicated to performing research sustainably. LabRATS currently has a series of programs targeting laboratory waste and energy efficiency. “Call me ultra low” was a sticker campaign targeting laboratory -80C freezers. These energy mongers are often held at -80C by default, even if the freezer content does not require such a low temperature. The campaign aimed to rename the freezers commonly called “minus eighty” to “ultra low” and encourage researchers to turn the freezers up to a higher temperature whenever possible. Some found this outrageous; others found this a relief from the constant, consistent piling of safety factors on top of purchase orders or equipment maintenance. For example, a crane intended to lift 200lbs for a graduate project ended up being a huge machine capable of lifting a ton after all the safety factors were applied.

Allan Doyle, director of the program, talked about saving energy not only by cutting through some of the red tape associated with equipment but also by changing behavior. An open fume hood can consume tons of energy. More attention to fume hood sash height is a simple behavioral change researchers can adopt. Another sticker campaign, coupled with audits, realized significant energy savings through a single behavioral change. Bringing LabRATS to UC Merced would be excellent on many different levels. Networking with professors will allow real energy savings in a lab setting, opportunities for academic infusion and a great way to instill sustainable research practices in a growing university.

Bringing LabRATS to UC Merced is an idea in its infancy. Contacting Allan and seeing what his thoughts on this are will be the first step. Getting him in touch with friendly professors will be the second. This project has a lot of potential. Sustainability is a founding principle at our university; LabRATS will provide an avenue through which researchers could go green along with the rest of campus.

Bringing LabRats project to UC Merced

By Dmitri Medvedko Energy Auditing

By Dao Vang

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MARTIN FIGUEROA | mfigueroa2@ucmerced.edu Team Manager/Project Coordinator/Metrics Coordinator JOE ORTIZ| jortiz3@ucmerced.edu Treasurer/Project Coordinator DMITRI MEDVEDKO| dmedvedko@ucmerced.edu Project Coordinator/Public Relations DAO VANG | dvan7@ucmerced.edu Project Coordinator JASMINE MCCLAIN | jmcclain@ucmerced.edu Project Coordinator

CONTACT THE TEAM

The California Higher Sustainability Conference held July 14th – 17th at Cal State Long Beach provided insightful information for Green Campus interns. One session that really caught my attention was “Changing Behavior and Increasing Water Conservation Awareness”. The panel consisted of Jim Genes, Assistant to the Vice Chancellor at UC Merced, Matthew Veeh, Director of Government & Public affairs from the Long Beach Water Department, and Bogdan Rusu, UC Irvine Green Campus Intern. Each presenter talked about one thing in common, behavioral change. The city of Long Beach recently had a visually stimulating ad campaign to encourage citizens to cut back on water. Jim Genes talked about new technology being installed in the Valley Terrace Dorms at UC Merced that show real time consumption. Bogdan Rusu spoke about a showerhead swap out in the dorms at Irvine.

All the presentations encouraged people to be that difference. It makes me realize that instilling all these machines and electronics for people is good, but the biggest impact is educating them on how powerful their new gadget it and how It makes a difference on the environment.

For UC Merced upcoming dorm water competition, I want to be heavily involved in the ad and PR for the project. It is a great opportunity to educate students on how their showers and water usage have an impact on local and regional water reservoirs. Our water comes from natural resources and California was fortunate to have an indulgence of rain this year. Now our goal is to keep those reservoirs levels high for as long as we can.

Increasing Water Conservation Awareness By JOSEPH ORTIZ